Editorial
13:55 hugi ! hugi ! hugi now !
(Ojuice.net oneliners on June 21, 2003)
14:07 lovely
14:23 who needs a gfx
14:48 hehe, a crappy voice synth... ;)
16:59 happy birthday kojote!
17:23 yankee go home
18:15 sam reciter on c64 ?
19:49 aaadok!!!!! you'd better get the hugi out, asap!!!!!
Like always, people tend to get impatient when it's already a couple of weeks after the official articles submission deadline, the Hugi staff has announced a long time only that they are "finishing" the new issue, and still - it hasn't been released yet. Some would accept a sloppily edited issue containing a few grammar errors, misaligned images, dead links and the like if only they could read it a few days before. Impatience and rush are two of the prime vices of the modern life-style. It's exactly them that prohibit the creative people of today from creating works of art and making discoveries comparable to wonderful products of human mind such as the Sistine Chapel and the General Theory of Relativity.
Waiting may be annoying, but the outcome of waiting a bit longer and being able to enjoy a more perfect product definitely makes up for this nuisance.
Hi and Welcome to Hugi 27!
So here's finally the new issue of Hugi, the magazine that has been providing the scene and beyond with an enormous amount and variety of contents throughout the past 7 years. In these 7 years, Hugi has undergone tremendous changes, which partially reflect the development of its editors. After all, "the times they are a-changing" - especially for young people as us members of the Hugi Staff. I'm going to report more about the latest developments of our lives a couple of pages below.
After being forced to publish a rushed issue (even though its release was delayed, it was done rather quickly) as a consequence of me having been confronted with challenges of a new quality in my real life, I've got the steering wheel in my hands again and am able to create Hugi with a refreshed spirit and new energy.
Hugi 27 - The Freedom Diskmag has been released on Sunday, the 22nd of June, 2003. Consisting of 630 kbyte of articles, it may at first glance appear to be a not-so-huge issue for Hugi standards (which is still more than double the size of an ordinary diskmag) - but then again, it's a dense issue, for these 630k are distributed over only four sections: Editorial, Scene, Coding and Misc (Literature &emp; Real Life). No 315k about commercial music, Winamp skinning and the like, but only the core sections that constitute the secret of HUGI's success.
The demo scene has been alive and prosperous in the first half of 2003. You can read about some of the interesting new releases and projects in this issue's "what used to be called the news corner" column. It seems like the scene and its products are increasingly gaining attention from the computer industry; recently I've even discovered that the Dark Basic site contains a link to www.hugi.de. Therefore, "Presenting the scene to the general public: good or bad?" is one of the questions we ask you in the opinion poll for Hugi 28 (see fillme28.txt).
Our coding corner is especially strong this time. I suppose there's no need for me to tell you anything more about its contents here - simply open the section and see for yourself in case you're a coder or planning to become one.
Of course this issue also contains a hidden tune. By the way, the hidden part in Hugi 26 can be accessed via the last link in the Support article. Polaris, mados, gal, Alchemist, Paralax, Barlog and Multik have found it on their own - congratulations on that!
A few words about politics
A lot has happened in the world in the last couple of months. The most noteable event has certainly been the war in the Middle East. As a consequence of this war, the Iraqi people have finally been liberated from the yoke of the Saddam régime. This war may have primarily been fought for economic reasons, for oil, but it did serve a humanitarian purpose.
The cover story of the latest issue of Der Spiegel (25/2003) has confirmed my opinion that the rule of the Ba'ath party was equally cruel as the Stalin and Pol Pot régimes. Saddam had established a totalitary system based on state terrorism. People were living in constant fear of being denunciated to the Iraqi secret service by their neighbours, their children's teachers or members of their own family. The punishments for anybody who dared to criticise the régime or just to make a joke of the Iraq were terrible: imprisonment in dark dungeons, torture, capital punishment. Many men and women were blasted and buried on Cambodia-style killing fields while still being alive.
Even the people that had the closest relationships to Saddam Hussain or his elder son Udai were not made exceptions. One doctor who had served Saddam as his personal physician for many years ended up in prison, where he spent 12 years of his life. Anybody who visited Udai's parties had to consider not returing home without severe injuries, for Udai used to randomly select visitors for perverted violent games. The others were forced to laugh on their cries of pain; if someone didn't laugh, he would be the next victim.
If you were a beautiful woman and caught Udai's attention - too bad for your husband: unless he handed you over to Udai voluntarily, this would be his death sentence. If you then refused to have sex with Udai, he would simply rape you; and afterwards he would have possibly killed you.
In a régime like Saddam's, even the worst criminals are free to commit their crimes if they are the dictator's sons.
In the Iraq of Saddam Hussain, 70% of the population - the Shiites and the Kurds - were treated as evil aliens. When a Shiite preacher once offended the Iraqi régime in a speech, the government took revenge by erasing the population of an entire Shiite village. On top of that, it was a randomly chosen village which was not even related to the preacher in any way.
In the early 1990s, the Iraqi army also tested chemical weapons on Iraq's own population by attacking a Kurdish village with poison gas and killing all its citizens.
Facing these facts, it's incredible how Jacques Chirac, the President of France, was able to have the idea of creating an Anti-American alliance. When short after the war Iraqi citizens desperately dug out their relatives, the victims of the Saddam era, from the killing fields with their bare hands, they cried with pain and asked the bystanders: "How could French President Chirac protect these murderers??" That Germany joined this alliance must be attributed to the absolutely dilletante nature of Gerhard Schröder's and Joschka Fischer's politics.
The other major political event of the past months has been the expansion of the European Union. Welcome to the club, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta!
On this occasion I would like to remind Germany that it isn't only the locomotive of the European economy and the country that makes by far the largest contribution to the EU budget, but it also has to be conscious of its political responsibilities and guide our new member countries on their way to peace, democracy and a high living standard.
And most importantly, the EU's friendship to the USA ought to be firm as a rock.
News about the Hugi staff
Quite a bit has happened inside the Hugi Staff. After Chris Dragan, who completed his MSc in computer science a couple of months ago, we now have two more universitys graduate in our team: Dendrite has finished Cambridge Medical School and is now working as an assistant physician for opthalmology. He originally wanted to specialize in neurophysiology, but as medicine is such a complex branch of science, it's obvious that your particular interests may change with time. And Makke has completed his degree in computer science; he's now working as a coder for a telecom company. Congratulations, Mr Makke and Dr Dendrite!
The Hugi Core welcomes two new active members: DiamonDie and SacRat have enhanced our team. DiamonDie, from Finland, is working as a freelance journalist in real life; she has been a regular contributor to Hugi since issue 24, and she's also a member of two demogroups, foobug and Numedia Cyclops. She will continue to write articles on scene and real-life related matters. SacRat has been a member of the Russian Division for quite some time, but recently he has become one of the most contributors to the international edition as well. Apart from writing articles, he selects the music for each Hugi issue. In real life, he's studying physics.
CoaXCable is well again after a period of illness (like last year); his other group CoolPhaT, of which he is the group organizer, is probably still one of the most productive demo groups these days. I guess all of you who regularly visit the scene channels on IRC have met him several times, and he's probably the no.1 source for news on Hugi for IRC users. On the other hand, he provides Hugi with a lot of news on other groups.
As regards myself, a lot has been happening. Apart from having completed the second year of my medical studies, I'm now beginning to get seriously involved in some scientific projects. I'm also active in two students organizations and basically I'm doing a lot related to medicine and natural sciences apart from attending the regular classes.
One day I visited a symposium on the effects of the Nazi rule in Austria on education and science, where I had the chance to talk to Eric Kandel, who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in the year 2000; he asked me to summarize the contents of a book in which the biographies of several Austrian Nobel Laureates of former days and present-day Austrian scientists were compared, which I did. I then asked him for his estimation of the chance that a Nobel Prize would be awarded to an Austrian scientists again in the next decades, and he said yes, he does believes that Austria is going to have some Nobel Laureates again - Austrian science is improving slowly, but it is improving.
On the same day, I also visited the opening of the High-Voltage MRI Center of Excellence at the General Hospital of Vienna. As expected, there were a lot of university professors I knew; but what I hadn't anticipated was that several Austrian top politicians would also be there, including Reinhart Waneck (the Austrian State Secretary for Health), Elisabeth Pittermann-Höcker (the member of Vienna's city council that is responsible for health-related issues) and Herbert Haupt (Vice Chancellor of the Republic of Austria). But what came most unexpected of all was that Mr Haupt took place right next to me! Apparently I had involuntarily taken place in the row that was actually reserved for VIP guests. But since I had the fifth seat from the right and there were only four VIP guests, nobody complained about it. So that was how I came to sit (and also talk, but only very little and nothing of relevance) next to one of the most powerful persons of this country whom I had only known from TV before.
Well, you see, this was quite a remarkable day which I won't forget that soon, but basically - even though I rarely meet so many famous persons at the same day - my every-day life is equally diversified; I'm hardly ever bored! I attend regular lectures as well as extra-curricular ones including such for students of other areas (e.g. chemistry and physics) as well as graduated scientists. I regularly visit the meetings and conferences of my students organizations. We sometimes have excursions, e.g. to pharmaceutical companies; once we also spent a weekend at Brünn (Brno, Czech Republic) where we paid a visit to the Gregor Mendel Museum. (BTW, is anynone of you from Brno/Brünn? Once while walking on the streets, I heard music playing from a house that sounded very much like chip!) In early May, elections for the students' parliament were held; it was also great fun to help my party gain votes. (In the end, we won the elections with 60%! On the evening after the elections, our chairman received a phone call from Wolfgang Schüssel, the Chancellor of the Republic of Austria, who congratulated him on this very impressive success.)
All in all, I'm happy that I'm studying medicine at a university (the newly founded Vienna University of Medicine; until last year, it belonged to the University of Vienna) which offers so many interesting extracurricular activities in addition to high-quality tuition. In the summer holidays, I'll attend a special seminar in Prague focusing on philosophy that features teachers from Dartmouth and Harvard University; I'm already awaiting it with curiousity in order to see how the lectures at American Ivy-League universities differ from ours.
Now enjoy reading!
Well, all that's still left for me to do is to wish you a happy read. And, please: Fill in the file fillme28.txt that is attached to this Hugi issue (in case you're reading it online, check out the Hugi 27 page at the Hugi website).
Diskmags are interactive media - after finishing reading the current issue, it's your turn to give feedback and contibute to the next one.
Cheers!
P.S.: Special thanx fly to seven11 for the great pics and their quick adaptation to Panorama, TAD for submitting two completely new background themes only two days for the release of this issue, SacRat for music selection and DiamonDie for finishing a great article just in the last minute.