For crowd pleasers it's hard to beat Pixar. "Thanks for the look into the most-envied movie studio there is!" gushed a fan of June's cover story and rising-star director Brad Bird. "He was a legend at Disney in the early '80s - including for, as the tale went, getting fired for kicking a water-cooler bottle down the hall in frustration. He's a genius: funny and smart and full of heart." Yes, dear readers, you loved Mr. Incredible - but, damn, did you hate the cable guy we put in View's Hot Seat. "I'd like to know," sputtered one of many with a coax to grind, "where the hell [Time Warner Cable CEO] Glenn Britt gets off telling us that 'People like having maximum choice.' The 'choices' he's giving me really suck." Speaking of giant sucking sounds: "Everyone knows that cable is a pipe and content is the liquid," wrote another viewer who'd reached the last straw. "If I want a tequila sunrise, the cable company is going to stick the orange juice in one package, the grenadine in another, and the tequila in yet another so I have to buy all three." Even streaming media can be a thirsty business.
The Incredible World of Pixar
Just wanted to say, great article ("Welcome to Planet Pixar," Wired 12.06)! I'm an animator working in London, and my hackles always get raised when I read articles about the CG industry. Yours, however, showed an amazing amount of research and respect, and it captured perfectly the tone of how the rest of us perceive Pixar.
Matt Estela
London, England
I liked how the article looked beyond the influence of Steve Jobs and the Disney symbiosis to trace the company's origins back to places like Boeing and the Genesis Effect. Even more than that, I appreciated the emphasis you placed on Pixar's creativity, rather than its technology. I expected it to be the other way around, given the magazine that published it, so it was a nice surprise.
Scott Newton
Bellingham, Washington
Rating the Wired 40
Your Wired 40 (Wired 12.06) is suboptimal in a couple of ways. I would replace Nokia with Qualcomm and Intel with AMD. Though Nokia aggressively led the change from analog to 2G and established industry domination as a result, it hasn't had the same success with the move to 3G. Qualcomm is gaining share, Nokia is losing share. Qualcomm is leading in 3G, Nokia is still trying to squeeze profit out of 2G. QCOM is wired, NOK is tired.
In microprocessors, I think you have made another error by going with the biggest rather than the leader. While Intel has among the best, if not the very best, manufacturing expertise, it has made a series of mistakes and lost the technology crown to AMD, which has been proven right after fighting through a sea of FUD to the contrary. AMD is gaining share, Intel is losing share. AMD is leading us to 64 bits, Intel is still trying to keep the market mired in 32 bits, where they dominate. AMD is wired, INTC is tired.
John Biddle
Clearwater, Florida
I'm surprised this year's Wired 40 doesn't include Wal-Mart. The company has always been a technology leader in retail and continues to pioneer. For instance, Wal-Mart is revolutionizing the retail industry by becoming an early adopter of RFID as a way to eventually replace the product barcode. Plus, Wal-Mart has entered new markets like online DVD rentals and even offers Internet connectivity to consumers. I wonder how Costco made the Wired 40 and Wal-Mart did not.
Will Gillen
Fayetteville, Arkansas
I was appalled to see Comcast included in the Wired 40. Its overly restrictive bandwidth policies and drastic rate increases only prove that it is taking full advantage of its near monopolistic stronghold on the marketplace, leaving consumer choice in the dust. Show me a cable company that offers tiered Net access and � la carte cable packages for a reasonable price, and I'll show you a true "[master] of technology, innovation, and strategic vision."
John Dewar
Fairfax, Virginia
Mad About the Mad Kitchen Scientist
Alton Brown's television program sounds like one I would enjoy if I owned a television ("The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking," Wired 12.06). But I must take issue with the statement "Everything in food is science." If you've planted a seed and washed the harvest, or sharpened your own knife and got the dice just right, or cooked eggs for yourself, or put out 400 plates, you know that's the same as saying "All you need to know about sex is anatomy."
Markus Brakhan
Burlington, Vermont
Show Me the IP
While I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek view of the US $20, you lost me at the IP address (Found, Wired 12.06). With more than 5 billion $20 bills in circulation globally, the 32-bit IPv4 would barely scratch the surface when assigning unique IPs to each note. You would have won me over with a newfangled IPv6 address instead. Of course, this assumes that paper money is still a reality in 17 years. The greenback's days are numbered, especially with an embedded IPv4 address.
Joshua Biggley
Windsor, Ontario
Greenspan's arthritic signature, sure; the Wal-Mart Coke coupon, yeah; even the currency exchange-rate feed. But I don't think we'll be putting an IPv4 address on every bill in 2021.You should have used an IPv6 address!
Tim Stevenson
Sunnyvale, California
The Department of Treasury better use IPv8 by the year 2021.
Mladen Zagorac
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Intellectual Property Line - Do Not Cross
I thought "The Free & the Unfree" (Wired 12.06) was a very balanced article on intellectual property copyright and noticed with interest that the US is at the forefront of protecting individual and corporate property. So it's ironic that under the title "Strong Medicine," I find Wired possibly breaking copyright. Did you get permission to print the internationally copyrighted symbol of the International Committee of the Red Cross?
Ken Oakley
Chatham, Ontario
Fixing Those Stopped-Up Pipes
What the hell is Glenn Britt talking about (View, Hot Seat, Wired 12.06)? There better be a card up a sleeve somewhere, because the future of cable is on-demand. Stop using content and customers as scapegoats for an inability or a reluctance to evolve delivery and billing systems. Relying on the old understanding of channels as dictated by supply side is like shoving a big block up a donkey's dark side hopin' for horsepower - it ain't gonna work, and eventually the donkey catches on and gets pissed. Just give us what we want when we want it!
Neil Cross
Rye, New York
I just read your interview with Glenn Britt about � la carte cable, and I realized how out of touch the industry is with its subscribers. I would love to have a true � la carte cable system, and I would love to know why, if I cut my channel selection in half, my price point won't drop accordingly. We are being held hostage by the cable companies and are forced to pay for crap we have no interest in viewing, and our government leaders have been absolutely no help.
Mark Kurtz
Montgomery, Illinois
Too Darn Hot
Bruce Sterling's "Suicide by Pseudoscience" (View, Wired 12.06) makes me think, "You're kidding, right?" Just because the Bush administration has taken a contrarian point of view on global warming, for example, do you really think that means the end of American science? Really?
A better argument would point out that Bush & Co. correctly noted that scientists are still debating global warming and a variety of other topics, and it would be foolish to take expensive action based on insufficient data. Does that decision conform to a right-wing worldview? Yes. But the opposite point of view isn't politically pure, either.
Eventually, the final answer on global warming will be discovered and accepted. Modern science will sail on and move forward. Please tell Mr. Sterling I enjoy his fiction. That's his strong suit.
Kelly Parks
San Diego, California
Undo
Excusez-Moi: France and Poland have not switched places ("The Free & the Unfree," Wired 12.06).
And SCO On: Software maker the Santa Cruz Operation is now known as Tarantella, not as the SCO Group, though SCO did buy some Santa Cruz assets (Start, "Cashing In, Selling Out," Wired 12.06).
Intruder Alert: Friendster spokesperson Lisa Kopp was misquoted in "Cracking the Code to Romance" (Wired 12.06). Speaking about hackers infiltrating Friendster, she said, "Security is a big concern. We haven't seen this problem, though. No complaints about it."
