Silicon Soapware #241

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                            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 #241
                        New Moon of July 26, 2014


Contents copyright 2014 by Thomas G. Digby, and licensed under a Creative 
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported 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.  


                          *********************

As I'm drafting this issue the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con is winding down.  
That is not an event I normally pay much attention to but I couldn't help 
noticing when it got mentioned in the news.

The organizers have banned the wearing of Google Glass hardware at 
showings of video clips, film trailers, and the like.  Since Google Glass 
includes a camera that can feed a video recorder wearers could, at least 
in theory, record presentations in violation of studio copyrights if 
people were allowed to use it during showings.

I'm reminded of other venues that also ban cameras and recorders, but for 
different reasons.

One common case is where an event draws people who tend to favor 
alternate lifestyles, counterculture values, or non-standard sexual 
practices.  If someone whose job or political situation requires that 
they appear to be living a life of strict traditional morality, 
publication of a photograph of them at such an event could cause them 
significant problems.

Or at least that used to be the case.  Will it be in the future?

What if someone were to simply announce that they had seen Person X in 
the crowd at Event Y without presenting any evidence beyond their 
unsupported word?  It's likely that most people wouldn't pay much 
attention, and even if they did, Person X could simply deny having been 
there.  It would then be a case of one person's word against another's.

Even if the person making the claim was an artist and produced a sketch 
of Person X engaging in some sort of naughty-looking activity at the 
event it would still boil down to a "He said ... she said ..." type of 
thing.

A photograph, on the other hand, has traditionally carried much more 
weight.  It used to be said that "The camera does not lie."  Some degree 
of what back then was called "trick photography" was possible, but it was 
difficult and limited in what it could do.

But nowadays technology is changing this.  We may be getting into a time 
when a photograph without corroborating testimony is not really proof of 
anything, any more than a painting would be.

So if some sex club bans cameras, should they also ban those artists 
whose ability to remember visual images is much better than "normal", 
lest they paint or draw things they shouldn't?

And with further improvements in technology, will the presence or absence 
of cameras and recorders at such events eventually cease to make much 
difference?

Whatever happens, laws and etiquette will eventually adapt to the 
technology, but it may take a while and the way may be bumpy.


                          *********************

Since much of the camera technology I'm thinking about is relatively new, 
it's likely to be expensive.  So how are you going to pay for it?

I'm reminded of something amusing I got in the mail a few days ago.  At 
least it was addressed to my name and address.  As I looked through it I 
got the impression that it wasn't really meant for me, but for someone 
else who in some alternate world has the same name and address that I 
have in this world.

It's an ad for a credit card.  One of its nifty features that they 
emphasize is that it's made of stainless steel.  Or at least the front 
is.  The back is made of carbon.  This is such a nifty thing that they've 
patented it.  You can see for yourself by going to uspto.gov and doing 
patent number searches for "D677,330" and "8,640,948" (commas optional).

Further proof of how nifty this card is comes in the form of some of the 
pictures in the brochure.  They show industrial-type stuff being done to 
metal in big factories.  I think you're supposed to believe that these 
are pictures of those nifty stainless steel credit cards being made, but 
my suspicion is that they may just be stock photos of industrial-type 
stuff being done to metal in big factories.

The brochure is also full of pictures of upscale stuff people who like to 
be seen spending money might want to spend their money on, such as 
airline flights, exotic resorts, luxury hotels, and stylish clothing.

And as long as you're spending lots of money on things like stylish 
clothing and expensive meals and travel and such you probably won't 
really notice the annual fee of $495 (that's less than five hundred 
dollars) plus another not quite two hundred dollars for each additional 
user you want to put on the account.  And even if you do notice it, the 
cool VIP status this card gets you at those fancy places, as well as the 
concierge services and the like you get access to, may be worth the money 
if you're into that sort of thing.

And did I mention that this credit card is made of STAINLESS STEEL?

They don't really say what's so special about making a credit card out of 
stainless steel, and I didn't bother wading through the patent-office 
legalese to find out.  One guess might be that when other members of your 
family come to the conclusion that you're throwing away too much money on 
frivolous stuff like credit cards made of exotic materials and try to cut 
up the card, you'll get your revenge when the stainless steel ruins their 
scissors.


                          *********************

Many of the pirates you see in cartoons and such are wearing eye patches.  
Did pirates really get deeyeified that often?  (Is "deeyeify", meaning to 
deprive someone of one or more eyes, a word?)  Or are the patches hiding 
something like a Google Glass thing that some time traveler has smuggled 
in from the future?

If time travelers have been smuggling high-tech future stuff back to our 
past we may not know about it if the future it's coming from is still in 
our future.  If this stuff is being smuggled from, say, the 2070's back 
to the 1770's, we here in the 2010's might not have been let in on the 
secret.  We may see some anomalies but can't explain them.  All we can do 
is speculate.

So what would someone like a pirate in the 1770's do with something like 
Google Glass disguised as an eye patch?  There would have been no 
Internet back then, although it's possible the time-traveling smugglers 
could have set some semblance of one up.

Maybe the pirates are keeping their treasure maps online now?

Or maybe the smugglers have set up radar and satellites and other 
ship-tracking technology and are charging the pirates for information on 
what other ships are nearby but still over the horizon?  Many pirates 
would have paid well to know about potential prey they might have 
otherwise not known about.  They would also have paid to know when some 
enemy was approaching.

And when they do capture a ship they can use data on the people they find 
on board.  Who has friends or relatives who would be likely to pay a 
large ransom?  And who should they avoid upsetting?  Would the time 
travelers have been able to get enough of that kind of information to be 
useful?

And speaking of satellites, don't forget weather data.  That could have 
been another profitable endeavor.

So why haven't we heard more about this?  Maybe the Time Patrols we used 
to read about in science fiction of the middle of the 20th Century are 
keeping them in check?

Maybe.


                          *********************

I've been eating at one particular fast-food place fairly regularly.  
They have one thing I like, which I order fairly often.

This item comes with a biscuit, which in turn comes with a little packet 
of "butter".  I usually ask for a second packet.  I know it may not be 
the most healthy food in the world, but I like the way it tastes.

For some reason they also throw in a little packet of "honey", which I 
don't use.  I've been letting these pile up on a kitchen shelf, and I now 
have several dozen of them.  So now I'm wondering what to do with them.  
The times I've dealt with similar things in the past have led me to doubt 
that many of my friends and neighbors would be interested, and I got the 
impression the restaurant I got them from doesn't really want them back 
either.  I was feeling rather discouraged about the whole subject.

Then it came to me: If it's honey, it must have come from bees.  Give it 
back to them.  After all the bees almost certainly did not give consent 
when the humans came and opened up the hive and pretty much just stole 
the honey the bees had spent the last several months making.

The fact that the honey is in little plastic packets makes it even 
better.  The bees won't need to make any new wax honeycomb cells to keep 
it in.  It'll keep just as well in those plastic packets until it's 
needed.

For a while I was thinking that I could just stack the packets in front 
of some hive somewhere and let the bees do the rest, but then I got to 
wondering if the bees would know how to open the packets when the time 
came.  What if they didn't?

And aside from possibly not knowing how to open those packets, would they 
know what was in them that would make it worth even trying to open them?  
I would guess not.

So the next step becomes obvious: Teach the bees to read.  Then they'll 
be able to read the labels on the packets and know they need to figure 
out how to open them because there's good stuff inside.

There are still a lot of steps in this process that I need to figure out.  
How does one teach bees to read?  Does it also require teaching them how 
to spell?  I recall that schools used to have "spelling bees" when I was 
in school, although I don't recall any actual bees participating at the 
time.  Maybe they were doing stuff behind the scenes?

Would I need to teach all the bees to read?  Or would teaching just the 
Queen and a few other members of the royal court be enough?  Let the 
decision-makers pass the word down the chain of command to the workers 
who would actually handle the packets of honey in question.

And what grade level would they need to be able to read at?  I took 
another look at the label on one of the packets to get an idea of the 
level of difficulty and what other information the bees might need.

What I found was not encouraging.  First, the main title was not really 
"Honey".  It was "HONEY SAUCE", followed by an ingredients list that 
started out with "High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar ..." and 
only then got to actual honey.  It then went on with some more stuff and 
ended with a bunch of chemicals and "natural and artificial flavors" that 
I doubt the bees would really be interested in.  It did claim to contain 
"7% real honey", but would that impress the Queen Bee?  Probably not.

I suspect the bees wouldn't really want this "honey" any more than I do.  
So it looks like I'll need to find some other use for it.  Or as some say 
in such circumstances, back to the drawing board.


                          *********************


                             Cloudy Concepts


Two friends lie on a hillside
Gazing at the clouds
 making pictures in the sky.

This one's a dog, that one a car,
Yet another one a saxophone.

But there's one that doesn't seem to be anything.

In reality it's a trans-temporal replorvinator,
But since replorvination won't be invented
 for at least another three hundred years
Today's cloud-gazers haven't a clue.

That cloud has labored in vain.

How many other clouds
 have made shapes of things that will be
 but aren't yet,
Or might have been
 if only things had been different?

Only the gods of clouds know,
And they aren't talking.


                          -- Tom Digby
                          Written       8:40 a.m. April 21, 2005
                          Saved with Title  03:42 Wed May 11 2005


                          *********************

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