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 #245 New Moon of November 22, 2014 Contents copyright 2014 by Thomas G. Digby, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. See the Creative Commons site at http://creativecommons.org/ for details. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. (But see below for coming changes.) ********************* I'm switching Silicon Soapware to more of a web journal format. You can find it at http://bubbleblower.dreamwidth.org/ One reason for this is the format. In most cases (except for poetry and such) the exact placement of things like line breaks isn't important. What matters is the content. But for almost twenty years I've been using a text file format that requires specifying all the line breaks. That might be OK, except that this format was originally designed for monospaced text-based terminals that use 80-character lines. The screen on a phone or similar device is much narrower than those old CRT terminals. With any reasonable font size this can make a mess of things. You might be able to turn the phone sideways so it switches to Landscape mode, but even then you'll probably also need to set the typeface to some itsy-bitsy eensy-weensy size that is likely to be hard to read unless you have itsy-bitsy eensy-weensy eyes (see http://www.well.com/~bubbles/Poetry/LittleTeenyEyes.txt) (and yes, as I was drafting this something reminded me of that other song about the Yellow Polka Dot Bikini). Yes, I did do an HTML version of the first few issues, but that was because I'd been planning to index everything to HTML anchors in the files. I was doing the HTML manually, which can get tedious very quickly, which led to my slacking off on the index idea. And then along came search engines, which made such manual indexing less necessary. Now we also have blogging software with tags. This should make indexing feasible again, assuming I actually take advantage of it. And it feels like I'm getting tired of the old format. Maybe this will rejuvenate things. It feels like it will be less of a big lump of work looming at the start of each lunar cycle. And I think much of the material will be fresher. Perhaps my relationship with my readers will grow more intimate. It sort of feels like it's time for that. ********************* Those of you who look at such things may have noticed that I'm licensing this on more liberal terms than I've been using. Future issues of Silicon Soapware (and the journal) will be under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The main difference is that I've dropped the restriction against commercial use. You can read the fine print on the Creative Commons site at http://creativecommons.org/. I got started thinking about this when I noticed that the Creative Commons people had upgraded all their licenses and were recommending that people use the newer versions. My feelings on copyright have changed as the world changed. When I was growing up the music industry (as well as movies and other media) were built around a few large companies. The recording and distribution technology of the time tended to favor a culture of a relatively few heavily promoted stars. This made a few composers and performers wealthy while most languished unnoticed. There may have been a fair number of people making a modest living at the kinds of things the stars were getting rich at, but the general public didn't hear much about them. Thus it appeared that the only way to succeed as a writer was to somehow get noticed by one of the established publishers. In addition, I'd grown up hearing horror stories about composers like Stephen Foster who died in poverty as others got rich from their works. I didn't want that to happen to me. Then the world started changing. Cassette tapes came along, making it feasible for people to record music at home and distribute it to their friends and acquaintances. The quality may not have been what you would get from a studio, but at least it was a start. Likewise, printing technology made small-scale distribution of written works less capital-intensive. Around this time I was getting involved in science fiction fandom, where one could make friends and otherwise get non-monetary rewards by being generous with one's creations. Then computers and the Internet added momentum to the trend. Now a culture based on freely shared creative works is taking shape, and it feels like something I want to be part of. Based on the arguments I've read on the Creative Commons site and elsewhere, the type of license I'll be using appears to be the best choice for me. If you'd like to be a patron of the arts I'll gladly take whatever money you want to give me (contact me for logistics), but I won't be charging for my work in the conventional sense. And I don't have all that much control over my Muses. They don't perform on command. ********************* Thoughts about the weather we have or haven't been having lately led me to the question of whether there are worlds where umbrellas fall from the sky and people use water to fend them off. It seems highly doubtful. That in turn got me to thinking about worlds where there could be some sort of airborne jellyfish-like things that look like umbrellas to fool people. You see one floating by and you grab the handle, but it turns out to be a trap, covered with glue and stingers and such. You're trapped, and can do nothing to keep from being hauled up into the canopy, which then closes around you as digestion starts. So if you're on some strange planet and it's raining, and you see what looks like an umbrella just floating along, take a good second look before you grab the handle. Better yet, wear a good heavy glove for protection. ********************* I'm reminded of something that seems to have been missing from the news reports of the recent elections: Nostradamus. He may have made his usual predictions but if he did I didn't happen to notice. So did he predict anything this time, and if so, how much did he get right or wrong? His prophecies consist of roughly a thousand verses of four lines each. They were written almost five hundred years ago. If you spread them out evenly that works out to about two verses per year, and not even that if some of the verses are predicting stuff that's still in our future. It may be possible to average more than a couple of predictions per verse, but probably not much more than a factor of two or thereabouts. An order of magnitude at the most. Since there's lots of stuff happening all over the world that most Americans never hear about, it's not surprising if he didn't consider this year's elections significant enough to write a verse about them. And a question: I don't recall hearing anything from Nostradamus about President Obama at all. Shouldn't he have been mentioned in the stuff about the 2008 elections? And wasn't Obamacare enough of a major development to be worth noting? Does the fact that it wasn't mentioned mean that it's going to be repealed while its effects on American society are still relatively small? That aside, what are the predictions for 2016, if any? Will the Democrats retake control of Congress? Of course I may be putting too much faith in Nostradamus to begin with. After all, the first of his predictions I ever heard turned out to be wrong. It was back in 1952, as the presidential campaign was starting to build up steam but the nominating conventions hadn't happened yet. Somebody on TV was talking about Nostradamus and his wonderful predictions. So the host asked who Nostradamus said would be the next President. The guest answered, without hesitation, "Kefauver". Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver had been in the news in recent months, and he seemed like a plausible choice. So I eagerly awaited the Democratic convention where he would be nominated as their candidate for President. But alas, he didn't win. Adlai Stevenson got the nomination, and then lost the election to Republican Dwight Eisenhower. I don't recall Nostradamus ever getting anything else wrong. But then the only other predictions I've heard from Nostradamus have reached me after the events he predicted took place. I wouldn't be surprised at there having been some selective editing there. So is there anything new from Nostradamus that I should be aware of? ********************* An article I was reading about some event that was big news back in 18-whatever included reproductions of pages from newspapers of that period. Newspapers didn't have the technology to print photographs, so they ran pictures drawn by artists. I don't know how accurate a rendition of the actual scene these images were, but they may not have needed to be all that close to reality. Perhaps all the readers expected was a general impression of what the event might have looked like. Nowadays photos are the norm, but we still see occasional artist-drawn pictures in the news. The first examples that came to my mind when I stopped to think about it were scenes of court proceedings where photography was not allowed. I've also now and then seen photographs of accident scenes and the like with diagrams of what investigators believe happened superimposed. There are also illustrations and diagrams of scientific and technical things that physically can't be photographed. So drawings are still published as news, but only in limited circumstances. ********************* Walls I was born in a country of thrown stones And spent my days retreating into exotic lands Of imagination Or else hiding behind walls Of forced wit and nervous laughter Listening to the pitter-patter of pebbles Against my stronghold. I eventually fled that land And wandered in poverty Until I found a realm Where my fortune in strange coin Would be accepted. Still I built walls -- Until I noticed that here thrown stones were few And bruises healed easier And the view, fresh air, and sunshine Were more than worth sweeping up An occasional broken window. No more walls? But I am by nature a builder, Scheduled for frequent deliveries Of lumber, nails, bricks, and mortar: All the materials for building walls. No more walls? No more walls. But the materials for building walls Can also be used To build bridges. Thomas G. Digby written 0315 hr 3/05/77 typed 0410 hr 5/22/77 entered 2210 hr 4/12/92 ********************* The two email lists described below will continue, at least for now. Even if there isn't a full issue of Silicon Soapware emailed out regularly, there will be some sort of notice of when something is available on the web. At least that will be the case for a while. I don't know what will happen in the longer term. For the latest new version see http://bubbleblower.dreamwidth.org/ ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. Both are linked from http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware you can tell which list you are on by looking at the email headers. If the headers include a line like this: Silicon Soapware zine with reader comments you are getting it via the list that allows comments (some software may hide part of the line, but there should be enough visible to recognize it). To comment, simply email your comment to ss_talk@lists.plergb.com (which you can often do by hitting "Reply All" or "Reply to List") from the address at which you got the zine. The list will not accept comments from non-member addresses. If the Subject line includes the phrase "SS_Talk Digest" you are getting the digest version. Otherwise you're getting individual items as they are posted. The address for posting comments is the same either way. If, on the other hand, there's a line like "Silicon Soapware no-reply" you're on the zine-only list. This list does not expect comments nor does it accept replies for posting. If you need to contact the author use bubbles@well.com or bubbles@plergb.com. If you are receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be just below this section in the copy you received. Or you can use the plergb.com URL at the beginning of this section to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --