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 #136 New Moon of January 29, 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. ********************* This is the Gray Time. The winter holidays have pretty much faded into the background of memories of times past, and life has once again settled into its normal routines. The days are getting longer, but they're still rather short and we're still deep in Rainy Season. There have been a few sunny days of late, but they won't last. There's more gray on the way. But at least there's the hope of more sunny days after that gray has come and gone. And let us not forget that this season, like any other, has its special days to look forward to. Those that are most widely known to the world at large pale in comparison to the major mid-Winter festivals, but some that are celebrated only within small communities of kindred souls can bring as much love and joy to those who share them as any other holiday in any season. ********************* I find myself turning on the radio every now and then, largely for the weather forecast. When will the next rain come? When will it end? How will it affect my plans for the day? But then I see birds flying around outside. They just take the weather as it comes, without worrying about what the radio is saying. Is there something to be learned from that? Some would say there is. But that coin has a dark side. Birds can suffer and die when the weather turns bad on them. They can be blown far from their home nesting grounds, far from their normal sources of food. And they don't have anything like FEMA, flawed though FEMA may be, to help them. But even with all that, though some individuals may suffer and some may perish, the species lives on. And that may be the difference. Humans care about specific individuals. Nature doesn't. All that matters is that genes do or don't get passed on. And who's to say which attitude is better? We may claim a right to say, but we're rather biased. ********************* If Malleus, Incus, and Stapes was a law firm, would they specialize in cases involving noise pollution and loud music? ********************* I recently attended a large engineering trade show. One of the exhibitors was someone I knew from decades ago when I was working for the tape recorder factory in Los Angeles. We got to talking. One of the topics that came up was the impending demise of traditional broadcast TV in favor of the new digital variety. I got to thinking about it and later did some Web searching on some technical terms. The results included much of the history of how the current technical standards were arrived at. They had to do some rather tricky juggling of parameters to make it work as well as it does. If you're interested in the details, try a Web search on "3.579545". You can narrow it down by adding other words like "NTSC" and "color" and "frequency" (no quotes on any of them). Reading about the history of color TV brought back even more memories. The standard became official around 1953, with color TV sets hitting the market soon after. They were big and finicky and expensive. A set with a 23-inch screen sold for over a thousand dollars, in 1950's dollars. If you consider inflation that's more than many big-screen sets go for today. And they only sort of worked. For example, I recall seeing one set on display in a store. It was showing a guy in some strangely-colored suit, standing in front of a couple of big purple plus signs, giving some kind of spiel for the American Red Cross. I don't recall what color his face was, but it too may well have been some weird shade of something or other. But it was still wonderful because it was TV in color, at a time when most people could remember when they didn't have even plain old black-and-white TV. Transistors were also just coming in, so the TV sets then on the market did all their magic with vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes were a lot larger than transistors and used a lot more power. They also ran hotter, which meant that fine adjustments would change as the set warmed up. And some of their electrical characteristics were not well suited for video in the first place. In retrospect color TV in the 1950's was like the old line about the performing dog playing some musical instrument: It was not done well, but it was a wonder that it was done at all. ********************* Does dragging someone kicking and screaming into the 21st century count as kidnapping? ********************* There once was a willow that didn't know it was a weeping willow. It thought it was just some kind of crybaby or something. So it kept trying to go to tree psychiatrists for therapy, except it couldn't because there were no tree psychiatrists and besides, it was rooted where it was and couldn't go anywhere. So it just stood there and cried and cried and cried. Then one day a wise old owl came and perched in the tree. He asked the tree why it was crying. But the tree didn't understand because the owl asked the question in owl language, which sounds to non-owls like the owl is just asking "Who?" over and over again. And besides, even if the tree had been able to understand owl language, the owl wouldn't have understood the answer in tree language, which sounds like rustling leaves. Then, as luck would have it, humans built a Nature Trail through the area. As part of the project they put signs up by many of the trees telling what kind of trees they were. They put a "Weeping Willow" sign up by the tree, but that didn't really help because the tree couldn't read. But now the tree noticed that it was crying over not being able to read the sign. That gave it an excuse to cry, which made it OK. So it lived happily ever after, even though it still cried a lot because it was, after all, a weeping willow. ********************* A few days back as I was having my teeth worked on I asked my dentist if they had dentists in Heaven, and if so, what did they do? Who would they work on? What if some dentist enjoyed fixing teeth, but nobody in Heaven wanted to have bad teeth in the first place? He said that kind of question made his head hurt. ********************* During a recent storm one local radio newscaster had a narrow escape. He drove into standing water that turned out to be a lot deeper than he thought it was. The car had power everything, so once the engine died he had no way to unlock the doors or roll down the windows to escape. He finally managed to get into the trunk by way of the back seat and grab a tire iron to break a window with. That reminded me of an idea I'd had earlier: A sign for roads subject to flooding. Make the sign in the form of a life-size human figure with its arms upraised, holding a FLOODED sign over its head. Mount it by the side of the road, with its feet level with the lowest part of the pavement. Then when there's standing water, see how much of the sign is sticking up out of it. You should be able to tell at a glance how deep the water is for any depth from a few inches to six or seven feet. Drivers still need to use good judgement as to whether they want to risk driving through the water, but at least they'll have more data to go on. ********************* As long as we're on things related to driving, here's another idea: Allow license applicants the option of taking the written part of the test orally: On a cell phone at the same time they're taking their behind-the-wheel road test. If they pass, they get a special mark on their license that allows them to talk on the phone while driving. If they don't pass (or don't opt for that version of the test) they have to pull over and stop or let someone else drive while they use the phone. ********************* After reading a long online article about how technical standards for TV differ in various parts of the world and the difficulties of converting from one format to another, I had a thought: What happens if and when we are ever contacted by extraterrestrials? Assuming they have eyes with color vision, what will their video standards be like? I suspect the basic system will be based on some sort of raster scan, although it's possible they could use something else such as a large number of low-bandwidth channels in parallel, one for each pixel. That parallel approach is sort of what the optic nerve does, if you ignore the pre-processing that takes place in the retina. But if they build their systems like we do rather than grow them like cells the raster-scan approach seems more likely. If they do scan a raster, what directions do they scan in? Are the scan lines horizontal, like with our systems, or vertical? And do they go from left to right or right to left? Top to bottom or bottom to top? Or do they go back and forth or spiral in or out or do some other weird combination of things? And then there's the matter of color. What are their eyes like? How many primary colors do they have, and where are they with respect to our visible spectrum? If they're too different it may not be possible to do a signal conversion that looks right because neither side's system is carrying all of the information the other side needs. This may not matter for the likes of "South Park" because the animators can just redefine the colors as needed. But the bug-eyed monsters who used to drool over scantily-clad Earth women on the covers of science fiction pulps in days of yore are likely to find our X-rated satellite channels rather disappointing. ********************* "You write about that guy all the time. Why don't you put his name in your spelling checker dictionary?" "Because he's such a dweeb. I enjoy clicking IGNORE every time I see his name." ********************* It may be worth noting that the song "Little Teeny Eyes" has just turned forty. I wrote it on January 27, 1966. A lot has changed since I wrote that song. Not only have computers changed (see the verse about resistors, diodes, and transistors) but publishing technology has changed as well. It was first published in APA-L #69, on February 10, 1966. The technology I used was mimeograph. I typed the words onto a mimeograph stencil, and drew the lines of the music staff with a stylus and straightedge. Then I drew the notes, also with a stylus. Photocopying existed, but was expensive and hardly ever used for printing fanzines. Computer software for printing musical notation may not have existed, and if it did, it would have been too expensive for anybody but professional music publishers. Hence the hand-drawn staves on a mimeograph stencil. Yes, things were different back then. ********************* Many songs are a lot older than forty years, but few of them are about computers. Little Teeny Eyes 1. Oh we got a new computer but it's quite a disappointment 'Cause it always gave this same insane advice: "OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE." 2. So we re-read the instruction book that came with the computer But it kept on printing crazy stuff that reads Like: "YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY SHOES FOR CENTIPEDES." 3. So we got an expert genius and he rewrote all the programs But we always got results that looked like these: "OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY LICENSE PLATES FOR BEES." 4. Then we tested each resistor, every diode and transistor, But our EElectronic brain just raves and rants: "OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE BRANDING IRONS FOR BRANDING ANTS." 5. Now we're looking for a buyer for a crazy mad computer That will only give out crazy mad advice Like: "YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE." -- Tom Digby written 1/27/66 first publication APA-L #69 2/10/66 entered 22:12 Feb 14, 1996 These words are available on the Web at http://www.well.com/~bubbles/LilTEyes.txt and the music can be found at http://www.well.com/~bubbles/LilTEyes.GIF ********************* 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. When you receive an email confirmation request go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list posting you receive.) To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.com or bubbles@well.sf.ca.us). I currently do that one manually. -- END --