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 #59 New Moon of November 7, 1999 Contents copyright 1999 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. ********************* There seems to be a tendency for the media to play up whatever links they find between any kind of criminal or terrorist activity and the Internet. In view of this, it's refreshing to note that last Friday (Nov 5) was the anniversary of a plot in which the conspirators did not use the Internet at all. They didn't use it to coordinate their plans, they didn't post a manifesto on the Web, and they didn't use it to get the recipe for the explosives with which they were going to blow up the British Parliament. Nitpickers may point out that the events in question happened before the switchover from ArpaNet, but they didn't use that either. As far as I know they didn't even use dialup modems. If you want to know more, look up "Guy Fawkes" or "Gunpowder Plot". ********************* Something (I think a remark about British filkers on vacation) reminded me of the song "Over the Sea to Skye" and about a cartoon I'd once thought of. You have a large airplane in flight, with a bunch of solemn-looking people standing out on one of the wings. There's a shroud-wrapped body lying there with them, sort of like you might have for a burial at sea. It's captioned "Burial at Sky". I don't think it's too practical in real life. Most airplanes nowadays fly too fast for people to stand comfortably on the wings. And having dead bodies raining down out of the sky might annoy whoever is on the ground below. But to me the fascination is in the very impracticality of it, the way it doesn't fit into the world as we know it. Impractical or not, it leads to more ideas. Suppose the burial ground is some place like the Amazon jungle, inhabited at most by primitive tribes who have never been heard to complain. And suppose the area has long been held sacred as a sort of "Land of the Dead" and thus never explored, so you don't really know for certain that it's inhabited by mortals at all. Any people you see there might be angels or demons or Gatekeepers of the Underworld or whatever, even if they look like human savages. And such sightings are few, because all you can see from the air is the tops of trees, and the only time you're on the ground there alive is if your plane crashes. A few such survivors have made it out, but not many. So it's a land of mystery. As for aircraft slow enough to stand on top of to conduct services when dropping off a body, lighter-than-air dirigibles would do nicely. Or if you could count on prevailing winds to carry you all the way across the region, you could even use a non-powered balloon. Might be some interesting story ideas there ... ********************* "If God had wanted us to own guns, Adam and Eve would have had a Tree of Firearms." ********************* I was washing my nose ring and earrings in the shower, and got to thinking of some magic-user who gets hold of a mini-Medusa amulet or something. He wants to "not let it out of his sight" but he doesn't want to ever actually look on it directly (mirrors and video are OK). So he attaches it to an earring and puts it in his ear, soldered or otherwise secured so it can't fall out or be stolen while he sleeps. He always knows where it is, but it's never in his field of vision. There's still the problem of others seeing it, but maybe he has a little cloth bag or something over it so it's usually safe. Most people notice nothing unusual as he goes about his daily business, but when confronted with an enemy all he has to do is pull the covering off and turn his head the right way. Or maybe he has two of them, from different gods who were lovers or rivals or something, and if they ever touch or even "see" each other there will be some tremendous cataclysm. So he puts one in each ear. As long as his head is between them, they won't do anything. Again, in the right desperate situation he could cut them loose and bring them together. That might be good for the climax of a movie, like when they crossed the atomic-particle streams in "Ghostbusters". ********************* Another weekend is almost over. I'm reminded of two online discussion threads that got crossed up. One person replied "Oh, *Monday*" to something where the date had been ambiguous, but a remark from another thread about cuss words slipped in just ahead. So maybe "Monday" could be a mild expletive, suitable for use around children? Some weeks I've felt that way. ********************* As you may know, DVD has some sort of encryption scheme whereby disks can be played but not copied beyond limits set by the originators. According to a recent news item, this copy protection has been broken. This reminded me of a dinner conversation a few weeks back, where somebody mentioned the free software concept, and somebody else said that all you could expect in the way of income was to win a prize. I think he meant that disparagingly, in the sense of it not being a viable way to make a living, but it got me to wondering about what if the prizes were more numerous and larger. Suppose we had a system where you (for example) could record a song and make it freely available, and if enough people liked it you won a prize. And suppose there were enough of these prizes to allow someone who was good at doing songs to get as much in prizes as they now get in royalties and CD sales. That would pretty much eliminate reasons for songwriters to oppose copying. In fact, you might even encourage copying, because it means you get a bigger prize. There are problems setting up such a system, but I think they're basically engineering problems. First, you need some way to fund the prizes. Ideally funding should somehow come from users, with the public in general as a second choice. Maybe part of the price of a CD player and/or recordable blanks could go to prizes. Or maybe it could come from other public funds. Then there's the problem of measurement. Do you want to measure copying, or actual listening, or what? And how do you gather the data? Ask people? Have their equipment automatically upload some kind of log? And how do you gather statistics without violating privacy? What songs you listen to tells a lot about you, and if you're not a Standard Mainstream Person you may not want your preferences known. You might allow anonymous uploads of listener data, but that makes it easier to cheat if you want to make your song appear more popular than it really is. Perhaps we could create some kind of agency that people would trust, much as people trust priests or doctors (or did before the insurance industry and big databases got into the act). Or maybe there's a cryptographic solution. It may be possible to have a scheme whereby the authorities don't know who a particular upload is from, but would be able to detect the same person trying to upload the same data twice. Another problem is keeping track of authorship. What if somebody else copies your song and changes the title and puts their name on it instead of yours? Even if you solve that by watermarking or something, there's still the question of derivative works. Someone might record their own performance of your song, or write a parody, or translate it into a foreign language. In that case I would think the proper thing is some kind of shared credit, but how do we manage that? If pattern recognition software gets good enough, the computers at the copyright registration center would be able to tell what song it is even if somebody else is singing it, and could even figure out things like one person's words being sung to someone else's tune, or Tune A having been derived partly from Tune B and Tune C. Then credit for the piece could be apportioned according to some predetermined formula based on degrees of similarity. If you used voiceprint technology, thieves would not be able to claim someone else's performance as their own. Nothing would prevent you from registering a dub of somebody else's performance, but if you did, the originator would get almost all the credit for it, with your portion being pretty much nil. You'd be better off as an honest distributor. Such a system would no doubt take years to work out, but if we succeed, it should pretty much solve the problems that copy protection now attempts to address. ********************* A few nights back was Halloween. I got no trick-or-treat people. I've seen them around on the streets other places, but I've never had them come to my door, not for many years. Do they only go to prearranged addresses nowadays? Or only to places with Halloween decorations? I then got to wondering about costumes that evoke plausible this-world scary stuff like terrorists and gang-bangers and child molesters and racists. Those can't be swept away under a blanket of "they don't really exist" the way most people sweep away ghosts and goblins. How close to reality is scary Halloween stuff allowed to get? ********************* Word salad? Not without dressing. But I don't want to put clothes on until it's time to go somewhere. Do they allow nude salad? People smeared with mayonnaise or Thousand Island aren't usually considered "dressed", even though a salad is. There's a double standard here, with one rule for people and another for salads. But it could be worse. At least with the present rules salads aren't allowed to eat people. ********************* There was a news item about vandalism at what is supposedly the country's loneliest phone booth, out in the desert in Nevada or some such place. That reminded me of this: PHONE BOOTH IN ANTARCTICA Open with a scene of snow-covered hills With absolutely no signs of life And only enough gently moaning wind To let us know we have sound And to call attention to the silence. Then Behind the title we see a map of Antarctica. All through the opening credits the camera zooms slowly in To the place on the White Continent Closest to no place While all we hear Is the gently moaning wind: The only thing ever to be at home here. Dissolve to A view of a broad snowy valley: Not a tree, Not a bush, Not a footprint Has rumpled that white blanket. Although the day is gloomy We can see Off in the distance A small building. The camera moves slowly in Until we can make it out To be a phone booth. We see inside the booth Close-ups of details Like a light dusting of snow In the corners, On the shelf, And on the phone. It is obvious that No one ever comes here Except now and then the wind To flip through the directory. There are directions for long-distance only Since from here there is no such thing As local. Inspection finished, the camera pulls away. It leaves no footprints. We pause a few hundred feet off. The day looks a little gloomier And all we hear Is gently moaning wind. Then, Faint in the distance, We hear the phone ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And ring... And not ring again. Thomas G. Digby Entered 2245hr 3/06/84 -- END --