-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
_/_/_/_/_
_/_/ _/
_/_/ _/ .
_/_/ _/ __
_/_/ _/ / / / / /
_/_/_/_/_/_/ / /- / /-/
_/_/_/_/_/ / / \ / \ . . .
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
We're back!
It's the return of the longest running regular column in Maggie. We've
managed to squeeze in an appearance on an earlier issue of Alive! But so
far, exhausted from this feat, we haven't repeated it yet.
But in a spirit of making good the omission, here we are back again, with an
assortment of diverse and bizarre topics, maybe a *little* less heavily
Wintel PeeCee-bashing biased this time? I doubt it somehow!
Jpeg Madness!
Here's a bit about the up and coming attempts to make money, by flogging a
publicly available for years previously horse, or a generally generic
graphics format. It happened to .gif files years ago (now whatever happened
to Compuserve?!) Now it seems to be the turn of the .jpeg piccy.
From: Francesco Savastano
Many american pseudo-companies want to earn money by claiming infringing
patent rights: this seems the new american way...very sad. The most
disappointing thing is that these guys seem to hate graphics programmers
like us. They probably want Adobe be the only graphics company on the
market. 10 years ago it was true but now graphics programming is for
everyone : that's why the Adobe guys are worried to lose their monopoly on
graphics.
EFI and MIT have sued more than 230 small/medium/big graphics companies in
USA, Europe and Canada for infringing of color image editing patent 919 they
claim. Among the companies are the big ones: Microsoft,Corel,Macromedia,Jasc
etc..but not Adobe.The 919 patent is expired on May 2002 but they filed the
things to the court before that date.
Gif is another sad case, but at least they didn't sued small companies, but
just went to the great ones.
This new american way is:
1)Let's see if we have a patent we can claim rights on.
2)Let's call the big companies to collect the money
3)If they don't want to pay money(million dollars) we put up an army of
lawyers to win the suit.
Further, many of the american patents (expecially on algorithms or other
software things) would not have been accepted in Europe.
What you *can* do and many are doing already, is tell them that you were
unaware of their patent and that you now have decided to duefully send back
what is legally theirs, i.e. your porn collection of JPG files.. Send one
image every day, to each employee, like this guy on slashdot:
(begin letter)
Dear Forgent Employee,
Attached is some of my porn collection. I am returning it to your company
because I inadvertantly used your patented JPEG format.
The rest is still to follow. My printer is slow. Playmate Debby especially
requires a lot of ink because of her unorthodox techniques and tools, as you
can clearly see in image #4057.
Thank You for your patience and understanding,
[Slashdot User]"
(end letter)
Times Past Remembered!
Here's a selected extract of some email correspondence I've been having with
Shiuming Lai, one of the MyAtari regulars. He tells me that he is going to
be giving the much-hyped Bitmap Bros game 'Chaos Engine', a fairly stiff
appraising, but things got a little weird from there, when the subject of
'ST Format' was brought up. Anyway, read on..
P.S. Thought I'd let you know, I'm going to trash The Chaos Engine in my
article. "Re-compiled" the ST Format demo and just downloaded a crack to
refresh my memory...
> Is this the Bitmap Bros game of that name?
Yes, that supposedly "STE enhanced" game that was late coming to the ST
because of apparent difficulty getting it to run on an ST. Oh yes, I am
bitter. ST Format's reviewer was clearly on drugs. Now I'm going to have my
say.
ST Format reviewer "on drugs" for just that one review?? Shurley shome
mishtake!
ST Format sample review - May 1993, editor Paula "out there" Richards....
"You get an initial impression of diesel fumes, the harsh clattering sound
of a London bus pulling out into a busy street. Jimi Hendrix dives headfirst
through a sheet of glass, and the cascading shards metamorphosise into Red
Admiral butterflies... Oh wow man! Really WOW!!"
"All in all, not bad for a textfile displayer. - 6 out of 10.."
Some things you cannot do on the cheap!
Taken from Teletext, August 14th 2002...
"Amateur Brain Surgeon charges œ3 a time."
A man who performed brain surgery in Egypt despite only having a primary
school education has been arrested.
The 40-year old man claimed to have studied surgery in Cairo and Germany,
when in fact he had forged a secondary school certificate.
He charged 22 Egyption pounds (œ3) per patient and operated on a number of
people, said court sources.
The condition of his "patients" has not been revealed.
(Surely "dead"!? - Ed.)
Revenge of the Film Licence Game!
This just in to our newsdesk..
MEN IN BLACK II: Alien Escape
Playstation 2 - 40 UKP
"There's something innately likeable about Will Smith. Even though he's
played a part in highly questionable fare such as Wild Wild West and Bad
Boys, it's hard to dislike him, however appalling the travesty in which he's
involved."
"It's perhaps appropriate that in Men In Black II: Alien Escape, his voice
has been replaced with that of some random wisecracking voice actor,
instantly voiding the role of all charm, and completing the circle of evil
in a game that is as harrowingly frustrating and derivative as any tat
trotted out as cheap movie merchandise."
"Run around, shoot at the tedious onslaught of alien scum, and then get
killed and start the whole monotonous thing again from the beginning, whilst
listening to half-arsed semi-quips delivered by two people who quite
patently aren't the stars of the film."
"It's hard to believe that anyone really hates themselves enough to spend
œ40 on this."
Nick Gillett - The Guardian
And it's hard to believe that software companies are still taking their
customers as mugs who will buy any old crap with a picture of a big name
movie on the box! Waitaminute, what am I saying!! Anyway, reading this takes
me back to the sort of thing I was against ten years ago! It almost makes
you nostalgic for the days of Ocean and US Gold!
Almost, my memory isn't that far gone just yet!
Phenix Roast?
Here's some stuff which came off the back of a question that I thought to
ask in the Rodolphe Czuba interview. This went first via Shiuming Lai, who
had a lot of good information about the Phenix project when it was active,
and who gave me quite a bit of it here. So I thought this would be worth
putting elsewhere - CiH, Sept 6th 2002.
CiH:- A historical curiosity. We all remember the Phenix, the dual '060
based super Falcon concept that didn't make it. I even remember seeing a
motherboard at the AMS Show in Stafford a few years ago. Shortly after, it
all fell apart from the firmware developers side. How close did Phenix
actually get to being fully realised?
SL:- That wasn't a motherboard, it was *the* motherboard, the only
prototype. I remember Rodolphe showing me the cause of the bug that had
stumped him just weeks before he brought it over. After he borrowed a logic
analyzer it transpired that he'd accidentally routed some bus lines on the
board back-to-front! So he had to cut a few tracks and solder on some wires
to "flip" them back over :-))
Bear in mind Dolmen had actually reached a stage of quite advanced
functionality, you should have seen screen-shots of it running normal GEM
apps on a CT2A Falcon fitted with the evaluation PCI bridge running with the
S3 Virge.
CiH:- But somehow we never got to see that, the only thing the Phenix board
was capable of doing at Stafford was booting an orange chessboard pattern on
screen. If Dolmen got that far, it is curious that we didn't see much
physical evidence of it when we were in the 'live' development phase, such
as screenshots. I don't remember seeing a Dolmen screengrab anywhere?
SL:- Read again, "on a CT2A Falcon." Remember you couldn't develop anything
on the Phenix itself, it would be a chicken-and-egg scenario. So what they
did was code all the stuff on a CT2A Falcon, then squirt it down to the
Phenix via the CT2A's 32-bit expansion bus (the one which Titan Designs
famously tried to screw CT2B for lacking). All the main bits of Phenix were
developed as plug-in cards for the CT2A.
Check Atari Computing 15. It was also shown at various European shows, on
CT2A Falcons (I saw it at Neuss 99 in April but didn't get to play with it)
because at that time a Phenix did not physically exist. By the time it did,
and by the way, its *first* public showing was at Stafford, then the Neuss
fair the following weekend, it was not yet in a state ready to run on the
Phenix.
CiH:- I am also curious about the fact that Dolmen seems to have been
completely abandoned, almost deliberately hidden out of sight, with no buggy
but useable beta versions circulating for example. Where did it go to?
SL:- I did ask for a copy when I was working at System Solutions but it was
deemed too complex to configure, they may have promised a more user friendly
one later but I can't remember on this one. There is basically no point
running Dolmen on even a CT2B, because the Phenix systems it's designed for
are only available on the Phenix itself, or a CT2A with the relevant Phenix
sub-system development card on its expansion connector.
Down with King Spam!
Now this is a spam email with a difference. Now most spam emails are easily
spotted and dealt with quickly. Most of them promise to "add three inches
within a month" (to your cucumber plants, and whilst making "$$$"?!) But
this one managed to avoid being dunked into an early random electron bath,
because of the initial weirdness of the subject header. Which goes something
like:
Subject: A:\newsubject_dad SEMPTEMBER 30 2002.txt
A ghastly mistake, or something genuinely from a reality operating almost in
parallel to ours? No such luck, as it turned out to be yet another
"unbeatable!" offer. But wait, reading it reveals more!
==========================================================================
300 MILLION E-MAIL ADDRESSES WORLD WIDE FULLY EXPORTABLE
and 1.4 million USA business fax numbers FULLY EXPORTABLE ==Only $ 99.95==
SILVER PACKAGE ALL TWO DIRECTORIES (1,2) On 3CD'S.
90% DELIVERABLE
=========================================================================
WE CAN DRAMATICALLY IMPROVE ANY BUSINESS!
Targeted email is the most direct and powerful method of advertising on the
Internet today! There are potentially millions of buyers willing to Purchase
your product or service. Start NOW by being your own boss............
So we're starting to get an idea where spam comes from. Hands up, who still
believes that they get all these email addresses by themselves, by hand?
Thought not! It gets more sinister, look below!
MORE THAN 164 CATEGORIES SUCH AS:
* Persons running home businesses or interested in starting one
* Persons interested in buying things on the web
* Persons interested in investing online or offline
* All 50 States broken down by area code
* Persons interested in Health & Fitness products / services
* Opt in : Persons interested in recieving offers by email.
* Persons interested in Travel, Sports, Dining, Real Estate, Mortgage,
Politics, Religion, Fishing, Trade Shows etc..
* Many More Categories...
It's getting like that 'Minority Report' film, targeted spam! Don't belong
to any religion or gyms! Now a screamingly funny bit coming up:
MUCH FASTER: With bulk E-mail you get responses back in 1 to 4 days instead
of waiting weeks or months! You can begin filling orders the same day you
send E-mail. FREE ADVERTISING WORTH MILLIONS: It costs millions of dollars
to mail.
Pity most of the responses will be on the lines of "Oh do fuck off!" (!) But
what is this? They've got a snailmail address right at the end.
MAILING ADDRESS:
Future Tech International
Import Export Company
1300 Don Mills Road Suite 211
Don Mills Ontario, Canada
M3B 2W6
To be removed from our database please send a fax to 1-970-289-6524 (Wanna
bet that fax number got bombed within three days of this spam going out?!)
Now if we can get cruise missiles to respond to postal addresses, and not
just grid references, we might be on to something here!?
The Real Star Wars, coming soon to a Rogue State near you?!
I scooped this off the www.stragegypage.com site, which has interesting
stuff of this nature featured occasionally. And you thought that the people
that made the (first?) Gulf War so memorable, had been sitting back and
chewing the ends off pencils since 1991?
=======---------========
October 11, 2002; The military is developing laser weapons to arm the F-35
and AC-130, and expects to have a demonstration model by 2010 with a full-
scale development project to follow. Such a weapon has many advantages, it
can fire indefinitely, subject only to the engine fuel to power it and the
cooling system to keep it from overheating. And the aircraft can be refueled
in flight after the laser hits a target, there are no bomb fragments that
say "Made in USA", allowing covert attacks with full deniability. A laser
could detonate fuel storage tanks and leave no evidence that an attack had
even taken place at all. It is more accurate than guided bombs, which can go
off target due to mechanical failures. The damage caused by the laser is
very localized, with a damage radius of only a few feet.
It can "allow covert attacks with full deniability"(!) Isn't that sort of
giving the game away in advance? - Ed Note
This has become possible due to recent technological advances that make
lasers smaller, lighter, and more efficient. Another improvement is in
fighter technology, as new fighters will be able to feed a megawatt of power
into a laser within five years, and more within ten years.
Microwave weapons are also being designed, but will only be carried by
unmanned aircraft as they are harder to control and more likely to harm
their own aircraft and its crew. - Stephen Cole
Does Halloween make you Sick?!
This internet grabbed Halloween pisstake was just too good to pass up!
I might suggest you make up your own captions for this one!
The End (for now!)
And this is it for another edition of Dirk.I leave you with a final thought.
If Guy Fawkes night is only supposed to be one night, how come we've got
fireworks going up into the air for the previous month before, and now six
days afterwards?! It's the same with Xmas starting in November, People,
learn to get your festivals in proportion, or they'll get taken away from
you by the government ministry of banning fun things!
CiH,for Alive! Mag, various in '02
|
