Rants & Raves
Knock This Chip Off My Shoulder
In "The Next Intel" (Wired 10.07), you left out one detail when listing "dead" GPU makers. Nvidia was accused of using 3dfx patents without a license; losing in court, Nvidia effectively bought 3dfx, closed it, and ended support for customers who had 3dfx products.
__ Mark Buchholz
Portland, Oregon __
If graphics technology, not the CPU, is what the next-gen computer is to be based upon, where will that leave the consumer market to expand once 100 percent realism is achieved? The processor will always be the central area of growth for computers, because all other upgradable components have a ceiling. Who needs a 1,000-gig hard drive, a burner that can make a CD within a few seconds, or more than 20 gigs of RAM? Where all other components level out, the processor will keep going.
__ Richard Schneeman
Montgomery, Alabama __
The Decline and Fall of Decline and Fall
I've been reading your magazine since the second issue. The article about the exaggerated reports of the death of the new economy ("The New Economy Was a Myth, Right?" Wired 10.07) was brilliant. Please keep up the good work.
__ Matthew Grimm
Shakopee, Minnesota __
Gilded Age
I couldn't help feeling just a little suspicious about the January issue's pairing of George Gilder's "Moore's Quantum Leap" with Wil McCarthy's obviously satirical piece about the birth of the rail industry, "Runaway Train." McCarthy's account, though fictional, had a very Gilderesque quality. I thought, How could the editors of Wired be so mean to one of their favorite writers? Well, "The Madness of King George" (Wired 10.07) has settled all of my suspicions.
I've spent the past five years working for a small local phone company and watched huge amounts of backbone fiber go through our community, with no off-ramps. I've been asking, So how is all this bandwidth going to get to the end user? Now I finally feel somewhat vindicated. Gilder made some huge intellectual mistakes, and thus many people got sucked into the Gildercosm, a place where irrationality is king and where there is free and infinite optimism for all. As for those of us who live in reality, some are now getting great bargains on in-place fiber. I would like to thank Gilder and everyone in the Telecosm Lounge for their gracious, if not intentional, donation. My customers and I appreciate it.
__ Russ Ramsey
Toledo, Washington __
Get With the Program
Basic should be at the top of the "Mother Tongues" chart, not the bottom (Wired 10.07). It was the first interactive programming language, written by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz when a time-sharing computer became operational at Dartmouth in 1964. ANSI Minimal Basic was included in the first microcomputers, such as Apple, IBM, TRS, Commodore, and Atari. It was certainly a popular language in the universities. Basic still survives as TrueBasic. The language is written on several levels so that a novice programmer can be successful on the first level; as advanced features are added, the programmer can learn them. No new level is added at the price of complicating the more elementary levels.
__ Pauline McKinnon
LaSalle, Ontario __
Nice summary of programming languages, but you really missed the mark in declaring Forth "extinct." Forth is one of those invisible technologies that works so well you don't notice. Forth helps boot Macs, FreeBSD servers, and Sun workstations. It's embedded in millions of dedicated devices because it's the ideal low-level language for real-time machine control. That Forth is extinct will no doubt come as a shock to the many engineers and computer scientists who live right on the boundary between hardware and software.
__ Tim Daneliuk
Des Plaines, Illinois __
Hidden Agenda
Thanks for the great Cheat Sheet on privacy by Brendan I. Koerner ("How to Disappear," Wired 10.07). Most of the advice seemed quite sound.
There are a few more things you can do to protect your privacy. Be conscious of your Google exposure. Do ego searches to see where your name crops up. If you have an old r"sum" online, you may want to take it off. Also, use a disposable email address — one, for example, courtesy Yahoo! — then change it whenever the spam gets too thick. Having your email address floating around on the Web will increase the spam you get thanks to the spiders that search for the @ character.
Another thing: Buy a shredder. Data mining isn't just digital — ever hear of dumpster diving? Shred anything with your name on it — and definitely anything with your SSN. Look at receipts — a lot of them show your credit card number and its expiration date.
__ John Baichtal
Minneapolis, Minnesota __
Brendan I. Koerner forgets to mention another way to disappear: Don't subscribe to magazines, especially ones that sell subscriber lists. See page 151 of your July issue: The irony of the article and your statement in fine print in the same issue is too much to pass up.
__ Sean Cooleen
address withheld __
Richard Nixon Has a Secret
Whatever is on tape 342 is no longer worth knowing — if we ever could ("Cracking the 18½-Minute Gap," Wired 10.07). Of what possible value would a few words be anyway? Let Nixon have his secrets. I prefer to believe that those 18½ minutes were spent listening to "Alice's Restaurant" just as Arlo Guthrie describes in his "Massacre Revisited."
__Steven K.
Cherry Hill, New Jersey __
UNDO
'Back on Track: Khalid Khannouchi broke the world marathon record as a Moroccan in 1999 ("The Post-Human Race," Wired 10.08); he set the new mark in April as a US citizen, with a time of 2:05:38. "Now Hear This: MadWaves" MadPlayer sells for $249.99 ("Boy Toy," Wired 10.08).
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