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The Ultimate Computer stood at the end of the Ultimate Computer Company's production line. At which point the guided tour eventually arrived. The salesman stepped forward to give his prepared demo. "This," he said,
"Is the Ultimate Computer. It will give an intelligent answer to any question you may care to ask it."
A smart-aleck who ran a humor mailing list stepped forward and asked,
"Where is my father?"
There was the soft hum of powerful electronic gear going to the task. Panel lights lit and blinked, and within a couple of seconds the laser printer printed out a piece of paper:
"Fishing off Florida."
The smart-aleck laughed, "Actually, my father is dead! It was a trick question."
The salesman, quickly thinking on his feet, replied that he was sorry the answer was unsatisfactory, but as the Ultimate Computer was precise, perhaps a rewording of the question might work better.
The smart-aleck said to the Ultimate Computer, "Where is my mother's husband?" Again, the hum of the powerful electronic brain filled the room.
After a moment, the laser printer whirred to life. The paper said,
"Dead. But your father is still fishing off Florida."
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 technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 mi/gal."
Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement:
"Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?"
Not only that, but....
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.
You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT". But, then you would have to buy more seats.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.
The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.
New seats would force everyone to have the same size вuтт.
The airbag system would say "are you sure?" before going off.
If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.