At 01:30 PM 04/17/96 -0700, Dave Del Toasto <ddt@lsd.com> wrote:
[from "If _____ Made Toasters" ...my edits]
If The Rand Corporation made toasters... They would be large, perfectly smooth, seamless black cubes. Each morning, exactly as much toast as you could eat would appear on top of your toaster. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number and the cube's blueprints would be highly-classified government documents, but the "X-Files" would have an episode with a partially disassembled toaster remarkably similar to it visible in the background.
If the NSA made toasters... Your toaster would have a secret crumb-door on the back that only the NSA could open in case they needed to inspect your toast for breakfasts of a national security nature.
If RSA made toasters... They'd tell you the price *only* after finding out how much toast you wanted to make and how badly you wanted the toast; then they'd insist on you making a piece of toast for them every time you used the toaster. If cypherpunks made toasters... Jim B and Black Unicorn would argue about whether toast should be buttered, and what the appropriate flavor of jam/jelly should be; TC May would point out that it wasn't really toast, but rather, sliced and slightly-burned bread; Perry would kvetch about the lack of crypto-relevance of toasters; and a few others would form a new listserver for toasterpunks. The service department would be flooded with calls from newbies, asking how to make toast. If Netscape made toasters... They'd beta-test the toasters for months, then make one slot too wide and the other too narrow. It wouldn't be until a cook in a diner pointed out that the toast wasn't coming out right that they'd have their design reviewed by a 3rd-party Toaster Engineer. If Microsoft made toasters... They'd put the slots on the side, the actuator on top, make the cord too short, and design it to only run properly on 177V, 41Hz. Then they'd declare the toaster to be the new industry standard. Dave Merriman ------------------------------------------------------------- "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P. J. O'Rourke (b. 1947), U.S. journalist. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> http://www.shellback.com/personal/merriman/index.htm