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souce http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/ComputerVsCarindustry.htm

Computer vs car industry

Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, If we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

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

l. 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 over 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. 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.

5. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.

6. The airbag system would ask "are you sure" before deploying.

7. 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.

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

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

First, thanks for a great site. I read something about "20 hour days" keeping the site afloat, and I believe it was required. For those of us who enjoy it daily (along with Dwight Silverman's column) it can be a real lifeline, especially when work is ultra-boring.

Just a few questions:

1. You oversaw the "internet revolution." Beyond Al Gore inventing it, beyond the dot-com hype, beyond the spam and the sockpuppets, what do you think is the future of networked communication? Is it the cloud OS and social networking, or are we rounding another bend?

2. You've mentioned liking Postgres DBs. What other underrated hardware and software do you enjoy and employ on a regular basis?

3. What emergent technologies do you watch?

4. In the Wired interview, you mention a balance between wise crowd tendencies and dumb crowd tendencies:

"When you're building a system like this you're balancing the wisdom of the crowds versus the tyranny of the mob. Sometimes a crowd is really smart, but some things don't work so well by committee. Crowds work when you have a tightly knit group of people with similar interests, but when you have a loosely knit community you get 'Man Gets Hit in Crotch With Football.'"

What have you learned is the balance of this duality? For all of its attempts to be crowd-wisdom propelled, Slashdot does lean on the theory of exceptional individuals, because it has picked editors to filter what makes it to the front page, which cuts down on the "site-rhymes-with-bigg" tendency to put rosy garbage on the front page. Are you satisfied with the balance of your responses to whatever psychological fulcrum keeps a crowd wise and not mobbish?

5. What if any fiction authors do you enjoy?

6. I'm a technical writer, and am curious what you think about the current state of software and hardware documentation. Is it getting better? What are its common failings? Does anyone read it? Will single-sourcing (documentation that appears in print, online help, web sites, flash cards and text messages but uses the same text) change documentation's effectiveness radically?

7. In the CNET article, you talk about Slashdot as a community.

"But to some of our readers, it's a community that's here to discuss issues that are relevant to this community. There is a lot of value. The bulk of our content comes from other people. There are 6,000 or 7,000 comments on a busy day that other people write and just a dozen stories of just a paragraph or two that we actually generate, that are ours."

As you started out in BBSs, you probably had a prexisting idea of this being important to a resource on technology. Why do you think this is?

8. In the same interview, you talk about the ability of low-tech websites to take on big roles:

"I think that it really comes down to the content. If you have content people want, they will tolerate a system that is inferior. Now our system is solid, but back in the day, it wasn't. Look at eBay: That system is the most hodgepodge and clumsy user interface that you will ever find. People use it because it was first and it worked."

In the world of advertising, people call this branding. What do you think Slashdot's brand represents, and is it something IT workers will always have in common?

9. In the Network Administrator interview, you compare Slashdot to bulletin board systems favorably.

"Strangely not that far. It's all just a matter of scale. At some level it's all identical."

You mean in twenty years, not much has changed except the technology? I'd like to hear more on this if you find it compelling.

10.

A few times in fact. And each and every accuser has had one thing in common: some connection to Microsoft. First it was by noted Microsoft evangelist Rob Erndale that Linux users were potential terrorists. Another one is the Micorosft sponsored group ADTI who have been publishing articles detailing how terrorists could use Linux to attack the USA and so it should be outlawed.

And Alan Ralsky is still spamming and is the number #1 spammer according to Spamhuas. even with the stupid Verizon lawsuit.

When are the fucking ISP's going to be forced to shut these assholes down.

I forgot , they make money off them.

The Internet consortium needs to start shutting down ISP's if they don't act.

Isn't this like telephony fraud ?

I think you're right about the cost, at least I have heard that networks have expected studios to underwrite more and more of the expenses. So there is all the more pressure to deliver instant hit shows, rather than wait for a sleeper to simmer. Really, though, Farscape had passed the sleeper stage.

The pitfall I see here is that the show really needs the strength of a fully committed network behind it. Farscape is still pretty obscure and needs to expand its audience share. To do that, it needs promotion and an intelligent time slot. I don't know about elsewhere, but here in DC Farscape was airing late Friday night. That is not primetime, and yes people can tape it but the ones who do already like the show.

So ... the money-raising may be symbolic at best, and maybe the ideal outcome is to outbluff the network. However, we would not want a repeat of the Star Trek experience, where the show was renewed under fan pressure, but only for one year and in bizarre moving time slots without promotion. The network guaranteed its demise for "declining ratings."

I don't know the business, and I hope whoever's involved in this white knight plan does. It is rumored that whoever is in charge at SciFi (I forget his name) simply "doesn't like space shows" which is certainly ironic and probably insurmountable. More.

I'm still leaning towards my cruise missile idea. Is there a downside?