Computers vs. Automobiles

[alpha]

Computers vs. Automobiles

 

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 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:

 

l. 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 would run on only 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. New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt.

9. The airbag system would ask "are you sure" before deploying.

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 grabbed 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 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 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.

13. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

[ThornyRose]

LOL! Most xlnt!

I'll see if I can make up a couple myself.

[Azat]

Love it. This is a classic.

[Juggernaut]

I doubt a press release of such a large company would have the word 'butt' in it.

[Azat]

If Linux was a car...Sense of Humor required!

 

M: Hey Pete, Can you help me put a radio in my Debian?

 

P: You're an Idiot, RTFM!

 

M: I need more help than that.

 

P: You're an idiot! I did a Google search. It's in the page

referenced by the footnote in the 37th hit. If I could find

it, so can you.

 

GS: (good Samaritan) You need to rebuild the engine to add a

radio.

 

M: Rebuild the engine?

 

P: You're an idiot!

 

GS: There's a how-to. It's written for a "Hat", but it's

mostly correct except that engine is in the rear. It's

translated from German, but they did a pretty good job. It'll

tell you to hook the radio to the red and black wires, but

since you've got a Debian, there won't be any red and black

wires. And you still need to write the radio driver. Don't

forget to regrind the camshaft. If you don't, you'll get an

error message that you don't have permission to change the

tire pressure, but it's the camshaft. You'll need a lot of

tools, but you can get them for free. Most of them come with

instructions... about 900 pages in all. Read 'em all carefully

and understand 'em before you start. Should be able to figure

it all out in a couple of months.

 

[MUCH LATER...]

 

M: Hey Pete, I didn't get all the stuff I needed to rebuild my

engine. Can I borrow your Drake again?

 

P: The wife has the Drake, but you can borrow the Hat.

 

M: This is different. Where's the steering wheel?

 

P: That dashboard was really using a lot of gas. This has what

is called a CLI. Just type CTRL-L to go left and CTRL-R to go

right.

 

M: What about the gas and brakes?

 

P: That's all combined into a single speed number. Just type

ps | grep speed. The headings are in Klingon, but the third

number is the one you want. Just divide by the speed of light

to get meters/second. You'll have to parse it out, calculate

the new speed and use the nice function to change the priority

of the process. That changes the speed. If you had just read

the manpage, I wouldn't have had to tell you all that.

 

M: Which manpage?....never mind... What if I need to stop in a

hurry?

 

P: Gotcha covered. There's a script for panic stops. Just type

PanicStop-3.8.63278665-HAT when=now. It will ask you for a

password. Enter the password and hang on cause you're gonna

stop real quick. I'm really proud of the deceleration

optimization routine. Be careful typing, it's case sensitive.

If it gives you a cryptic error message and doesn't stop, it's

probably because you forgot to add yourself to the brakes

group. It's all in the manpage.

 

M: Which manpage?....never mind...

 

[MUCH, MUCH LATER....]

 

M: I wish I hadn't sold my Gates. At least I could drive it to

town and pick up Granny....

 

P: You're an idiot!.....

[DominO123]

I remember me when trying to run my Refreshing rate at 100 Hz. I downloaded that booklet from Nvidia to how install correctly the drivers. The best I did was 85 Hz, the thing would just stop booting in Xwindows in higher than that. I just formated that Linux partition in NTFS and promessed myself that I won't install it anymore, for all the problem it gave me.

[DominO123]

I remember me when trying to run my Refreshing rate at 100 Hz. I downloaded that booklet from Nvidia to how install correctly the drivers. The best I did was 85 Hz, the thing would just stop booting in Xwindows in higher than that. I just formated that Linux partition in NTFS and promessed myself that I won't install it anymore, for all the problem it gave me.

Oh forgot. But I am enough an idiot to still having it installed on my second computer.