lensman

Happy to be here

Lot of grat innovations & people out of MIT
See's paradox of what possibly could be accoumplished.
Internet bubble 5 years ago
What computers were like when he was a kid
Paul Allen and his begnnings with first gen microprocessors
constant improvments
IBM & MS first joint system for 8088
critical mass to kickstart the software industry
DOS it's 2 Mill copies sold
MS and Apple take original Xerox pioneering concepts & move forward
Internet standards come out of univeristy environment and start Internet excplosion.
Hardware has keept pace but his (admittly biased belief ) is that software is the driving force.
Chip people brought us Moore's law, but Storage people have outdone them.
New device come out in fall "portable Media Centre" 40Gb device $400 range
(not just music but video as well)
Screen resolution have caused big challenges, but future will assume 30" screens
This will cause windows management issues that will need to be dealt with
Tablet PC is getting better, all portable will become tablet like

Future of CPU is thinking about parralellization

Wireless will move from just connecting pc to net, but components of the pc will also be wireless so a pc will "pick up" nearest monitor

tough challenge is the cost of broadband
believes that advances in wireless and mesh hardware will improv connectivity

Smart watch on the small size recieve only now but will soon have transmit capability... Now thinking about how these devices will work together

building XML into business tech spreadsheets etc) so that buissiness processes become "visiual"

meetings are source of ineffficientcy.... how can it be made more so by recording and retransmiting...

sales... fix basic processes e-cormerce is only one step

spam: (Funny slides) Tuesday they announced DNS solution that can help what form of proof will ork in parrallel.

debit solution so that there would be a cost associated for spam

wearable camera that auto detects "interesting" events to make photos of durring the day

prototype of MS research
movies: hyper linked centralized db with graphical interface with titles/directors/actors, and the relations to each other

photo simiarity to find other related groupings has 3d ish interface

yes these are just db's but we need better ways to interact with the db

have very large research budget.... (6Mil IBM is about 20% less)
thre major research centers (cambridge, ...)

Language theory keeping systems up to date

automated tools should be available to monitor traffic
with learning capability for behavior blocking

speach recog progress is very good. in ideal situations they are comparable but add in noise and it get to be a worsening problem

speach work is catching on is a couple of chineese apps

AI - This is the holy grail - Impressed by MIT's commitment
roomba is first step very basic. but want to go higher

xbox live has a way to monitor level and make levels more challenging

boundery between comp sci and other sciences beginning to break down
astronomy db's are being collected to into large cross reference...

biology - optomistic about advances will benefit from advances

digital divide

challenge in comp sci is diversity, more gates scholorships at MIT than any other.

Tanks...

Q & A section:
What is .NET?
Revolution around XML, bettig on web services protocols for interoperability...
It is a broad project that they are about 60% complete

If you were 19 again and went to MIT, would you complete or drop out to form a company
Well I liked going to school - actually went on leave from harvard... would say that anyone who has the mind to try take time off you can alwas go back and finish later

Who do you consider a hero (inspiration)?
Warren buffet

How do you feel about software pattents?
on both side of issue. Pattent system is not perfect, but it has worked for several hundered years...

Interesting trend, about micro-isation... where do you see MS fitting in with sw getting cheep.
We only get paid once up frount. it never wears out. looking at various models
driven by need for better newer software.

{ small group leavng }

Question about philanthorpy....
Missed answer

Security, Dr Gear's papre on Mono-culture views:

Finance question:
MS has lots, how do you justify holding that much cash
"Sleep well at night".....

Gift to gates Sweatshirt and hard hat