Thu, 12 Mar 1998 14:39:11 +0100 (MET) - Message No. 2367
From: Ludo Sys

Subject: IF MICROSOFT WAS BUILDING BIKES...




At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly
compared the computer industry with the bike industry and
stated, "If Honda had kept up with technology like
the computer industry has, we would all be driving
twenty-five dollar bikes that got 1000miles/gal."

Recently Honda addressed this comment by releasing
the statement, "Yes, but would you want your bike to crash
twice a day?"


IF MICROSOFT BUILT BIKES....

 1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road
    you would have to buy a new bike.

 2. Occasionally your bike would die on the freeway for
    no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and
    drive on.

 3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your bike
    to stop and fail and you would have to re-install
    the engine.  For some strange reason, you would accept
    this too.

 4. You could only have one person on the bike at a time,
    unless bought "Bike95" or "BikeNT".  But then you would
    have to buy an extra seat.

 5. Macintosh would make a bike that was powered by the sun,
    was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive
    - but would only run on 5 percent of the roads.

 6. The Macintosh bike owners would get expensive Microsoft
    upgrades to their bikes, which would make their bikes run
    much slower.

 7. The oil, fuel and temperature warning lights would be
    replaced by a single "general bike default" warning light.

 8. A new seat would force everyone to have the same size butt.

 9. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea
    what happened.


regards from sunny Belgium,

Ludo


dipper@normans.isd.uni-stuttgart.de