From business class to the big house: Sometimes it's the small stories that spark the most heat. April's "Why Your Gadgets Won't Crash the Plane" certainly went down in flames. "Flight attendants already have their hands full," writes an angry flier of the friendly skies, "without Wired adding fuel to the fire of passenger insurrection." Other readers took it more personally: "This gives the bitchy little salesman in 4D one more thing to yell about." (This is your captain speaking. To cause an uncommanded pitch input to the autopilot, press 3 now. And please fasten your seat belt.)
An equally incendiary article, "Survivor: Behind Bars," never reached penitent subscribers in Florida's Glades Correctional Institution, officially because it "presents a threat to security, good order, or discipline of the correctional system or the safety of any person." The offending content: "Page 54 depicts different scenarios for disturbances within a correctional institution." Give me the Wired life, with time off for good behavior.
Rants About Raves
I applaud your choice of Steve Jobs as renegade of the year ("The 2004 Wired Rave Awards," Wired 12.04). When Apple teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, Jobs returned the company to profitability. And when the RIAA bemoaned digital pirates, Jobs shut them up by proving that people would buy music through iTunes. But Jobs' track record at Pixar isn't as clear-cut. As explained in my new book, Apple Confidential 2.0, he didn't share the Pixar founders' vision of creating computer-animated features until it was clear that Toy Story was a success. In fact, he attempted to sell Pixar to Microsoft before the film was released. To be sure, Jobs has shown incredible moxie in his strong-arm renegotiations with Disney, but the real heroes at Pixar are the creative geniuses who have produced an unbroken string of blockbusters.
Owen W. Linzmayer
San Francisco, California
When I first heard Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, I fell in love with the lush melodies and powerful rhythms. I hadn't listened to it in a while, but then I read in "The Rave Awards" about the Flaming Lips' new album, Yoshimi 5.1. I usually don't shell out for a remixed version of something I already own, but I made an exception for the Flaming Lips. I fell in love all over again, and this time I'm obsessed. Is there any chance Wilco will do the same for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot?
Wheeler Joseph Hall
Dayton, Ohio
Adrian Lamo, Our Hero
Halfway through your article on Adrian Lamo ("The Homeless Hacker v. The New York Times," Wired 12.04) I wondered why he wasn't working as a security consultant and earning at least $500,000 a year. I feel his deductive reasoning skills make him worthy of the Medal of Freedom. When talented neoscientists like Lamo find security flaws that seriously undermine the credibility of a major company or intelligence agency, shouldn't Tom Ridge get him off the streets by employing him to uncover future terrorist strikes?
Jim Peers
Sydney, Nova Scotia
Now I know there's someone out there like me, illiterate in programming languages and code yet fascinated by the simpler attributes making up feeble firewalls. I told my parents, who are nothing like the Lamos, to read this article to better understand their daughter - and not to be so afraid of my "unhealthy" obsession.
Lauren Robinson
Gilbert, Arizona
I enjoyed your article about Adrian Lamo, though it was a little straitlaced. Aside from the ethics of his activities, the real issue is that we are all grayhats, and giving the impression that such grayness is somehow weird or kooky is misleading. Aren't we beyond thinking that someone is odd or naive because they do not choose a regular lifestyle and career? We need to admit that people can be simultaneously wonderful, weak, and unusual without dressing them up like comic book villains.
Joseph Gelfer
Otago, New Zealand
Hanging Together
Your article about the overhang in the tech industry ("The Roots of Bust 2.0," Wired 12.04) tells of people with more money than good sense. Cash going to retread companies will never deliver any returns to speak of. Meanwhile, companies in other industries go without the financing necessary to launch products. Consumer products are mundane, but they've made many people very wealthy. Some good ideas starve because investors are looking for the next eBay or Microsoft rather than for investment ideas outside technology.
Danny Huckabee
Katy, Texas
The Long Arm of Moore's Law
Loved Michael S. Malone's article (Start, "Moore's Second Law," Wired 12.04). Bob Metcalfe's assertion, in effect, meant that Moore's law was a self-fulfilling prophecy! The economics of the industry have been predicated on that, so in some sense it's true.
Moore's law, for now, is open-ended. The problem with Moore's second law as proposed is that you can double only so much before reaching either rapidly diminishing returns or hitting close to 100 percent. The real question, then, is: What is the headroom on energy per instruction? Claude Shannon discussed this in a paper in 1948, and it turns out we have a way to go before reaching the limit. So there is hope. All of this points to a conclusion that I came to years ago: Storage and distribution of power are much scarcer resources than computing!
Kevin Dowling
Boston, Massachusetts
Michael S. Malone's extension of Moore's law shows a distinct lack of understanding of both the battery life issue and the basis of the "law" used as an example.
Moore's law comes from his observation of exponential growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit and his prediction that this trend would continue. It has nothing to do with "Herculean" efforts! And everything to do with the natural progression of technology.
Battery development follows similar laws. If you want to help the portable electronics industry, it would be far better to observe the rate of development over the past 50 or 100 years, and determine what the natural battery law is.
Neil Horden
Wauconda, Illinois
This Is Your Brain on Steroids
From the title "Steroids for Everyone!" (View, Wired 12.04), I thought G. Pascal Zachary was being ironic. I was surprised to find that was not his intention. We look up to athletes not only because they win medals, but because they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. How do we feel pride in a shared humanity when our heroes are no longer human? Athletic competitions would devolve into "how much more can we pump into him/her" rather than a display of willpower and determination. The heroism lies in the desire to be a better person, to be the best at something. Taking drugs is cheating, however you look at it. As they say, cheaters never win.
Christian Kelly
Dublin, Ireland
Zachary seems not to understand that steroids are life-threatening. I know the parents of one high-school football player whose death by suicide was blamed on steroids. This is a well-known problem; many young people have killed or tried to kill themselves because of psychological problems brought on by steroid use. Advocating legalization without discussing this issue isn't very responsible.
Jim Wells
Melbourne, Florida
Sacrifice Fly
Personal electronic devices, as we pilots call them, really can interfere with the navigation systems on airliners (Start, "Why Your Gadgets Won't Crash the Plane," Wired 12.04). I know because I've seen it. A few years ago I was trying to land a Boeing 737 on a foggy night. Everything seemed normal until we started the approach. The airplane started behaving erratically as the autopilots and autothrottles chased a distorted signal from the ground-based Instrument Landing System. I refused to continue the approach. About that time, we heard a flight attendant give the score to the World Series. Since we hadn't told her what it was, we knew a passenger had a radio. Sure enough, somebody was listening to the game on a portable radio. We made him shut it off, and the airplane behaved perfectly on the next approach. That made a believer out of me. So when the crew tells you to turn off your electronic gadgets, please do it.
Dave Collett
Salt Lake City, Utah
Insanely Destructive Incentives
Lawrence Lessig's column on self-replicating "insanely destructive devices" (View, Wired 12.04) is a parable whose moral is: To reduce the risk, reduce the rage. There is sense to this, but what if the source of my rage is law professors like Lessig? Or magazines like Wired? Are you ready to mollify me by killing your columnist or going out of business? Isn't Lessig really offering an incentive to use IDDs by positively reinforcing them? He acknowledges that "crazies, of course, can't be reasoned with." But they can be placated. His logic suggests we should do so, abandoning freedom and sanity along with the defensive measures he derides.
Daniel Akst
Tivoli, New York
Rants About Rants
I was disappointed to see you print a rant from Zach Leinen (Rants + Raves, Wired 12.04) that included the sentence, "The EU is overpopulated, underproducing, and completely reliant upon the aid of more powerful countries." (Who dat?) In the interests of balance you may wish to print that North America is populated by obese, gun-crazy religious fundamentalists.
Peter Coggon
London, England
