…are amazing; the plasma people stepping up for their piece; the improvements in just the capacity and the bandwidth.
I love seeing that 802.11n is happening here. Now that's a cutting-edge thing, but people are sending high definition over multiple input, multiple output-type devices. Those will get standardised; the price will come down. Here, Toshiba, when you connect up your video, they're using ultrawideband to send a DVI video signal from here so that you don't have to connect. It's a docking station with no cables. The only thing you need a wire for is the power. Everything else, you just come within proximity, and there it is. So that's a cutting-edge thing; that it's low-volume this year but over the next several years really will get out there in a huge way.
The relationship of phones to PCs, we'll see some new things there. The relationships of PCs to services up on the internet itself, that's another hot area that we and others are investing in. So everything is here, from purple containers for devices to neat new software. I get to spend a few hours looking around tomorrow.
Obviously, you're still working full-time at Microsoft, but the Gates Foundation is getting a lot of your attention. Health care and education have been two of the big focuses. What are the kinds of things that you're starting to look at in your foundation work?
The change for me doesn't come until mid-2008. I'm totally full-time at Microsoft and get anywhere from 10 to 15 hours on my foundation work. That's going very well. We've got great scientists, and people understand that the challenge is there, and so I look forward to understanding those things better. My new time really will go into health and education, some of which, hopefully, I'll help Microsoft in those areas but very much the foundation getting some of that input.
Both Microsoft and the Gates Foundation have education as a common focus. You and other people have been talking about the problems and putting a lot of energy into it for years now. Especially in the US, is the education situation getting better or is it still not where it needs to be?
Education is complex to even measure. My daughter goes to a school that's been using portable PCs for every student for over six years now. They use tablets. And if she doesn't have a maths textbook, she just cuts the problems out and tries things out. She can email the teacher whenever she wants.
So when you get a glimpse of that, and how interactive it is and how it's easy to analyse, OK, what's going wrong here? And that kind of support that you get from simple communications, and even sending the homework to the parents and saying "Hey, I need help with this" or "Hey, I'm proud of what I did".
You can see a glimpse that we've got some really great things — the lectures that are out there on the internet now. If you can find the right ones, it's kind of amazing, and Microsoft and others can do more to make that simple so that lectures are the simple, the easy part. And then collaborative learning — whether that's just finding people online or even doing the collaborative learning online — software can help with that, you know, build a marketplace that that all coalesces around. We're quite enthused about it.
Talkback
I saw some of the CE show demos and was gobsmacked by the idea anyone would allow MS Windows to run a house?
Don't they have health and Saftey Executive in the US?
MS have not the first idea of resilient integrated systems, their OS can barely hang together for a decent session on a simple PC and is not even closely integrated with the many available PC peripheral device drivers - think fire extinguishers or intruder protection systems for a house - and it takes a technology geek to fix anything beyond a reboot, pick crashed apps from the teeth of its DOS throwback registry, etc. Been there , done that.
Run away! Run away!
There was once a good gag about what people would expect if they bought a car from Microsoft and it regularly stopped functioning without warning and required various unnatural acts to get working and keep running. Its coming true in the mind of his Billness! Do not be hypnotised and swallowed up by the evil empire. Resistance is possible. WAKE UP!
Anyone really want to trust the operation of their house to a Microsoft OS? Maybe a Mac or Linux, Mac if you want to minimise user expert knowledge and actual service interuptions.
But really this should not even be a PC architecture market. Its far too life threatening. You need to step right out of loosely integrated modular PC architectures - to MIL standard embedded processors with tight, non proprietary designs so they are required by law to work with all connected peripheral devices and run bomb proof "House Management" code the user doesn't have to maintain - and will run indefinitely without a upgrade on what is a closed and industry standard consumer unit for 20 or 30 years with the only upgrades to BIOS/firmware. Not an MS way of working.
Imagine:
"Microsoft VIstahome version 8.3.2 Release 4 has encountered a critical software error and must be rebooted. The sprinkler system has been activated. Please evacuate the property, close all active programs, cooking , heating, lighting and life support systems then reboot".
"We're sorry, you need to upgrade to House 7.3 before you can enter the property again, please authorise payment of $1,000 to Microsoft to gain entry".
etc.
.... I don't think so. This needs closed integrated industry standard devices from people who understand what real consumer utility products are, as in Honeywell Controls et al. Or motor vehicle electronics makers - who are not quite there yet either but a lot closer than MS.
Not flaky Gates' MS who demonstrably wouldn't know how to build an integrated resilient and fault tolerant system to save their lives, and have always swamped emerging CPU power with crap overweight code and pointless cunningly concealed and unuseable-by-the-rest-of-us "features" for techno "don't you know that" geeks with no lives - instead of making PCs work faster and the core features more accessible to ordinary people who live in houses instead of sleeping in their clothes under their coding stations. Would you want their idea of a user interface running your property?
With a REAL integrated approach to PCs Woz and Steve had an integrated intuitive GUI OS running on 1985 Motorola 68000 CPU technology, it took MS another 10 years - and then MS started with the licensed Mac OS for Windows 2.0 and 3.0.
Since then Jobs did Pixar, iMac and iPod. Microsoft did some more cumbersome and slower OS and Office Apps, the ignored tablet PC and played "catch up and kill the innovators" on the Internet. With smart handelds they are still forcing cool and unwanted technology on real users instead of targetting needs, as Sony , a real market led company, has.
I rest my case.
My motion is this house will never run under a Microsoft OS.
Don't let yours if you value your investment.
Brian Catt
Think i will agree with you on this as the idea of a gates controlled house is a tad scary.