At my mom's house growing up, we just did the wave the towel at it trick when it went off, which worked remarkable well. No windows open, nothing fancy. Just some vigorous towel waving for about 15 seconds. It would go off if you did so much as overboiled water.
Poor placement of the smoke detector, I believe.
I'm not sure if that disabled it for a few minutes or what.
http://www.nfpa.org/research/statistical-reports/fire-protec...
I also know most of the people I'm related to have pulled the batteries at one point or another. Unless you think it's some genetic defect to have struck both my mother's and father's lineages, that probably points to a wider problem, too.