I’m speaking on a Geek Cruise to the Panama Canal—tough job, but somebody’s got to do it—so I’ll be taking two weeks off from my column, blog and videos.
Internet access on the ship is via satellite, so it’s pricey and slow. But it’s certainly capable of transmitting a Word file, so I thought I’d nonetheless file an e-mail newsletter this week.
A couple of weeks ago, I sent you a list of some of life’s little questions that don’t seem to have good answers. Over 800 of you decided to take a stab at supplying answers. Some responses were snarky; some, academic; some, alarmingly pessimistic.
Here, culled from nytimes.com/pogue and my own e-mail Inbox, is a sampling.
* Why is Wi-Fi free at cheap hotels, but $14 a night at expensive ones?
–” Because the people that can afford to stay at expensive hotels are willing to pay for it. “[Many, many responses like this one.]
–“”No, the real question is: Why does the free Wi-Fi at the cheap hotels work perfectly 99% of the time, while the expensive hookup at the fancy digs usually fails on the first try?”
* What’s the real reason you have to turn off your laptop for takeoff?
–“So the laptops won’t go flying around if the plane stops abruptly during an aborted takeoff, and passengers won’t be distracted in case of an emergency evacuation.”
–“Security theatre: the illusion that the airlines are doing all they can to protect you from harm.”
* SmartDisplay, Spot Watch, U.M.P.C., Zune… when will Microsoft realize that it’s not a hardware company?
–“Microsoft does make some excellent hardware: keyboards and mice.”
–“The day after they close the XBox division.”
* Do shareware programmers pay taxes on all those $20 contributions?
–“Yes…in exactly the same proportion as people who voluntarily send in state sales tax at the end of the year for all their Internet mail-order purchases.”
* Do P.R. people really expect anyone to believe that the standard, stilted, second-paragraph C.E.O. quote was really uttered by a human being?
–“No. Some PR people are quite bright. Once they write a quote, however, it has to be vetted, edited, and changed by at least six stilted, brown-nosing vice presidents and/or product managers.”
–“It *wasn’t* uttered by a human being; that’s the way CEOs talk.”
* Why are there no federal rebates or tax credits for solar power?
–“There IS a Federal tax credit, which right now extends through 2008. It is capped at $2,000 for residential systems. Currently, the bill to extend the credits beyond 2008 is being debated. If you care about this issue, go to //seia.org/itc.php, the website for the Solar Energy Industry Association, which is actively working for an eight-year extension of this tax credit, as well as removing the cap on the credit for residential systems.”
–“Because there are too many powerful, well-funded lobbyists promoting big-oil’s interests in Washington.”
–“The Feds are still trying to figure out how to tax the sun.”
* Laptops, cameras and cellphones have improved by a thousand percent in the last ten years. Why not their batteries?
–“Chemistry. Quoting John Hockenberry from a Wired magazine story: ‘Current can be altered by changing a battery’s size, but voltage is determined (and fixed) by the atomic makeup of the materials used. Those attributes, recorded in the good old periodic table of elements, were configured shortly after the big bang and are not subject to clever human modifications.'”
* Who are the morons who respond to junk-mail offers, thereby keeping spammers in business?
–“That would be my sister.”
–“My mother, O.K.? Now you know.”
–“Statistically speaking, half of ALL people are below-average intelligence. That fact can explain MANY things.”
–“Naive people, like recent immigrants; old people whose adult children just set them up with a computer for the first time; and the truly desperate who’ve already tried other methods of penis enlargement.”
* How come there are still no viruses for Mac OS X? If it has 6 percent of the market, shouldn’t it have 6 percent of the viruses?
–“It’s not that writing an Apple virus is particularly hard. It’s that writing a Windows virus is so easy. The holes are known, as are the methods of delivering payloads through them. The ‘200,000 viruses a year’ number is mostly just variations on exploiting the 5 ports that Microsoft left open in Windows XP by default.
In comparison, writing a Mac virus would require real work on the part of the hackers. This eliminates the Script Kiddies.”
–“The lack of viruses on a Mac isn’t because of a small market; creating a working virus on a Mac would be a major feat. Any virus maker would get instant recognition and accolades from his or her peers.
Rather, it’s that Mac OS X is from a Unix heritage, and Unix has been designed to safely share resources amongst a number of users.”
–“Now let’s stop talking about this before some sicko takes it as a challenge.”
* How come cellphone signal-strength bars are so often wrong?
–“Just to mess with you.”
–“Like the battery indicator, the signal strength on a cell phone is deliberately weighted toward the high end. I worked on a phone development project several years ago. When the first units went to the carrier for approval, their first request was to toss the perfectly calibrated battery indicator in favor of one that sat at 4 bars for around 75 percent of the charge.”
* Why don’t public sinks have foot pedals?
–“Because architects don’t consult moms.”
–“The sensor faucets work quite well, including for those in wheelchairs.”
–” Because moving your foot around under he sink could be misinterpreted as…well, you know. Somebody could be watching.”
* Why do you have to take tape camcorders out of your carry-on at airport security, but not the tapeless kind? Couldn’t you hide a bomb equally well in either one?
–“I was recently stopped at security for just this reason. The security person told me that people could place a bomb INSIDE the tape cartridge. I asked him why, if the tapes were the problem, we didn’t have to take all THOSE out. He said he didn’t know. Mind you, I was traveling with at LEAST 20 tapes on me. They saw them in the bag and proceeded to open up the camera, never touching the supposedly dangerous tapes.”
Best of all, a few of you submitted equally good High-Tech Imponderables. The floor is now open:
* Why can’t I order TV channels a la carte, so that I just pay for the ones I want?
* How come there are some music players that play FM radio, and iPod add-ons that play FM—but almost none that play AM radio?
* Why no Wi-Fi on Amtrak?
* Why do the signal-strength bars on my cellphone change when I’m standing still?
* When we are put on hold, we offered numerous options–“press 1 for sales,” etc. Why not an option to press for “Mute this annoying music,” or maybe to select different types of music?
* Why is there a Maximum Weight notice in an elevator, and what are we supposed to do about it? How are we supposed to know how much we collectively weigh?
* Why is the numeric keypad on a computer (7-8-9 at the top) upside-down from the numeric keypad on phones (1-2-3 on top)?
* Why do most public sinks have separate hot & cold faucets that you have to hold on with one hand while you try to wash the other? Why would anyone want either hot or cold water for washing? A single warm-water faucet would be cheaper and make more sense.
* Why aren’t elevator buttons double action? Press once to go to floor, press again to cancel. It would save all those “OOPS!–“I hit the wrong button” moments.
See you when I’m back on land in a couple of weeks!
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