Joshi Posted February 11, 2003 Share Posted February 11, 2003 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 1000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating (by Mr Welch himself): 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 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 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 "Car95" or "CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats. 6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads. 7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light. 8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt. 9. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off. 10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna. 11. 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 them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department. 12. Every time GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car. 13. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brief Posted February 11, 2003 Share Posted February 11, 2003 Define recent.. That joke has been around since at least 1997. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshi Posted February 11, 2003 Author Share Posted February 11, 2003 oh sure, spoil my fun. i just read it and thought i'd share it (and it was copied and pasted so so of course it would say recent, it was recent when it was first put on the page i got it off) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kjølen Posted February 16, 2003 Share Posted February 16, 2003 ROFL:rofl: Oh that's a little scary thought, and 3 years before 2000, put Microsoft or comouter-like technology in cars? Think of all the people running around afraid their car will die. Which they din have to worry about 2000, it would probably have died 50 times before then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AutoCept Posted February 16, 2003 Share Posted February 16, 2003 lol that's funny. Your automatic transmisson would probably require you to shift too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Posted February 16, 2003 Share Posted February 16, 2003 It would be great for the environment though. No one would dare to go anywhere near a car, that means a lot less pollution. Anyway. 14. You see a robber approaching your car, and you try to close the window, but it doesn't respond to you clicking the button. 15. You could buy XP Cars that look like bubble-gum combined with LEGO, and you'd have to go to a garage to tweak the car so that it looks like a previous version. 16. The car radio would only play WMA files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Eggplant Posted February 19, 2003 Share Posted February 19, 2003 behold the cool world! the place where the cyber world and the real world come together. the place where we drive as well as surf the super information highway route 66. where the giant blue airbag of death in microsoft cars suddenly deploy, just because you tried to use the cigarette lighter. where microsoft cars get marooned along the soft shoulder, while mac cars just beep and zip on by. (and they the friendly mac users) would like to stop and offer you assistance while your PC cars engine reboots itself. or while you search in your MY Glove Compartment to find where those missing window wippers.sys went to. but unfortuanetly your jumper cables are just not compatible with their batteries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kjølen Posted February 19, 2003 Share Posted February 19, 2003 If you try to buy an optical car it probably wouldn't have any wheels just a bright light to stare at the road and sit. Your Ford Explorer.exe would crash every once in a while If you try to have the lights, radio and heater/air conditioning on at the same time, your car would have to stop in the middle of the road to proccess all that If you don't use something that you turned on for awhile it wil stop responding to your car. Everyone would want to buy a better car every time a new video card comes out so your onboard display is crisper. When you turn the stearing wheel sometimes it takes awhile for the wheels to respond and turn, if you have a lot of things in use on your car. If it rains your car will start smoking and die right there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acrylic Posted February 21, 2003 Share Posted February 21, 2003 What if you had to download drivers and fix internal bugs on your car! That would be crazy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brief Posted February 23, 2003 Share Posted February 23, 2003 Originally posted by Kjølen ROFL:rofl: Oh that's a little scary thought, and 3 years before 2000, put Microsoft or comouter-like technology in cars? Think of all the people running around afraid their car will die. Which they din have to worry about 2000, it would probably have died 50 times before then. The big bru-haha over the Y2K bug had nothing to do with Microsoft, though. It was simply a design flaw in the computer BIOS clock system, which stored the years with only 2 digits, instead of 4. That was why "people" were worried that anything with a computer chip in it (including cars) would stop working come January 1st, 2000... but if they bothered to stop and think about it, does it make any difference for these devices whether or not they knew what year it was? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshi Posted February 23, 2003 Author Share Posted February 23, 2003 all that would happen had they not been treated for teh Y2K bug would be that the clocks would go back to the year 1900 or 1981, making absolutely no difference in the computers performance whatsoever except your computer would dispplay the wrong date. oh, shock horror, we can't have that happen, lets build some really expensive fix for this and make it out to be bigger than it is. my friend never had his computer treted for it and it's still works fine today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kjølen Posted February 23, 2003 Share Posted February 23, 2003 Feh, well its all over now. The only thing we have to watch out for now is that new Pokémon game coming out. That will surely startle a bunch of crazy children. Eck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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