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/~bubbles/ Issue #68 New Moon of July 30, 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. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* Someone at a recent party mentioned a news item about a supernova. The article said that the quantity of neutrinos emitted would have been enough to kill an unprotected human at a distance of several hundred million miles. Some questioned that wording, since neutrinos go through almost anything and there is no known way to stop them, short of light- years of lead or something equally impractical. (Later thought: Would a neutron star stop neutrinos?) But suppose you could wave your hands and conjure up a Spaceman Spiff Anti-Neutrino Suit. You'd still be in trouble. Even though neutrinos are small, they carry momentum. And that quantity of neutrinos would carry a LOT of momentum. So the thrust from all those neutrinos hitting the outside of your Anti-Neutrino Suit would probably still kill you. If you had a pair of teleporters you might be able to put one between you and the supernova and the other somewhere else so the neutrinos get teleported around you, but that might be rather tricky to set up. And technology being what it is, lots of things could go wrong. All in all, I think the best advice is to stay away from supernovas unless it's part of your job to deal with them up close. ********************* Some of the same people I was talking with about the supernova and neutrinos will be at another party in San Jose in a couple of weeks. That got me to thinking that song "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" and that in turn led to thoughts of the opposite situation. We don't seem to ever hear songs about people going to Silicon Valley (which overlaps San Jose) and then having their dreams of getting rich by starting a dot-com fail so now they're giving up and going back home to Burbank or wherever. Why? Maybe fewer people have Silicon Valley dreams than have Hollywood dreams? And of those who do, maybe a greater portion succeed, at least partially? Or maybe people who have Silicon Valley dreams generally aren't as "mainstream" as people who have Hollywood dreams, so a song about them wouldn't resonate with as large an audience? Whatever the reason, it's something to think about. ********************* Is the railroad person who limits the Limited also the same one whose job it is to prefer their Preferred Stock? ********************* Just had a thought after seeing "Scary Movie", which is a spoof on that genre of horror movies where people have sex and get killed (usually in that order), and the plot doesn't always make much sense beyond that. Suppose some Mad Scientist figures out what the genetic code of a unicorn would be if they existed, and tries to grow one. Something goes Horribly Wrong, and now there's this monster that goes around goring virgins with its horn. It doesn't bother non-virgins. So the Mad Scientist tries to save as many of his (or maybe her) friends as possible by having sex with them so they won't be virgins any more. Sometimes the effort succeeds, but other times it comes too late. And in some cases (especially if both are of the same sex) there can be quibbles about what constitutes "losing virginity". If you want to go for comedy, you could have it end with the monster arguing with someone who's gay or into BDSM or something else non- standard about what constitutes "virginity", and while the monster is busy arguing the authorities come and capture it. ********************* I happened upon an article about how Earth's climate may be bistable, and that global warming may trigger a sudden shift from the Warm state we're in now to the Cold state we see during ice ages. That would lead to lots of unpleasantness, since such a world couldn't support anywhere near the present population of Earth. The author thinks it might be possible to resolve this with better computer modeling, and maybe even to get into actively managing things. The trigger events may be small enough to be initiated or blocked by human effort. That reminds me of earlier thoughts brought on by the phrase "Spaceship Earth". Many who use that phrase seem to think of humans as passengers whose mandate is to not interfere with the automatic systems. But maybe we're not just passengers. Maybe we're crew, and our job is to tend the machinery as active managers. To use the example from the article, if an ice age is about to start, maybe we can and should stop it. I see several potential areas of conflict here. First, are we to be passengers or crew? Do we want to do the equivalent of going through doors marked "Employees Only"? Can we give ourselves permission to touch the controls? Second, the documentation is far from complete. We'll have to write most of it ourselves, as we reverse-engineer the machinery and feel our way by trial and error. And some of the errors are likely to be tragic. And if we are to be crew, what do we do for a captain? We'll need some kind of unified authority that the "engine room" would get its orders from, lest chaos reign. But unlike sailing ships, our "captain" need not be one person. Maybe there would be some Climate Council or something. Were there a World Climate Council, would they get into politics? If the Council disliked some element of some country's culture, perhaps their attitudes toward gender roles or non-standard sexuality or human rights, might they be tempted to give them less favorable treatment than they would otherwise get? "If you don't do [whatever] we'll cut off your rainfall." This would be further complicated by the fact that we may need to regulate population growth and migration, and doing that more or less requires some interference with local laws and customs. Thus a blanket non-interference directive is probably not possible. We'll need to put a lot of thought into this, and come up with some good systems of checks and balances. ********************* Someone I know emailed me about a new company he's working for. Their Web site has some kind of fancy animation that hangs my Netscape browser at work. It's OK on my home machine. There's a thing on it to the effect of "If you don't see the animation or don't get redirected when it's over, click HERE." That leads to thoughts of the PutriDOS page: If you don't see the animation, click HERE. If you do see the animation, but it hangs your browser afterward so you have to kill it with the Windows NT Task Manager, click HERE. If you have a Mac and are having trouble killing your hung browser because the only way to kill it is with the Windows NT Task Manager and you don't know anybody with an NT machine, click HERE. If you have a Linux machine and are looking for like-minded people to help you port the Windows NT Task Manager to Linux so you can kill your hung browser after watching our stupid animation, click HERE. And I keep thinking of new Putri-DOS things, like a page purporting to be a running tally of death threats against the webmaster because of all those hung browsers. I was thinking of something graphical, but a pie chart may not work because some death threats may specify more than one means of killing so the totals add to more than 100%. Maybe bar graphs are more suitable? Or maybe just a table listing numbers and percentages? Start off with conventional stuff like hanging or shooting, then maybe drawing and quartering, and eventually go off into the absurd, like "running a freight train through your bedroom in the middle of the night by building fake track from the nearest railroad" or "pacemaker running Putri-DOS" or "nibbled to death by ducks". Pick some that are far enough from reality that almost nobody will have actually suffered it, so most will find it funny. Thing is, will I have time to actually do it? ********************* I'm reminded of someone I used to know. He was on my Lust List but I never acted on it. Could we have gotten something going? Would it have worked out? That's one of those "might have been" things we'll never really know, unless perhaps we meet our alternate-world selves in Heaven or some such place. That might be a story idea. Perhaps there are many alternate worlds, as often postulated in science fiction, but we'll never get physical alternate-world travel. Instead, there's one combined Hereafter: Heaven, or Summerland, or Valhalla, or whatever. People from all faiths end up there. And versions of people from all alternate worlds end up there. If it's the Christian model, some of a given person may get to Heaven while others end up in Hell, and if it's a model based on reincarnation some of a given person may reincarnate before others arrive from that life, but in general you can meet others of yourself there and find out something about how things would have been had you taken the other fork on this or that decision. And it may not always be major decisions like a job offer or a marriage proposal. It might be something as trivial as where to have lunch on a given day, which could lead to randomly meeting or not meeting somebody, snowballing from there. Has much been done with this idea? ********************* In another month or two we'll be coming up on the Olympics. The Torch is already on its way. And that leads to this: TORCH SONG SOLO The last man on Earth(?) sits alone in his camp On the way to the Olympics. How he has come to be Torch-bearer is kind of hazy, Along with why there seem to be no crowds along the way To cheer him on. He's not really sure where the Games are, And even if he knew for certain It wouldn't seem right to go straight there Without first finding people along the way That he can show the Torch to. A secret part of him also suspects That if he ever did arrive at the stadium He would find no pomp and pageantry, No cheering crowds, And nothing to do But collect all the medals by default And ever after Have nothing to do. So he will run the Torch forever, Taking whichever road looks most tempting, On the chance that somewhere The cheering crowds Are waiting. Composed 0215hr 7/25/84 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the headers show the originating site as "lists.best.com" you're getting the list version, and anything you send to DigbyZine@lists.best.com will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, dying down to almost nothing in between. But any post can spark a new flurry. If there's no mention of "lists.best.com" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The content is the same for both. To get on or off the conversation-list version send email to DigbyZine-request@lists.best.com with the word "subscribe" (to get on the list) or "unsubscribe" (to get off) in the body, but nothing else (except maybe your signature if that's automatic). 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