News

It does take a perverse form of optimism to have any faith in the news media when almost every time they cover something you know about, they get it wrong.
-- Grant Edwards
This page contains links to current events' pages, periodically updated things, and references to some old-fashioned 'zines and newsletters.

(26.08.95) New! To make things livelier, most entries now have their keywords enhanced with boldface. Eeek! Is this the first step towards the eventual Wiredization of my pages? Stey tuuned.

(04.06.98) After nearly 3 years, my first re-appearance here.


(04.06.98)(05.01.96) The Hate Page of the Week. Nothing for the faint of heart.
(04.06.98)(12.09.95) Bertrand Meyer, of Eiffel fame, got fed up with news.noise. SELF-DISCIPLINE is a behavioural codex for news postints, consisting of 15 rules. Some of them are IMHO part of well-accepted "extended netiquette" (i.e. points like "cross-posting of opinions to at least three groups, followup to one"); others are indeed new. The main element that is entirely new is the introduction of a two-character encoding in the Subject: line; [++] for opinions, [--] for corrections, etc.pp. I don't really believe this will work...

(interesting alternative: a "comment channel"; after reading an article, each user can give a codified rating (something small, to be encoded in a few bytes), and the ratings for each message can then be used by newsreaders...)


(10.09.95) The McLibel Trial.

(13.08.95) At last, recognition! The CFP of the First International Virtual Conference on Mad Science (IVCMS'96), something we (the more or less mad scientists of the world) have been awaiting for years.

(26.08.95) Its now up to five articles, of which four are good.

(09.10.95) After being removed from its original server, a new site has been found.

(20.01.96) After being removed from the other server, yet another site has been found (this time a commercial one, in the hope of more stability).


(26.08.95) Want to buy a really unique christmas present for someone who likes SF? A few original manuscripts (typescripts with handwritten corrections) of Philip K. Dick are coming on the market (ex libris Tim Powers).

To get an idea of the price range involved: A Scanner Darkly (``Two complete manuscripts. The original ribbon copy typescript, with pages numbered 1-128 and 3 pages that appeared in the book as the "Author's Note." The text has been extensively reworked in ink by the author, with revisions on a majority of pages and at least two scenes that do not appear in the final book. Together with a second copy, this a complete re-typing consisting of 300 ribbon copy pages, with a few small ink notes and changes by the author, and a number of pencil copy editor's marks.'') sells for $16,500.

(If you can't afford a whole book, you can lay hands on `` 13. Autograph Note Unsigned. Circa 1972. A single sheet on which Dick has written two drafts of a statement in German, designed to help Powers speak to a girl he was dating. Folded four times.'' for a mere $300.)

And ``16. (POWERS, Tim and DICK, Philip K.). Manuscript. One page, ribbon copy, from the Powers novel The Anubis Gate, on which the first 14 lines are Powers' own text (page 241 of the published book) and the last 13 lines were typed by Dick in a parodying continuation of the story. Across the top, in Powers' hand, is a note explaining that Dick typed while Powers was out getting beer. A humorous invention, and an indication of the closeness between the two writers. $750'' sounds really interesting.

(Reading this catalogue left me in a cynical mood: Dick is an author who was so poor at times that he had to live off dog food (or is this an UL?), and his writing career was probably saved one time by RAH who gifted him a typewriter. Not to speak of his various psychological and drug problems.)


(22.08.95) Ganz Bayern ist erzürnt über der Kruzifix-Urteil. Im Namen der Netzgemeinde bedanke ich mich bei Herrn Prof. Dr. jur. Herbert Bethge, auf dessen Seiten ich nun öfter einen Blick werfen werde. Die Seite Öffentliches Recht im WWW enthält mehrere aktuelle Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts im Volltext.
(26.08.95 ok, its old news) Lesenswert: Die neue deutsche Rechtschreibung (IDS SPRACHREPORT EXTRAAUSGABE / Dezember 1994 / Informationen und Meinungen zur deutschen Sprache / Herausgegeben vom Institut für deutsche Sprache)

(Der Report sieht eingescannt aus, er enthält einige OCR-typische Typos (I/l) ;-)

``Eine Übergangszeit von fünf Jahren ist vorgesehen; die verbindliche Einführung sollte bis zum Jahre 2001 abgeschlossen sein.''


(13.08.95) Envisioning the Information Age: a very well-filtered list of links to information-technology (whatever that is ;-) related sites and issues.
(05.08.95) The other guy in the Jake Baker case, a certain Arthur Gonda (why am I reminded of a certain Lem story character?;-), is searched by the Ontario Provincial Police.
(22.07.95) A lot of different Weather Maps, mostly of the US, but some world-wide ones, too. Updated every hour / six hours / day. ( Europe )
(27.03.95) Kludge is ``a web site about new media and digital culture''. Currently, this means CD-ROM reviews, and general musings on how new media are "filled" with "content". Kludge is still quite new, let's see how it develops. (Turn off graphics if you don't want an average 50k of graphics per page.)
(24.03.95) EYE's Stupid Net.Coverage award for the month of February. (Read it if you want to know where to find "SexNet" and what all this talk about "cracking route" is about.)

Their collection of net.related stories (one per week) contains, amongst many other topics, articles on the alt.religion.scientology conflict, the useless WWW page phenomenon, and Cancelmoose[TM]. (If you are the kind of person interested in this kind of thing, these are the news you might be more interested in.)


(24.03.95) The New York Times' TimesFax is distributed as a 6-page PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file. I have to admit that it does look good, and is better than plain PosctScript (you can even cut text from it!), but is it really worth the effort? Most of TimesFax' material is plain text, so the graphic mostly buys me the crosswords (and the advertisers' logos).
MIT's News Totalizator. Mostly lame bets, often unreachable.
Are you in favor of the rat or the snake?

(17.06.95) Still there, with the Snake leading.


The people at Mathworks (creators of MATLAB) maintain a library of Pentium Papers; a collection of documents related to the world-famous Penium division bug.

(17.06.95) Most recent entry is from December 27.

Locally available: Vaughan R. Pratt's Pentium error chain reaction experiment.

There were some follow-up analyses that relativized his findings, but the approach is still a very nice example of "experimental" computer science.


A pearl of commercialism: Netscape are just as tired of "that throbbing, pulsing, breathing, oversized N" and want YOU to design a replacement. Contest ended on March 19. The contest page also contains some nice Mozilla-pics.

Now that the contest winner has been choosen, the winner and some runners-up are displayed on that location.


(16.05.95) Mysterious Bytes is ``Electronic magazine devoted to the study of mysteries and related subjects''.

"Mysteries" as in "detective stories", not as in "bermuda triangle". Quite readable.


(07.06.95) Reichstagsverhüllung und Rahmenveranstaltungen
(17.06.95) CSICOP (the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), one of the most prominent skeptical de-bunking societies, have made a few recent issues of their Skeptical Briefs newsletter available online.
(09.10.95) Mad Science Monthly Newsletter
Heresy Trial

Three theologians who are not members of the Society of the Holy Heretics have been charged with High Heresy. It is their contention that the Universe is not the play-test version of an original role-playing game, but rather, a thinly disguised reworking of an earlier role-playing game called Verisimilitude.

The theologians will be defending their thesis at the next annual V. M. Smith Memorial Barbeque.


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