News and Views on
Technology
This is one of those stories that people e-mail me from time to time, so I can't speak for its origin. However I can attest to its merit from first hand experiences...
At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared
the computer industry with the auto industry and stated; "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000mi/gal."
Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the following statements....
1. Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this; restart and drive on.
4 . Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to reinstall the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.
5. You could only have one person in the car at a time; unless, you bought "Car95" or "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, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on 5% of the roads.
7. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.
8. The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single, "general fault", warning light.
9. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butts.
10. The airbag system would say, "are you sure?", before going off.
11. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
12. For no apparent reason, your engine will fail to run after you install your new sunroof.
13. Auto Geeks will evolve who spend endless hours creating auto-viruses designed to destroy your car. Your only recourse will be to buy preventative measures from other Auto Geeks.
14. A new highway will be created linking every destination in the world, except it only has one lane and a 28.8 mph speed limit.
15. Auto makers will cease to make replacement parts for any car more than 2 years old.
16. Most people (even those in the auto industry, like mechanics and taxi drivers) will have no idea how their car works or how to drive it correctly.
17. The richest auto manufacturer will get to create and enforce all traffic laws.
18. All automobiles will be released at least 2 years behind schedule.
19. You will be responsible for fixing all factory defects for the life of the car - but it will still never run correctly.
20. You will have to buy a new car about every 2 years because your old car won't run on any of the new roads that are being built. When you trade in your 'old' car, it will be worth about .00001% of what you paid for it.
21. Of course, your new car won't run correctly either, but it will have a different looking dashboard and a bigger engine - so you'll be happy with it.
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