A collection of jokes, top lists, poems, puns, news parodies and other humorous items about Microsoft, Bill Gates, their products and their company culture. The book uses contemporary events and celebrities to make the material come alive for the reader. Timely and irreverent, the book can be enjoyed by both computer experts and non-experts alike.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
We published the first edition over three years ago in early 1999. A lot of the material features real public figures so over that three year period a lot of changes occurred and the material began to become dated. The book had been very successful so we decided to update the material and publish a second edition.
From the Author
I've been in and around the computer industry for over 25 years and Microsoft and their products continue to provoke strong reactions. People may love them or hate them but everybody knows them and very few have just neutral feelings about them. Poking a little fun at the rich and powerful is at the core of the American literary tradition of satire and parody so it just seemed to me like a good idea to have a collection of humorous material with Microsoft, its creator Bill Gates and some of its products and practices at the center.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little humor at the expense of a very, very rich man,
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Totally Unauthorized Microsoft Joke Book, Second Edition (Paperback)
Most of us have heard enough Microsoft jokes to know that you could fill a book with them; Tim Barry actually did it. The book, first published in 1999, was successful enough that he came out with this second edition three years later, adding some new jokes and tweaking others to fit them more readily into the new cultural environment (post-Y2K, a new Presidential administration, etc.). The preface says this book is 15% larger than the first edition and that 70% of the material is either new or has been updated. Thus, for those who enjoyed the first edition, there is certainly good reason to buy the second edition. Discounting superfluous pages at the front and back, we're talking about 100 pages of jokes here.
You will almost surely have heard some of these jokes before - one case in point would be the fake news release stating that the viruses that cause hoof and mouth and mad cow disease are the first two viruses discovered that do not actually spread via Microsoft Outlook. You'll find plenty of Bill Gates at the Pearly Gates jokes; all sorts of silly riddles; haikus devoted to Microsoft and its products; top ten lists; a lot of jokes about ineffective technical support and bug-ridden software; and numerous references to Gates' attempts to take over the world. In case you don't recognize some of the names found in the jokes (such as those of some Microsoft competitors), there's a list and description of "Dramatis Personae" at the end of the book. Finally, "by popular demand," you get a bonus chapter of 101 light bulb jokes. I found this is a rather inexplicable addition to the book - first of all, only a handful of these jokes have any relationship to Microsoft, and second of all, how many people would possibly demand the addition of exceedingly silly light bulb jokes to anybody anywhere at any time? Frankly, I didn't find a lot of humor in these jokes - I should note, though, that those I enjoyed the most were ones I had already heard. Laughter doesn't come to me as naturally as it does to some people, and I haven't learned to thoroughly hate Microsoft yet (although I'm making progress), so I'm sure many will find this book funnier than I did. Those who think Bill Gates is evil personified will, of course, love every minute of it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jokes, puns, one-liners, haikus, and observational humor,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Totally Unauthorized Microsoft Joke Book, Second Edition (Paperback)
Having edited more than fifty computer technology books (and authoring four of them himself), as well as writing numerous articles on the personal computer industry, who knew that Tim Barry's gift for computer humor would prove as keen as his expertise with Microsoft technology and products! The Totally Unauthorized Microsoft Joke Book is a 112 page compendium of jokes, puns, one-liners, haikus, and observational humor that will tickle the funny bone of anyone who has ever sat down to a computer keyboard. Don't miss Barry's "Windows Glossary" with more than two hundred terms "defined". There's even a chapter offering "101 Light Bulb Jokes"!.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
