Monday 19 April 2004

Probably apocryphal

This one has been on the internet for years but perhaps not everyone has seen it:

At a computer exhibition in the US, Bill Gates said that if General Motors had advanced with technology in the same way that the computer industry has, cars would cost $25, get a thousand miles to the gallon and run at two thousand miles an hour.

Piqued by this, GM hit back. They said that if cars were designed along the same lines as computers, they would crash twice a day for no reason whatever. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

Occasionally, if you performed some complicated manoeuvre, such as turning left, your car would stop. You would then have to go to the hard shoulder, take the engine out, and reinstall it. Before the airbags could be deployed, you would have to click on a sign saying: “Are you sure?” Instead of warning lights for water, battery and fuel, a sign would light up saying: “This car has performed an illegal act”.

Every now and again, 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. You’d need to press the “start” button to turn the engine off.

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