Dave Barry In Cyberspace by Dave Barry
If ever a subject was made for an author, Dave Barry and cyberspace are perfectly matched. Just imagine what can happen when Dave and his computer go mano a mano. In Dave Barry in Cyberspace, you'll learn how to produce attractive, high-impact documents when you have absolutely nothing to say; visit the world's largest computer trade show - Nerdstock in the desert; use Internet shorthand; chat with total strangers who may be boring and stupid; and discover the world's largest collection of viola jokes - all this and more. When you rattle down the pothole-studded information superhighway with Dave Barry at the wheel, you will be a:) and you will be LOL, even ROTFL. Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Trust Dave Barry, middle-class America's chronicler of the absurdities and inanities of daily life, to provide the authoritative funnyman's guide to life with computers. Barry is sometimes insightful, as when he notes the ridiculous number of keystrokes needed to actually write something, often hilarious, as in his sendup of technological support hotlines, and occasionally genuinely indignant. This book is the perfect gift for anyone who, like many of us, can't live with computers and can't live without them. From Publishers Weekly Whether you're a computer whiz or a computer nerd, this tongue-in-cheek guide to computing by bestselling humorist Barry (Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys, etc.) has enough byte to keep you entertained. Designed to look like a user's manual, complete with section tabs and a mock glossary, it offers a wryly skeptical tour of the digital world with outrageously irreverent commentary on word-processing applications, software installation and use, Windows 95, Comdex trade shows, technical support services and much more. Computerphobes will instantly relate to Barry's spoof, which taps into the residual anxieties lurking even in computer sophisticates. (How to buy and set up a computer? Step One: Get Valium.) Along with a brief history of computing from cave walls to virtual reality, Barry chats on the Internet, eavesdrops on a cybersex session and visits selected weird World Wide Web sites (Proof that civilization is doomed.) Barry's nonstop humor is, perhaps necessarily, hit and miss, but he never loses sight of his big target and lets loose with enough volleys to remind us that, despite all the hype, a computer is just a machine that operates on simple principles that can be easily understood by anybody with some common sense, a little imagination, and an IQ of 750. Major ad/promo. Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal HUMOR This latest spoof by a best-selling author and popular syndicated humor columnist is a welcome antidote to the recent influx of technical jargon regarding computers and the Internet. In typical style, Barry pokes fun at everything imaginable: Picture this scenario. ...Your 12-year-old child suddenly remembers that he has a report...due tomorrow. He needs to do some research, but the library is closed....Your cyber-savvy youngster simply...logs onto the Internet...and, in a matter of minutes, is exchanging pictures of naked women with youngsters all over North America. Although readers of Barry's past collections will often see the punchlines before they arrive, there is enough hilariously imaginative material here?particularly a chart depicting emoticons, those annoying keyboard symbols that chat group users employ to suggest emotion?to justify purchase in most public libraries.?Mark Annichiarico, Library Journal Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist The perdurably popular humor columnist (he's the Bob Hope of the Sunday supplements) admits he belongs to the tribe of computer geeks who would much rather spend our time diddling with our computers than using them to do something productive. (Is there innuendo in that statement, or are we just filthy-minded? That's the kind of question that crops up repeatedly while reading Barry--and one reason to keep reading him.) Moreover, the powerful studliness of Dave's latest binary toy allows him to do multitasking, which means I have the ability to . . . waste time faster than ever before. If you love Barry's shtick--that he's sort of a nonugly Rodney Dangerfield sans the profanity--you'll happily traipse along with him as he tells you how computers work and how to get computer literate and then takes you to a big computer convention and on to the 'net and even the Web. And if you don't love it, at least enough to be amused a few pages at a time, you're in a distinct minority. Ray Olson Review After a day spent staring at the computer monitor, think of this book as kind of a screen saver for your brain. -- The New York Times Book Review, Robert R. Harris About the Author Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Miami Herald. He is the author of numerous best-sellers, including the recent Dave Barry's Guide to Guys. He lives in Miami, Florida. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Dave Barry in Cyberspace: A Word from Dave You need to know right off the bat that I'm a total computer geek. I am pathetic. You've seen all those computer magazines with names like Data Dweeb and cover headlines like: Inside: Explicit Color Photographs of Big Hard Drives! and Wax Your Modem for Improved Speed! No doubt you've asked yourself, What kind of no-life loser actually reads these magazines? I do! All the time! I read them in bed! I look at the pictures of new computer systems and become moderately aroused and say things like, Whoa! Check out the 6X SCSI-2 CD-ROM drive on THAT baby! I could go on and on, listing the ways in which computers enrich our everyday lives. But I've made my point, which is that we live in the Computer Age, and you need to get with the program. You are standing in the airport terminal of life, and the jet plane of the 21st Century is about to take off. You must make a choice: Do you remain in the terminal, eating the stale vending-machine food of outmoded thinking? Or do you get on the plane and soar into the stratosphere of computerization, swept along by the jet stream of evolving technology, enjoying the in-flight snack of virtually unlimited information access, secure in the knowledge that if you encounter the turbulence of rapid change, you are holding, in this book, the barf bag of expert guidance. That is the vision of tomorrow that I am offering you. Come, take my hand, and together let us explore this amazing new cyber-world. If you don't know anything about computers, have no fear: I'm not going to bombard you with a bunch of technical gobbledygook. I'm going to present you with simple, practical, well-organized, easy-to-understand information, a lot of which I will make up as I go along. So let me just take a moment now to run this chapter through my computer's spell-checker, and then you and I can begin our fascinating journey into a brighter, better, and--above all--more productive future.
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Binding: Hardcover
Published by: Crown: , 1996
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ISBN: / 0517595753
215 pages.
Book Condition: Very Good
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