SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/ Issue #62 New Moon of February 5, 2000 Contents copyright 2000 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. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. If you don't want to read about the mechanics of this, skip down to the row of asterisks (****). 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I do that one manually. ********************* According to old directory entries and what I remember, this is close to being an anniversary of sorts: My Web page has been up five years. That's a long time as Web stuff goes. ********************* A couple of days ago I noticed one of the neighbors sitting in his car, trying to fold a map. He eventually got it at least sort of folded, but it still got me wondering about opening a Map Foldery. People would bring their maps in to be folded, and even if the map had previously been folded wrong so the creases were no longer a reliable indication, the shop would have documentation from map publishers all over the world so the staff could look up the correct folding pattern. Or maybe it would do better as mapfoldery.com: You go to the Web site, put in your credit card number, enter the information about what map you have, and get step-by-step folding instructions. Cartoonland is currently full of venture capitalists who would fund the online version in a heartbeat. I suppose the brick-and-mortar version would also be funny enough to survive there if we didn't wear it out by referring to it too often. But I doubt it would fly in the Real World. ********************* And some radio commercial about big heavy mattresses led me to thoughts of opening a Mattress Flippery. The crew would come to the customer's home, stick a label on the top side of the mattress, then load it in their truck and take it to the plant. There they would lay it on the floor ("top" side up) in a large high- ceilinged room, then remove the label and retire to a safe distance as a robot arm with a giant spatula flipped it like a human would flip a pancake. Then they would put the "top" label on the former bottom side (which is now facing up), load it in their truck, and take it back to the customer. Like the Map Foldery, I think the Mattress Flippery might work in Cartoonland but not in our Real World. ********************* I've been noticing quite a few birds in the trees outside my window, and most of them look like robins. But isn't it kind of early for the first robin of spring? ********************* A few days ago Groundhog Day was the first date in over a thousand years in which all the digits were even: 02/02/2000. It was also a date that uses only two different digits. Those, however, are somewhat less rare. The last was 11/19/1999 (which was also a date with all its digits odd). The next date with only two different digits will be 02/20/2000, followed by 02/22/2000. And so on in years like 2002 and 2020 and 2022. After 2022 there will be none until 11/11/2111. There will be no more all-odd-digit dates until after the year 3000. ********************* This whole flap about same-sex marriage is an example of a rule that exists on a sort of subconscious level, and only comes to conscious awareness when somebody tries to break it. Then society has to decide whether to eliminate the rule or put it into writing. Sometimes what happens is that the rule is formalized in the short term, and then later formally repealed. Other times the rule is formalized and then remains in effect. A third possibility is that the rule is discarded with little fuss, although I suspect those cases don't stick in our memory as much as when there is a fight over it. Perhaps such invisible rules have to be put on the books (law books or etiquette books or company policies or whatever) where they can be seen before they can be debated? ********************* They've been showing a TV commercial for some kind of diet drug or something. It's apparently an appetite suppressant, or maybe it makes you feel full sooner, and it's billed as a way to help you waste food (although they don't use that wording). They show plate after plate of half-eaten food left. No mention of starving children overseas. I can see where once the food is on your plate, it may be less immoral to throw it away than to eat it if you're overweight or it would otherwise be bad for you. But why is so much food on that plate in the first place? Why didn't those people just get smaller helpings to begin with? Or delay the meal so they end up having fewer meals? Maybe it's aimed at people who are constrained to get fixed-size servings (as at restaurants) at predetermined times (as with group or social eating)? ********************* Conversation at work got to stocks and such, and IPO's, and the fact that once your stock is public you're potentially subject to hostile takeover. I wondered aloud, "What if we get bought by the Anti Nose Ring League?" Someone (with an unpierced nose) replied that there would probably be a mass exodus. It wouldn't just be people with nose rings. Many of the people who hire on with Silicon Valley startups wouldn't put up with the kind of management style such a group would probably try to impose. It sounds to me like the situation would be like shepherds trying to herd animals they don't realize are cats. Herding cats is hard enough when you know what you're dealing with. If you bought the ranch under the delusion that their cats are all sheep, you'll have an even harder time of it. Especially if all you plan to feed them is grass. ********************* This reminds me of an online discussion of what kind of policy new companies should have for assigning email ID's to employees. There seemed to be a number of different opinions, based partly on efficiency and partly on company culture. It's fairly common around here to let employees pick their own email ID, perhaps with some constraints or guidelines. On the other hand, there are companies that seem to like regimentation for the sake of regimentation: Rules about different kinds of office furniture for people of different rank, and so on. Although I'm personally in favor of letting each person pick their own email ID, if you want regimentation as such then you may want a standard algorithm that specifically does not take input from the person who will be using the ID: Put in their legal name, turn the crank, and out comes the ID. And then I got to thinking about the military as a hypothetical extreme case. What will they do when they start giving mail accounts to individual soldiers? Perhaps there will be two sets: One, of the form [function]@[unit].[service].mil for official messages, and another, perhaps [serial_number]@[service].mil, for personal use. Has the matter of email for soldiers come up in science fiction yet? ********************* Elsewhere online was a discussion of fuel-cell cars, and a digression to rotary engines. Someone said something about the sound not being what people are used to, and I made a joking remark about using a sound- effects system to imitate the old-fashioned piston engine. Someone else asked if this had anything to do with hydrogen fuel, which was the "official" topic. It does, sort of. If an electric car (fuel- cell or battery) is too quiet it may hurt the macho he-man market: A fuel-cell car is the cleanes' But here's a l'il secret between us. As a marketing star It won't get very far, It's a flop as a surrogate penis. ********************* A dream fragment from a few nights back: There was some kind of marble plaque listing Lutheran churches that piped Communion wine to a spigot outside their front door, free for the taking (which I don't think Lutherans do in the waking world). In any event, it listed three locations: One in San Francisco with gold plumbing, one in Jerusalem with copper plumbing, and the original in Athens, built by Aristotle with lead plumbing. I don't think Aristotle was building Christian churches back around 350 BC in the waking world, but you know how dreams are. Dreams, dreams, dreams. Do they mean anything, or are they just mental "noise"? Most likely they're some of both. ********************* Hypothetical conversation: "I recently acquired ownership of two lots, one at the bottom of Suicide Mountain Road, the other at the top. Both are zoned for business. I've long wanted to go into automotive repair, so I'm thinking of putting a transmission repair place on the bottom lot, and a brake repair place on the top lot. But some of my friends say I should put the transmission place at the top and the brake place at the bottom. What do you think?" "I think it depends on whether you're an optimist or a pessimist about how most people maintain their cars. But I have another idea. If you can squeeze both places onto the top lot, I know a lawyer who will pay you good money to put his office on your bottom lot." ********************* The combination of this being a five-year anniversary and also being close to Valentine's Day reminds me of this one: Moon??? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And saying that you've seen it brings howls of cruel laughter? Where the silvery light shining in the night Is a thing that defies explanation And the tides are caused by the breathing of the oysters? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Sun And everyone is acting just like it wasn't shining? Where to walk down the road in the midday heat You are careful to carry a lantern, Or you have to move as if stumbling in the darkness? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And people that've seen it are locked up in the nut house? Where the young lovers go out beside the sea And they watch the reflections of nothing, And they never talk about what they think they see there? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the rain But keep on getting wet without any earthly reason? Where you go with your friends for a picnic lunch While you fear what you'd better not mention, And it's just delusions you have to come in out of? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe In love??? Thomas G. Digby written ???? 1968? typed/revised 0130 hr 11/23/75 entered 2340 hr 3/16/92 -- END --