Scott Kirsner

Hoping that a well-crafted FAQ might allay fears, if not actually save humanity, I began constructing one. I borrowed heavily from existing FAQs, like those written by the Mahir “I Kiss You!!!” Cagri Fan Club and the sci.bio.entomology.lepidoptera newsgroup. And now, here is my definitive list of frequently asked questions about the turn of the millennium:

What are the roots of the Y2K problem?

Contrary to media reports, the mainframe programmers of the 1960s were not shortsighted in using just two digits to represent the year (99 instead of 1999, for example); they were actually quite forward-thinking. Anticipating a depressing state of date-lessness on the biggest Friday night of their lives, they devised the millennium bug to provide a plausible reason to spend New Year’s Eve 1999 in front of a monitor, watching for system anomalies and purchasing Seven of Nine collectibles on eBay.

How should I prepare for December 31?

Experts recommend assembling the same amount of food and supplies you’d have on hand for a blizzard, hurricane or other serious storm. Keeping paper records of bank and brokerage accounts from December 1999 through January or February of 2000 is also advisable. Stockpiling a year’s supply of grits is probably overkill.

What should I be most concerned about on New Year’s Day?

Well, if the U.S. government is right, not any Y2K technology troubles. Terrorism is top of the list for New Year’s fears. After the December arrest of an Algerian man who was caught smuggling nitroglycerin across the Canadian border, federal officials have ordered increased security at government buildings and airports. President Clinton has advised Americans to be aware and report suspicious situations, but not to panic. The people should “go about their holidays and enjoy themselves.” So by all means break out the party hats and kazoos — but you may want to use discretion with the pyrotechnics, especially if your travel plans involve crossing checkpoints.

Is my savings account Y2K-compliant or should I take all my money out of the bank?

Well, most U.S. banks have upgraded their systems and tested them for months to be sure they won’t fall victim to the millennium bug. Many even plan to open their doors on January 1 — a Saturday — to show that they are engaging in “business as usual” and to discourage mass withdrawals. Unruly mobs of passbook-waving citizens will be welcomed with free lollipops and circuitous, imperceptibly-moving queues.

“Experts” recommend having a few days’ — maybe even a week’s worth — of cash on hand. But I wonder who will be accepting it. If the power to your ATM fails, what are the chances that the Wendy’s drive-thru will be open? As for getting supplies post-Apocalypse, forget it. Your cash will be worthless at any hardware store filled with bar code scanners and electronic cash registers.

Should I be concerned about accidents at nuclear power plants?

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that safety-related systems in all 103 U.S. nuclear plants are ready for 2000. Even Chernobyl, the notorious nuclear plant in Ukraine, purports to be Y2K-ready. “We have conducted tests and are certain now the main computer will pass the changeover,” Chernobyl’s Y2K expert, Anatoliy Iliichev, told the Associated Press. Asked about the backup computer, Iliichev held up his forearm, pointed to his digital calculator watch and said, “Brand new batteries.”

How much will the federal government spend eradicating Y2K bugs?

The Office of Management and Budget estimates that, by September 2000, the federal government will have spent $8.38 billion on Y2K-related problems. As part of that figure, the Federal Aviation Administration said it had spent $368 million — the price of two 747s — fixing its systems. The Pentagon spent $3.6 billion, enough to buy an aircraft carrier. The White House shelled out $23 million, enough for a tanker’s worth of Michelob, a crate of t-shirts imprinted with the slogan “We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 1999″ and a steamy, hip-swivelin’ command performance by Christina Aguilera. President Clinton said he planned a quiet evening at home with friends.

What’s this I hear about champagne shortages?

In some parts of the world, true French-made champagne will be scarce, usually because of parsimonious party-planners. Revelers will be plied with domestic sparkling wine and, in some situations, ginger ale chilled with floating scoops of store-brand sherbet. Do not panic. The situation can be remedied by uttering cutting comments about your hosts to anyone within earshot.

Is my Furby Y2K-compliant?

Tiger Electronics, Furby’s manufacturer, cautions that some Furbies may turn feral at 12:01 on Jan. 1 and begin gorging on household pets and small children. Tiger stresses that there is no cause for alarm, but the company strongly recommends letting your Furby sleep through the New Year, preferably in a locked metal box buried at least 16 feet underground.

Who is Peter de Jager, and where will he be on New Year’s Eve?

De Jager is a Canadian computer consultant who wrote one of the first articles warning the world about Y2K, back in 1993. Since then, he has been the self-appointed Paul Revere of the millennium bug, alerting corporations, IT professionals and national governments to the dangers of Y2K. In the process, he has developed a taste for seeing his name in the media; he now gravitates toward microphones with the single-mindedness of a congressman up for reelection.

In 1997, when I asked him where he would be on New Year’s Eve this year, he had a pre-fab answer at the ready: “I will be in a place called Doolin, a small fishing village in West Clare, Ireland. They have two bars. There’s good food, good conversation and no computers.” After the New Year arrived, he planned to “take a long nap.”

Since then, de Jager has changed his plans to something a little higher-profile. Now, he’ll be on a plane, flying from Chicago to London to demonstrate his faith in the people who prepared the world’s air traffic control systems for the calendar-flip. And, according to an essay on his Year 2000 Web site, he’ll be cuddling up to the press during the flight: “I’ll actually be doing an interview with a reporter at the fateful moment.”

Who is Jewel, and where will she be on New Year’s Eve?

Jewel is the banshee-throated chanteuse from Alaska, and on New Year’s Eve, one place she won’t be is the Sullivan Sports Arena in Anchorage. The Associated Press reported that her millennial engagement there was cancelled in part because of a fear of the Y2K bug, and in part because only 1,000 of the 8,000 available tickets were sold over the course of a month. (Many grandiose celebrations have been canceled due to global Y2K apathy and a little-known millennial affliction called homebody syndrome.)

Wherever Jewel is when 2000 arrives, she’ll be well conditioned for any worst case scenarios: When she was growing up in Homer, Alaska, her home had no TV or running water, and as an aspiring singer in San Diego, she lived in a van.

What if I choose to spend the New Year’s holiday engaging in my favorite pastime? Hacking, that is.

John Koskinen, chairman of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, asks that you kindly refrain. “Hopefully [hackers] will recognize we’re going to have enough things going on that weekend, that this will not be a particularly good weekend to demonstrate the need for more information security,” he told a group of reporters earlier this month. Instead, Koskinen suggested that hackers seeking to make a point about the need for increased security should make it the following weekend, when the Y2K frenzy will presumably have waned.

Koskinen also beseeched anyone planning to hack into Hotmail’s servers to please retrieve his password, which he had written down on a scrap of paper that has apparently disappeared from his wallet.

Who will be keeping an eye on the world’s important systems on New Year’s Eve?

Well, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, Hewlett-Packard president Carly Fiorina and Microsoft president Steve Ballmer are among the execs who will be manning their desks. They’ll be joined by thousands of programmers ’round the world — the real heroes of this whole global Y2K effort. If not for their selfless toil, et cetera. Raise a toast to them. Then polish off the last cocktail knish.

Will Y2K have any negative effect on the stock market?

The Asian financial crisis, the impeachment of a president, the shambles in the former Soviet Union, the resignation of Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the radio dominance of the Backstreet Boys and repeated dour comments by Alan Greenspan haven’t managed to put the reins on this bull market. I’m guessing two missing digits won’t do it, either.

What if my plans for welcoming in the new millennium involve love in an elevator?

You may be out of luck, Sparky. Many high-rise buildings will take elevators out of service during the transition. In New York, one building management company reports that at about 11:50 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, its elevators will all descend to the ground floors and remain there for 20 or 30 minutes with their doors open. “We’re not trying to be alarmist,” the company’s president told the New York Post, “but we don’t want anyone ringing in the New Year stuck in an elevator.” Stuck?

What about Y2K problems in countries outside the U.S.?

Many nations were late to start identifying and eliminating Y2K bugs. In a statement released in July, the State Department cautioned, “All U.S. citizens planning to be abroad in late 1999 or early 2000 should take the potential for temporary disruptions related to Y2K into account when making their travel plans.”

As an example, half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa have done little or nothing to get ready for the new millennium, according to the International Y2K Cooperation Center, an agency of the World Bank. The other half, reassuringly, have already gone straight to their local Kia dealer for great deals on the 2000 Sportage and Sephia.

How can I differentiate everyday glitches from serious Y2K problems?

“If we watched the world tomorrow as closely as we will watch Jan. 1, we’d see a whole set of things not working,” Koskinen told the New York Times. To illustrate that, his Council on Year 2000 Conversion collected some data on typical, everyday failure rates of common systems. Between 1 and 2 percent of the nation’s 227,000 automatic tellers are inoperable or out of cash at any given moment, for example. And just about every week, somewhere in the U.S., public connections to a local 911 center fail.

So, here are some clues to help you distinguish Y2K-induced traumas from the ordinary variety: Pieces of airplane fuselage plummeting into your living room may be an indicator of a Y2K problem. Being unable to find the remote during a crucial bowl game is, in most cases, not an indicator of a Y2K problem.

What about Feb. 29, 2000?

Even after the Y2K crisis recedes from memory like a bad pickup attempt at the punchbowl, we may be in for one more inconvenience. Conventional wisdom says that years that end in double-zero are never leap years. But in fact, there are two every millennium, and next year is one of them. As a result, some computer programs may ignore the fact that Feb. 29 exists in 2000. My advice: You should, too.

Sleep through it.

The occasion was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Scientific and Technical Awards, which each year’s Oscar host fleetingly refers to as “a ceremony held earlier” before cueing a 30-second video summary of the event. There’s usually a grand total of one celebrity at the Sci-Tech Awards: the evening’s host. The banquet’s organizers at the academy have a solid record of landing actresses on the way up, including Charlize Theron, Kate Hudson and, last year, Scarlett Johansson. This year’s host was Rachel McAdams, seen recently in “The Family Stone,” “Wedding Crashers” and “The Notebook.”

As someone who identifies less with the international megacelebs who’ll strut into the Kodak Theatre on the first Sunday in March, and more with the working stiffs behind the scenes trying to keep the directors, cinematographers and editors happy, I’d always been curious about the Sci-Tech Awards. Did they have anything in common with Hollywood’s biggest night, aside from plastic statues of Oscar guarding every pillar?

The Sci-Tech Awards celebrate the mechanics of moviemaking, recognizing “any device, method, formula, discovery or invention of special and outstanding value,” according to the academy. Awards this year went to a system that can keep a movie camera level even if it’s on a boat in the middle of a roiling ocean; the graphics research that makes the characters in Pixar movies more realistic looking; and a newly designed air bag that’s less likely to cause stunt people to bounce off and be injured when they hit it from great heights. There are no “For Your Consideration” campaigns in advance of the Sci-Tech Awards, no seat fillers in the audience and, amazingly, no time limits on speeches. “It has never been a problem,” says Rich Miller, the administrative director at the academy who has overseen the Sci-Tech Awards since 1988. “We haven’t had to install the microphone that starts descending into the floor when you’ve talked too long.”

The ballroom last Saturday wasn’t pervaded by tension or anxiety — all of the winners had been announced a month before. So everyone could enjoy the four-course dinner without worrying about going home empty-handed, and no one had to fake an “I’m so happy for that jerk who edged me out” smile. At my table were three winners, J. Walt Adamczyk, Michael Sorensen and Alvah Miller; the trio of engineers and computer scientists won for a remotely controllable camera system that can execute the exact same moves, take after take, and for “pre-visualization” software that gives directors an early, rudimentary view of how computer-generated sets and special effects will look once they’ve been integrated with the live-action footage. The rig has been used in “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “Spider-Man 2.”

Miller said he’d won “five or six” Sci-Tech Awards in his career, and he’d also been a guest at the main-event Oscars. “This is better than the Oscars,” he said. “The Oscars are too long and too boring.”

McAdams took the stage after a highlight reel of her film performances had been shown. She explained apologetically that the audience was probably “more familiar with my work as a scientist. I recently abandoned my research on cold fusion, because it was just too cold.” Toothpick thin, she wore a glittery gold sleeveless gown. McAdams didn’t deviate at all from the jargon-laden script that scrolled across the teleprompter, but she did keep things moving at a good clip. (As with the other Oscars, the evening featured one painful-to-watch special performance, in the vein of Rob Lowe and Snow White singing “Proud Mary” in 1989: ventriloquist Jim Barber, direct from Branson, Mo., who trotted out dummy after dummy, and eventually had two Academy members from the audience up onstage lip-syncing to “Stop! In the Name of Love” in sequined shifts.)

The evening’s first award went to Scott Leva, a stuntman and stunt coordinator (“Superman,” “Toxic Avenger,” “Collateral”) who developed the Precision Stunt Airbag. Inflated on the ground to catch a stunt person performing a high fall, Leva’s air bag is designed to pull the performer in, whether he or she lands in the center or close to an edge. Leva said he was sorry that stuntman Paul Dallas, a friend, wasn’t alive to see him receive the award. (Dallas died in 1996, doing a fall for an episode of the TV series “L.A. Heat.”)

Winning an award alongside Pixar president Ed Catmull, Pixar programmer Tony DeRose said he was “on a mission to show kids how cool math and science can be, and this award will help get that message across.” Microsoft researcher John Platt, receiving an award for his insights into “elastically deformable models” (at the other Oscars, the term would refer to arm candy that’d had too much work done), thanked McAdams for lowering his “Kevin Bacon number” to three, and his neighbors for watching his kids. Laurie Frost, a Brit who invented a remote-controlled camera system in 1976 that allows camera operators to stay a safe distance from dangerous shots, recalled having to take out a second mortgage on his house to cover the costs of its development. (Rich Miller explained that the academy tends not to bestow awards until a new technology has been widely adopted in the industry — and, sometimes, even later.)

At the Sci-Tech Awards, there are three tiers of honors, and the process for choosing the winners involves more research — and less DVD viewing — than the other Oscars. If a nominated technology is portable enough, its inventor brings it to the academy for a demonstration; if not, a small team goes on a field trip. With Leva’s air bag, they watched as stunt performers — including a 9-year old — plummeted into it from 30 feet up. Toward the end of the year, the academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee votes by secret ballot on which technologies are most worthy. A technology can win a certificate (the lowest rung of Sci-Tech Award), a plaque or an Oscar.

“We give very few Oscars,” said Miller. “They’re mostly for inventions that change the way movies are made. Steadicam is a good example. There are almost no movies made today that don’t have a Steadicam shot in them.” (Two of the most famous shots using a Steadicam, which permits a camera to remain motionless while the camera operator is walking or running, are the scene in “Rocky” where Sylvester Stallone ascends the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the five-minute shot that opens “Goodfellas.”) Miller said that only 44 Oscars have been awarded for scientific and technical achievement. None was awarded this year: Recipients instead received plaques, certificates, one honorary medallion and an honorary Oscar statuette, which technically wasn’t an Oscar Oscar.

“My impression is that the Sci-Tech Awards are generally not that political,” said Bill Warner, the founder of Avid Technology. Warner won twice for developing a digital system for editing movies — including receiving the coveted Oscar statuette in 1999. (Most Hollywood movies are now edited on an Avid system.) “I feel like it’s a meritocracy,” he said. “Some of these companies that win are really small, and some of the people are so freaking brilliant. You wonder, how did they figure out how to make that flying camera?”

The Sci-Tech Awards are like Oscar’s older, brainier brother, who isn’t very good at small talk, and spends his disposable income on outfitting his basement workshop with new oscilloscopes rather than on teeth whitening and tanning. And since they were first given out in 1930, the Sci-Tech Awards have always existed in the shadow of their flashier sibling. The Academy Awards get billboards all over Los Angeles; the Sci-Tech Awards didn’t even get a sign in the lobby of the Hilton. In the past, the Sci-Tech Awards have been doled out without a gathering to mark the occasion, or palmed off in a hurry during the commercial breaks of the televised Academy Awards. “During the commercial breaks, people don’t always sit still and pay attention,” observed Rich Miller.

But the Sci-Tech Awards this year are coming up from the basement for a bit of air: The Discovery Channel is preparing a one-hour documentary, hosted by Dave Foley, about the ceremony, the honorees and their inventions. “Science on the Red Carpet” amounts to perhaps one one-thousandth of the airtime that will be devoted to the Oscars, Oscar parties, Oscar fashion and the performance of first-time Oscar host Jon Stewart. But it’s a lot more attention than the Sci-Tech Awards have ever gotten before. (The Discovery Channel producers had to install their own patch of crimson carpet at the front door of the Hilton, though — the Sci-Tech Awards don’t usually feature a long red rug.)

Garrett Brown, the inventor of Steadicam, says he isn’t happy that the Sci-Tech Awards are often referred to as the “nerd Oscars” or “geek Oscars” by those who attend the main ceremony. “Don’t call it the nerd Oscars, OK?” he advised me. On Saturday, Brown received an award for another technology he developed — a camera suspended by four cables that can move freely through space. (It was used in films like “The Boy Who Could Fly,” “Birdie” and “Highlander.”)

“It’s kind of a shame that we’re sequestered off,” Brown says of the sci-tech bunch. “We’ll have our revenge some day.”

And if Hollywood produced a major motion picture about the group, it would surely be called “Revenge of the …”

Never mind.

I’d come to talk to some of General Motors’ top research executives about the company’s investment in hydrogen fuel cell technology. (GM has been touting hydrogen as the fuel of the future and showing off a concept car called the Hy-wire.) But I ended up surprised at the swipes GM executives took at Honda’s and Toyota’s success with hybrid vehicles. They accused the two Japanese carmakers of selling their hybrids at a loss to generate positive environmental buzz, and argued that hybrids appeal only to a microscopic subsegment of U.S. consumers.

“You always have your early adopters,” said Alan Taub, GM’s executive director for R&D, about today’s hybrid buyers. “Toyota sells as many Priuses as we sell Pontiac Aztecs. Is that a success?” Earlier this year, at the Detroit International Auto Show, Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman of product development, had said that the company’s decision not to make a hybrid car “was a mistake from one aspect, and that’s public relations and catering to the environmental movement.”

It is true: Hybrids — vehicles that improve gas mileage by pairing internal combustion engines with batteries and electric motors, and recapturing some of the energy that is usually lost in braking — represent only a tiny sliver of cars sold in the United States this year. For 2004, they’ll account for about 0.52 percent of total sales, or 88,000 vehicles, according to Anthony Pratt, an analyst at JD Power and Associates. But is that a sign of a weak market, or merely the thin end of a wedge that could quickly become very, very large? Toyota recently announced that it will double the number of Priuses that it allocates to the United States next year, from 50,000 to 100,000, and Honda will introduce its third hybrid model this month, the first hybrid version of its popular Accord sedan. Pratt expects hybrids to account for 1.3 percent of all car sales in the United States next year, and other industry observers say that Toyota could surpass General Motors as the world’s biggest automaker by 2006, partly on the strength of its hybrids.

As for the question of whether the Japanese carmarkers are selling their hybrids at a loss, just to look good for P.R. purposes — well, the closer one looks, the less that seems to be true. Instead, Japanese carmakers appear to making the kind of front-end investments that pay off in the long run, with market share and eventual profits.

GM is not alone in its hybrid disdain. Its Detroit rivals have been similarly slow to warm up to hybrids. DaimlerChrysler, which is more interested in cleaner diesel engines than hybrids, did announce plans to produce a hybrid version of its Dodge Durango SUV by 2003, but that vehicle has apparently gotten lost on the way to dealerships. The introduction of Ford’s first hybrid, the Escape SUV, was delayed from 2003 to 2004. General Motors aims to be the first company to profitably sell a million hydrogen vehicles — “we measure success when it has six zeroes behind it,” Taub told me. But the company has so far introduced only two “mild hybrid” pickup trucks, which improve gas mileage by about 10 to 15 percent, in a few scattered markets. (By comparison, Ford’s hybrid Escape drives nearly twice as far as the traditional Escape on a gallon of gas.)

Back in the 1970s, the Big 3 carmakers watched in dismay as Japanese imports carved a huge swathe through their traditional markets. Is history about to repeat itself? Is Detroit missing out on a major shift in technology — and car-buyer psychology — by committing only grudgingly to hybrid vehicles? By betting big on the ever-elusive technologies of tomorrow, like hydrogen, carmakers such as GM may be letting the present slip away.

GM’s research executives work in sleek offices and conference rooms reached by ascending Saarinen’s renowned floating spiral staircase; the spaces would make ideal sets for a revival of “How to Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying).” The executives seem to view hybrids as a steppingstone on the way to hydrogen-powered vehicles, which would use fuel cells to turn hydrogen into electricity. (The problem with hydrogen is that there’s no guarantee of three important things: that hydrogen fuel will be cost competitive with gas, that it will be produced in an environmentally sensitive way and that a hydrogen fueling network will be built anytime soon. Consumers also associate the gas with an ill-fated blimp that crashed in New Jersey.)

“By 2010, we want to be ready with a commercially viable hydrogen car technology,” says Byron McCormick, GM’s executive director of fuel cell technology and commercialization. He spins out visions of hydrogen cars that could serve as electrical plants for individual homes, plugging into the garage at night to produce power. “If you had just 10 percent penetration of fuel cell cars in California, the cars would have more generation capacity than the electrical grid,” he says. The company is investing more than $1 billion in its hydrogen car development program.

But the day when 10 percent of Californians will be tooling around in fuel cell vehicles is still far off, as is the fantastical year of 2010, when teenagers will travel by personal jet pack and Christmas dinner will be packaged in a pill. Today, consumers who care about gas mileage and limiting their impact on the environment are purchasing hybrids.

General Motors’ first forays into consumer hybrids, its Chevy Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks, aren’t really in the same category as the Toyota and Ford hybrids. They’re “mild hybrids,” which seek fuel efficiency by capturing energy lost in braking and by shutting off the engine when a driver is stopped at a red light, using batteries to power accessories like the radio and air conditioning. Full hybrids like the Prius do those things, too, but they also use banks of batteries and electric motors to actually propel the vehicle when it’s moving at low speeds. GM won’t offer a full hybrid until 2007. (DaimlerChrysler has yet to start selling its first hybrid of any sort in the U.S., though now it seems that a Dodge Ram pickup will likely be first in line.)

GM’s Taub says the company is trying to “take the hype out of hybrids,” introducing the technology slowly, and in vehicles where it will have the greatest environmental impact, like trucks and SUVs, which swill more gas and emit more pollutants than passenger cars. And he adds that GM doesn’t intend to sell money-losing vehicles. “The question with hybrids is who will be the cleverest at driving down costs the fastest,” Taub says.

It’s true that hybrids will have more mass-market appeal once they’re no longer priced at a premium. (Today’s hybrids can cost $2,000 to $3,000 more than their nonhybrid doppelgangers.) But it’s also true that the Japanese carmakers, by virtue of five years of production experience, are already figuring out how to drive down manufacturing costs more quickly than their rivals in Detroit. Toyota is already producing some of its Priuses on the same assembly lines it uses to produce traditional sedans — rather than their own dedicated lines. That’s a precursor to being able to cost-effectively offer any vehicle type in one of two flavors: regular or hybrid.

“It’s natural to wonder how we can make a profit on these vehicles,” says Wade Hoyt, a spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales USA. “I would chalk it up to sour grapes. We broke even on the first-generation Prius during its model run, and the current generation will be profitable after about two years on the market, which is typical for any vehicle.” The company’s high-end Lexus division, which will start selling its first hybrid SUV next year, has tallied up more preorders for the Lexus RX 400h than any other vehicle in Lexus’ 15-year history.

Honda won’t disclose whether individual car models are profitable, but spokesman Chris Naughton says that while “some things may not be profitable from Day One, we are in the business to make money.” Naughton says Honda had its three consecutive best months of sales of the Civic hybrid last spring, when fuel prices were peaking. The company expects to sell about 20,000 of the new Accord hybrids in the coming year. “Hybrids are selling in increasing numbers as there are more available in the marketplace, and as customers understand that you don’t have to plug them in,” Naughton adds.

And neither company is ignoring hydrogen fuel cell technology, either. In 2002, Toyota and Honda were the first to begin leasing fuel cell vehicles in California. But, as Hoyt puts it, “whether or not the hydrogen market ever develops is something of a crapshoot.” Toyota isn’t giving up the bird in the hand for the one in the bush. The company is also licensing its hybrid technology to other carmakers, like Nissan and Ford, leading some analysts to compare Toyota to Intel. “They’re kind of becoming the ‘Intel Inside’ for hybrids,” says Pratt at JD Power. And it’s highly unlikely that Toyota is selling hybrid technology to its competitors without turning a healthy profit.

“There’s no question that Toyota and Honda are ahead of all the other carmakers, including the European manufacturers, when it comes to hybrids,” Pratt says.

GM and its Detroit brethren do seem to be stuck in neutral, with GM in particular obsessed by the hydrogen-powered world of tomorrow. But that could change quickly. The forecasting firm CSM Worldwide expects 20 new hybrid vehicles to be introduced by 2007. “General Motors sells about 1.2 million full-sized trucks and SUVs every year based on one platform,” says Lindsay Brooke, an analyst at CSM. “If GM prices its hybrids well, and markets them and advertises them in the right way, GM could well be the volume leader in hybrids.”

Brooke says that while the Japanese carmakers have earned bragging rights by being first to market with hybrid vehicles, it’s too early to pick a true winner. But if there is a victory in store for one of the Big 3, it’ll be one of the come-from-behind variety.

I was enthralled. At the drive-in, you could look for shooting stars when the movie bogged down, take a walk and try to spot some vans a-rockin’ or wing pieces of saltwater taffy — as we did that night — at the cars whose passengers absent-mindedly turned on the lights or tapped the brakes during the show. It was half the price of seeing an indoor movie. And the screen was 100 feet wide!

Two movies that would have felt like ponderous time wasters at a multiplex seemed light and whimsical at the drive-in. Hollywood lately seems much better at meeting lowered expectations; if it insists on flooding theaters with B-movies, why shouldn’t we see them at the drive-in, the ancestral home of the B-movie?

As this summer’s drive-in season in New England approached, I decided it would be a fun project to try to see more movies in my car than I saw at the multiplex. Later, I came up with a secondary mission: to visit all of the surviving drive-ins in Massachusetts.

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Convenience isn’t a reason you fall in love with the drive-in. None of them is within an easy drive of Boston or many other big cities. Unless you’re severely lost, you’re not likely to stumble across one. And if you do, odds are that it’s abandoned — there are only about 520 drive-ins left in the country, down from a high of 4,063 in 1958. The ones that have survived are huddled in the woods outside smaller towns like Lunenberg, Mass., or Amelia, Ohio, where real estate prices haven’t shot up too far or too fast.

But there are plenty of aesthetic and practical reasons that spurred my transformation from a denizen of the mall multiplex to a devotee of the drive-in, and nostalgia had nothing to do with it:

In keeping with that spirit, when my Macintosh PowerBook fell prey to crippling seizures in early June, I sent it off to be repaired and resorted to using an i-opener, a stripped-down Internet appliance, for a week.

Internet appliances have been the “next big thing” since Oracle CEO Larry Ellison started trumpeting their potential in the mid-1990s; the difference now is that they’re actually available to consumers. By Christmas, there could easily be a half-dozen different models on the market.

Internet appliances provide a connection to the Net and some pre-loaded e-mail and browsing software, but no hard drive. They could bring Net access to the estimated 40 percent of U.S. households that don’t already have PCs, and could also serve as second computers — bare-bones surfing devices — in homes that already have a traditional PC.

One question is how profitable the “forgotten 40 percent” — households that haven’t yet scraped together the cash for a PeoplePC, (a 400 MHz Toshiba desktop can be had for $24.95 per month) or an eMachine (a 500 MHz computer starts at $399) — will prove to marketers of Web stock brokerages, online services and home grocery delivery firms. The folks who are just now considering getting online undoubtedly will require much more support and hand-holding than earlier adopters. Another question is whether the devices will be as functional, addictive and easy-to-use as those other household favorites: the telephone and the television.

But before long, Internet appliances will likely be given away by banks, ISPs and brokerages in order to attract and retain customers, whose monthly fees would eventually cover the cost of the devices. In late June, Intel announced the Dot.Station, a $500 Internet appliance that will be distributed exclusively through those kind of partnerships.

Oracle is releasing its own Internet appliance, the New Internet Computer, this week, and America Online and Gateway are rumored to be on the verge of announcing something called the “Web pad,” which is expected to cost around $600, though consumers who commit to a long-term AOL subscription will undoubtedly pay much less. The MSN Companion, a device that will be available as soon as August, will be nearly free if buyers engage in a lingering lip-lock with MSN.

Of course, much of what made the i-opener so appealing to me was its $99 price. The thing was practically disposable; it was certainly cheaper than renting a substitute PowerBook for a week. And it was easy to imagine i-openers being given as Mother’s and Father’s Day presents, or a couple of them sitting under the Christmas tree. Compared to the other Internet appliances already on the market, like WebTV and the Mailstation — the i-opener simply offered more for the money. (The Mailstation, at $99, doesnt even let you surf the Web or open e-mail attachments.)

But after I’d got my hands on one, Netpliance unveiled a radical alteration of its pricing. The company had been hinting all along that $99 was only an introductory price, and that it would rise to $199 around Father’s Day. Instead, on June 29, Netpliance issued a press release announcing that not only was it not going to sell any more $99 i-openers, but it wasn’t going to sell any i-openers at all until this fall, when the price would rise to $399. The hardware will stay the same, and users will get a few new features, like instant messaging, stock tracking, and support for up to four e-mail accounts — but the new price could render the i-opener about as appealing as a tanning lamp on Survivor Island.

Here’s the record of my seven-day survivalist stint with the i-opener.

Day One
When Netpliance introduced the i-opener earlier this year, enterprising hackers started snapping them up at $99, cracking the back of the screen and adding an external hard drive. That created a very cheap, very functional PC; the i-opener comes with a 10-inch color LCD screen, a 200 MHz processor, a USB port, a 56 Kbps internal modem, and a decent-enough keyboard with a built-in pointing device. But because that segment of consumers never activated the accompanying $21.95 a month Net service, Netpliance lost money — close to $400 on each machine.

To combat that, Netpliance changed the rules. When I went to the Cambridge, Mass., CompUSA store to buy mine, I was informed that I had to sign up for access on the spot and provide my credit card number for billing. CompUSA staffers told me that I had to buy a year of access, but after reading a letter taped to the i-opener’s box and calling the company, I discovered that the required subscription term is only three months. (With its subsequent change in pricing, the company decided to waive its service contract — you can cancel it whenever you want, but the i-opener won’t work with any other ISP.)

At home, setting up the i-opener took five minutes. The only technical knowledge it required was how to use a standard phone jack and where to find a power outlet. When plugged in, the i-opener turns on automatically. There are no modem squawks when it dials up to find a local access number. I was online within 10 minutes. The keyboard is full-sized, but typing on it feels a bit like using one of those fake, hollow computers you see on display in office furniture stores.

Day Two
Panic strikes when I discover that the “pizza” key on my i-opener’s keyboard is useless. (It takes me to the Papa John’s Web site, which informs me that none of the Papa John’s locations in my Boston neighborhood take Internet orders.) The i-opener does have its merits, though. It switches on instantly. There’s no long boot-up sequence, unless you unplug the machine from the wall. If you’re online and a phone call comes in, the i-opener automatically cedes the line, and your phone starts ringing. There’s a light built into the top of the screen that shows you when you’ve received mail, even if you haven’t logged on recently (the i-opener dials in surreptitiously.) The i-opener’s custom interface is well-designed and easy to use, and it includes the most functional and dummy-proof e-mail system I’ve ever seen.

Day Three
Surfing the Web with the i-opener seems more sluggish than it does with my PowerBook, even though both have 56k modems. There’s no way to discover what speed the i-opener is actually connected at, but when I listen to streaming audio through the monitor’s built-in speakers, the connection is 16 kilobytes per second — none too zippy. And the “stop” button on the Web browser doesn’t seem to be much help when downloads jam; often, the only thing that works is closing the Web browser and restarting it, or breaking the connection and then re-establishing it.

The i-opener is also limited in what it can do on the Web. It can’t view Flash animations, for example, and many uses of JavaScript — such as opening a second browser window — befuddle it. Also, the i-opener’s browser doesn’t support strong encryption, which prevented me from gaining access to my brokerage accounts. You can listen to RealAudio streams — but no video.

Day Four
The first high-pressure test. The deadline for my weekly Boston Globe column is today, and I’ve been writing it using the i-opener’s e-mail application, which lets you save drafts of your mail before sending them. It’s a workable substitute for Microsoft Word, though the one feature I miss is being able to get a word count. The message gets to my editor without a snag, and is neatly filed away into the “Sent Mail” folder.

Day Five
There’s one mysterious, unmarked key in the bottom-left corner of the i-opener’s keyboard. Hoping that it might take me to the top-secret Los Alamos National Lab Copier Cam site, I press it repeatedly. Sadly, it does nothing. (It’s on the opposite side of the space bar from the pizza key, though, so I imagine one day it might be used to order burritos, that other staple of the computer user’s diet.)

Day Six
Frustration mounts. I miss the ability to toggle back and forth between a Web browser and my e-mail program. There’s no copy-and-paste ability with the i-opener, for example, so you can’t copy a URL from the Web or a section of text and e-mail it to a friend. Occasionally, my surfing is interrupted by a message that says the i-opener is running low on memory, with no suggestions about how to remedy the situation.

When I hit the keyboard’s “Chat” button to look for other i-opener users to commiserate with, I’m told that “the Chat Channel is currently not available. When it is available your i-opener will be automatically updated with it and you may then start chatting with others.” I’m not holding my breath.

Day Seven
I’m ecstatic when Tyler from the repair shop calls to let me know that my Mac has been fixed sooner than expected. Using it again, I feel like I’ve traded up from a Yugo to a Ferrari. The i-opener offers a connection to the Web, sure, but it’s a connection that would seem slow and frustrating to anyone who has ever used a recently released browser on a full-featured PC. And it seems like Internet appliances will have a hard time keeping up as the Web evolves; you can’t play MP3s on an i-opener, for instance, or use any kind of new plug-in or downloadable application.

Postscript

With my Mac back in hand, I relegated the i-opener to second-string status. I decided it would either be a backup in case something ever goes awry with my main machine, or that I would give it to my mother, who owns a Pentium-class laptop but is fearful of using it.

I realized I’d come to two conclusions after my week of dependence on the i-opener. First, for the forgotten 40 percent: Any access is good access, and it’s unlikely that computer neophytes would have been bothered by any of my beefs about sluggishness or missing features. Second, for people who already have experience using the Net: What would make Internet appliances really interesting is the ability to couple them with high-speed access, like DSL or a cable modem. (The i-opener only works with the company’s own dial-up service right now.) Then, appliances might be useful in the kitchen to place a grocery order, or at the breakfast table to browse the news online.

Still, it’s tough to imagine why someone would buy a device with as many limitations as the i-opener has for $399, when a real computer can be had for little more. Some full-featured PCs already cost less — or are even free — with multi-year MSN or CompuServe contracts. Netpliance seems to be hoping that the forgotten 40 percent are more concerned with simplicity than price. (I think they’re wrong.) But one thing is for sure: As more Internet appliances debut, manufacturers’ marketing and pricing machinations will become as entertaining as “The Real World’s” bed-hopping, “Survivor’s” behind-the-back scheming and “1900 House’s” chamber pot-emptying.