Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Beachwear is a subject rarely covered (or uncovered) in New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ.
But an old electronics hack has revealed how the situation can be rectified
– just juggle the letters, do some lateral thinking, and you come up with
beachware, to add to software, hardware and all the other computerwares.

‘Beachware is silicon chips,’ said the hack, ‘which look just fine,
but don’t work. The silicon is about as much use as the silicon on the beach.’
Softwear is old hat – see last week’s Feedback – but we’re still waiting
to discover the meaning of wetware. (Honest, the word exists.) One suggestion
is that it applies to the human component in computing. Wetware is the user
– roughly 70 per cent of whom is water. And, of course, cyberpunk’s fans
know that wetware describes people fitted with sockets to link them to networks.
Prizes, perhaps, for witty definitions of other wares: footware, underware,
rainware . . .

* * *

Following hotly on Feedback’s exposure of the link between bar codes
and the Bible’s Revelation, a reader writes in with more evidence. Using
as his text New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ’s own bar code from the 9 November issue (cheeky!),
G. J. Kirby from Weymouth, Dorset reveals that these ubiquitous Universal
Product Codes contain three delimiters to identify the manufacturer and
product. These delimiters are two thin stripes – representing the number
six.

Thus, he declares, the number 666 appears on every bar code. Ominously,
this fulfils Revelation Chapter 12, Verse 17: ‘no one could buy or sell’
without ‘the mark of the Beast’.

* * *

If you think that the escalators on London Underground are always breaking
down, then try the National Exhibition Centre at Birmingham. There are five
escalators between the centre and the railway station (which is called the
‘rail station’ on signs in the centre). When Feedback’s spy went to the
centre last week all five escalators were working in the morning. Three
hours later all five had ground to a halt.

* * *

Children will find a host of amusement in the Natural History Museum’s
Christmas catalogue. Not only are there the toys, but also the captions.
Take the rubber frog, for example. The catalogue describes the creature
as a reptile. Well, everyone’s got to make economies. Perhaps the class
Amphibia was just too costly to maintain.

* * *

Weddings have always been such a worry. Who will sit next to Uncle Archie?
Will Mrs Nobbs from next door be offended that she’s not been invited? Has
anyone ordered the flowers? Naturally, your computer will have the answers.
Not content with playing the matchmaker, the personal computer has now muscled
in on the arrangements for the happy day.

The Celebrate program will assist you from the beginning, says ErgoSoft,
Inc. It helps you with ‘developing a budget; putting together the guest
list; tracking invitations sent; choosing and monitoring the catering and
musicians’. But make quite sure you have chosen the right partner, with
‘Mindviewer’. ‘Now you can gain insight into the true nature of your friends,
family members and associates,’ promise the psychologists who wrote the
program. After just a few minutes at your monitor ‘you’ll know what really
motivates people’s behaviour’. Feedback has wondered for ages what his computer
really thinks of him.

* * *

The old-style Soviet-watchers who tried to fathom Kremlin policy by
reading between the lines of the Communist Party press are still not redundant.
Addressing the Royal Institute of International Affairs last week, Julian
Cooper of The University of Birmingham noted that a recent issue of the
army daily Red Star revealed for the first time ever the number of Soviet
citizens employed in military R&D – 1.7 million.

‘At least,’ he said, ‘the figure was there in the first edition of the
paper.’ The later edition the same day, however, had dropped it. ‘This was
not only an interesting survival of censorship; it considerably enhanced
the credibility of the figure.’