1 (edited by Dr.Jeckyl 2005-04-19 17:53)

Topic: the similarities of vehicles to computers

add to the list if you want. i just noticed a couple are redundant but oh well.




Bill Gates and the president of General Motors were having lunch. Gates puffed out his chest and boasted of the innovations his company had made. "If GM had kept up with technology the way Microsoft has, we'd be driving $25 cars that get 1,000 m.p.g."

"I suppose thats true," the GM exec agreed. "But would you really want your car to crash twice a day?"


1. 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 only run on 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 Dept.

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.

14. Ford dominates the market, and produces nothing but blue cars that guzzle gas, but someone leaked a patch that let you choose the color the car is. No one seems to notice or care.

15. A community know as the Open Parts Community builds cars themselves. There are thousands of dealers of these cars, but they all roughly have the same engine. None are as good as Fords cars just for driving to the store and back, but they are the prime choice for long-haul driving.

16.Most dealers of the Open Parts Community build the cars for you, but run slow. While others ship you the tool kit and a bunch of metal and expect you to assemble the car yourself, while initially a pain in the ass to assemble, they tend to run longer and faster than the cars dealt to you assembled.

17. While Ford charged hundereds of dollars for your car, then for every accessory added they charge another couple hundered for things like a rear view mirror, a radio, air fresheners, and welding patches for holes they missed in production... the Open Parts Community says screw it and picks up a welding torch and builds everything they need from scratch.

18. If your Ford breaks down. You need to reassemble the entire car, and lose any miles, accessories, and other things you may have had on it... unless you break into your neighbors garage and store your junk in it while you re-assemble your car.

19. trying to install new components to your car would result in the initial 'plug 'n' play' not working, due to the compatability software supplied by the car manufacturer being out of date and somehow it would effect your windscreen wipers.

20. when someone new gets in the car, it asks you if you want this new licence to be agreed.

21. someone invents a new system of controlling the temp inside the car. no one uses windows anymore, as AC is far more customisable. besides everyone loves the little penguin that dances across the dashboard.

22. you know when a crash is fatal because the windscreen turns blue.

23. a driver upgrade involves more driving lessons.

24. a service level agreement involves a mechanic.

25. your car doesnt perform as well at work. after trying to explain the problem to the techinician he remotely drives it for a hour and a half and returns it to you with a new dashboard and stereo, neither of which are an improvement, and the problem still isnt fixed. later you find out that you needed to change a head lamp bulb.

26. installing a firewall actually involves digging a trench around the car, filling it with oil and setting fire to it. windows doesnt really help.

27. Every time an accesory that has nothing to do with the cars performance malfunctions, the car asks "do you want to tell GM about this problem?"

28. Every 5 miles you stall out and are asked to send an error report

29. Every time Gm makes a new vehicle, the old one can no longer get parts from the supplier as the vehicle is no longer supported.

30. You fill the car with gas at the station and it no longer starts, the windshield turns blue and says you are out of storage.

31. In order to drive with your buddies at work you would all have to drive in the same LAN.

32. To improve your cars performance or fix bugs in your system you would have manually install all patches.

~James
FluxBB - Less is more

Re: the similarities of vehicles to computers

Someone has way too much time on their hands smile

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."