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 #176 New Moon of April 24, 2009 Contents copyright 2009 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 issue of Silicon Soapware is running late, for various and sundry reasons. The next issue comes due during a science fiction convention, so don't be surprised if it too is late. It's possible that I may get a burst of energy and inspiration and get it done early, before the convention starts, but I wouldn't bet on it. ********************* Recently some friends got one of those new TV sets where the screen is either wider than, or not as tall as, the screen on a traditional TV of similar size. I guess it's like whether the glass is half full or half empty. They invited me over to watch a movie. And once again I noticed something I'd seen elsewhere. The movie we were watching seemed to have been set in the Land of the Wide People, where faces and bodies are a little bit broader than in our world, and cars and wagons and such run on oval wheels that always magically keep their long axis parallel to the ground as they roll. The Land of the Wide People is not the only such exotic realm that has been sending us movies and videos lately. There is also a Land of the Narrow People whose inhabitants are somewhat taller and more slender than the people here, and where oval car and wagon wheels stand proudly upright as they roll across the land. I know nothing of the politics of those two lands. Are they mortal enemies? Are they united in some sort of unholy alliance against those of us who dally in the middle and use circular wheels and cannot commit to either pole of existence? Or do they not really care about anything outside their own borders? Are we in danger of being invaded? Do I need to sound the alarm? Or are the relevant authorities already aware of the matter, perhaps keeping quiet about their concerns so as not to spark public panic? I suspect this latter, since lately I've been hearing cover stories to the effect that what appear to be images of Wide People and Narrow People are just illusions caused by some newfangled TV stuff being adjusted wrong. ********************* Speaking of new TV technology, in the future when the CRT is pretty much extinct will people wonder where YouTube got its name? ********************* Back on watching movies with our friends on their new wide-screen TV, when we noticed that the image was wider than it should be, they fumbled around with various remotes for a few minutes trying to find some way to adjust it. When they didn't find the magic key immediately, we decided not to bother with it. We just watched the movie with the image stretched out. The brain seems to be pretty good at adapting to that sort of thing, so after a few minutes we could more or less ignore the distortion. I suspect other folks across the land are having the same problem, and dealing (or not dealing) with it in a similar manner. Will squeezed or stretched video images be this generation's cliche symbol of technical ineptitude, sort of like the eternally flashing 12:00 on their parents' VCR? ********************* As I was trimming my fingernails, I got to wondering: How did our primordial ancestors deal with their nails before scissors and such were invented? Did they just let them grow until they broke off, or did they keep them under control by biting them, or what? ********************* My doctor and I have decided it's time to adjust my medications. So over the past few days I've been taking larger or smaller dosages of this or that according to a plan we worked out, and noting any changes in symptoms (It's not the kind of condition where doing this is dangerous, although it may have contributed to the tardiness of this issue of Silicon Soapware). We anticipate being able to phase one or two drugs out completely. This brings up the problem of what to do with the leftovers, once I've quit taking them long enough to be reasonably certain that I won't need them again. Some of my Faerie friends suggested that do I what they've always done: Cross out my name on the labels, leaving the rest of the information intact so people will know what they're getting, and put them out by the curb with a FREE sign, just like many people do with unwanted furniture and appliances and such. I tried to explain to them why that isn't a good idea in this world. I'm not sure they really got it. First, they don't deal in low-level physical effects at all. They're not even certain that things like enzymes and neurotransmitters and such even exist. Yes, if some of our scientists went over there and looked they might find something like enzymes and neurotransmitters, but that doesn't mean they exist when there aren't any scientists looking for them. That universe sometimes likes to play games with people who get too nosy, but otherwise doesn't worry about details of how things work. People and other creatures just think and feel and dream and wish and move and that's It, with no particular infrastructure required. If you know the right spells you can bring even inanimate objects to life, and they generally don't even have living cells as we know them, let along enzymes and neurotransmitters (or, for that matter, RAM and ROM and logic gates). Also, most potions (as they prefer to call medicines and such) know what they're there for and know when to stop. If you're sick and you take a healing potion, it will chase the disease out of your body and stand guard for a while against its return, but it won't do more than that. It won't, unless you take a really massive overdose, go roaming around randomly disrupting various bodily functions. Even if the person wasn't really sick in the first place it won't do anything inappropriate. So they have trouble grasping the idea of something that just stupidly changes one thing deep in the inner workings, regardless of whether the change is appropriate or not. And yes, you do need to cross out your name on the label, even if you don't care who knows what you've been taking. There's a magical link between a potion and the person it was made for, and when you're done with it and want to let someone else use what's left you'll want to cut that link. Crossing out your name is part of the spell for doing that. So from their standpoint putting unwanted medications out with a FREE sign on them makes sense, even if it isn't something we here would consider wise. ********************* One person on the WELL posted about how when he's riding a bicycle and has to get across a busy street where there's a crosswalk but no light, he gets off and walks the bike across. That makes him a pedestrian, which means cars have to stop for him to cross. Were he to stay on the bike he would be a vehicle, and would have to wait for cross traffic to clear. So far, so good. But it started me to thinking. Does any law set limits on this particular tactic? And law or no law, how would drivers react if, for example, someone were to try it with a motorcycle? Or imagine an old dilapidated-looking VW Beetle pulling up from a side street and fifteen or twenty clowns getting out. A few of them start walking across the main road to stop traffic while the rest start pushing the car across. Then when the car reaches the side street on the other side they all get back in and drive off. How would other drivers react? If there was a cop around, would he find some reason to give them a ticket? I suspect that kind of thing could work in a movie, but has too great a chance of provoking road rage in real life. ********************* Every now and then I see an article or something to the effect that many young people nowadays have never seen a center-hole adapter used for playing 45 RPM records on turntables with small center spindles. Supposedly someone showed a bunch of them a picture of one (the type I recall using most often looks like the image in http://arcmusic.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/recoton.jpg with more background at http://arcmusic.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/recoton.jpg ) and they made all sorts of wild guesses as to what it was, including symbols for various arcane cults and conspiracies. Anyway, it occurred to me that if that shape wants to be a symbol for some movement or cause or something other than just nostalgia for vinyl, how about making it a symbol of the freedom to play music published in one proprietary format on players created by others? After all, isn't that one way to describe the physical object's original function? ********************* Speaking of things not being compatible, and assuming alternate-world travel, how do you know that computer components you buy in one timeline will be compatible with those from another? Even if they're marked as conforming to some particular standard, what if they're from a timeline where that standard is different? If it's a piece of hardware, what if, say, the connector pin assignments are different even though the mechanical dimensions are the same? So you plug the board into the slot, and everything seems to fit. But then you power it up and something goes ZAP and starts putting out smoke. Or maybe the power pins and voltages and such are the same so there are no pyrotechnics, but things like bus setup and hold times are different, or maybe one logic pin that doesn't get activated very often is in a different place. Either way the thing may appear to sort of work, but with occasional errors that are almost impossible to track down. Even if you as a paratime tourist know all this and are careful not to buy electronics from timelines whose standards haven't been certified as being compatible with ours, there are still pitfalls. One is whether you can trust labeling at all. If there's any significant amount of smuggling and other black market activity going on, you may have no way of knowing what timeline anything came from. This is especially true if the authorities in these alternate timelines haven't agreed on a naming convention to identify which timeline is what. "I'm from the timeline where Timeline A17B decided to call itself 'Timeline B17A' and the one you know as 'B17A' is using some completely different name." This could get quite messy, at least in those timelines where it gets messy. ********************* Speaking of which, what is the origin of the expression "Can of worms"? My mental image of it is that the worms in the can are somehow (magic?) still alive, and once you open the can they'll crawl out and it will be almost impossible to put them all back in. Presumably the worm cannery has special worm-canning equipment to do this, but ordinary mortals don't. So once you open a can of worms you're pretty much stuck with having worms crawling around all over the place. And what was the expression equivalent to "can of worms" before canning was invented? Did they have one? ********************* ... Or Mineral Pet rocks are OK But some people prefer more variety. The guy upstairs from he Has a 1947 Chevrolet engine block: I think his apartment is too small for it But there it is. And the family down the street With the goldfish pond in the yard Has an old ship's anchor To keep the fish company. But of all the inorganic pets in the neighborhood, The happiest is an old beer can Belonging to a small boy. It would never win a prize at a show: Too many dents And spots of rust And paint flaking off. And besides, it a brand of beer Most people don't like. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is FUN Like afternoons when they go for a walk: The can leaps joyously ahead CLATTERDY RATTLDEY CLANG BANG!! Then lies quietly waiting for its master to catch up Before leaping ahead again. I may get a beer can myself some day. But I still don't think it's right To keep a 1947 Chevrolet engine block Cooped up in such a small apartment. Thomas G. Digby written 1730 hr 2/07/76 entered 2045 hr 3/29/92 format 13:36 12/22/2001 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. 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