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If cars were designed using computer..

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by gbrownlee

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Technology, they would have the following characteristics:

For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day. (gotta love Win ME)

Everytime they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

Your car would die on the freeway and to get it going you would have to, 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.

Sometimes, turning left would cause your car to shut down; in which case you would have to reinstall your engine.

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.

The oil, water temperature and altenator warning lights would all be replaced by a single" Yhis car has performed an illegal operation".

The air bag system would ask "Are You Sure" before deploying.

Sometimes your car would lock you out and to get in, you would have to simultaneously lift the door handle, turn the key and grab hold of the radio antenna.

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

11 replies

by oz_media

Well thia sone's actualy quite old ( I think I saw it first in 95/96) but it still holds true when it comes to Microsnot.

Cars are actually designed, manufactured and RUN mainly by computers now but hopefully with a little more stability than we see from MS products. I think the original joke was 'If Your Car Was Powered by Microsoft' or something similar.

You missed the fact that YOU would be responsible for ensuring it runs safely by applying patches as needed on an almost daily basis, if it failed an you killed someone, it is YOUR fault for not keepnig it running smoothly, not the manugacturers fault. Your neighbour would be able to crash your car from his easy chair if he didn't like you. You would find mysterious passengers in the back seat after each day's driving "just along for the ride and to slow your car down a bit on the hills", it would be really annoying when they start pointing out all the billboards on the highway and encouraging you to stop and take a closer look while you are trying to get somewhere. On Wednesday you would not be able to drive for several hours as the car runs a full scan of all its systems to ensure no viruses are found, you would also be in charge for keeping these signatures up to date also.

You wouldn't need to rotate your tires as they would be obsolete long before wearing, but you would be encouraged to buy new ones every two years so that you can still have your engine repaired, if not, you would need to but new tires before any service could be performed.

Thank god that somethings actually rely on sense, logic and workmanship, the three dirty words at Microsoft.

by guruofdos

If cars today progressed at the same pace as computers...

A car costing $25,000 in 1976 would cost a little under $300 today.

Top speed would be around Mach 4.

They would go round the world twice on a gallon of petrol (two and a half times for diesel).

They would measure approximately 18cm long, 11cm wide and be 6cm high and would weigh 250g.

GM and Ford would be battling to gain market dominance and releasing new models almost as fast as the paint dried on the older ones. Nissan or Toyota would be making chassis and running gear which accepted either Ford OR GM engines, and trunk capacity would have expanded to the extent that, relatively speaking, the family shopping could be loaded in with ease and still leave room for the complete contents of a medium-sized Walmart warehouse (apart from the problem of the dimensions stated above...consider this a mental excercise!).

The 'John Boy Waltons' of this world (and rednecks generally) would of course cut holes in all the body panels, fit Perspex portholes and replace the wiring harnesses with 'glow wires', and put seven fans in the engine bay when one would suffice!

by guruofdos

Most of the cars we would have been driving for the last 15 years would have been 'boxy' and the same cream colour. Yes, a few Lime, Tangerine and Blue translucent ones would have been spotted on the roads here and there but they would be few and far between. Only in recent years would more 'curvy' models appear and they would take on other colours like black, metallic blue and silver!

by guruofdos

....golfers never die...they just lose their balls!

....teachers never die...they just lose their class.

:-)

Well, it's nearly Friday!

by oz_media

Al the cars would be built with the same hex screws with the universal slotted/phillips/robertson heads.

Benefit, my tools would have cost $3.00 (wow, how nice that would be).
Drawback, they would strip like case screws with anything over 2 ftlbs of torque. The body panels would never fit right (not too far off a new car nowdays).

It reminds me of the Honda civics, 10 or 12 mm socket and you can almost strip the thing completely, body panels and all. You will need a 15 mm on the suspension but that's pretty much it.

by jardinier

I have been running ME on an AMD 550 with
64 MB RAM continuously for more than three
years. It has never missed a beat.

by guruofdos

I don't use ME myself...I simply don't like it. It's nothing personal...I just prefer 98, 95 or XP (and even 3.11 for some jobs).

ME on the several customers machines I work on which do have ME installed have never given me or the customers ANY trouble. For what they use it for, it works perfectly well.

The only problem I have ever experienced with ME is trying to upgrade from ME to XP, or copying a disk using Maxblast. In both instances it usually throws a wobbly!

by gbrownlee

I wouldn't have a problem. But for a new user who had never touched a computer before, it was a handful. The only think I was taught how to do was turn it on, connect to the internet and acess a hotmail account. Also, my sweetheart (technology impaired), would make changes and then not remember or realize what she had changed.

We had crash after crash, viruses, and our system was even hijacked. It got to the point that, everytime the system was started, you had to search through the settings to find out what had changed, yet again.

One day while deleting files from a folder, I happened upon a file that couldn't be deleted. It was either some sort of virus or someone setting up shop in my pc.

By this time, system restore had become system scramble, and was of no further use.

Looking back, if it wasn't for this experience, I might not of become as interested in computers. I like problem solving and my skills(?) were really exercised.

By the way, some of your comments are too f~g funny!!

by guruofdos

I don't use ME myself...I simply don't like it. It's nothing personal...I just prefer 98, 95 or XP (and even 3.11 for some jobs).

ME on the several customers machines I work on which do have ME installed have never given me or the customers ANY trouble. For what they use it for, it works perfectly well.

The only problem I have ever experienced with ME is trying to upgrade from ME to XP, or copying a disk using Maxblast. In both instances it usually throws a wobbly!

by oz_media

Actually the most frustrating problems I have ever faced wer eon TWO ME machines. These two machines (different locations, different uses, different companies) were a MAJOR pain in the ass. I had never seen such an unresourceful OS actually put into service, well there's XP but that can be tweaked to run pretty normal.

but ME is my biggest headache ever. a friend of mine will LOVE your pro-ME comments though, I am always bugging him to let me install Win98 or 2K over his ME system. He refuses to go with 98 as "that is a downgrade).....sure. He almost got into 2K but has hardware issues on his Dell ME box.

I always bug him about using ME, because everytime I talk to him there's something new going on ME that he can't figure out. I will print this and show him that SOME people still find ME works for them.

Note; He is a full time DJ that is always mixing, producing and remixing video and audio on his box, perhaps why ME isn't such a great choice for him.

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