SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us = tgdigby@netcom.com http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/ Issue #45 New Moon of September 20, 1998 Contents copyright 1998 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. For more background info, details of how the mailing list works, etc., ask for a copy of issue #Zero. If you email me a reply or comment, please make clear whether or not it's for publication. ********************* I'm still thinking of setting up some kind of Silicon Soapware mailing list. It would probably be two lists: Discuss and Announce. The Announce list would carry just the zine. The Discuss list would get the zines (so you won't need to subscribe to both) but would also accept postings from readers. I'd probably subscribe the present mailing list to the Discuss list, and let those who don't want to read LoCs switch to the Announce list. And I've noticed that there's an ISP about two buildings down from work. I've walked past it a number of times on the way to lunch. According to their Web page they support the kind of mailing lists I'd need, and they also allow things like user CGI and server-side includes on Web pages. That way I could do stuff like an Ancient City calendar based on that planet's rotation (not the same as Earth's), and have a page that reports the date in that calendar when you access it. That may not be of much practical use, but it sounds fun. Hmmmm Could you set up a server-side include so a Java applet would get parameters freshly calculated when the page loaded? I think I might be able to. Something to think about. ********************* Do Boyle's Law and Charles's Law apply to vaporware? How about van Der Waals' equations? If some such formulas were found to apply, and the relevant constants determined, managers would know how much they'd need to pressure their staffs (while keeping their cool) to get new products to condense out of the vaporware phase into reality. Even though managers in the main part of Silicon Valley are likely to turn up their noses at the very idea of applying the physical gas laws to vaporware, it would probably gain wide acceptance in the Cartoon Quarter. ********************* The Cartoon Quarter of Silicon Valley is not widely known, and is even less widely publicized. The Powers that Be are afraid of some of the cartooniness leaking out and somehow contaminating real-world engineering calculations and tests. If that happened, then silicon in Silicon Valley might not work right any more. Or maybe things would work at the factory, but not at far-off customer sites with no Cartoon Quarter of their own nearby. So there's a de facto ban on cartoon characters working at real-world Silicon Valley jobs, and on the use of cartoon equipment at real-world Silicon Valley locations. Even if cartoon characters don't really make computer chips work strangely, there's the chance that customers might think they do. People might stop buying Silicon Valley silicon stuff if they thought it had been designed or built by cartoon characters. So the captains of industry have kept the whole matter pretty well hushed up. They've even persuaded map makers to not show the Cartoon Quarter on their maps. It's just shown as blank land along the shores of San Francisco Bay, in among the marshes and such. The only reason it's shown as land at all is so boats won't try to sail through it. That might damage the boat and cause all sorts of lawsuits and get into all the papers, and the secret would be out. So it's shown on maps as blank land, and the roads leading to it aren't marked, and trains that stop there aren't listed on normal schedules. You just sort of have to know how to get there. But there is some traffic, despite the ban. Remember the big mainframe computers in comic books back in the Fifties and Sixties, the ones that were more like omniscient oracles than what we now think of as computers? There are still some of those around in the Cartoon Quarter, and they can do things no real-world computer is anywhere near being capable of. So there's quite a bit of under-the-table consulting going on. You just never hear about it. ********************* Recently while a manager at work was talking about different modes of thinking it occurred to me that part of the difficulty of putting an idea into words is that ideas are usually at least two-dimensional, and may have three or four or more dimensions, while a narrative is essentially one-dimensional. So you have to figure out a one-dimensional path that somehow winds through your multi-dimensional idea, passing close enough to all the critical areas to produce a complete and coherent tour. Once you've done that, the actual writing is easy. Hypertext (as in HTML links) eases this constraint somewhat, but isn't universal yet. And some people may still need to be led through the maze on a guided tour rather than being left to find their own way. So translating ideas into words will continue to be a highly skilled trade. ********************* Mama Moopee's Canary Cannery. That's another Silicon Valley Shutdown. In other words, a startup that never really got started. The original Artist's Concept was a cartoonlike drawing of a factory-type building with canaries in cages going in on a conveyor belt at one end, cans of something coming out a conveyor at the other end, and some dumpsters full of empty bird cages. And since this was Silicon Valley, there was also a parking lot full of prosperous-looking cars. And of course there was a big sign along the top of the building, "MAMA MOOPEE'S CANARY CANNERY". The intended market was cat lovers who liked alliteration. Or maybe it was people whose cats liked canaries even if they didn't care about alliteration. Or something. In any case, for their first round of financing they sought out venture capitalists who liked alliteration, liked cats, and weren't especially fond of birds as pets. This was a rather unconventional way to categorize investors, but after a few months of hanging around coffee houses and cat shows in Silicon Valley's Cartoon Quarter they finally found some. They bought some land in the Cartoon Quarter and built a factory-type building with a conveyor belt running in one end and out the other, just like in the Artist's Concept, and started trying to can canaries. Big Problem: After they took the canaries out of the cages and put them in the cans, but before the cans went into the machine that put the lids on, the canaries all flew out of the cans. So all the canary cannery could can was empty cans. And engineering studies showed that even if the canary cannery did succeed in canning the canaries, many of them would escape when the customers got the cans home and opened them. So even if they did manage to get good initial sales, there would be little repeat business. And the word of mouth would kill them. Kill? One of the engineers calculated that canning dead canaries would avoid the problems of canning live ones. But that approach was rejected as Not Funny. They could do it anyway, no matter how unfunny it was, if they moved the operation out of the Cartoon Quarter, but the Animal Rights people vetoed that idea. Suggestions to have the canaries tied up or shackled or something were rejected as needing too much hand labor, even though some liked the idea of a ball and chain like you see on convicts in cartoons. Meanwhile, other parts of the project went forward despite vague word of possible engineering problems with the canning operation. Auditions were held for a cartoon character to play Mama Moopee in TV commercials and in-store promotions. The ideal person was to be female, rather motherly in appearance, and bright canary yellow. And despite being yellow, she also had to avoid offending cowards, Asian racial stereotypes, or taxicabs. They never found a candidate who met all the requirements. They considered having someone custom-drawn, but never could agree on whether she should be mostly human, mostly bird, somewhere in between, or some other species entirely. And what if she turned out not to want the role? You might be asking why this whole operation was being done in Silicon Valley as opposed to some place like Cannery Row. It was because of the canaries singing, or, more likely, not singing. Research had showed that canaries in cans would not sing, at least not very often or at the right times. So they designed a computer chip that would sing like a canary whenever a person approached, and were going to stick one on every can. Then when customers wandering around the supermarket would get to the canned-creatures aisle the cans of canned canaries would sing to attract their attention. Along about this time the investors started running focus groups on canned canaries in preparation for writing a business plan so they could take the company's stock public. Results were, to say the least, discouraging. So they pulled the plug. The factory building is up for sale, while empty cans of escaped canaries languish in abandoned waterfront warehouses, occasionally singing to the desperate criminals who tend to hide out in such places. The only halfway successful part of this whole mess was the singing computer chip. They managed to sell that to some toy companies. So that is why, when you wander the aisles of your local supermarket, you don't hear cans of Mama Moopee's Canned Canaries singing. ********************* Every Internet Service Provider has a number of users who swear by it, and a number of former users who swear at it. ********************* September 10 was my late father's birthday. He would have been 90. That reminds me of this: Lost? Child What did you say, son? Why did I cut what? Those flowers? Because they were there. We do need to clear this field before fire season. But you say they weren't a fire hazard like the dry grass So we didn't really have to cut them? Maybe not, but it was easier to go cutting straight through than to stop and think about it. If you really want flowers, you can buy flowers somewhere later. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. Gateways for the Little People? You say if you relax in a field of wildflowers And let your eyes unfocus and your mind go blank You may suddenly hear music and song and laughter, And if you follow your ears and your heart They'll lead you through the flowery gate Into the land of the Little People, Whose cares are different and perhaps more to your taste Than the cares of this world? I'd better not catch you telling that to the neighbors. They'll think there's something strange about you. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. We're almost half done. Let's take a break. Here's a tree we can sit under. Son, do you hear somebody singing off behind me somewhere? Are you going to meet them? What are you laughing about? Where did you disappear to? Son? Son? Answer me! Wherever you are, come back here! I am your father! Please come back and tell me If I really did just hear a faint voice Telling me "Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it." Thomas G. Digby entered 1215 hr 4/29/92 -- END --