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(continued from previous page)
People want to know "Are they missing something? What should their country do?" It's a great chance for me to have dozens of side meetings about where technology is going and what people might do with it.
One of the things you talked about there is Internet television and the way it's changing things. Is the television of today really on the verge of being outmoded?
Gates: You won't have to give up what you have today. But when you watch the news you can avoid the things you don't care about and see more of the things you do care about. The ads can be very targeted to you, so they won't be as bothersome. The content that is not very popular, like your kids' sports game or some lecture, will just be right there in your guide. The use of the Internet means it doesn't matter how many people are watching it. We can bring it down to you. We get rid of these limitations, the time limitations and the number of channel limitations that the old broadcast approach forced us all into.
Video:
Gates talks up Vista
Microsoft's chairman discusses the long-awaited launch of the new OS.
It strikes me that, in your foundation hat, that might be a challenge, since a lot of what you try and do is bring attention to things that people aren't thinking about. This world of customization and personalization...is there a societal challenge? Who tells us what we need to know that we don't necessarily want to know?
Gates: Part of the beauty of the online world is it will let us find people we trust who want to recommend things. Certainly if people want to know what I think is interesting, they'll see what they might read about global health. I do think there has been more attention paid to global health in the last five years than ever before.
People would like it if it could be put into terms where they can get involved. Where can their money have an impact? How can they see that it gets an impact? Online lets us do that. Just (reading) a newspaper or watching a TV show didn't draw the person in.
Is the line between professionally produced content and user-generated content shifting? Will there still be a mix of those two things?
Gates: Once upon a time a typeset document was a clear sign that a big company was behind it and had put some real money into it. Today, anyone with a copy of Office and a laser printer is making documents that look as good as a big company.
There is still a gap there in terms of movie editing. But now with this high-definition movie editor that's in Windows Vista, that barrier has really been changed.
In photography, we have this stitching capability and rich software algorithms to improve photo quality. The things that are out of reach of just a person with a PC are getting smaller and smaller. Eventually, we want them to be able to do anything, all of their creativity fully unleashed.
It's still a year before you are stepping away from full-time work at Microsoft and moving to part time. What's on your to-do list?
Gates: Certainly, the big decisions about the next round of Windows and Office. A lot of things about Live, including what we do in commerce and search. Steve (Ballmer) expects me to share a lot of ideas and make sure those things get going on the right track.
No shortage of important work. I'm thrilled to see Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie stepping up to their pieces.
Have you picked a couple things yet that you plan on working on when you do step away from full-time work?
Gates: It's too soon to really decide what those things will be. I'd be surprised if some things related to search or tablet PCs aren't in there. It's up to Steve to think, in that new role, how can I be most effective. 
See more CNET content tagged:
Bill Gates, Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Xbox, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows Vista
I see what's happening here, MS sees limiting the equipments functions based on license of the OEM. (only 2 times can a user brand their Vista License.)
So if more computers are more released with limitations put apon them, they will make it like the MAC culture: Once your done with it, upgrade by throwing away the old ones, and buy a new one with Vista, making another sale. I can see this. Many of my computers over the years have been mainly sold to the average computer user. The one who doesn't care about upgrading later, they will buy a new one if they want something new.
With Ubuntu this year, I plan on subverting that price gap in price with larger companies. Drawing computer enthuiests and Game heads to buy my systems, instead of buying limited equiptment which is promoted now by Dell. I have been able to compete with the XPS lines every time, but that doesn't make many sales at my store, I going to get with that affordable market by pushing Ubuntu systems and giving customers broader choices who can upgrade and save cost. The Generic Vendors will encourage this, because they rely on small business and computer hobbiest to keep them operational. They use the same chip sets from VIA, phoenix, ETC... They will fight back by promoting this, while still making Windows cert Hardware for a little while. Because unless they make main boards for Gateway, Dell, or HP.. they would likely be pushed out this year.
It'd be interesting to read about how it goes if you can get an article on newsforge.com
Really, developer and hw manufacturer support is what makes Windows the best OS for majority of users. Linux is fine on servers and in limited scope in companies with well defined user roles (and with knowledgeable GNU/Linux personnel). At home it would be good only for browsing. Multimedia are problem still. Not only there is still poor suppor frmo hw manufacturers but many codecs and software players are only available for paying customers and are not included in Linux distributions as default(Novel SUSE anyone?)
Funny thing - it may actualy work out one day. As i write this i have a freespire instalation CD in my bag to put it on friends desktop PC - he has notebook with original Windows XP so the other old PC will be used only for browsing and multimedia. Freespire offers support for that including Windows Media Audio/Video formats.
I also choose Ubuntu.
Vista is here bla-bla-bla/etc. But what interests me most - is it possible to set Vista to display week day along with time in tray clocks? Or all users would have to - again - resort to 2nd party solutions/patches we are all so used to in a decade Windows exists?
Why we customers need a thousands little applications for what M$ needs about 1 man/day to accomplish?
Does M$ intend to start actually listening to what its Windows/Office users actually need? Or it would be going on pushing "big politics" on shoulder of its multi-million user base? - while completely disregarding all the small issues which waste our time every day.
To me M$' politics in regards of Windows & Office products really reminds saying "death by thousand cuts."
8:07 AM
Wednesday
1/31/2007
Gates: Windows Live is fairly new for us. Ray Ozzie came and took charge of that. With Vista shipping now, we'll get a higher percentage of R& D on that Live-type capability. Over the next year you're going to see some neat things coming out. No one has done the platform on the Internet the way we think it needs to be done. We've got a lot of breakthroughs that we're going to be rolling out..."; sit down with the international analysts, banker et cetera, et cetera... from around the world who will advise on "Live-type capability"/(capabilities) they need and not what Microsoft thinks they need! This is also what is needed to be added to "Bill Gates' to-do list"!
Was the jab at Linux neccissary though? There's no comparison in the article or in a comment your responding two yet 90% "Vista is great" with the 10% "oh, and better than Linux" qualifier. That just seems like your looking for a flame rather than providing any facts or comparison valid to the discussion.
Get a life people.
True. The only people who would listen to what Gates has to say are: (1) M$ fanboys who try evangelize his and (2) jealous businessmen who want to earn same fortune Gate have earned.
None of them are target audience of Linux: system made by people for people - to get job done.
on when you do step away from full-time work?
Gates: It's too soon to really decide what those things will be. I'd
be surprised if some things related to search or tablet PCs aren't
in there. It's up to Steve to think, in that new role, how can I be
most effective."
Listen - doesn't it scare anyone that what is being said here is
that the future of computing (according to MS) is going to be
decided by Steve Ballmer. I would be very afraid.
Oh sure, that's possible. But in practice it's not going to happen. If you can get straight to the content you're interested in, the content provider won't be able to cram as much advertising down your throat as he wants to. That's why news programs now deliberately don't tell you when the segment you're interested in will be on.
"The ads can be very targeted to you, so they won't be as bothersome."
Suuuuuure they will. I'm an 80-year-old woman named Jerry Sproinger, and my interests include arthritis medicine and falsifying information on my user profile. I doubt I'll be seeing a lot of Ducati ads.
"The content that is not very popular, like your kids' sports game or some lecture, will just be right there in your guide. The use of the Internet means it doesn't matter how many people are watching it. We can bring it down to you."
Big deal. We have local programming now that nobody watches. Hand out copies of your camcorder cassettes to the six people who will watch it and save yourself the time and effort of capturing, editing and uploading it.
"We get rid of these limitations, the time limitations and the number of channel limitations that the old broadcast approach forced us all into."
Oh yeah, like there aren't enough channels to broadcast the wealth of quality programming now. The real problem is that as the audience base gets more and more diluted, the production funding is going to disappear. Then nobody will produce anything worth watching. Oh wait, that's already happened.
"Once upon a time a typeset document was a clear sign that a big company was behind it and had put some real money into it. Today, anyone with a copy of Office and a laser printer is making documents that look as good as a big company."
That's partially true (although it was the Macintosh that started the desktop publishing revolution). But you can't produce typeset-quality work with Word. You need Quark or FrameMaker. And even if you have the layout tools, you still need to be able to write and edit the content, develop the graphics, and lay the document out in an effective and appealing manner. Most people are still not capable of doing that well.
"There is still a gap there in terms of movie editing. But now with this high-definition movie editor that's in Windows Vista, that barrier has really been changed."
Oh yeah, that's going to make a difference. After all, producing video has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the writing, acting, lighting, camera work, makeup, etc. Give an amateur video producer access to the entire resources of Universal Pictures and he's still going to produce crap. Hell, even Universal pictures can't produce anything worth watching these days.
PS. Enjoy your copies of Vista :-).
We all know that Microsoft is basically a software company. If I
wanted to KILL APPLE (and alt OS), all I had to do would be to start
being a software and hardware company, like Amiga. Then all the
Macs and PC's running Linux/alt OS in the world would fall on their
knees and bow to me. Hah hah hah hah (evil laughter).
Screw Business Partners- Done
Screw PC Vendors- Done
Screw Hardware Vendors- Done
Screw 3rd Party Software Vendors- Done
Lie about OpenSource Software (emphasis on Linux)- Done
Lie about Mac system- Done
Spend 5 years designing eye candy for XP and renaming it Vista- Done
Yup all Done. Time to retire.
Start a charitable foundation to try to atone for all the sleazy things I've done.
Turn Microsoft over to someone who's really going to me look like a genius by comparison.
DONT SIT UP THERE BY YOURSELF!
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DR NOH
SF,CA94116
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Bull. What was the first plug and play OS? Windows 95. Who's Office suit is most copied by everyone else for functionality? Microsoft. Who's idea was it to use a mouse in a graphical user interface? Wasn't apple, it was xerox. Who's operating system has a graphical user interface? All of them... apple, linux, microsoft, even atari and commodore had GUI interfaces in their OS's. Apple did not invent it, macboy. Tell me this? When is the mac OS going to support using whatever hardware I want to put into a computer? There's plenty of inovation to go all around; apple doesn't hold a monopoly on it.
- Number Two: Retire
- by Xenu7-214951314497503184010868 February 5, 2007 8:30 AM PST
- When you are the richest man on the planet, why, oh why are you wasting your time with this stupid computer company? Think of the things you could be doing instead? Fly the space shuttle! Clean up the ocean! Take over a small country and create a model civilization for others to emulate! Devote your life to spiritual development and benefiting sentient beings! Etc. I guess money doesn't cure nerdism.
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