Bits: Many Are Already at Work on Fulfilling Gatesâs Vision
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Bill Gatesâs Davos challenge to the worldâs capitalists last week did not mention some important work that is already under way in developing nations.
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Although Bill Gates&#039; massive philanthropic foundation tends to get the most attention for its efforts to transform education, the company he co-founded also is paying close attention to the world of academia.
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Bill Gates call at Davos for a new way of thinking among businesses has elicited a wide range of commentary.
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CIOs from three organizations this week outlined steps they're taking to align IT with business goals and detailed some of the results they are seeing from their efforts.
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Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will share the stage Tuesday with nearly 15 system builders in a program to officially launch Microsoft&#39;s latest version of its
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There's a hidden promise in these results.
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Microsoft Corp.  adopted a new mantra on Thursday, promising to work harder to make its software work better with other software systems and hardware, Chairman Bill Gates said in an e-mail to customers.
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Most adopt wait-and-see attitude as they await more details of historic retailing deal. By Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News.
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It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realized.
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The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installation of 7,500 gates with saffron-colored fabric panels will begin next week.
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NAIROBI -- One recent Sunday, Paul Abeno, a mid-level computer sales executive, shuffled through aisles of brass cabinet pulls, colored tiles and tiny glass-encased models of three-bedroom homes landscaped with paper trees. He stared through the glass at Baobab Village.
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Microsoft boss Bill Gates tells the eletronics industry that more technologies should be working together.
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Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates has been giving keynote speeches at Las Vegas conventions, including the Consumer Electronics Show and the now-defunct Comdex, for decades. Before his last&#160;CES keynote speech&#160;as a full-time company employee, he talked with IDG News Service Executive News Editor Marc Ferranti about his legacy as an innovator, the background behind some of the deals announced at CES this week, and directions for Microsoft.The following is an edited version of the interview:IDGNS: We&#39;ve been tracking your career for some 30 years. One bone of contention has been when people have said that Bill Gates is a business mastermind, but not really an innovator. Can you point out a couple of innovative things you&#39;re particularly proud of?Gates: In terms of what we&#39;re proud of, I think it&#39;s the personal computer that we&#39;re proud of. It was a crazy idea at the time, that we could take the microprocessor and create a software industry around it. There was no software industry. Computing was about big businesses, and what we did in 1975, with me dropping out of school, was to say that we could build an industry that was about empowering people. We could seek out partners to build the hardware. We&#39;d let anyone write software for the work we did, and everything we&#39;ve done, over these 30 years, has been about that vision of personal computing. We were first ones with that vision.And now we&#39;re tackling the new frontiers. We&#39;re bringing TV, we&#39;re bringing new educational experiences, health experiences, onto this device that empowers people in a new rich way. And so it&#39;s pretty broad, the PC industry and our innovations in it -- I don&#39;t think there&#39;s anything in the last 30 years that has had as much impact.IDGNS: In the consumer space, since we&#39;re at CES, can you point out some recent innovations Microsoft can leverage in the next couple of years.Gates: Well the dollars spent on games and Xbox in the U.S. is greater than Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii combined. Really, that&#39;s because of the innovation in Xbox Live -- connecting people up, letting players find each other, matching them, getting video online. It&#39;s a real breakthrough way of thinking about even the future of TV.We&#39;ve got a million people using our Mediaroom, which is TV delivered over the Internet. Companies like AT&amp;T and 19 other phone companies around the world bet their future on this being the new video platform. And what that means is when you think about news, and you go and use Mediaroom news, you see the things that you care about, the ads are targeted at you.Look at what we&#39;ve done with Surface, directly touching and manipulating things -- that&#39;s gonna be a centerpiece.I can go on and on, there&#39;s so much that has to do with making it natural, bringing these things together and integrating them. We&#39;re the company that&#39;s doing the walk -- a lot of business focus but enough consumer focus that, from the biggest game phenomenon in the world to the biggest instant messaging thing, we have a lot of success that represents the innovation we&#39;re put into it.IDGNS: With increasing competition from abroad, innovation is of increasing importance to American companies. What&#39;s your thinking around the link between innovation and intellectual property?Gates: Well, we&#39;re a company that&#39;s based in the United States, but obviously we&#39;re drawing on engineering talent from all over the world. We&#39;ve got an unbelievable research group in China, we&#39;ve got an unbelievable research group in India, and we&#39;re delivering to consumers all over the world as well. And we file for intellectual property in all of these countries. They&#39;re all in different stages in terms of copyright, or patents, and it tends to be a pretty complicated area.Other countries look at what&#39;s going on in the United States and they say they&#39;d like their engineers to have those same opportunities, those same incentive systems, and so there really is a sense of progress in that. It&#39;s just one of the elements that make sure people are willing to take risks and keep the innovation in this industry the fastest of any industry in the world.IDGNS: You&#39;re going to be talking here about new partnerships for Microsoft&#39;s MSN, Xbox Live and Mediaroom IPTV services that will provide more content to drive Microsoft&#39;s consumer entertainment strategy. Can you talk about what you needed to do -- on the technology side and on the business side -- to make these deals happen?Gates: XBox Live is attracting virtually all the content people because of the volume we&#39;ve got there, and they see this group of very engaged users spending a lot of hours and finding new media in that environment, so that&#39;s made it easy for us. Our announcement with NBC on the Olympics is about our innovations in Silverlight, where you can view interactive content, multiple video streams, so it&#39;s really a perfect match for the Olympics where you have all this different content and yet different people care about different parts of it.IDGNS: As your consumer entertainment strategy comes to fruition, how will your business model change from what it has been in the past? Can you quantify goals for advertising-generated revenue?Gates: We&#39;ve seen good growth in our advertising revenue. That&#39;s an area where Google&#39;s the leader and we need to be very innovative to drive the scale. A huge partnership with Viacom is helping us with that. We&#39;ll be signing up more partners around the world. Taking the advertising platform to scale is very valuable for things like the search property we offer.We participate in a lot of business models. We have consumer software like games that you buy on a one-time basis. We have things that you can pay as a monthly fee, that we run up in our servers, as more of a service type model. We have some software we give away for free. And so, ads are coming in as a big, strong component but I don&#39;t see it replacing the others. We need all modalities to be strong.IDGNS: In your philanthropic work, you&#39;ve focused on fundamental health issues for the developing world. In the tech sector, there have been efforts such as the OLPC, and Microsoft&#39;s efforts to reduce prices in developing countries. But there&#39;s been criticism about these efforts. People have been saying, well, a $200 laptop isn&#39;t going to do a kid much good if he doesn&#39;t live to age five. With this in mind what do you think technology companies -- that need to make profits -- can do to spur development in emerging markets?Gates: Companies make their contribution by both giving some cash to broad areas but also by having their products in their area of expertise be tailored and donated to people who are poor. So in the case of Microsoft, we went and got involved in putting PCs in libraries. We went to Chile to put PCs in the libraries there, so by having a really robust machine connected to the Internet, going through the training, working with the government, getting all the pieces right -- we learned how to do that in the United States -- those projects were incredibly successful.So while I admit for my Foundation the top priority is health, Microsoft is about software. It&#39;s got a product, that&#39;s what the company knows. And that&#39;s where, in its activities around the world, its helping educators, it&#39;s helping kids who have curiosity, and I think that&#39;s fantastic for Microsoft to do that.I&#39;m taking the success that Microsoft had and putting tens of billions of that into the basic needs where breakthroughs can be made -- and there, we&#39;ll be using software. We&#39;ll be using mobile phones, we&#39;ll doing data gathering, so we&#39;ll be using software as a tool to do it. I wish every company was doing as much as Microsoft is to take their expertise and look into that developing world and see what role they can play . We&#39;ve had great impact, great success, and it helps us attract better employees. It makes our employees feel good because we were founded on the idea of empowerment. We&#39;re not just talking about it, we&#39;re out in over a hundred countries delivering it in a significant way.
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In this detailed interview, Gates talks about the background on deals announced at CES, new directions for Microsoft, and what he's proud of.
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A number of signs point to increasing demand for tech workers, but not all the clouds have been driven away.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called on the U.S. Congress toÂ raise the cap on skilled-worker visas, saying the county's economic future was at stake. Gates, testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he'd prefer that "unlimited" numbers of highly skilled foreign workers be allowed into the U.S., although he acknowledged that might not be politically feasible. Right now,Â the controversial H-1B program, which tech vendors and other companies use to hire foreign workers, has an annual cap of 65,000 people a year, and the cap is typically reached in the first couple of months the applications are available. "We have to welcome the great minds of this world, not drive them out of this country," Gates said, repeating his earlier calls for a higher H-1B cap. "These employees are vital to American competitiveness. We should encourage them to become permanent U.S. residents; they provide the nation economic growth, alongside America's native-born talent." Several U.S. tech companies have recently said they have hundreds of unfilled jobs because they can't find qualified workers. Gates also repeated two other themes he said are necessary for the U.S. to continue to compete in a global economy: He called on Congress to improve the U.S. education system and increase government spending on research and development. Without those three changes, the U.S. is at risk of losing its economic power and high standard of living, he said. "When I reflect on the state of American competitiveness today, my immediate feeling of pride is mixed with great anxiety," he said. "The challenges confronting America's global competitiveness and technological leadership are among the greatest we have faced on our lifetime." This generation of U.S. residents is too often living off the innovations of the past, he said. He called for "courageous" leadership to fix failing U.S. high schools, find more money for research, and welcome more immigrants. Few senators challenged Gates' position on foreign-worker visas, instead asking questions about Gates' ideas on improving education, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation'sÂ funding of experimental high-school programs. U.S.-based tech worker groups such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA) have opposed a higher H-1B cap, arguing that companies use the program to hire foreign workers for less money than unemployed U.S. workers would receive. Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said he heard different stories from industries and workers during forums on the economy in his state last month. "Time and time again, local businesses told me that they just could not find the engineers or the computer scientists they needed to run their businesses," he said. "At the same time, skilled workers in my state are watching their jobs move overseas, not because foreign workers are more qualified, but because U.S. companies can get away with paying poverty wages to workers in other countries." Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who often votes with Democrats, also questioned the effect of outsourcing. U.S. companies can hire overseas engineers at a "fraction of the cost" of U.S. engineers, he said. The free trade agreements that allow easy outsourcing benefits the U.S., Gates answered. The U.S. tech industry is able to grow by being able to sell products all over the world, he said. "The demand worldwide for highly qualified engineers is going to guarantee them all jobs wherever they are located," Gates said. "The IT industry, I guarantee you, will be in the United States as long as we can get these people to come to the United States." Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, said he agreed that Congress needed to raise the H-1B cap. He asked if an annual cap of 300,000 would be appropriate. "It'd be a fantastic improvement," Gate said. "My basic view is we should welcome as many of these people as we can get."
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked NATO allies and colleagues for more effort in Afghanistan, but it is too early to tell whether his lobbying will pay off.