Coffee Break 16
Bill Gates
In a recent interview, Bill Gates measured the accomplishments of Microsoft by comparing his company against the automobile industry.
The comparison went something like this:
If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a 4 cylinder or a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour (160,000 km/hr).
You could have an economy car that weighs about 30 pounds (14 kilos) and gets a thousand miles to the gallon of gas with no effect on the environment.
In either case, the sticker price of the new car would be less than $500.
In response to all this goading, General Motors responded:
Yes, but would you really want to drive a car that crashes four times a month?
If Microsoft Built Cars...
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.
2. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this and drive on.
3. occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to reinstall the engine. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this too.
4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a "Car95" or a "CarNT". But then you'd have to buy more seats.
5. Apple would make a car (the Macintosh) that was powered by the sun, was twice as fast, twice as easy to drive --- but it would only run on 5 percent of the roads.
6. The Apple Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run on more roads, but it would run much slower.
7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car protection fault" warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size rump.
9. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
10. The air bag system would ask, "Are you sure?" and require you to honk the horn before going off.
