A friend--one of those computer people who delight in pointing out technology's pratfalls--sent me a link to a news story this week. The headline read: "Govt. official trapped in car after computer fails. Security guards smashed their way into an official limousine with sledgehammers on Monday to rescue Thailand's finance minister after his car's computer failed," Reuters said. Seems that the computer in Suchart Jaovisidha's BMW failed, automatically locking all the doors and shutting off the air-conditioning. "We could hardly breathe for over 10 minutes," the freed minister told reporters. "It was a harrowing experience."

My friend--who'd take a sledgehammer to Microsoft if he could--appended a second story to the Reuters report. It was a press release headlined, "Microsoft technology powers the navigation feature used in BMW's innovative new iDrive telematics system." The juxtaposition of those two stories might remind some of you of an old joke: What would happen if Microsoft designed cars? They'd run perfectly for 50,000 miles and then explode.