__ Rants & Raves __
__ The Future Present __
In "The Inner Bezos" (Wired 7.03, page 114), Chip Bayers writes with awe about the future of ecommerce: "The consultants at the Global Business Network even sketch out a scenario where, within a generation or two, vans carrying inventories of more popular necessities, such as toilet paper or diapers, may be constantly circling neighborhoods, ready to drop off an order within moments of receiving it."
You don't need to wait a generation or two for that - it's called the Ice Cream Man!
__ Jim Lanzone
jlanzone@juxtanet.com __
__ Review Review __
I'm generally satisfied with Amazon.com. However, it's worth noting that Amazon censors book reviews. They keep sending me the same mindless form letter that says my language "criticized the author" - whatever that means.
__ Barry Popik
Bapopik@aol.com __
__ Consumer Goods __
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is sadly mistaken about the good he can do through his "new politics of consumerism." How can online shopping shift "the balance of power ... back into the hands of consumers" if the consumer can no longer see, feel, or test the purchase in person?
__ Andrew Witmer
awmarshill@aol.com __
__ Alpha Mail __
I am probably not the first reader to point out the errors in "Chip Tease" (Wired 7.03, page 130). "And at 450 MHz, the Pentium II has long been the fastest [CPU] out there"?
First, the DEC (now Compaq) Alpha 21164 chip family has always been available at faster clock speeds than the Pentium II. Not only does the Alpha run faster, it also processes more instructions per cycle and is a pure 64-bit chip, to boot.
Second, the latest BYTEmark integer test shows that Apple's 300-MHz G3 is faster than a 450-MHz Pentium II.
__ Mark Pinson
mpinson@ix.netcom.com __
__ Open Courts __
At the State of Utah Administrative Office of the Courts, we've been pursuing an e-filing project for a few years, and "Order in the Court" (Wired 7.03, page 94) bears out some of our early thinking. We sometimes feel like plump turkeys waiting to be carved up by companies with proprietary applications intended to control everything. Alliances with vendors can deliver technology in the short term, but as we all know, there's no free lunch.
It's time for someone to take the lead and develop standards for courts which are open and vendor neutral. It's also time for courts to stay away from the free food.
__ Rolen Yoshinaga
ryoshinaga@compuserve.com __
__ Pronounced Features __
Thanks for "The Undead" (Wired 7.03, page 140), George Dyson's story about the persistence of punched cards. If history is any guide, we can look forward to dealing with Windows for decades too, despite its obsolescence.
One small correction: It is unlikely IBM 129 card punches are converting anything into American Standard Code for Information Interchange, ASCII, pronounced "ass key." IBM, the Microsoft of the punched card era, had enough monopoly power then to force us to use its own nonstandard Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code, EBCDIC, pronounced "eb suh dick."
__ Bob Metcalfe
metcalfe@idg.net __
__ Return to Sender __
"The Undead" reminded me of my days as a radar repairman in the US Army Air Forces. In 1945, I was stationed at the Greensboro, North Carolina, Overseas Replacement Depot, waiting to be shipped overseas. I got acquainted with a young lady in the Women's Army Corps who was in charge of a giant card sorter used to track and dispatch men to overseas destinations by their military occupational specialty (MOS) numbers. She demonstrated it by typing my name in. The machine located my record card and spit it out.
After a couple of months, we had a minor disagreement. Within two days, I was shipped out! It didn't occur to me what happened until about 20 years later. But at least she sent me back to the Boca Raton Radar School and not to Timbuktu!
__ Gaines M. Crook
gmcrook@paclink.net __
__ Fact and Fiction __
Reading "exile.com" (Wired 7.01, page 108) about Kevin Poulsen being punished for hacking by being banned from computers during his probation, I was surprised you didn't mention Isaac Asimov's "A Perfect Fit" (1981). The main character of the story can barely live in his contemporary world because he has been conditioned against using computers - for the crime of hacking. He has to con a 9-year-old into ordering a dinner for him because the restaurants are computerized.
Score another prediction for science fiction.
__ Walt Cheever
waltc@mnic.net __
__ Screen Door __
Liesl Schillinger's story on The Onion ("Award-Winning Local Journalists Reflect Own Self-Hatred Back on Nightmarish World," Wired 7.03, page 106) was informative, funny, and timely.
I am a teacher living in Saudi Arabia, where censorship is strict - the government wants all the new technology but none of the information. Fortunately, satire and sarcasm aren't as easily recognized as an Absolut ad. The zealots who screen publications don't catch the subtle and not-so-subtle differences that make The Onion hilarious.
__ Scott Phillips
rsphillips@vinnellarabia.com __
__ Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down __
I enjoyed Liesl Schillinger's piece on The Onion, except for one part: "... its volatile charms remained the eccentric passion of students and anarcho-syndicalist academics in Madison (home of the University of Wisconsin) and a handful of humor buffs in New York and Los Angeles."
You coastal types are so smug! The Onion was famous in Chicago long before anyone in New York or Los Angeles heard of it. I could pick it up free at my local White Hen, for chrissakes!
__ Roger Ebert
Chicago __
__ Is It Hot in Here? __
With "leisure" wedged into the 10 minutes before you leave to catch a flight and "fun" defined as reading email, "The Pleasure Binge" (Wired 7.03, page 86) brings to mind the conversation between Faustus and Mephistopheles in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. When Mephistopheles freely admits he is a devil, Faustus asks why he's not in hell. "Why this is hell," Mephistopheles replies, "nor am I out of it."
By the way, you might have picked someone more objective to analyze the values and structure of the entertainment culture than a senior partner of the Media and Entertainment Group of Booz-Allen & Hamilton.
__ Robert V. Lancaster
rlanc@fix.net __
__ Electric Charge __
Readers of Electrifying Times have expressed their dismay at the glaring omission of our magazine and its Web site from "Suck Amps!" (Wired 7.03, page 124) by Charles Platt. We're regarded by fans of EV drag racing as the trade publication for the emerging new sport. We're working really hard and struggling in a market dominated by slick automotive titles selling more of the same internal combustion. Our address, www.electrifyingtimes.com, should have been right below the NEDRA address in the "More Juice" sidebar (page 165).
__ Remy Chevalier
remyc@prodigy.net __
__ For the Record __
"Listen Up" (Wired 7.03, page 138) sent shivers down my spine. Finally, an artist with the foresight to see that MP3 will decentralize the music industry and bring record labels to their knees by putting power where it should be, in the artists' hands.
I disagree with Chuck D's comparison of Bill Gates and Michael Jordan. Jordan got where he is through hard work. Gates got away with stealing what he could, and backing himself up with lawyers.
Big difference.
__ Brody Hurst
kagenin@cyberspace.org __
__ Trademurk __
The "MP4" format that Public Enemy is using is not the real MP4 format, but a proprietary trademark issued to Global Music One. This company is trying to make a quick buck off consumer demand for the MPEG-4 standard, which is defined by the International Organization for Standardization.
While I like Public Enemy's music, and support its fight for open music, the group's deal with Global Music One smacks of opportunism, and Wired's celebrity-worship allows this questionable behavior to go unchallenged.
__ Eric Scheirer
eds@media.mit.edu __
__ Undo __
Cryptographic Problems: A production error partially encrypted a piece of Malcolm Williamson's work history ("The Open Secret," Wired 7.04, page 113); for "�6," read: "himself working on cryptographic problems." ... Numbering the Aeons: There are six shorts (seven if you count the first season) in The Complete Aeon Flux ("State of Flux," Wired 7.01, page 148). ... Prom Not: The four chips shown on page 132 of "This Is Not a Test" (Wired 7.04) are SRAMs, not EPROMs.
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