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 #199 New Moon of March 4, 2011 Contents copyright 2011 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. ********************* Things have been kind of hectic lately, mainly due to there being two conventions only a couple of weeks apart. I'd just about finished unwinding from Pantheacon, and here came Consonance. At least there was one more or less free weekend in between for relaxing. So that's why this issue is slightly on the late side. ********************* At one party I went to recently the TV was on in the background, with the sound turned down but with captions showing. They were doing scenes from various movies and TV shows. One that caught my eye is known by various titles in different markets and languages, but can be found by looking up "Invasion of Astro-Monster" in Wikipedia. At one point the inhabitants of a newly discovered alien planet offer Earth a cure for cancer (or, in some versions, a cure for all diseases) in return for permission to borrow a couple of Earth monsters. I didn't see much more than that at the time. But the part of it I did see got me to wondering how such a deal would be worked out in real life. I suppose at some point the aliens would hand over or otherwise transmit some sort of technical data to some set of humans. In the movie (which may have predated cassettes) they gave some Earth officials a reel of audio tape. It apparently just so happened that our systems were compatible with theirs, so all we had to do was put it on a player and hit Play. I think the movie glossed over lots of details on language translations, units of measurement, and the like. It also wasn't clear whether they were to give us detailed recipes for medicines, or pure scientific data that would basically just save us some research work, or something in between. In real life that would have probably been stated as part of the deal. The tricky part comes when we try to tie it into our world of clinical tests, governmental approvals, patents, intellectual property, labeling, marketing, and so on. For example, would the basic information given to us by the aliens be immediately made public, or would some agency keep it to themselves for a while? Would it be in the public domain, or would someone own it? If someone does own it, who would that be? The U.N.? Whoever worked with the aliens to bring this deal to fruition? Other? And wouldn't our FDA (as well as equivalents in other countries) insist on testing this new cure, whatever it turns out to be, before it's approved for general use? If so, who pays for the testing? Private companies, or some governmental agency, or what? And does footing the bill for the testing give them a right to make a profit from the alien technology, as if they'd invented it? In the movie the offer turned out to have been made in bad faith (the tape contained a demand that Earth surrender to the aliens), so these questions didn't come up. But if the deal had gone through, how might these matters have been worked out? ********************* There's a brand of candy (Dove Promises) where each piece comes individually wrapped, with a little message printed on the inside of the wrapper. One such reads, "Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves." That's presumably supposed to be kind of cheerful and inspirational. But it takes on a more sinister tone if you're a vampire. But then don't most songs and poems that use sunshine as a metaphor? ********************* A bit of folklore from my school days is relevant to the season. It was widely believed, or at least claimed, that if you wore green on a Thursday it meant you were a "bisexual" or a "fairy" advertising for others of like mind. We weren't really sure what a "bisexual" was, or what a "fairy" was when it wasn't a mythical miniature winged humanoid, but both of these things were apparently something pretty bad. I'm not sure that very many people really believed this, but it was an excuse for taunting anyone whose clothing showed any trace of green on a Thursday. And then there was St. Patrick's Day, when everybody was supposed to wear green and decorate the classroom with green paper shamrocks and sing songs like "Danny Boy" and "When Irish Eyes are Smiling", and otherwise celebrate everything Irish. (There may have been an occasional news story about some sort of political problems involving parts of Ireland and their relationship with Great Britain, but we didn't get into that. It was more or less just an excuse to celebrate.) I've since wondered what happens when St. Patrick's Day falls on a Thursday. That would have happened when I was in third grade and again in ninth grade. In third grade we would have been too young to be aware of sexual stuff. I suppose the question could have come up in ninth grade, but if it did I don't recall it. But now this coming March 17 will be a Thursday. So once again I'm wondering if this "Green on Thursday" thing is still talked about, and if so, what happens when it meets up with St. Patrick. ********************* My new driver's license arrived in the mail a few days ago, after having been officially renewed back in December. It has various new high-tech anti-fraud things such as hologram images and raised signatures you can feel. And that's why it took so long to arrive. This version went into production just a few months ago, and they're still getting the bugs out. Evidently the philosophy is that if you make something difficult to produce, requiring capital-intensive processes to which economies of scale apply, and the legitimate producers of the thing expect to operate on a larger scale (and/or with access to more resources) than any imposters, then if they set the degree of difficulty just right the legitimate producers will be able to produce the thing in a cost- effective manner while the counterfeiters won't be able to produce a convincing copy at all, or at least won't be able to make a profit. The problem is in setting the degree of difficulty. If it's too easy (either initially or because technology has advanced since the thing was first designed) people will make fakes. If it's too hard, the legitimate producers will have problems producing it. The California DMV seems to have been leaning toward the "too hard" end of the curve, at least for now. But eventually they'll get production flowing smoothly, with licenses delivered on time. And then after another few years further advances in technology will make it easy to make fakes again, and the cycle will have to be repeated. ********************* Renewing my driving license reminds me that I'm not getting any younger. Sooner or later I may get to a point of not being in condition to drive any more. I'm sort of hoping that doesn't happen until after self- driving cars become available. Then it may not matter as much, assuming these new cars are affordable. And as others have pointed out, it may not be necessary to totally own one. Various kinds of sharing arrangements are possible. This should be easier than it is now, since the logistics of one user handing a car over to another will not require humans to ride around just to move the car and then end up needing a ride back to where they came from. I'm also noticing that a car is more than just personal transportation. It can also be, for example, a portable storage locker. It may not be a very secure one, but it's still good enough to be quite useful, and doing without that function can sometimes be quite inconvenient. It's also a means for transporting cargo, as well as shelter from the weather. I'm hoping whatever economic systems evolve around self-driving cars will take these other functions into account. ********************* I've recently wondered if there might be a market for glow-in-the-dark toilet seats. The target market might be multi-person households in which one person gets up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and doesn't want to turn on the lights, but also can't be certain what position the seat has been left in by other members of the household. Having the toilet seat glowing just enough to be visible would make its state more obvious. ********************* Legend has it that the Devil and his minions have fireproof credit cards so they can carry them in Hell where ordinary credit cards would burn up. So if you think that someone who is trying to pay you by credit card may be the Devil, try to burn the card. If the card melts and burns and stinks up the place with the smell of burning plastic, then it's OK to take it, except that it probably won't go through now because it's all melted and burned and the magnetic strip probably won't work any more. Also, just because the person trying to pay you by credit card isn't the Devil doesn't mean they have money in the account. So you still have to be careful. And does it really matter? If the Devil comes into your store and tries to buy something, what difference does his being the Devil make as long as he's not being obvious about being the Devil and the payment clears OK? You may never notice anything out of the ordinary. Just another customer you don't know personally. So is it worth worrying about? ********************* Several people on the WELL are keeping chickens and have been discussing various aspects of it online. These people aren't what I think of as farmers. They live in cities, or at least in suburbs, with the chickens in a fenced area in the back yard. And they don't sell the eggs commercially. They eat them themselves or give them to friends, sort of like people have long done with home-grown vegetables. Locally, at least one friend of a friend is doing it. So now I'm wondering: Is this something that has been growing in popularity lately? Is it a new trend in the suburbs? Are you or any of your friends or neighbors doing it? ********************* One family I know has been thinking about redoing their landscaping. At a recent get-together they spent some time looking through flower catalogs and discussing various alternatives. That reminded me of this: Roses Are ... My Fairy friends need roses Of all kinds and colors For some spell or enchantment or something, But they don't want to waste their treasure Buying flowers from earthly florists. So what might I suggest instead? How about the roses only Fairies can pick? There's one that grows in the sky On the pink clouds of sunset. Somewhere around the world It's sunset right now, So if they hurry They can pick all they want Until the sunset fades To twilight And the twilight fades To darkest night And the black night roses bloom, Unseen by mortal eyes. Then come the sunrise roses That look just like their sunset brethren, But whose perfume Hints of bright new beginnings While the sunset scent Lulls you toward sweet slumber. Speaking of the Sun, The blinding white roses that grow there Must be approached with caution Since they can melt any vase you put them in. Leave that one to the salamanders. Perhaps the rarest rose of all Is the icy flower That blooms only in Antarctica In the month of May. No mortal who has seen it Has lived to tell the tale. This roster of roses is far from complete, But the Fairies can fill in the blanks And take it from here. -- Tom Digby First Draft 03:53 Thu February 28 2008 Revised 01:01 Tue March 4 2008 ********************* 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 and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer appended to the end of this section in the copy you received. Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --