Off The Internet: Ford vs MSFT

Courtesy of Judy McGrane

 
For  all of us who feel only the deepest love and  affection for the way computers have enhanced  our lives, read on.
At  a the COMDEX computer expo  Bill Gates  reportedly compared the computer industry with  the auto industry and stated, 
‘If  Ford had kept up with technology like the  computer industry has, we would all be driving  $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the  gallon.’ 
In  response to Bill’s comments, Ford issued a press  release stating: 
If  Ford 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 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 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.  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 run on only  five percent of the roads. 
6. The  oil, water temperature, and alternator warning  lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This  Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning  light. 
7.  The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’  before deploying. 
8. 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. 
9.  Every time a new car was introduced 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. 
10.  You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn  the engine off. 
PS  – I ‘d like to add that when all else fails, you  could call ‘customer service’ in some foreign  country and be instructed in some foreign  language how to fix your car yourself!!!!

Philadelphia Music Of The Day

Sailing to Philadelphia is the title track of Mark Knopfler’s second solo album which was released in September 2000. It concerns Mason and Dixon of Mason-Dixon Line fame.


I am Jeremiah Dixon
I am a Geordie boy
A glass of wine with you, sir
And the ladies I’ll enjoy
All Durham and Northumberland
Is measured up by my own hand
It was my fate from birth
To make my mark upon the earth….
He calls me Charlie Mason
A stargazer am I
It seems that I was born
To chart the evening sky
They’d cut me out for baking bread
But I had other dreams instead
This baker’s boy from the west country
Would join the Royal Society…..
We are sailing to Philadelphia
A world away from the coaly Tyne
Sailing to Philadelphia
To draw the line
A Mason-Dixon Line
Now you’re a good surveyor, Dixon
But I swear you’ll make me mad
The West gonna kill us both
And you’re a gullible Geordie lad
You talk of liberty
How can America be free?
A Geordie and a baker’s boy
In the forests of the Iroquois….
Now hold your head up, Mason
See America lies there
The morning tide has raised
The capes of Delaware
Come up and feel the sun
A new morning has begun
Another day will make it clear
Why your star should guide us here….
We are sailing to Philadelphia
A world away from the coaly Tyne
Sailing to Philadelphia
To draw the line
A Mason-Dixon Line

House Bill Calls For Fines For Motorists Who Ignore Temp Flood Barriers

The State House, last week, unanimously approved a measure aimed at protecting the safety of drivers and first responders in a flood event reports Rep. Jim Cox (R-129). 
House Bill 2199 would fine motorists who ignore temporary police barricades and drive through flooded areas during and after severe storms. Under the bill, any individual who requires rescue, towing or medical assistance because he or she ignored a barricade would face a fine from $250 to $500. In addition, the individual would be responsible for the costs of being rescued and would have points assessed to his or her driving record. 
House Bill 2199 now goes before the Senate for consideration. 

Marking Time In The New Millennium

Walking down the street today I felt a
deep sense of sadness and loss. My mind drifted to the past, back
when things were more open, and when people were more able to speak
their minds; the times before 9/11, when the country was free and
everyone wasn’t polarized. Do any of you remember that time? It was
just after President Clinton left the White House and the country had
a surplus for the first time that would have expanded until we were
prosperous, had it not been spent on tax cuts for the top 1% and on
war and security. This time though, it was a war on terror meaning
that it would go on forever.

As long as someone disagreed with us,
the war would go on. If we feared someone was going to do something,
the war would go on. If someone sounded as though they were going to
do something, the war would go on. Soon people started to censor
themselves or be censored while the most conservative voices began to
spew out hatred and ways of thinking all the way back to the time of
the Civil War and before. The world really turned around 9/11.
Millions of people have suffered because some people saw this
incident as an opportunity to push through hidden agendas they had
been working on for decades in order to lessen the power of the
people in this nation, and to take the resources of the average
working families.

My sadness, I guess, was for myself,
but more for the nation. People get angry. They work hard to
justify their anger as they are laid off, or as the price of
everything is going up while the wages are going down. They point at
each other, or blame some ethnic group or the other, or even poor
people sometimes. This is sad and troubling and leads to nothing
except anger and squabbling. So here we are right now trapped in a
world of anger, finger pointing, and squabbling. As most people
would agree who never dreamed of being part of such a world, things
are just getting more ugly with no hope for any type of change or
improvement while a very small part of the population is taking
property, foreclosing on homes, just making all kinds of money by
keeping all of the anger alive.

John Gilmore

www.nextstepcoaching.4t.com .