People in the computer business just can't resist those Moore's Law versus the car analogies. Today's exhibit is Professor Steve Furber of the University of Manchester:
One litre of fuel would serve the UK for a year and oil reserves would last the expected lifetime of the solar system - if efficiency in the car industry had improved at the same rate as in the computer world - a leading computer scientist will tell an audience in Manchester, UK, on Friday 20 June 2008.
I bet he won't be telling them about the motorways clogged with automobiles stranded at odd angles as their drivers phone into call centres to be told: "Just try taking the battery out, then put it back in and start the car up. We can see if it happens again."*
Sorry, it's an old joke, but someone's got to do it.
* I once hired a Smart ForFour with an ECU that crashed so badly - in the middle of Wimbledon in rush hour - the only option was to reboot the car. When I next hired a car from them, I noticed that the ForFour was no longer on the list of vehicles.
