QUIET RIOT

With people talking on cellular phones just about everywhere these days, quiet folks have produced a new weapon: jammers.

Japan is leading the way. On that island of the technology-devoted—teeming with 39 million cellular-phone users—restaurateurs and concert promoters have begun planting tiny electrical devices in strategic locations to block out portable phones' and pagers' radio waves. Calls and pages can't go in or out. As small as cellular phones themselves, these jammers, called Wave Walls, can be placed just about anywhere. And arbiters of etiquette for public places are considering placing them just about everywhere.

With a $480 price tag and effectiveness only over a 20-foot range, the Wave Wall can be an expensive proposition. Nevertheless, thousands of Wave Walls have been sold since Medic introduced the product last year, and demand is building.

Don't expect your local bistro in the U.S. to install a silence barrier any time soon. Jamming products aren't approved here, and there is concern about how the use of these jammers will affect physicians or others who need access to beepers and cellular phones in emergencies.

Still, we can dream, can't we?


A KINDER, GENTLER PC

We don't suppose Microsoft has a job opening for an Error Message Laureate or a Bard of Breakdowns. But here are some suggestions, circulating on the Internet, for what might happen if a Japanese company supplanted Microsoft's operating system and wrote error messages in haiku:

First snow, then silence.
This thousand-dollar screen
Dies so beautifully.


With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.


Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.


A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.



INFORMATION OVERLOAD

If present trends continue, "by 2003, the Internet will be more than 90% of the bandwidth [in the world]; by 2004, more than 99%. Voice . . . will be insignificant."
—John Sidgmore, chief operating officer, WorldCom


TAKE TH@

Kids in the street play "the dozens." One hotshot hurls out an insult: "Your car is so old, they stole the Club and left the car." His opponent fires back with a "snap" of his own: "You're so stupid, it takes you an hour to cook Minute Rice."

Boys in the boardroom play the dozens, too. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told a computer industry conference that, if General Motors had kept pace with the computer industry, "we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon." GM's defenders then began circulating a fake press release that laid out what might happen if Microsoft were in the business of making cars:
The airbag system would say, "Are you sure?" before going off.
For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, was five times as fast, and was twice as easy to drive, but it would run on only 5% of the roads.
The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.
Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
Every time a new model was introduced, buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as in the old car.
You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.


"I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE
A BILLBOARD LOVELY AS A TREE. . ."

"Customers look at advertisements on portals a little like billboards on the side of the road. Over time, the ads just become part of the landscape."—Martha Deevy, senior vice president for electronic brokerage, Charles Schwab. [For the record, the rest of the Ogden Nash poem that provides the headline is: "Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I may never see a tree at all."]


HOLY HOLOGRAM, BATMAN

"Consider that 1998 is the 50th anniversary not only of the transistor but also of the hologram. Both seemed promising in 1948, but one invention has given rise to a multibillion-dollar industry while the other remains largely a curiosity."—Richard Shaffer, Technologic Partners


NO REST FOR THE WORKING

When the alarm buzzes at the crack of dawn, we don't exactly bound out of bed, ready to rally the troops and take the world by storm. A recent e-mail—whose header was, "Why am I so tired?"—finally explained why:

For a couple of years, I've been blaming it on iron-poor blood, lack of vitamins, dieting, and a dozen other maladies. Now I found out the real reason.

I'm tired because I'm overworked.

The population of this country is 237 million, and 104 million are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work. There are 85 million in school, which leaves 48 million to do the work. There are 29 million employed by the federal government. This leaves 19 million to do the work. Four million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves 15 million to do the work. Take out the 14,800,000 people who work for state and city governments, and that leaves 200,000 to do the work. There are 188,000 in hospitals, so that leaves 12,000 to do the work. With 11,998 people in prisons now, that leaves just two people to do the work.

You and me.

And you're sitting there screwing around with e-mail.