SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.com http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #139 New Moon of April 27, 2006 Contents copyright 2006 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. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* As I type this the evening before the issue is officially due, today has been a bright sunny day, with a forecast of more sunshine for the next few days, at least in the afternoons. Is Rainy Season finally ending? Songs about April showers notwithstanding, April is not usually an especially rainy month around here. But this April was rainier than usual, as was March. I'm reminded that a few weeks ago I was watching birds outside singing in the rain. They didn't seem to mind getting rained on. That was good, because it would have been very awkward for them to carry umbrellas around while flying. Probably not practical at all. And besides, birds wouldn't be able to pay for umbrellas even if they wanted them. So I'm guessing that umbrellas for birds are not going to be the next big Silicon Valley thing. ********************* A visitor to Cartoonland is asking his host about all the sirens and other hullabaloo he heard the previous night. "Oh, somebody at the nucular power plant hit the Reactor Destruct button again, and there was a big panic rush to cancel it before the countdown timer expired." "Reactor Destruct button?" "Yeah. It's in the men's room, hooked up to that hot-air thing you dry your hands on. They put up a sign asking people to dry their hands on toilet paper instead, but every now and then somebody slips up." "Reactor Destruct button??" "Yeah. If the countown expires it sets off explosive charges that will blow all the control rods right through the roof and into the air like skyrockets at a fireworks display. Very impressive. That will let the reactor go critical and detonate in a big mushroom cloud. Most of the staff will end up in the hospital all bandaged up like mummies for a few days, while everybody else in that part of town will glow in the dark for a couple of months. That's actually a good thing because it'll take that long to rebuild the plant and get the lights back on, and glowing in the dark gives you light to see by at night. Besides, some people think it's romantic, like having dinner by candle light" "But isn't all that radiation unhealthy?" "You're thinking of nuclear radiation. With nucular radiation the authorities will put up lots of big danger signs all over the place, but aside from making people glow in the dark and messing up camera film and such the only lasting effect is that any children born in the vicinity are likely to have mutant superhero powers." "But ... A Reactor Destruct button in the men's room?" "That's not as sexist as it sounds. The cancel switch is in the women's room. Go to the last stall on the left and flush twice." "But ... but .... How ... ?? Why ... ???" "The only real problem is if somebody tries to use the hot-air hand dryer on the night shift when there are no female staff on duty to go into the women's room to cancel the destruct sequence. Then they have to call one of the secretaries or some such in from home. That can be a real race against time." "Aren't there any female operators?" "It's a cartoon facility. They have to conform to the stereotypes unless it's funnier to break them. And that's also why the men can't go into the women's room to cancel the destruct. A man could barge in if there was a woman already in there to scream at him, but then he wouldn't need to." "But why put those controls in the restrooms in the first place?" "Back when the plant was first built it was taboo for cartoon characters to have those bodily functions, so they didn't need restrooms. Then later when cultural attitudes changed the only place they could find to put in restrooms was part of what used to be the control room. They were getting rid of a big old mainframe computer that they were able to replace with a couple of desktop units, so that space was available. That's why there are reactor controls in the restrooms. It's just that the ones in the women's room happen to be ones that don't get used very often." "Hasn't anybody considered moving the Reactor Destruct button out of the men's room, or maybe moving the cancel switch out of the women's room?" "That suggestion came up the last time the plant blew up, but they were in too much of a hurry to rebuild it to mess around with redrawing the blueprints. And besides, it wouldn't be funny any more." ********************* "Why are you building that bird feeder so low to the ground?" "Because I think of it as more of a cat feeder." ********************* I wonder if FEMA's response to natural disasters might be better if hurricanes and earthquakes and such had Arabic-sounding names, thus leading certain decision-makers to a subconscious association with terrorist actions. Would a hurricane named Al-Qaitrina have been given higher priority than Katrina? Should we name earthquake faults after the likes of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban? That might get some action out of the Homeland Security people. Even if it doesn't, it seems unlikely to hurt. ********************* "What's that you're working on?" "It was going to be the Secret Homosexual Agenda, but then we realized that there were enough other groups and factions bent on world domination to make a market for a generic template." "So how are you doing it?" "We started with the best parts of things like _The Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, _Mein Kampf_, and _The Communist Manifesto_. First we went through and changed all references to any particular religion or ethnic group or the like to user-defined macros. Then we flagged the complicated areas where the user will need to write custom text. Now we're in the process of wrapping it all up in a snazzy Windows-based GUI." "Will you be doing Mac and Linux versions?" "No. We expect Microsoft to be one of our biggest customers, so we don't want to get too friendly with their competition." ********************* "If pigs had wings ..." "... then chicken might not be kosher." ********************* I recently got an email spam urging me to buy some stock or other. It's currently selling for 24 cents a share. They say I'd better buy it NOW because a big publicity campaign will be starting in the next few days, and the last time they ran such a campaign the price went up to $2.80 a share. Does that mean that somebody bought it at $2.80 and then had the price drop back down to 24 cents? I feel kind of sorry for whoever that was, unless they're Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or some such who bought a bunch of it at $2.80 and took the loss as a sort of gift to the stock-buying public. ********************* If a human eats the fish part of a mermaid, is that cannibalism? ********************* Stories I'll probably never write the rest of: "People were starting to wonder, what with terrorism and bird flu and such, whether the line of succession to the Presidency was adequately defined. So they passed that Universal Presidential Succession law. The formula for figuring any given person's place in line was rather complex and I didn't really understand it, but they had a Web site where you could see where you stood. Last time I looked I was number 273,804,012. Although the exact number fluctuated from moment to moment, it was obvious that I was pretty far down the list. So it was quite a surprise when Federal agents, accompanied by reporters and a cameraman, came knocking at my door in the middle of the night to swear me in as President. I hadn't been following the news so I had no idea what had happened to the 273,804,011 or so people who had been ahead of me on the list, but I got the feeling the country was in trouble. Deep trouble." ********************* The radio was doing the more or less usual traffic report from someone in some kind of aircraft. They called it something like "Sky Five", perhaps from an affiliated TV station. But I somehow got to thinking of the opposite. Maybe some news station would like to have have some kind of subterranean craft that burrows under roads and then uses sonar or something to look up at the traffic from below. With the right kind of sonar you might be able to "see" where tires are touching the pavement, and from that deduce how traffic is (or is not) flowing. While a subterranean vehicle would not be as fast as an airplane or helicopter when it comes to getting to distant trouble spots, it would be pretty much immune to bad weather. So it could be the only game in town when all the aircraft are grounded. Earthquakes, however, could be a different story. As one might expect, this approach presents significant engineering problems. But this is Silicon Valley. If any place has the requisite concentration of tech talent, this is it. Prospective investors should feel free to email me. ********************* The Poetry Market [sound of radio being turned on] ... and there is a severe writer's block On the northbound Pasadena Freeway at Avenue 43. As an alternate we recommend Figueroa Street, Where inspiration is flowing smoothly. Next traffic report in ten minutes on Station K-P-O-E-T, And now it's time for the market report: Trading was mixed on the New York Poetry Exchange, With limericks and sonnets closing sharply higher On rumors of some poets running out of rhyme. Sestina contracts held steady, While blank verse plunged to a new low. Meanwhile in Tokyo, September haiku gained slightly With most other verse forms closing unchanged. And in the over-the-counter market Greeting-card verse rallied, Ending its seasonal decline. Stay tuned to K-P-O-E-T for all the latest poetry reports. [sound of radio being turned off] Thomas G. Digby written 1735 hr 11-14-90 entered 2020 hr 10-20-91 revised 1535 hr 10-23-91 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time. If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both. To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space provided and hit Signup. 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