At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry to the car 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 1,000 mile to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release (by Mr. Welch himself) stating: "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:"

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

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

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

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 "Car95" or "CarNT". But then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, 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 be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

9. The air bag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

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, turn the key, and grab hold of the car 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 or 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 Department.

12. Every time GM introduced a new model car, buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

13 You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine!

Fed-Up Apple Decides To Just Add 1 GHz.

Ultimately fed up with trying to explain away the gap in processor speeds between the PowerPC and chips from Intel and AMD, Apple has simply decided to add 1 GHz to all quoted speeds.

"The 1.25 GHz dual processor PowerMac?" Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. "Yeah, that's now 2.25 GHz. The 1 GHz PowerBook? 2 GHz."

"Any questions?"

Unable to make up the difference in physical clock speeds and unable to adequately explain that the PowerPC is somewhat faster per cycle than other chips, Apple decided to lie.

"Can they do that?" asked the San Jose Mercury News' Dan Gillmor when reached for comment in Hong Kong, where he's in the midst of a two-month long shopping spree. "They can't do that. Can they?"

"According to our research," Apple Senior Vice President for Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller said, "people don't notice much speed difference between using an Intel machine and a Mac, because they're concentrating on other things. The difference in interfaces, the difference in machine styling, the difference in applications such as iTunes and iPhoto.

"But when you tell them the PowerMac is 1.25 GHz and the Intel machine is 2.25 GHz they'll say 'Oh, yeah, that Mac was really slow.' It's very annoying."

According to Schiller, "Finally we just said, eh, screw it. Let's just say it's the same. Like, who's gonna know?

"Sure, InfoWorld or someone will run some benchmarks and find out the PowerBook really isn't 2 GHz, but people don't read those benchmarks anyway."

Schiller indicated that test marketing of the number-adjusted Macs had been highly successful.

"And we have not received one complaint. Think about it. If someone goes into the store to buy a computer and they get the Mac instead of the PC, then they don't have the PC so they don't know if it's faster or not!

"This is a win-win!"

Schiller added, "Well, not really a win-win in the literal sense of both sides winning, but more in the sense of one side winning and the other side, um... not knowing what's going on."

"There's something not right about that," Gillmor said. "I'm going to have to make some calls about it. I'm pretty sure they can't do that."