__ __ , , __ __
| V | ' V : .
: . | |\ |`\ |\ | . | |`-~. .`-~.
| | | | | | `\ | | | | | : |:| | ||
|_/`\_| `' |_;`_| `' |_/`\_| `--`' `--|
-=='
The Everso Spur-of-the-Moment Third edition!
Editorial:-
After our breathtaking Mekka and Queen-mum-tastic special editions of Mini-
Mag, in the previous issue of Alive! It is back to something like normal
service. We are of course using a definition of "normal" as "normal, but
only because we are kept in check by a perilously experimental cocktail of
psychiatric drugs!"
But without further ado or controversy, here it is.
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Thought Provoking Bit:-
Here's my thought on the anniversary of September 11th ("9-11" to any
Americans browsing the Mini-Mag channel).
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Fire-fighters, the guys and gals who are your literal last resort when
lunatic beards in stolen aircraft come calling into the side of your office.
Are these the last untarnished heroes of a society prepared to be cynical
about everyone else? Think about, it, in a world of groping doctors, abusing
priests, fraudulent life insurance salesman etc, isn't it nice there is at
least one group we can all look up to?
The scope for professional misconduct is pretty limited in their case, which
sort of helps I suppose. Imagine if fire-fighters were like lawyers,
delaying putting out a blaze, or throwing petrol on a small fire to inflate
their fees!? Too horrible to contemplate really...
As for the report that criticised the New York emergency services for all
rushing in too quickly into the World Trade Towers disaster, well that's
what emergency services are trained and paid to do! You can tell that report
was put together by a civil servant who has never faced a moment of physical
danger with people's lives on the line! This is a case where hindsight
wisdom is the wisdom of the wanker!
That's it, thought-provoking moment over, back to the rest of the rubbish!
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News:-
All the news and rumours and frankly made-up stuff comes right here.
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Fresh breaking news arrives, telling of a new compact menu from ancient dad-
crackers, the Pompey Pirates. This is following the recent relaunch of the
Dbug compact menus. This new Pompey disk contains some very unusual
software, namely the Ultimate Music Demo, The full and finished Willies
Adventures game, and a never before seen CT60 software emulation, that turns
an '030 Falcon into an '060 Falcon with no extra hardware and at no extra
cost (complete with crack trainer!)
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Bud the Chud is coming! - Beware the idle buggers of March!
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Jeff Minter has been confirmed as going to the latest Alt Party next January
in Helsinki as the guest of honour. Jeff's Llama's and Sheep on his farm are
getting some intensive sauna training in for the event. At least that's what
we hope Jeff means when he says he is "getting into a small hot box with
some of his favourite animals"!
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Now .gif, .jpeg, and .mp3 have fallen, the humble ascii text falls victim to
the format licensing frenzy! The venerable ascii text format becomes the
latest intellectual hot property to attract a pay-per-use fee. Sid
Gutenberg, of the suspiciously revived 'Gutenberg Inc' commented yesterday:
"We're charging a (licensing) fee as we feel it is time to get something
back. The general public have had the best part of five hundred years worth
of free use of ascii. In my view, we have been exceedingly generous in
holding off putting a pay-per-use system in for this length of time. But we
now think the infrastructure has developed to the point where we can make
such a system work. Besides which, we don't need the permission of the Pope
anymore!"
Initial reports suggest that a charging regime will consist of a levy of
0.000369 dollars per standard A4 text page. When pressed for more details,
Sid Gutenberg remarked: "Aw, go and work it out for yourself!"
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MyAtari Press Release #1, Matthew Bacon
has typed another article, he will shortly be checking for spelling and
formatting errors, then making it into a nice HTML page ready for uploading
to the MyAtari website!
MyAtari Press Release #2, He has made a cup of coffee before going onto his
next one!!
MyAtari Press Release #3, He has added sugar and is stirring the cup, now on
the second rotation around the cup with the spoon, he will be drinking it
soon. See the MyAtari website for a constantly updated minute by minute
activity log!
MyAtari Press Release #4, Now he's absently wiping his nose with the back of
his hand....
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Games:-
An absence of Atari stuff, leads us to contemplation of some mainstream up
and coming big press releases for the Xmas 2002 games.
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X-Box, "Gor Blimey here's a good old cockney car-chase 2" - Touted as *the*
release for the X-Box this Xmas. 'Cockney Car Chase' renders several hundred
realistic London scenes, and fills them with texture mapped, shadow mapped,
and cockney witticism laden car wrecks and casual gangster violence. "They
nevva 'urt no-one oo wasn't one of their own! Do vah blag with th' slag
guvnor! 'Ave a banana! Is anyone actually reading this crap?!"
44.95 ukp - Age restricted due to explicit content, no-one OVER 18 is
allowed to purchase this game.
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PS2. "The further adventures of Mr Pink -
Escape from Japan!" Our favourite coding hero goes a long way overseas,
having freed himself from the escape-proof dungeons of Guild-Ford (see
"Adventures of Mr Pink") he makes his way to Japan to relax and stock up on
shiny widgets. Unfortunately, he is captured by the dominant evil power,
NinTend-O-San, and put to work in the Gameboy prison. Now you have to get
him out of there!
4495 yen - All crackers and pirates will be put to work to build railway!
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Gamecube. "Super Mario Territorial Dispute over some islands in the South
China Sea." The most boringly geopolitical of the lot. Comes as a useful
companion to the infotainment release "Lets invade Taiwan!"
$$ lots $$ in fact, don't even think of asking!
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Demos:-
This section is closed for the time being, due to lack of interest.
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Shade Bob Record - A serious attempt at getting the *fewest* shade bobs on
the screen of a base 8 mhz ST. The winner was The whole Atari scene, with a
new record number of *zero* bob sprites onscreen!
New competition coming soon! - To get the fewest 3-D polygons onscreen,
with the least amount of texture-mapping. 8mhz ST preferred, but any
hardware will be fine, or indeed, none at all!
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Adverts:-
ONCE IN A LIFETIME FINANCIAL OPPORTUNITY! Your future road to prosperity can
be found in taking up the NIGERIAN STATE OIL COMPANY FREE PORNO VIAGRA PENIS
ENHANCEMENT SHARES ISSUE! If you aren't interested in this unique
opportunity, then please send a return blank email on
'spamalot@wevegotyounow.com' so we can (cough!) take you off our mailing
list.
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Utilities:-
"Sim Laden" - Is the world's public enemy number 1 still alive? Or is he
merely a bomb-splattered DNA scraping, waiting to be collected from the
walls of the Tora Bora canyon? Well with this neat software widget, you can
confuse the issue further! An ultra-realistic home video editing suite,
along with the latest CGI fakery-ware will keep the worlds secret services
guessing when your next "exclusive" with the Al Jazeera satellite telly
people comes along!
44.99 shekels, compatible with Ramadam Mk 4 with a minimum Pentium III and
4GB hard drive.
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Coding:-
The Easiest way to code, this is how!
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Run Routine_
Enquire hopefully on Dead Hackers BBS for difficult code query
Await multiple reponses to coding query
Select best of the replies
Cut from Dead Hackers BBS page
Paste into Devpac
_ Compile and run
End Routine
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Interview:-
With Ted Daft, head of the Microsoft development team for the future version
of Windows, codenamed 'Palladium'.
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A. "Ted, we're told that Palladium will be more secure than anything that
Microsoft has done previously, can you tell us why?"
T. "Sure, Palladium has a special inner area, sort of like an exclusive
gentlemans club. It has a software bouncer on the door which decides which
software will make the grade, and be allowed to run. So nice clean and tidy
software, with the right sort of haircut, shoes and trousers, would have no
problem, but any scruffy riff-raff 'warez' simply wouldn't get in."
A. "Well what would you define as 'riff-raff' software?"
T. "Viruses trojan horses and stuff obviously, also anything badly written,
of dubious parentage, that could do harm to the contents of the hard
disk..."
A. "So going on that last statement, then Palladium won't be able to run any
Microsoft products at all!?"
T. "That's not fair, the rumours about early versions deleting themselves in
an apparent suicide bid aren't true either, give me that tape now!!"
(Struggles and thumps can be overheard.)
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Travel:-
Error in Line 3 on pontoons - or "Bad river, naughty river, stop that!"
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Having learned lessons from the massive flooding at Dresden in August, next
year's Easter Error in Line party will be held on a series of giant
polystyrene rafts which should be able to float clear of any future
waterborne disasters. Full enjoyment of any computer equipment brought to
the party will be assisted by each raft having its own independent
electricity generator. If these rafts aren't available in time for next
Easter, the organisers are looking at several alternative methods of keeping
your feet dry. So we might be getting together on anything from a fully
rigged sailing ship, through to an oceangoing oil rig platform!
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Multimedia:-
Uh oh! This one is not going to be pretty!
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I feel a large scale rant coming on about the music recording industry. I've
got no sympathy for their alleged losses from the widespread adoption of
file sharing by their financially burdened cash cow punters, when they can
pay off Maria Carey umpteen million dollars to get rid of her for being
bonkers and useless. This after paying something like 38 million dollars for
her services in the first place. If they really are having their financial
throats cut by the evil pirates, then surely they would have booted La Carey
out into the snow without a penny to her name?!
Starvation of funds to develop new creative talent indeed! The record
industry supports a corporate infrastructure way beyond that needed for
necessary development of the artist. There are plenty of jobs for the
useless hangers-on, including many distinctly uncreative people, mainly
operating in a punitive capacity against the public. What the hell is an "A
& R Man" anyway? In the UK, it is not as if it is particularly successful
anymore in the great balance of payments battle. The UK recording industry
was 20% of the US market at its peak, now it is around half of 1%, the
lowest figure since the early 1960's! Which speaks volumes about the
effectiveness of the likes of Simon "Oswald Mosely Trousers" Bowell, er,
Cowell heading up the industry?
Is the fact that he spends most time bullying vunerable starstruck teenagers
on teevee shows like Pop Idol, intended to deflect attention from the fact
that his proper job as head of a record company is going down the tubes at
light speed?!
There is a real need for a genetically engineered smart virus, that targets
recording industry executives, along with corporate lawyers, and advertising
people, then with just the useful people, the artistes, left standing, we
can start again..
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The Fat Lady Sings:-
Or the thin lady rants and screams at a bunch of pretty, toned, but stupid
kids who naively dream of "the stardom", and are willing to endure any
humiliation, ANY humiliation, including having Geri 'Notverywell' Halliwell
bawl at a normally developed teenage girl, for being "too fat"(!) The ex-
spicester is too fucked up to run her own life properly, so why put her in a
position of power abuse on the jury of the latest 'Pop Idol' teevee series?!
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CiH, for Alive! Mag,Oct '02
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