Dave Barry in Cyberspace Review
Now that Dave Barry has alerted me to the fact that Bill Gates wears a zucchini in his shorts, I will never be afraid of cyberspace again. Hahahahahaha...Oops, I'd better use an emoticon here if I want to be cybercool:
:-D == (a person laughing so hard he or she does not realize that a zucchini is sticking out of his or her pants).
Thanks to Dave, I can now display my feelings online, although I'm not certain how I'm going to work in his emoticon, "person who is none too pleased to be giving birth to a squirrel." Before reading this book, communicating with me via the internet was like trying to strike up a casual conversation with Lieutenant Data. I didn't have a clue about all of those nifty acronyms my friends were inserting into their 'instant messages'. I thought ROTFL had something to do with burying fish heads in the corn field and IMHO was an admission of sexual promiscuity.
I also found out why my boss religiously attends the Comdex convention (Dave calls it 'Geek-O-Rama' and 'Nerdstock in the Desert') in Las Vegas every fall. It has a lot less to do with amazing, futuristic hardware and geeky souvenir tee-shirts than it does with the AdultDex convention down the street.
In the midst of this author's signature adolescent humor about hard-drives, bytes and mega-ram, he uncharacteristically inserts a tender internet love story. Frankly it made me a bit uneasy--rather like watching a Three Stooges movie, and just as Mo is ready to whack Curly over the head with a platypus, the Pope suddenly appears and launches into a homily about family values. It didn't work because frankly, I wasn't prepared to stop laughing and segue into tender empathy for two middle-aged losers.
Please Dave, stick to your booger jokes, at least in books with your picture on the cover.
Dave Barry in Cyberspace Overview
In previous books he's done Japan, turned forty, and plumbed the "black holes" of home ownership. Now Dave Barry boots up, logs on, and invites millions of readers to laugh out loud as he undertakes a hard drive down the information superhighway.
Dave Barry in Cyberspace Specifications
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.
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Customer Reviews
Classic Barry - Ian Laurence Hudson - Topeka, KS
I originally owned this book more than a decade ago, and recently felt moved to repurchase it, recalling it being hysterical. Some of it has not aged well (e.g. he has a chapter about Comdex, which has ceased to be for the last six years, Windows 95 is the latest software), but certain things have; computers breaking down for no apparent reason, internet lingo, and an insightful look into internet affairs via a clever vignette. If you're a Dave Barry fan, or you can catch a good deal on it, go for it.
Very funny, until it isn't - John Sloan - right there
Dave Barry wrote this book back when Windows 95 was the latest, greatest thing in personal computing. Much of it is out of date, but now it is almost nostalgiac. However, you don't really need to know alot about 1990's computers to get the jokes. Computers can still be complicated and frustrating, and the Internet still contains a lot of pointless junk. The book is very funny, in the typical Dave Barry style. I would have rated it much higher, if not for the short story at the end. It is just terrible. It seems like Dave was taking a creative writing course and was assigned to write a story in the second person point of view ("you" do this, "you" say that). The "you" in the story is a suburban woman with a boring job/husband/life. "You" discover Internet "chat" and fall in love online with a guy using the alias RayAdverb, and anagram for Dave Barry. Its creepy and not funny, and it drags an otherwise entertaining book to a disappointing conclusion.
:-D == (laugh-out-loud funny) - E. A. Lovitt - Gladwin, MI USA
Now that Dave Barry has alerted me to the fact that Bill Gates wears a zucchini in his shorts, I will never be afraid of cyberspace again. Hahahahahaha...Oops, I'd better use an emoticon here if I want to be cybercool:
:-D == (a person laughing so hard he or she does not realize that a zucchini is sticking out of his or her pants).
Thanks to Dave, I can now display my feelings online, although I'm not certain how I'm going to work in his emoticon, "person who is none too pleased to be giving birth to a squirrel." Before reading this book, communicating with me via the internet was like trying to strike up a casual conversation with Lieutenant Data. I didn't have a clue about all of those nifty acronyms my friends were inserting into their 'instant messages'. I thought ROTFL had something to do with burying fish heads in the corn field and IMHO was an admission of sexual promiscuity.
I also found out why my boss religiously attends the Comdex convention (Dave calls it 'Geek-O-Rama' and 'Nerdstock in the Desert') in Las Vegas every fall. It has a lot less to do with amazing, futuristic hardware and geeky souvenir tee-shirts than it does with the AdultDex convention down the street.
In the midst of this author's signature adolescent humor about hard-drives, bytes and mega-ram, he uncharacteristically inserts a tender internet love story. Frankly it made me a bit uneasy--rather like watching a Three Stooges movie, and just as Mo is ready to whack Curly over the head with a platypus, the Pope suddenly appears and launches into a homily about family values. It didn't work because I wasn't prepared to stop laughing and segue into tender empathy for two middle-aged losers.
Please Dave, stick to your booger jokes, at least in books with your picture on the cover.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 19, 2010 22:08:04
