T-Mobile customers are still seething after a major outage on Tuesday that left many people across the country unable to text and call their friends and business associates.
The outage, which started Tuesday afternoon and lasted through the evening before being resolved, affected a wide swath of users, though T-Mobile said that only 5 percent of customers were affected. T-Mobile has yet to say what caused the problems.
"Our sole focus during the service disruption on Tuesday was to quickly restore normal service to affected customers," T-Mobile said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are now working to determine the root cause and facts surrounding the interruption."
After CNET News reported on the outage and asked readers to share their experience, dozens of e-mails poured in.
From a husband unable to connect with his pregnant wife, to small-business owners unable to reach clients, to people getting grief for seemingly ignoring text messages from their significant others, people wrote in with their grievances.
Electrician Casey French, of Flower Mound, Texas, said that the outage is a major issue for his business, given that he can't afford to sit in an office with a landline phone.
"This is a catastrophic blow to businesses like mine, losing a day or more of production means losing not only money, but potential new customers, which in this economy are extremely hard to come by already," French said.
T-Mobile, which confirmed the outage Tuesday afternoon, released an updated statement around 5 p.m. PST, saying that "some T-Mobile customers may be experiencing intermittent service disruptions impacting voice and some data services."
However, plenty of folks e-mailed me to say they were having more than intermittent problems.
Around 6:15 p.m., the company said it was making "good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected customers." The company added that, "at this time, approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are experiencing service disruptions."
From that point, though, another 50 people e-mailed me to say they were still having problems with their service--many saying that they had multiple phones that weren't working as well as friends who were also having problems of one variety or another.
Some questioned T-Mobile's 5 percent estimate, saying that nearly everyone they knew with T-Mobile was experiencing some sort of outage. (As of the second quarter, T-Mobile had 33.5 million subscribers, meaning that even if 5 percent of users were affected, that would still be more than 1.5 million people.)
John Bystrom, of Elk Grove Village, Ill., said he also doubted the 5 percent figure, given the number of people who packed a local store he stopped in to inquire about the outage. Bystrom said he had just switched from AT&T to T-Mobile to get the BlackBerry 8900, but now hopes to switch back to AT&T.
"Hopefully I can get out without being charged the fee since T-Mobile in my opinion has broken the contract first by not delivering a stable system," Bystrom said.
At 10:30 p.m., T-Mobile e-mailed another statement, to say that things had been resolved.
"T-Mobile confirms it has fully restored voice and text/picture messaging services for customers affected by intermittent service disruptions on Tuesday," the company said. "About five percent of our customers across various geographies were affected for much of Tuesday evening, and by late Tuesday PST their service was restored... We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers."
Some took issue with the way T-Mobile handled the outage.
"My frustration with T-Mobile is not that they had an outage, but the way they buried their head in the sand," said Carlos Ovalle, an architect in Long Beach, Calif. "They have just about everyone's email and could have notified us of the issue. Had that been the case I could have immediately notified customers that rely on being able to reach me at a moment's notice."
Clarence Barnes, a TV and radio host in Los Angeles, said he also objected to how T-Mobile managed the issue. "The problem for me was that if you called my phone, it would say 'The number you dialed is no longer in service'," said Barnes who is looking for full-time work after the radio station where he worked switched formats. "If you get that message it generally means that the person no longer has that number or simply didn't pay the bill--either answer doesn't make me look that responsible."
Tuesday's outage is the latest blow for T-Mobile, which is still working through a month-long ordeal for its Sidekick service, in which some customers have lost their address books and many more are still waiting to get back other data, such as calendars, to-do lists, and photos.
Of course, T-Mobile customers are not the only ones with cell phone issues. AT&T customers regularly complain about service problems with their iPhones. An outage last year interrupted service for BlackBerry customers on various networks across North America. Earlier this year a cut fiber line left many AT&T customers in Silicon Valley without service.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile customers by and large had their service back, but many were still looking for answers. Bystrom said that several hours after calling customer care he got a call back offering a $5 credit. "When I protested that it was unacceptable (I) was pretty much told take it or leave it," Bystrom said.
Describing both the need for improvements in global health and the technologies that could create those gains, Bill Gates on Tuesday characterized himself as an "impatient optimist."
For those that know him, both terms describe him well.
Bill Gates talks about efforts to fight Malaria as part of a broad global health speech on Tuesday.
(Credit: CNET News)In the 15 months since he left full-time work at Microsoft, Gates has focused on his philanthropic efforts--which focus on areas where there is great suffering as well as the means to alleviate that suffering through attention and increased resources. But, too often, change is not coming quickly enough.
"When it comes to global health, Bill and I are optimists--but we're impatient optimists," Melinda Gates said in a statement ahead of a speech on Tuesday. "The world is getting better, but it's not getting better for everyone, and it's not getting better fast enough."
Melinda Gates pointed to a program in South Africa where antiviral treatments are helping those living with HIV, but she said that for every two getting the treatment, there are five others that are missing out.
"That's the kind of thing that makes us impatient optimists," she said.
In the Washington, D.C. address, which is being carried live over the Internet, the Gateses spoke of areas where change is taking place, pointing to some of the "Living Proof" success stories that his foundation has highlighted on its Web site recently.
In his speech, Bill Gates noted that the U.S. government has increased its spending on global health each of the last 10 years and said that the investment is paying off.
"We're here to say two words you don't often hear about government programs," Bill Gates said. "Thank you."
He pointed to what he called the most beautiful picture he had ever seen--a chart of childhood deaths worldwide that shows death falling by more than half since 1960, when 20 million kids a year died annually.
But, he said, even the current level of 9 million childhood deaths a year is too many. Gates called on policymakers to commit to reducing by nearly half the number of children that die each year, from the present level of 9 million per year to less than 5 million by 2025.
"U.S. support has already helped to reduce deaths of young children by more than 50 percent in the past 50 years," Bill Gates said in a statement ahead of the speech. "If we keep up our commitment, it's possible to cut child mortality in half again--just 15 years from now. What's more, we can do it with proven interventions that already exist."
Despite the global economic challenges, the foundation has increased its own spending this year.
In particular, the Gateses advocate a focus on fighting malaria, vaccinating 90 percent of children against preventable diseases, providing basic health services to three quarters of the world's pregnant women and newborns, and treating diarrhea and pneumonia.
"A few interventions make a dramatic difference," Bill Gates said, showing computer modeling that shows that work in those areas alone could allow the number of global childhood deaths to drop below five million per year. "This is well within the realm of possibility."
Melinda Gates noted the development of a vaccine against rotavirus--a major global health threat, but one that remained invisible because it wasn't a factor in developed countries such as the United States.
"It's a fantastic success," Melinda Gates said. "We've created a vaccine for the poorest children on the planet and it's just beginning to reach them."
One of the challenges, though, is that the vaccine needs to be refrigerated throughout its journey from manufacture to delivery to those being immunized.
In the speech, Melinda Gates told the story of a young HIV-infected girl who went from very ill to robust after a year on retroviral treatment and brought out a Namibian a capella group that tours the country with songs that educate people about HIV. Bill Gates talked about some of the methods being used to fight Malaria and other diseases.
But he also saved some of his words to answer those skeptical of his efforts, worried that the aid was only fueling corruption or actually holding back long-term self sufficiency.
"The goal here is to help countries become self-sufficient," Gates said, noting that onetime aid recipients like Thailand and Brazil are now net contributors. "Aid done properly can help a country unleash their potential."
Not all of the criticisms are myths, though, Melinda Gates said. She noted that very little progress has been made in some areas, such as protecting the health of new mothers and newborns. Roughly half a million women in poorer countries die during childbirth, while one in 32 children in the developing world die in their first month of life.
Bill and Melinda Gates spoke earlier on Tuesday on ABC's World News Tonight, talking about the role that just a couple of new vaccines can have in saving millions of lives.
And, while most of his time is going toward his foundation work, Bill Gates said he still spends time at his other job--at Microsoft.
"I love the work that Microsoft does," Bill Gates said in an excerpt of the interview posted to ABC's Web site. "I love the magic of software."
Here is one of the foundation's Living Proof videos:
SEATTLE--In one corner of the exhibition hall, hands sift through bins searching for rare pieces missing from vast collections. In another area, a giant Lego person rides in circles atop a brick rendition of the Segway scooter. In between are myriad Lego creations large and small.
It was all part of BrickCon 2009--a four-day festival devoted to Lego, the Danish creation that celebrated its 50th birthday last year.
On display were pieces of Lego art, replicas of real cities and even visions of an apocalyptic future crafted from the signature blocks. For those seeking to build on expansive collections, vendors offered rare and discontinued Lego sets as well as bulk bins where enthusiasts could hunt for plastic treasure.
Also for sale were all manner of trinkets, including T-shirts with sayings like "Got bricks?" along with jewelry and working lamps crafted from Legos.
Among those displaying their projects was Micah Berkoff, a 15-year-old who has already amassed more than 200,000 pieces in his collection. "After it overtook my regular room, I had to move it to a special Lego room," Berkoff said.
Berkoff brought a steampunk vehicle he created back in January to show at the convention, but was a little worried that he would be overlooked because he wasn't an adult like most of those who attended the main part of the conference. "I thought I would have been ignored," Berkoff said. "I thought this would be a conference for AFOLs."
For those not up to speed on Lego lingo, that means an Adult Fan of Lego. Indeed, while the public convention hall was open to all ages for several hours on Saturday and Sunday, the four-day private convention was geared primarily to adults (though teens could participate if a parent did as well).
And there were plenty of AFOLs. One of them was Thomas Mueller, a 33-year-old German native who created a moving Segway scooter out of Legos topped with a giant re-creation of the Lego person. Mueller had a remote-control version of his Segway at last year's BrickCon, but that required his constant attention. This year, he decided instead to have the Segway follow a lined track so that he would have more time to socialize with other convention-goers. With a fresh set of batteries, Mueller said the scooter can now run for four hours unattended.
Mueller actually didn't set out to build a Segway at all. He was building a weapons platform, but when he showed the partially built creation to friends, they all thought it resembled the pricey scooter. Rather than fight it, he decided to tweak his creation to work like the scooter.
When the doors finally opened to the public on Saturday, the line stretched for more than three blocks.
Among those who toured the event during the public time on Saturday was M3 Sweatt, who works in Microsoft's Windows unit, along with his two boys, CJ and Max. Sweatt said it took 45 minutes to get inside the event, but added that it was worth the wait.
Among the things that attendees could try out was a new version of software from Lego that lets people design their own Lego creation online. If people like their creation enough, they can order the real pieces required to build it direct from Lego. The latest version of the Lego Digital Designer software, due out soon, also lets users create a custom-designed box for their project.
BrickCon began in 2002 in just a small room at Seattle Center but has grown almost every year and now fills the giant 35,000-square-foot exhibition hall.
While BrickCon was probably the most interesting event in Seattle Center for the geek set (aside from the year-round science fiction museum), for me it was a trifecta on Saturday as I also got to enjoy the Northwest Tea Festival, as well as the opening day of the Sesame Street Presents The Body exhibit at The Children's Museum, Seattle. That last exhibit, which I particularly enjoyed, is in Seattle through January and then travels to Buffalo, N.Y., as part of its ongoing tour.
(Credit:
Ina Fried/CNET)
PASADENA, Calif.--Ashton Kutcher said that the fact he beat CNN to a million Twitter followers is a significant deal.
Kutcher, known to his nearly 3 million followers as "aplusk," said that it shows that one individual can have the power to reach as many people in a new medium as a media conglomerate.
"Individuals are becoming consumers and (the) editors of the media," Kutcher said. "It has and will forever change media."
While he doubts his content has the broad relevance of, say, CNN, Kutcher said having such a large audience is both fun and useful for his job as an actor.
"It gives you an ability to stay in tune with your audience...but also as it has continued to grow, it gives me a great platform to syndicate content."
Kutcher noted that half the budget of a film is spent on marketing, basically trying to reach the potential audience of that movie.
"I can do it for free (by) pushing a button," Kutcher said. "There's a value proposition with my other job."
Although he spoke of Twitter specifically, Kutcher said the real advance was widely distributed, real-time microblogging. He said that someone will probably come around with a microblogging service that syndicates better and searches better than Twitter.
For those who want more aplusk, here's a video interview that CNET News did last year with Kutcher on the launch of his entertainment Web site.
PASADENA, Calif.--Marc Andreessen is known more for building companies rather than funding them, but he said he is looking forward to proving his chops in the latter category.
Andreessen, who launched his $300 million Andreessen Horowitz venture capital fund earlier this month, said Wednesday at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech conference that he has a lot of "directly relevant" experience that will help attract start-ups.
Marc Andreessen talks about his move from entrepreneur to venture capitalist at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech conference on Wednesday.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)There are not that many great companies started each year, he said. Andreessen noted that there are probably 15 companies created a year that go on to produce $100 million a year in revenue and account for much of the industry's return.
"Our job as a VC is to be able to get into those...by being the kind of VC that entrepreneurs want to (do business with)," Andreessen said.
He said that his fund will focus on his field of expertise--information technology.
"We won't do medical devices," he said. "We won't do rocket ships. We won't do space elevators."
Andreessen said that many markets seen as mature are actually still rapidly changing--sectors such as storage, networking and operating system.
"There's a lot of change happening in these areas," he said.
Andreessen, best known for his role at Netscape, said he learned from his summer as an IBM intern that a career at such a large company was probably not for him. While he learned a lot, he said there were 17 layers of management between him and the IBM chief executive.
He said that start-ups tend to be more innovative, but said that only when companies get large can they really have a global impact.
"Small companies, just as a category are going to be more innovative," he said, though he noted Google and some other large companies have managed to remain innovative.
Asked about his prediction for the economy, Andreessen went out on a limb: "I predict the company will survive in some fashion."
He did, however, suggest that the deleveraging of the economy may not be done yet, noting that the government has pumped billions in to replace private sector money.
"Have we really addressed the problem or have we just kicked the can?" he said.
Correction at 4:15 a.m. PDT July 23: The spelling of Andreessen's last name has been fixed.
A full-scale model of Curiosity, the next-generation Mars rover, was on display at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference here.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)PASADENA, Calif.--While some suggest that space exploration is a luxury we can't afford in tough times, it's not surprising that Charles Elachi doesn't see it that way.
"Our economy is fundamentally dependent on innovation," said Elachi, who heads NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This is not the time to go back and sit under our shell."
Elachi, speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference, said some of the technology used in space has led to things like GPS and better ways of detecting cancer.
To offer a visual aid to his argument, Elachi brought a full-scale model of the next Mars rover, due to begin its voyage in two years.
The vehicle, known as Curiosity, has 10 times the experiment carrying ability of the last Mars rover and is due to spend at least a martian year (two earth years) gathering data.
Of course, the first-generation rover was only designed to last 90 days and two of those vehicles have now been going for five years.
"Why did they survive?" Elachi said. "It is a combination of being smart and being lucky."
He noted that one of the two current rovers had one of its six wheels fail and the other has had other issues. "After a while you get old, but we've always figured out a way to manage it."
Curiosity will be nuclear powered, as opposed to the solar technology used in the first-generation vehicles.
It's been a year since Bill Gates left full-time work at Microsoft, but he's found plenty to keep him busy.
In between trying to eradicate polio, tame malaria, and fix the broken U.S. education system, Gates has managed to fulfill a dream of taking some classic physics lectures and making them available free over the Web. The lectures, done in 1964 by noted scientist (and Manhattan Project collaborator) Richard Feynman, take notions such as gravity and explains how they work and the broad implications they have in understanding the ways of the universe.
Gates first saw the series of lectures 20 years ago on vacation and dreamed of being able to make them broadly available. After spending years tracking down the rights--and spending some of his personal fortune--Gates has done just that. Tapping his colleagues in Redmond to create interactive software to accompany the videos, Gates is making the collection available free from the Microsoft Research Web site.
Gates said that he hoped his action would serve as a model for taking great educational content and making it broadly available for free.
"When a lecture is presented as well as this, it draws more people in to understanding science." Gates told CNET News. "And over time I hope there's more like this."
In a wide-ranging interview, Gates also reflected on the changes at Microsoft, spill the beans on the expansive vision for Product Natal and shared his thoughts on Google's just-introduced Chrome OS. Here's an edited transcript of that interview.
You first saw these videos on a vacation 20 years ago. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that happened, and what your reaction was to seeing those lectures?
Gates: Yes. I was in a period where, in order to learn new science, thought it would be a fun thing to see what films there were, and we went to some university catalogs, including University of California system had a catalog of films, and got a lot of health, biology, physics type films--those are those metal cans with big reels--and then we had a projector in a room that we made dark. So even (during) the day, you could thread these films. And there were a lot of interesting ones, but these Feynman lectures that he gave at Cornell...those were just unbelievably good.
After that, I got them put onto videotape, and I got rights to make a small number of videotapes. It was VHS tape at the time, and send it around to some friends who might be interested. But I always had in the back of my mind that it was kind of a crime that there wasn't broad availability of those things, particularly for young people thinking about science.
And so I sort of had this project in mind, and (have been) making some progress in understanding who had the rights, and eventually doing deals for the rights, and then getting these things scanned, and then getting Microsoft Research agreed to host the stuff and create some innovative software around it, which Curtis (Wong) has run. It's taken a long time, but with lots of PCs and the Internet, and my willingness to spend some money, now these things are just going to be out there.
What do you hope people get out of these videos? Who is your ideal audience for them?
Gates: Well, I didn't get to see these until I was about 30, and so I would love it if lots of young people saw them, and got a sense of the fun, and how science works, and what's complicated, and what's not. I hope some people who teach science are inspired by the way that Feynman managed to make it interesting without giving up the depth of how it works.
With super-high-quality material like this up there for free, I hope people see the potential, and that they'd benefit from this one in particular, and then it starts to push forward the idea if someone is great lecturer, then their work should be out there and available.
I've heard you talk about the way community college really should change, and really what we should be doing for some of these subjects that are somewhat universal is taking really the best explanations, the best lectures out there, and making those broadly available, and then focusing sort of the local learning around discussion and different sorts of things.
Gates: That's right. Education, particularly if you've got motivated students, the idea of specializing in the brilliant lecture and text being done in a very high-quality way, and shared by everyone, and then the sort of lab and discussion piece that's a different thing that you pick people who are very good at that.
Technology brings more to the lecture availability, in terms of sharing best practices and letting somebody have more resources to do amazing lectures. So, you'd hope that some schools would be open minded to this fitting in, and making them more effective.
But, you've also got this huge set of people who like to teach themselves and like to learn things, and yet find science kind of daunting. And when a lecture is presented as well as this, it draws more people in to understanding science. And over time I hope there's more like this, including some about science stuff that's changed since the time these were done.
How big an impact do you think these types of things can have in terms of the overall problem of getting people interested in math and science? Is this type of thing enough, or do we really need to fundamentally do more, younger?
Gates: Well, certainly in fifth grade through senior year, most students aren't yet motivated to want to learn a lot in general, and particularly about science and math. The big impact is anything that can help teachers do a better job, where teachers can either see other teachers doing it super-well, or they might incorporate some online things into the classroom experience. As you get older, and you've got people who are motivated more clearly, then it shifts where these online lectures can be a huge part of learning.
That's where Feynman with his clarity of explanation and simplicity of explanation, and love of the subject, and humor around it is such an exemplar.
You mentioned that you didn't get to see these until you were in your 30s. If you had seen them earlier in your career, maybe before you decided to start Microsoft, do you think you might have headed in a different direction?
Gates: I'm not sure. I've always liked physics, but I also want the equivalent lectures to be out there for biology, and computer science, and chemistry. Everybody has a level where you can bring in their interest. I mean, people care about animals, and disease, and food, but many of the sciences are so abstract, and the amount of things you have to learn before you start connecting to those practical issues can be very daunting. And yet with a teacher like Feynman they're out there in different fields, it's just that we haven't had a way to magnify their excellence, and make it broadly available.
One of the points that's made in the lectures is this idea that from the discovery of gravity there's basically been since then 400 years of just an avalanche of discoveries, and he sort of puts forth this notion of continuous progress. And I'm curious, do you see that having continued, or have we seen limits to sort of some of the full understanding that the basic sciences can give us? Are there things that are beyond sort of what basic science can teach us?
Gates: We're learning more about basic science today by a huge amount than ever before. You just take understanding materials, why they break, why they're strong, how you engineer them to have various properties, and a lot of that was black magic. And it's only now that we're able to say, okay, when we want to make batteries that charge really fast, okay, how do you make something with a lot of surface area that doesn't degrade.
Anyway, in material science, or basic medical things, or basic things about physics that are going to be important for cheap energy as just one example, this is the most interesting time. That's why it's partly an irony that you're not getting the best and the brightest particularly native born to go into science and math. And so you've got to look back and say, what is it we're doing about making it daunting, or abstract that holds that back so much.
There's an American physicist, Fritjof Capra, (who) wrote a lot of books in the '70s on ecology, and the limits of Cartesian thinking. Basically his thing was that by focusing on sort of the Cartesian reductionist approach to things that prioritizes sort of looking at the small parts--that type of thinking has contributed to not getting as deep an understanding of things like ecology, and really complex systems. Is that what's caused us to get into some of the problems we have, or do you think it's more just these are tough choices and require conserving, and things that are kind of hard for us as humans to do?
Gates: Well, the tough situation that we're in is that we have electricity, we have medicines, we have vaccines, those were all due to scientific understanding. And as we get new materials, new batteries, solar, nuclear energy that don't cause environmental things, it will be because of these scientific understandings. So, I think the incredible improvement in living standards, and life expectancy, and literacy, and all those things really do come back to the advanced scientific understanding. And when people look at history, that's the one thing that they always undervalue is how scientific progress has allowed us to do those big things.
It's true that as you go forward, you tackle more complex problems, but the tools of modeling and simulation and getting a lot of people who are mainly in politics, but know enough about science to be in the discussion, that's important. You know, there was a book written called Physics for Future Presidents, which took some of the basic notions of energy density and costs and dangers about radiation or nuclear weapons, and put that into a fairly straightforward thing.
We do have a problem if we don't draw a large part of society into at least some understanding of science and the tools of science. And so, having great lectures online, I have several goals--improve education, get more people into the sciences in a deep way, but also get a broader set of people into sciences in even a modest way.
When we talked a year ago, I asked kind of what you anticipated your life would be like once you stopped being at Microsoft full time. Now a year later what are some of your observations on how your time is different, and maybe what are some things that you hadn't expected about where you are today?
Gates: Well, the foundation work is very rewarding, and there's a lot of interesting complexity that comes with it. I'm pretty much doing what I expected to be doing, which is very different than what I was doing before my job changed. I do have about 20 percent involvement with Microsoft, where topics like their future of Office, of search, or various things that Steve (Ballmer) asked me to look into and help out with come along. So that's developed pretty much like I would expect.
It will be interesting as I get a year or two more out, and I know the activities and the people (at Microsoft) a little bit less, you know, how Steve and I make sure I stay fresh and connected and things like that. So, maybe the first year was always going to be the easiest. And it's at the level that we planned it for, which is giving me a massive amount of additional time to meet with scientists and go to the developing world and meet with various government partners.
For the last three months, up until two weeks ago, I was entirely in Europe, and actually based out of there. Our family had moved over there. So, I was up at Cambridge and Oxford. For that period I was particularly focused on the science and partners, both governments and companies, and things that happen to be based in Europe. That's done, but the kind of things I was doing there are exactly what my schedule looks like over the next six months, where I'm in India, I'm in Africa, going to meet with companies, doing things, meeting with scientists. So, you know, I'm thrilled by the foundation work, and fortunately I have Jeff Raikes running the foundation as CEO, and so my role at the foundation is a lot like it was in the period where Steve had already taken over as CEO, where I got to be more on the research side, the breakthroughs, the new ideas.
And you've been doing some stuff with Intellectual Ventures. I know every time you show up on a patent application that, folks get interested in what you're looking at, whether it's stopping hurricanes, or beer kegs, or what-have-you.
Gates: That's right. We're going to make the cows that don't fart. You name it, we've got it under control.
That's been really exciting to take this idea of gathering top scientists from a broad set of areas and think about problems that can be solved. And in the case of the foundation, you know, Nathan (Myhrvold) has used that ability to convene great scientists to look at things like how do you deliver vaccines without having to use as many refrigerators, or how do you pasteurize milk in a better way, some very interesting things. And then I also sit down with that group when they're looking at their rich world applications, including things around energy, and one of those has actually led to creating a company called TerraPower, which is focused on a new, very radically improved nuclear power plant design, which is a hard thing to get done, but extremely valuable if it comes through.
I'm curious of your thoughts of how Microsoft is doing as a company since you left. I'd also be remiss if I didn't ask you what you thought of Google's efforts to get in the OS arena.
Gates: Well, just to do the second part very succinctly, there's many, many forms of Linux operating systems out there, and packaged in different ways, and booted in different ways. So I don't know anything in particular about what Google is doing. But, in some ways I'm surprised people are acting like there's something new. I mean, you've got Android running on Netbooks; it's got a browser in it. In any case, you should make them be concrete about what they're doing. It is kind of a typical thing. When Google is doing anything it gets this--the more vague they are, the more interesting it is.
I guess there is the notion, though, and I know Microsoft Research had been looking at it, too, of whether the browser, because it's become so central to so much of our work, needs to take on more operating system-like characteristics.
Gates: It just shows the word browser has become a truly meaningless word. Anyway, what's a browser, what's not a browser? If you're playing a movie, is that a browser or not a browser? If you're doing annotations is that a browser or not a browser? If you're editing text, is that a browser or not a browser? In large part it's more an abuse of terminology than a real change.
What about on the question of how Microsoft is doing?
Gates: I'm always the one who thinks, gosh, why isn't Microsoft doing even more, because that's been my mindset, let's move fast, do new things very quickly. But, you have to say, whether it's Windows 7 that is a really excellent piece of work. I'd go so far as to say both compared to other operating systems, and compared to other generations of Windows, it's an extremely nice piece of work.
What they're doing in new versions of Office--I guess they showed a little bit of how the Web piece fits into it recently, but there's a lot about the new version that will get talked about in the next nine months or so. The work on search, where people see Bing as a nice piece of work, really see us in the game, hiring really top people, and willing to try to do things some different ways.
The part of Microsoft I stay up to date the most on is probably the research group. I was over at the Cambridge lab a few weeks ago, over at the India lab as part of a trip I take this month, and that's really the sort of crown jewel in terms of always feeding neat new things into Microsoft. I'd say a cool example of that, that you'll see is kind of stunning, in a little over a year, is this (depth-sensing) camera thing... Not just for games, but for media consumption as a whole... If they connect it up to Windows PCs for interacting in terms of meetings, and collaboration, and communication, you put the camera in now it's a cool thing, and it's just an example where Microsoft research did the original stuff to show, with the depth information, something great could be done. Then both the Xbox guys and the Windows guys latched onto that and now even since they latched onto it the idea of how it can be used in the office is getting much more concrete, and is pretty exciting.
So Microsoft is a very innovative company, but obviously in a hyper-competitive field, which is what makes it such a great field.
I'm not sure I understood that last point. You're talking about cameras, you were talking about like the depth sensing cameras that are in Natal?
Gates: Yes, exactly, Natal. The software libraries and applications we're doing around Natal.
And we'll basically see that in more than gaming? We'll see it in other scenarios, too?
Gates: Well, I think the value is as great for if you're in the home, as you want to manage your movies, music, home system type stuff, it's very cool there. And I think there's incredible value as we use that in the office connected to a Windows PC. So Microsoft research and the product groups have a lot going on there, because you can use the cost reduction that will take place over the years to say, "Why shouldn't that be in most office environments?"
Bill Gates may not be showing up at Microsoft headquarters every day, but he's certainly staying busy.
In an interview with CNET News, the Microsoft chairman talks about just a few of the things on his plate, including an effort to make a series of classic physics lectures available for free over the Internet.
Although it's unlikely to garner the audience of say, a sneezing panda, Gates said that putting great educational content online is an important part of getting people interested in science.
"When a lecture is presented as well as this, it draws more people in to understanding science." Gates said.
Gates also took on topics such as Google's Chrome OS and what things at Microsoft still have him excited.
One of those things, he said, is Project Natal, the technology shown at E3 this year that uses depth-sensing cameras to allow one's own hands to act as a video game controller. But Natal is not just for games, Gates said, noting that the technology is also being used by the Windows team, which sees uses both for controlling media at home as well as in a number of workplace scenarios.
"If they connect it up to Windows PCs for interacting in terms of meetings, and collaboration, and communication, you put the camera in now it's a cool thing, and it's just an example where Microsoft research did the original stuff to show, with the depth information, something great could be done," Gates said. "Then both the Xbox guys and the Windows guys latched onto that and now even since they latched onto it the idea of how it can be used in the office is getting much more concrete, and is pretty exciting."
Ticketmaster's Irving Azoff rejects criticism by Bruce Springsteen and others of the proposed buyout of Live Nation.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)CARLSBAD, Calif.--Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff portrayed his company on Wednesday as one that needs the merger with Live Nation to survive.
"Any of you guys can write a program to sell some tickets," he told the crowd at the D: All Things Digital conference here.
Conference co-host Kara Swisher took issue with his positioning. "Most people don't consider Ticketmaster a victim," Swisher said.
Azoff noted that more and more entities are getting into the ticketing business, forcing his company to diversify as well.
"It's the natural evolution of business," he said. "It's just a myth that there is not real competition."
He rejected the criticism of the proposed deal from Bruce Springsteen and others.
"I would say Bruce is uninformed," he said.
Asked about the deal's prospects of ultimately going through, he said: "We're very optimistic and enthusiastic that the merger will get done sometime between now and the second half of the year," he said.
Twitter's Evan Williams and Biz Stone (far right) on stage with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the opening keynote Tuesday of D: All Things Digital.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)CARLSBAD, Calif.--The D7: All Things Digital opening night keynote, often reserved for tech legends like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, was handed over this year to the team behind Twitter. CNET News is offering live coverage, so check back for frequent updates.
6:37 p.m. PT: Rupert Murdoch takes the stage to kick things off.
6:40 p.m. PT: Singer Jill Sobule takes the stage with a song written for Rupert. Kara Swisher comes out to hold the lyrics.
"Rupert I met you last year at this conference," she sang. "Do you remember me. They took our picture. you gave me a warm hug. It was really disconcerting. I've never been a big fan."
6:47 p.m. PT: Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher take the stage.
They thank the audience. "We've decided to declare the end of Web 2.0 right here," Mossberg said, declaring the start of, you guessed it Web 3.0.
Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher take the stage Tuesday at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET)"We're that creative," Swisher chimed in.
6:50 p.m. PT: Now they are musing about the econolyse and plugging their iPhone app.
Now they are mocking their presenting companies with iPhone apps that they could benefit from.
"Trying to make money from an overvalued microblogging service," they said. "We've got an app for that," they added, showing a picture of the Twitter fail whale being harpooned with dollar signs.
They went on to mock Microsoft's search engine, Yahoo's occasionally foul-mouthed CEO and MySpace.
6:58 p.m. PT: As a prelude to the Twitter execs, Swisher interviewed her mom.
Do you Twitter, Swisher asked her mom. Why would I want to that, the elder Swisher said.
"Why would I want people to know what I am doing?" she said. "It's nobody's business."
"It's going to be sold for a zillion dollars," Swisher said.
"Lucky them," Swisher's mom said.
7:10 p.m. PT: Back up after some networking problems. To make a a long story short, Swisher and Mossberg have been hammering them on how many people regularly use Twitter as well as about their past company, which specialized in podcasting and got "crushed" by Apple, according to Mossberg and Swisher.
7:13 p.m. PT: Another thing that was noted while my computer was misbehaving, Twitter has just 43 full-time workers. And even that is a big jump, Biz Stone noted.
"We've doubled since January," Williams said.
7:15 p.m. PT: With so many third-party applications for Twitter, Swisher asks them what pieces of technology they plan
Williams notes the company invested a year ago buying a search engine. "We plan to work on search a lot."
Mossberg asked if they plan to build their own clients, either for computers or phones.
"We're pretty device agnostic or interface agnostic," Williams said. "I don't think we should build a desktop client any time soon. We'll work on the Web site."
After avoiding it for nearly 15 minutes, Swisher has started to ask about a business model, which actually qualifies as admirable restraint in my book.
She asks if real-time search is the answer. Williams notes that Twitter is just doing search of Twitter itself, not the Web. "It's a completely different thing," he said.
7:18 p.m. PT: So advertising, is that the business model, Swisher asks.
They talk a bit about "opportunities for discovery," but don't really say anything new on revenue.
Mossberg said that the polling D did showed 30 percent of people would be willing to see banner advertising.
"I think its probably the least interesting thing we could do," Williams said, but added he said it probably wouldn't offend him as a user.
Williams spoke more positively about commercial accounts, but reiterated that the company has nothing to add that front.
7:22 p.m. PT: They are talking more about the possibilities for commercial accounts. After some debate, they settle on using Dunkin Donuts as an example.
The first thing Twitter could do, Williams said, is authenticate it really is Dunkin' Donuts. Doing that will require manpower on Twitter's part. "We'll probably want to charge money for that," Williams said.
Location-based information is another possibility, they said.
7:25 p.m. PT: Swisher asks them what it is like to be the hot company.
"That is not going to last," Stone said. "Pretty soon everyone is going to hate us...maybe by the time we are done speaking. The worst thing we could do is get all caught up in this."
Swisher asked about their talks with Facebook and other companies about selling the company. She noted that she has this thing about sustainable companies.
"I have a big thing about building sustainable companies too," Williams said.
Swisher: What if Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi or someone with Google came up and said "a billion dollars, here you are."
She pressed them on whether they, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg have the ability to say no to such an offer. "It doesn't matter that much because the board and investors are feeling the same way we are," Williams said.
7:35 p.m. PT: What's the next big thing?
"We are not doing a TV show," Williams said, shooting down the rumor du jour. He said that people can build Twitter apps for TVs, much like they do for phones and computers. Or someone can have a TV show with Twitter feedback built-in.
The next big thing, Stone said is building the company, scaling it to become a larger company. 7:37 p.m. PT: They open it up for questions. Venture capitalist Roger McNamee offers a couple of comments. "Don't ever do another planned maintenance in the middle of the day on a week day."
He also suggested that they need to find a way to scale their business faster than they have been. "I can't believe that 45 people is the right number of people... I think that you've created the coolest thing in a long time."
7:44 p.m. PT: Back to business model stuff.
Stone said the greatest business model could be something that no one has thought of yet. he said that an important facet of the company is assuming it doesn't know where things might go.
That said, Williams said the company will try some revenue-producing ideas.
10:00 p.m. PT: I got a chance to interview Williams and Stone, after their chat. Click here to read about it or check out the video embedded below.
"We are going to start trying some stuff," he said.
