And if my repeat had repeats she'd be a repeat.

Is there supposed to be some sort of point here? If Moore's Law applied to everything we would all be driving flying cars on the moon and eating lunch on Pluto which will of course have been re-granted planetary status after the first intergalactic war.

submitter: If fuel efficiency advanced at the same rate as computer chip efficiency, the current oil reserves would last for about six billion years

because cars would be 10 mm long, with .5 W motors.

Sliding Carp: because cars would be 10 mm long, with .5 W motors.

And only the six richest kings of Europe would be able to afford them.

If money grew on trees at the same rate as computer chip efficiency, we'd all be multi-millionaires and a soda would cost 50,000 dollars.

If fuel efficiency was based on the computer business model, our cars would stall every couple of hours and we'd have to buy Microsoft Gas.

-2 for no obvious tag.

I'll just go ahead and put this in my "no shiat" file.

A project manager, a computer programmer and a computer operator are driving down the road when the car they are in gets a flat tire. The three men try to solve the problem.

The project manager said: "Let's catch a cab and in ten minutes we'll reach our destination."

The computer programmer said: "We have here the driver's guide. I can easily replace the flat tire and continue our drive."

The computer operator said: "First of all, let's turn off the engine and turn it on again. Maybe it will fix the problem."

Suddenly a Microsoft software engineer passed by and said: "Try to close all windows, get off the car, and then get in and try again."

And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.

General Order 24, just for the concept...

If wishes were wheels hobos would commute by go-cart.

Advanced computer parts is good for business.

Better fuel mileage is not.

Thus the owners of Amerika do not care.

And if wishes were horses.... we could grind them up to power our HorseFuel(tm) Hummers!

Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.

Analogy doesn't work. Computers are not more efficient, consuming far more CPU cycles and memory with every release of an OS or software upgrade.

And if a frog had wings... it surely wouldn't be long before it found itself the subject of a Fark greenlight.

DarthBrooks: If fuel efficiency was based on the computer business model, our cars would stall every couple of hours and we'd have to buy Microsoft Gas.

You could always buy a Mac car, but it would have trouble merging on to some of the highways.

Tr0mBoNe: And if my repeat had repeats she'd be a repeat.

But it was greenlit, so tough noogies.

Microsoft Gas Stations?

Too lazy to photoshop...

There would also be MacGas and MicroFuel fanboys. They would berate people for using MacGas or MicroFuel when both basically have the same function.

/If only house prices followed Moore's law.

Wow, that's an apples to apple comparison. Not.

Vanetia: A project manager, a computer programmer and a computer operator are driving down the road when the car they are in gets a flat tire. The three men try to solve the problem.

The project manager said: "Let's catch a cab and in ten minutes we'll reach our destination."

The computer programmer said: "We have here the driver's guide. I can easily replace the flat tire and continue our drive."

The computer operator said: "First of all, let's turn off the engine and turn it on again. Maybe it will fix the problem."

Suddenly a Microsoft software engineer passed by and said: "Try to close all windows, get off the car, and then get in and try again."

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet about the ground. You are between 40 and 42 degrees north latitude and between 58 and 60 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the man, "but how did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost."

The man below responded, "You must be a manager."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "how did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are exactly in the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

If government advanced at the rate of Moore's Law, it would first rapidly become a compact, ultra-efficient, non-partisan government with no ties to special interests or pork projects, then a few years later it would evolve itself out of existence altogether.

But more efficient gas doesn't get us porn faster. You've got to have priorities.

CygnusDarius: Tr0mBoNe: And if my repeat had repeats she'd be a repeat.

But it was greenlit, so tough noogies.

Careful. You could get suspended for 10 months in Florida for tough noogies.

This is what our Reptilian overlords desire, thus it is so.

I can't help but notice that no matter how fast the hardware gets, the OS still takes a minute to boot and the word processor does too.

Current research at Manchester into the development of the 'Brain Box'

Cruelos approves

ecmoRandomNumbers

This.

Carnot cycle creates a thermodynamic maximum efficiency. (new window)

If governments were as smart as Farkers are witty, the world would have blown up forty-five years ago.

One thing you'd likely see at a Microsoft gas station:



/and, no, it wouldn't forget how much you pumped, of course

And if I ran as fast as a cheetah I'd have a gold medal in the men's 100 meter dash!

jicon: Analogy doesn't work. Computers are not more efficient, consuming far more CPU cycles and memory with every release of an OS or software upgrade.

I believe the article was comparing CPU cycle per unit of energy required to power the computer. Simply because the software may be less efficient doesn't negate the whole analogy, because it was referring to energy usage.

Frankly, it hardly negates any of the analogy. Even if modern software uses 100 times more CPU cycles to perform the same operations as early software, the hardware is many magnitudes more powerful, easily overcoming the difference many thousands of times over.

jicon: Analogy doesn't work. Computers are not more efficient, consuming far more CPU cycles and memory with every release of an OS or software upgrade.

It does, sort of. Today's computers, with all of their capabilities, are essentially the flying car of the computer world. I talk to friends, compose music, do photographic post-processing and write code on mine. Twenty-five years ago, I only wrote code on my Vic-20. A car serves exactly the same purpose as it did 90 years ago.

That is all

/shamelessly hot linked.

This and a handful of shiat would let me grow a flower.

CitizenReserveCorps: jicon: Analogy doesn't work. Computers are not more efficient, consuming far more CPU cycles and memory with every release of an OS or software upgrade.

It does, sort of. Today's computers, with all of their capabilities, are essentially the flying car of the computer world. I talk to friends, compose music, do photographic post-processing and write code on mine. Twenty-five years ago, I only wrote code on my Vic-20. A car serves exactly the same purpose as it did 90 years ago.

Also, this article fails to consider the fact that computers run off of electrical power that is derived by a nearly equally inefficient heat engine power plant.

Chevette 1977...

If companies would make use of the fast computers to allow all the paper shufflers in the world to telecommute, a helluva lot less oil would get burned in the first place.

Instead, the conventional office is organized like a baboon troupe, and everybody must show up to bare their canines or show their big purple butt as appropriate. So every day, millions of people haul 180lbs of monkey back and forth to a place where they shuffle a couple pounds of paper.

The sheer magnitude of the stupid is such that you have to step waaaaaay back to even see it.

It did advance at the same rate.

In the 1850s.

AmazingRuss: If companies would make use of the fast computers to allow all the paper shufflers in the world to telecommute, a helluva lot less oil would get burned in the first place.

Instead, the conventional office is organized like a baboon troupe, and everybody must show up to bare their canines or show their big purple butt as appropriate. So every day, millions of people haul 180lbs of monkey back and forth to a place where they shuffle a couple pounds of paper.

The sheer magnitude of the stupid is such that you have to step waaaaaay back to even see it.

HR frowns on showing your big purple butt in the workplace. Didn't you get the memo?

Salacious Salad: ecmoRandomNumbers

This.

Carnot cycle creates a thermodynamic maximum efficiency. (new window)

Ah, but cars technically have to do about zero work - they end up with the same potential energy as they start with. All the work done, from heating air in the tires to air resistance, is actually waste. (Of course as soon as you get into acceleration/deceleration energy flows entropy makes even pure-theory world less happy.)

Yes, but I suspect the flying saucer from which the major computer/software corporations have gleaned all their "technological breakthroughs" wasn't equipped with an internal combustion engine.

And I'd imagine it's kind of hard to reverse-engineer a quantum slipstream drive for practical use in an SUV.

AmazingRuss: If companies would make use of the fast computers to allow all the paper shufflers in the world to telecommute, a helluva lot less oil would get burned in the first place.

In my opinion, virtual cubicles is how the energy crisis will ultimately be dealt with. Not telecommuting, but an actual 8'x8' video screen wall (current tech and bandwidth is making this economically feasible) and an always on video camera (no more telecommuting in your undies). The cheap screen is the technical hang up and the mandatory monitoring via camera assuages the managerial desire to bare canines at big purple butts.

Danger Avoid Death: HR frowns on showing your big purple butt in the workplace. Didn't you get the memo?

I got the memo about biting...was it in that one?

Not mine, but thought this fit.. Alleged to be GM's response to Bill Gates' comments about the improvements in computer technology vs. cars. Debunked by Snopes, but still funny.

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.

Yeah, but the laws of physics can be a biatch, can't they?

There's only so much efficiency you can get out of a chemical reaction. We need more nuclear power.