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 #111 New Moon of January 21, 2004 Contents copyright 2004 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 seems to be the season for Mars probes. One has landed successfully and is starting to explore the surface, another is due to land within a few days, while an earlier one seems to have been lost. There have been several Mars probes lost in the past, and some have speculated that Martians, or perhaps other space aliens residing on Mars, have been responsible. I don't think that's very likely, but you never know. I do think some part of my Inner Child, awash in memories of decades of science fiction on the radio and in magazines and other media, kind of wants aliens to be involved. But if Martians have been shooting down our space probes, why have some missions been allowed to succeed? Could there be parts of Mars that are OK for us to look at while other parts are off-limits? But then what of the orbiters, which I think have pretty much scanned the entire surface by now? Maybe the Martians have camouflage that can fool an orbiter but wouldn't stand up to a lander? Nobody on Earth knows, except possibly the tabloid writers or maybe whoever is behind whatever conspiracies you may believe in. These thoughts raise another question: Is our batting average for Mars missions worse than for Venus or the asteroids or the outer planets? Is there enough space activity to make any such statistics meaningful? ********************* Years now start with "20" instead of "19". A robot rover is trundling around on Mars, sending back pictures. Computers with more computing power than Babbage ever dreamed of are being sold in the stores for less than a month's pay. The future is here. And there's yet another sign: The local movie theater is hiring, but they're not asking applicants to fill out a paper application. Instead, they are to go to the office and pick up a sort of portable computer that will guide them through the application process. The on-screen ads don't give details, but they do show a picture of the device. It's reminiscent of a laptop machine in the open position, but in one piece rather than hinged, and with a smaller screen. Apparently the applicant enters data as requested by on-screen instructions, and then takes the machine back to the office where the information is transferred into a more conventional computer system. The applicant may eventually be asked for paper documents, but I would guess that those come later, after the first round of eliminations has been passed. And that first round of eliminations may be automated, based on the applicant's answers to certain questions and how well the applicant seemed to have been able to follow the machine's directions. Even if the machine doesn't make the final decision, it may flag certain items so that whatever human does the reviewing doesn't have to read the entire application in detail unless the applicant appears promising. The ad was silent on that, but it seems logical to me that it might work that way. The future is here. ********************* Cartoon idea: A robot beggar sitting on the sidewalk, holding a sign reading "Will Work for Batteries". ********************* At a recent holiday party one of the teen-agers in the host family had gotten a new sewing machine for Christmas, and people were talking about it. Among its features was an internal computer chip with the ability to download files of stitching patterns. That led to the question of whether it could store other types of data. Nobody knew for certain, and we didn't feel like plunging into the instruction book right then, but the general belief among the computer experts present was that it probably could, even if the data didn't make sense when somebody tried to use that file to sew something. That led to thoughts of hiding secret messages by disguising them as stitch patterns. Everybody there pretty much agreed that it would be fairly easy to do, at least if you were technically inclined. And it's not limited to sewing machines: You can hide secret messages in digital cameras and other types of computerized gizmos as well. More and more things we don't think of as computers have computer chips and data interfaces nowadays, and many of them have enough storage capacity to hold quite a few messages, secret or otherwise. Depending on whether, when, and how the device checks data for validity it may be necessary to put the data into some specific format, but that's probably not all that big a problem if you know the requirements and can write a program to do the conversion. You may end up with the embroidery equivalent of the million monkeys trying to write Shakespeare, but who among potential snoopers has time to go through all those files and check what the patterns look like? ********************* While I'm thinking about computers built into things, I'm reminded of some new tires I recently got for my car. As part of the warranty the salesperson said I should have the tires checked every 5000 miles, but that the store wouldn't be sending out reminders. That led to an idea: Since most newer cars have a number of computer chips in them, would it be possible to have them allow the owner to input personal reminder messages, triggered on the owner's choice of mileage or time or some combination thereof? These could range from reminders about the tires to notes about things to buy on the way home from work that evening. I think that would be a useful feature for manufacturers to include. Does any car maker currently do this? ********************* I recently got a bill or something where the envelope I'm to send my check back in had a little rectangle in the upper right corner with the words "Place Stamp Here Before Mailing". At first I wondered if they had a big problem with people mailing the envelope first and then going to the post office to try to have the stamp put on retroactively. And then I recalled some online discussions where people thought that even the more common message "Place Stamp Here" was redundant. That reminded me of a trick I once saw a stage magician do. He produced a strip of paper bearing the words "Fresh Fish Sold Here Today", and then proceeded to tell a story of how a fish merchant with such a sign was criticized by various passerby for having extra verbiage. The word "Today" at the end, for example, was unnecessary because it was obvious that a merchant with a pile of fish on his counter was probably intending to sell them that day. And he was selling them there, not someplace else, so the "Here" was not necessary either. And so it went, with the fish obviously being for sale, and nobody expecting a fish merchant to claim to be selling stale fish, and the things piled on the counter obviously being fish and not books or whatever, until there was nothing left of the sign. As the magician told the story he tore the words from the strip of paper, until he had just the piece with the word "Fish" on it. Then he tossed that away, standing there empty-handed. That left the merchant with no sign at all. He didn't think that was the way to go, so he decided to keep the original sign. At that the magician took the torn-up pieces of paper, crumpled them in his hands, said a few magic words, and triumphantly displayed the original strip of paper, un- torn, with the words "Fresh Fish Sold Here Today". It feels to me like the little box marked "Place Stamp Here" is sort of like that fish merchant's sign. No one part of it is indispensable, but the whole is sort of useful. ********************* A week or two ago I saw the third Lord of the Rings movie. Afterward a rather silly question occurred to me: Why didn't Frodo just FedEx the Ring to Mount Doom? Judging from some FedEx ads that would have saved lots of time and worry. That reminds me of some other ideas I've had for FedEx ads. For example, a cat owner might FedEx a pill to "Inside the Cat". Or a football player might FedEx the ball to the opponent's end zone. Of course these would be rather impractical in real life, but maybe they could be some FedEx employee's dreams or something. Too bad I'm not in the advertising industry. Or maybe it's just as well. ********************* Back on the Mars probes, I saw a news item about a watchmaker who modified a bunch of wristwatches to run slow (by Earth standards) so as to keep Mars time. The Martian day is about 39 minutes longer than an Earth day. That leads me to wonder if there is any official way to designate the time of day for a point on Mars. Do they use 24 Mars hours, with each Mars hour being about a minute and a half longer than an Earth hour, or do they use Earth hours, with each day running from 00:00 through 24:39 or thereabouts? If they use longer Mars hours, do they also have Mars minutes and Mars seconds? This latter could get especially confusing, since the Earth second is a standard scientific unit in lots of physics formulas. Since the Martian watches were originally Earth watches, just modified to run slow, it follows that they display Martian hours and Martian minutes (and Martian seconds if they have a second hand). You could get a similar result with a digital watch by replacing the original 32.768kHz crystal with one cut for about 31.9kHz. On the other hand, if you wanted to keep Earth hours and minutes and just have more of them in a Martian day you'd need to modify the logic chips in the digital watch. This might not be practical for small quantities of wristwatches, but would be easy enough to do on computer displays with appropriate software. Does JPL or NASA or anybody else in a position of authority on this matter have a preference? ********************* Speaking of the passage of time, I recently saw a newspaper cartoon where the baby New Year was wearing what pretty definitely looked like a disposable diaper. When did whoever does parenting for baby New Years (Father Time?) make the change from the traditional cloth diaper with the big safety pin? ********************* More thoughts on Mars: If President Bush is in favor of a manned Mars mission, then the opposition may feel obligated to be against it. If you subscribe to the Package Theory of politics, space travel could end up in the Right-Wing Package. Then if you are in favor of space travel you will also be expected to favor things like the War on Drugs and to be against such Left-Wing things as gay marriage. Can we prevent that kind of political packaging from happening? ********************* This was written for an earlier Mars mission, but seemed appropriate: Draining the Last Canal "It's landed! It's finally landed!" "Let's go see it!" "What if it sees us?" "Don't worry. It has eyes only for the physical. We could form a mob and advance on it with pitchforks and torches and plaster it with posters and graffiti and make obscene gestures right into the lens and still it would ignore us." "But surely among its masters are a few who are not blind. Won't they see us?" "They have seen us for centuries already without artificial aid. Physical sight forms a barrier: If we want them to see us we must approach from behind, lurking just outside the picture: Or else retreat behind a dune, or better yet, the horizon." "Retreat, retreat, retreat. First to remote areas of their world, then to here, and soon to places beyond. Will it ever ens?" "Probably not, since that is why they created us: To give them something to follow to remote lands, then here, and eventually the stars." "The stars... Enough to last quite a while. But then???" "We'll think of something." "We always do." Thomas G. Digby written 0205 hr 7/24/76 entered 2225 hr 2/08/92 ********************* 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.sf.ca.us or bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually. -- END --