[cshuman]

EVERYONE WITH A COMPUTER WILL APPRECIATE THIS ONE!!

I'm sure this would all be too true! At a recent computer expo
Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto
industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to
buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You
would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the
windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause
your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would
have to reinstall the engine.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought
"CarNT," but then you would have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was
reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but it would
only run on five percent of the roads.
7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would all
be replaced by a single "general protection fault" warning light.
8. The airbag system would ask, "are you sure?" before deploying.
9. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, you car would lock you out
and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door
handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the antenna.
10. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of
Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither
need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
11. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn
to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in
the same manner as the old car.
12. You'd have to press the "start" button to turn the engine off.

[Korv]

Don't forget:

13. We'd all have to buy MicroSoft gasoline from MicroSoft service stations.

[seanyepez]

That's hell of old, though. Good points, but technology is technology - unstable as it is, we still have to put up with it. The consumer computer industry has been around for twenty years. The automobile industry has been around for quadruple that if not more.

In a hundred years, we will use computers that never crash, computers innovated to the point where bettering the computer will be merely in its aesthetics and slight performance boosts... Computers will be as reliable as cars.

[ 08-10-2001: Message edited by: seanyepez ]

[el chupacabra]

At a recent computer expo

is 6 years ago really recent?

still always funny though

There was a whole thread on this car stuff as well as comparing OSs to airlines at arstechnica a couple weeks ago, you might want to check it out it was pretty funny.

[Kozmik]

This AND that airline thing are freaking ANCIENT! Get some new humor!

[TheJoshu]

My memory of the airline thing dates at least as far back as 97 or 98.

The car joke is likely even older.