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3-Minute Roast, Vol. 1, No. 33

A Poke in the Eye of the Online/Multimedia Industrial Complex

[scientifically tested to take no more than 3 minutes to read, unless you're a newbie]

3MR Liquidation Sale!!!! Everything Must Be Roasted!!!! No IPO Joke Will Be Refused!!!

19 more shopping days till X-Mas; 26 more drinking days till New Year's; 71 more cheating days until Valentine's; 135 more flag-burning days till Flag Day


Dumbed Down Payment: 3MR Guide to PC Shopping Guides

North Pole -- With the liquidation sale of 3MR in progress, we decided to get in the holiday spirit with our guide to buying a PC for Christmas, Hanukkah*, Kwanzaa, or whatever consumer orgiastic holiday you subscribe to. As you well know if you read, every newspaper and magazine in the country is running a story about how to buy a computer. This fact alone shows us why the computer is not an electronic appliance yet -- you don't see stories about how to ask the right questions when buying TVs or microwaves for X-Mas. Once again, we've taken the hassle out of actually reading the articles and are presenting the best of each of these stories for your perusal -- with our patented BS Detector letting you in on the real deal.

Sample Quote**
"Most experts say you'll need a 133MHz Pentium with 16MB of RAM, an 8X CD-ROM drive, speakers, a 15-inch monitor, 28.8 modem, controls for your house's lighting, BarkRecognition(tm) technology so your dog can email you if he's hungry, and headgear for cybersex."

BS Detector
What you really need is a 386 computer so you can do basic word processing. But for some reason they keep making you think you need all this "horsepower" for something or other. Like you're trying to set the land speed record for opening a Word document. This writer obviously relies on a dog too much, hates Macs, and is very kinky.

Sample Quote
"If you want to get on the Internet, you can go with one of the bundled online providers like America Online or MSN. Or, if you're a really really technical person, a.k.a. a geek, you can get a so-called Internet Service Provider (ISP), which also lets you surf the Web. This decision should not be made on cost alone. It's more a question of style: do you want an email address with the dreaded "aol.com" at the end (gulp), or a cool one like "hooked" or "sirius" or "earthlink"?"

BS Detector
This guy has never used the Internet in his life. His newspaper doesn't a) have more than one computer hooked to the Net (and that one is for the computer guy), b) get paid enough to afford a home computer. His best research for this story is asking the computer guy what to do. He doesn't consider if the provider can be trusted to have enough phone lines, and doesn't even mention the really swell online games on AOL.

Sample Quote
"Be sure to stay ahead of the curve when making your purchase, and don't go for the cheapest PC. Buy the highest price machine you can afford."

BS Detector
He's right, but what he really means is: The computer industry is peddling products that will get you on a buying cycle worse than heroin. You buy something, which immediately becomes obsolete. In order to have the coolest, bestest, most cutting edgiest PC, you will have to upgrade the chip, hard drive, Zip drive, monitor, CD-ROM player, modem...well, you might as well buy another new computer. The Wintel world means upgrades or replacements every year or after 10,000 miles, whichever comes first.

Handy-Dandy 3MR Buyers Guide Glossary

RAM: Rapid Artery Movement. You want a lot of this so that stuff goes fast.
ROM: Real Ornery Mother. Again, the more you have, the more your system kicks ass.
CD-ROM: A CD that plays in your computer, and blows out the speakers on your CD player.
Refresh rate: How often you'll need to drink coffee to stay up waiting for tech support.
Dot pitch: How many pick-up lines it'll take to get a babe in a chat room.
Bawd rate: What you get when you pick up the aforementioned babe.
Plug And Play: This doesn't really have anything to do with computers. It was meant for things like toasters, radios, and blow driers, but somehow Bill Gates re-appropriated it in an unappropriate manner.

*Copy Editor's Note: In case you were wondering, here are all the alternate spellings for the eight-day Jewish holiday commencing tomorrow night:

Chanukah, Hanukah, Channukkah, Hannuka, Hanuka, Chanooka, Babooshka, Tchotcke-overload, Schmatte Exchange, X-Mas Wannabe, and Eight Days of Heartburn

**These quotes are made up for your humorous enjoyment and so we don't get sued.


"3-Minute Roast" is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.

Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert
Mark Glaser - Unpaid Editorial Intern

* If you hate our rantings, send a reply message: "Bill Gates is funny
and you aren't," and we'll discontinue service.
* To see all our back issues, link up to 3MR on the Web at:
http://www.mediawhore.com/3-minute/roastarchive.html
* The material is the exclusive copyright of Comdex Haters Int'l, hoping
to make our world Comdex free by 2010. Feel free to forward this to
three friends or enemies. Some call it a pyramid scheme; we call it
distribution.


This e-newsletter is copyright 1997 Mark Glaser

 

If you have comments or suggestions, email glaze@sprintmail.com
 



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