Fun_People Archive
30 Jan
Making Toasters - Rate Your Techno-savvy

Date: Tue, 30 Jan 96 04:21:43 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Making Toasters - Rate Your Techno-savvy

[This is a test to see if you're paying attention to what's going on in the  
technological world. To calculate your score, start with 100 points and  
subtract 5 points for each paragraph that doesn't make sense.
	100-96 => Oh sure, we believe you.  Not.
	 95-76 => You're OK (I'm OK).
	 75-51 => Pretty pathetic, reminds me of recent elections
	 50-26 => You'll just have to stop listening to Rush...
	 25-0  => And take some remedial arithmetic classes
-psl]

Forwarded-by: Pat Parseghian <pep@research.att.com>
Forwarded-by: esc@research.att.com

If IBM made toasters...
They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted
for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe
six toasters.

If Microsoft made toasters...
Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster.
You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it
anyway. Toaster'95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced
steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up
95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that
lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would
secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them.
Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since
most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters...
It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.
The toast would make a little smiley face at you when it popped up, or
else it would get stuck and there would be a little picture of a bomb
burned onto it. If they break, these toasters would require a special set
of MacToaster Tools to even open up. Worldwide market share would only be
5%, but all the bread in school lunches would be exclusively toasted on
the MacToaster.

If The NeXT Corporation made toasters...
It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every
morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service
department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for
the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would
have an episode about it.

If Fisher Price made toasters...
"Baby's First Toaster" would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the
bread that pops up like a Jack-in-the-box.

If The Rand Corporation made toasters...
It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning
there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would
have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the box would be
highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode
about it.

If the NSA made toasters...
Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access
in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

If DEC made toasters...
Does DEC still make toasters?...  They made good toasters in the '70s,
didn't they?

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters...
They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives
you regular bread.

If Sony made toasters...
Their Personal Toasting Device (replacing the Sony Toastman), which would
be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can
be conveniently attached to your belt.

If the Franklin Mint made toasters...
Every month, you would receive another lovely hand-crafted piece of your
authentic hand-crafted Civil War pewter toaster.

If Timex made toasters...
They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a
licking and keep on toasting.

If Radio Shack made toasters...
The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. You
would be able to buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If K-Tel sold toasters...
They would not be available in stores, and you would get a free set of Ginsu
knives.

If University of Waterloo made toasters...
They would immediately spin-off a company called WatToast.

If the PQ made toasters...
They wouldn't want to be on the same counter-top as the rest of the
appliances.

If Wang made toasters
Marketing would never agree upon what customers really want or need in a
toaster so millions of dollars would be spent in development and the toaster
would be several years late. Just after release Wang would buy another
company whose toaster ran on NT but would find that they got more orders
for the original.

If Cray made toasters...
They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice
toaster in the world, at least for a couple of years.

If Thinking Machines made toasters...
You would be able to toast 64,000 pieces of bread at the same time.

© 1996 Peter Langston