The fRiDaY File, for March 24

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 Xerox made toasters... You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you. If Radio Shack made toasters... The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster. If ParcPlace made toasters... Their OO building block system would be called EGGO. If Oracle made toasters... They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home, you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant Entension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke. If Sun made toasters... The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa Java. If Netscape made toasters... They would give away free, unfinished, prototype versions of their toasters every 4 months; you set it up and then just wait forever, while the toast comes to you. Does DEC still make toasters?... They made good toasters in the '80's, 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 Tandem made toasters... You could make toast 24 hours a day, and if a piece got burned the toaster would automatically toast you a new one. If Thinking Machines made toasters... You would be able to toast 64,000 pieces of bread at the same time. If Cray made toasters... They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world. 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 toasters 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 Sony made toasters... The 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 Timex made toasters... They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a licking and keep on toasting. 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 Franklin Mint made toasters... Every month, you would receive another lovely hand-crafted piece of your authentic hand-crafted Civil war pewter toaster. If CostCo made toasters... They'd be really cheap, as long as you bought a six-pack of 'em. 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, but people would credit Microsoft for inventing toasters. This is News? Check it out, as mentioned in the Toronto Sun "Flamethrowers across the border" and the Toronto Globe and Mail "Internet wits", the Anti-Canada web site. Lame, eh? And not one of the dozens of speling misteaks is good enough to make it into the aLtErNaTe GlOsSaRy. Even worse is the Great Canadian comeback page. Copyright 1995, no less... I'm so glad the papers are on top of today's breaking stories. The Toronto Star, on the other hand, has interesting news, like "Study finds our Net access cheap". It just so happens that Canada has the cheapest Internet access in the industrialized world. Australia's Number 2 and the U.S. is third. Mexico ranks 24th... it costs 5 times as much to surf the net in Mexico as it does in Canada. But if it's eighty degrees in the shade, who cares?