The Beer Utility

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Date: Sat, 17 May 97 11:36:26 PDT

KLUDGE@NETCOM.COM writes:
> I consider it amazing that nobody has yet considered a beer utility, with
> beer piped directly from the factory to the home.  Light and dark running

Security is the eternal problem of utilities.  Few people steal water
from the distribution pipes because it's so cheap that it's not worth
the effort involved.  Few people steal electricity because it's pretty
cheap too and requires special skills to handle safely.  Few people
steal sewage for obvious reasons.  Lots of people steal cable
television, because it's priced way above the cost of delivery, thus the
escalation of the scrambling and piracy wars.

Now, beer is something worth stealing.  Furthermore, your best customers
are likely to be buildings full of engineering students.  Just try
building a student-proof beer meter!  If they can't bypass the measuring
system, they'll break the microcontroller and make it report whatever
numbers they want.

Consider the social effects of a beer utility.  Of course, someone would
pass a law requiring a cardswipe device at every tap, to protect
innocent children, at which point the ACLU would sue, taking valuable
dollars away from their net freedom campaign.  Since it costs a fair bit
to do a credit card verification, the price per use would quickly
approach what you'd pay elsewhere.  It'd be taxed to death, too.  Maybe
they'd even put a regulator in the meter to prevent it dispensing more
than N pints per day, thereby defeating the original purpose of
preventing drunk drivers when partygoers go out for fresh supplies.

People would publish studies pointing out correlations between violent
crime and the availability of the beer utility, neglecting to point out
that crime happens in cities and cities are the only place where it's
cost-effective to set up.  Do-gooding teatotallers would make trouble by
refusing to allow you to run the pipes under their property, and
campaigning for public land to be the same way.

Unless you kept the pipes really thin and the flow rate up, requiring
strong pipes and high pressures, you'd have a lot of beer sitting in the
pipes at any given moment, going stale all the time.  You might just as
well re-route the output of the urinals to the taps and create a
self-contained beer loop.

Now, a nanobrewery in your fridge... there's an idea!

-- 
Matthew_Skala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca, hacking Delphi for MPR in Burnaby

 * RM 1.3 00829 * "your melon is all waxed then you got to ice her jits" -jjp

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Copyright © 1997-1999 Matthew Skala
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