Gates Says "A Lot of Work" Ahead In IT Development 77
An anonymous reader writes "Bill Gates concluded his last Microsoft-associated public appearance in the EU today with comments about the future of IT. The long-time company head said that there's still a lot of work to be done before Information Technology resources truly come into their own. '"There's another side that is how software is allowing people to be more productive at work. It's the empowerment of these people to do their jobs more effectively." Gates also commented on the potential of the Internet, calling it a "huge democratization tool". But Gates said there is still a long road ahead for tech development. "It's come a long way in the last 30 years but we're not even halfway there with building the systems we need to have."'"
The punchline? (Score:3, Funny)
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There are companies that have still improperly embracing technology to suit their needs, or lack insight into implementing technology.
Chicago is a good market for tons of organizations, schools and business that have any decent foundation in technology to suit their needs.
I'm referring to Chicago, not any of it's suburbs.
MS has been busy breaking windows .... (Score:2)
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Productivity (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the roots and legacy of Windows, there's really not a whole lot MS could have done with Vista to make it a kick-ass super OS short of writing it from scratch (ditch Win32) and force all existing apps to run in a sandbox the way Apple did with OS 9. There's just too much legacy stuff tying Microsoft's hands. Here's a great article comparing what Windows is now with what dBase once was: http://garywiz.typepad.com/trial_by_fire/2006/03/windows_vista_p.html [typepad.com] Windows seems to be following a similar demise for similar reasons. What is comes down to is that Microsoft is getting to the point where the best they can offer in a new product is backwards computability with their previous products. Few people care about what NEW software they can run on Vista. Most just want it to run the same software they've always run with a little more flair and perhaps with a little more security.
-matthew
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I figure Windows 7 (or whatever number or name it is) will be closer to Unix or at least as secure as such a system.
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I think it is too late for that. There's just too much Win32 shite out there for MS to do what Apple did with OS X. Apple was pretty desparate before OS X. They didn't have much to lose. But that made the solution clear: Get the few major players (i.e. Adobe and Quark) on board with OS X and everyone else would (and did) follow.
Hell, look at Windows XP. It is almost 7 years old now and many people are STILL clinging to it.. refusing to buy into Vista. Even if you could get users of some vastly different Win
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Vista should come with at least 15 pieces of flair [wikipedia.org]...
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-matthew
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Hear hear!
I understand the origin of their new gadget culture was in a quote Bill G. made years ago -- "If we don't obsolete our own stuff, someone else will". I think it became a mandate for chaos, which manifests itself whenever they come out with a release with a funny name.
Stating the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a revelation? Isn't that what has been promised continually since day one?
Thank a Lot (Score:2, Funny)
Coincidence? (Score:2, Interesting)
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And I don't care (Score:2)
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Just fucking retire already! (Score:5, Interesting)
*My* problem turned out to be one of the really obscure ones, and by sheer luck it was the second one I tried or I'd be working this tomorrow as well. The problem with *IT* is that the dominant OS is a deliberately obfuscated pile of week old baboon jism.
I had to use RegEdit last week to make Visio behave the way I wanted to. WTF is that? Is that supposed to be even remotely sane? And this week it's reverted back to its old behavior for no known reason.
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You're right, it would have been much easier to write a perl script or pipe 30 commands together, like Linux users are so fond of. /sarcasm.
You're trying to be sarcastic, but what you said it actually correct. It would be eaiser, because you'd have to write the script once (or not at all, if someone else wrote the script for you), and then all it takes is to run the script whenever you have a problem. Hell, you could write another script to monitor the log files and run your first script automatically.
Automating common tasks is approximately 2 orders of magnitude easier on Linux (particularly on Debian) than on Windows. I'm saying this h
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Software has problems. All of it. It's an imperfect creation made by imperfect people.
Re:Just fucking retire already! (Score:4, Insightful)
You imply that the 2 camps are roughly equivalent in quality, and that the unequal bashing is just bias. Not so! On the majority of objective measures, open source is superior. There are the obvious, whole point of libre ones, such as ability to examine and modify the code. And then there are the measures that take a little research to determine, such as which systems are more secure. I've read that CERT has always found more problems with Windows than with Linux. There are plenty of other measures: code quality, performance, robustness, nimbleness, and portability to name a few. Libre OSes are better than Windows in all those categories. And the reason they are better is in part because they are open and cannot be monopolized-- the many eyeballs effect, and the inability of private interests to be the gatekeepers of all progress. Windows does have a few advantages, I'm not denying that. Even when you move to applications, what do we see? Yes, Firefox is better than IE. Pidgin is much better than AIM thanks in part to AIM actually getting worse. OpenOffice vs MSOffice is more a matter of what's important to the user. On the other hand, I read that the GIMP still isn't as good as Photoshop, but it's gaining. And I don't know where gcc stands compared to Visual Studio, but I've read that in the past gcc definitely generated the poorer code but now this is not so clear. Overall, libre is better. I only wonder how long MS can carry on in the face of the massive disadvantages their chosen business methods put them at. For years now we have seen MS resort to unethical methods, and that's the mark of a weak competitor. They are only strong because of their near monopoly position, not because of any inherent superiority to their practices (the ethical practices, that is) or software. They've also made a lot of enemies, not least the previous monopoly computing giant, IBM. Strip away that monopoly, and MS would have to change or die, and they know it. It will be a real shame to see the huge pile of money they've saved up be frittered away year by year in hopeless attempts to maintain the status quo, but activation for XP, WGA, and now Vista seem a clear signal that's the direction they're determined to keep pushing towards.
Those comments that get "modded into oblivion" very likely deserved it for misrepresentation or outright lies. Genuine problems with libre software are fixed right away, or acknowledged. Those that are buried are rare, and often they get forked. Xfree86 and Xorg come to mind on that last.
Your comment seems trollish to me. Consider that maybe the majority of Slashdot has good reasons for believing as we do.
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I find it amusing that you think I'm a troll when the truth is that I use both Windows and Linux. Have for years, and I see the pros and cons in each.
You, on the other hand, seem to like to repeat the same thing over and over again, ignoring valid arguments to the contrary or calling them "misrepresentations" or "outright lies".
Code isn't better because it's "free", and the *vast* majority of people who use open source have no desire to muck about with the code.
As for all of the issues with op
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Of course there will always be problems with code. And no, "fix it yourself" is a strawman. Any able programmer can fix OSS. Just like any competent mechanic could fix any brand of car. Most people don't fix their own cars and don't want to, they pay the professionals of their choice to do that. With libre software, while they could fix it themselves the real power is having the option to hire programmers to fix problems and not have to beg the originators who often have other priorities. It's not "yo
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Fast forward 10 years, and we have a product that has no internal consistency because we have 100 different developer teams scattered all over the world creating 'stuff' (ie object libraries, 'frameworks', etc) that just adds a layer of said baboon l
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being stuck for the last 20 years doesn't help (Score:4, Insightful)
20 years and counting Bill. 20 years. I weep for the state of computing under MS's jackboot.
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I weep for the state of computing under MS's jackboot.
"Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! Yummy!"
-- Bill Gates
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"Advancing the state of computing" (Score:2)
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Bullshit.
The only thing that Microsoft ever did was take existing trends, embrace and extend, and make a lot of money in the process. If Microsoft had never existed the IBM PC would have run CP/M. The only functionality we might not have is the ability to embed Lotus 123 spreadsheets in our Word Perfect documents - and GNU+Linux would probably have trashed OS2 all over the place in the late 90's.
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Actually, if you took MS out of the equation I doubt things would be any different today except that some other platform would be the most popular. Also, you assume that back in the late 80's there were no cheap solutions that could do what people needed (document preparation for example) and again you are wrong. The Amstrad WPCs were a good example of a cheap piece of hardware with integrated software aimed at the business desktop. The
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Uhh, you could buy $200 computers back in the 1980s. But Windows pushed the prices up.
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1. The internet really was full of terribly bright people;
2. I would not be among them. I need to work on that...
yes, you idiot! (Score:5, Insightful)
A consistent picture in every company that I have seen from the inside, with not a single exception: The Unix (or in some places, the mainframe) department is an order of magnitude more professional than the windos group. The Unix servers run reliable (mostly), while the windos network is always a hassle. I've twice replaced the windos infrastructure for a small team with something non-windos (Solaris once, OS X once) and it worked better, with less maintainance, and more useful features.
By now I doubt it's a coincidence, and I've come down from my former arrogance of simply assuming that windos admins are mostly stupid fuckups who couldn't get a job in real IT. If there's one constant in all the cases you see - namely microsoft software - then doubt as you may but the chances are excellent that that's the reason.
I mostly learned that from the one really good windos admin I had the pleasure of working with. He could make things work. But the amount of trouble he had to go to was astonishing. Since then, I'm sure the problem isn't the admins (though they sometimes add to the problem, as many of them are stupid fuckups who couldn't get a job in real IT), but the crap they're forced to work with.
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I'd beg to differ and walk a fine line on this one. Part of the problem is that MS-Windows WAS the easiest desktop environment to use. The other part of the issue was IBM vs Apple. I was a bit too out of the IT scene at the time to really take notice but recall when they were called IBM-Compatible computers? IBM pushed the market share, then Intel rocked along with the x86 platform. Hardware manufacturers are as much to blame
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Part of the problem is that MS-Windows is the easiest desktop environment to use.
Whatever you're smoking, reduce the dosage.
I've switched to OS X just a year ago, dragging several people in my immediate environment with me. From geek to "I bought my first computer two years ago", they all agree that OS X is so much better and ask themselves how they could ever put up with the horror that is the windos GUI.
No, the real truth is that the windos environment is horrible, but it's the environment everyone is familiar with. That means low training costs. Simple as that.
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It's probably true that OS X has a better GUI than Windows (Apple has pretty much always beat them there). But Windows took over the market due to many factors, not least of which was inexpensive hardware. Apple tried to compete by allowing Power Computing (or whatever they were called) build their machines instead of just
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Really? You can build me this machine for under $1000:
And don't forget the software...
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Unfortunately I would be a fool to buy it and expect to game on it
Intent has a lot to do with the platform you choose as well, but yea - that's some impressive beef.
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True, one of them was that Apple used to be more expensive than PCs. That is no longer true, but it was, for many years.
Other factors are, of course, MS illegal business practices, the original IBM deal, later OEM deals and so forth.
Once dominance was achieved, all the self-perpetuating effects of a lock-in apply. In essence, switching becomes too expensive (in money and/or effort) for most people because you have all your software, all your documents in some pr
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Odd, I've got a
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I don't like marketing people preying on our language.
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CC assurance levels, for example, are only certified for a specific version and configuration, namely the one that was submitted. There have been numerous patches and even at least one service pack (too lazy to look up the exact date) since windos got its certificate, so very certainly the certification is not valid for what you actually run.
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In some sense, the Guru was taken out of Unix slowly over the last few decades. In Windows this role is required more than ever.
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So in other words the companies you've been inside of have had managers that are unable to hire competent Windows admins?
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Why on earth would I do that? I like our highly competent IT staff to be right here and do their work so that I can do my.
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And the reason is that there are so few of them. I know they exist, because I've met one. Probably two. But they are kind of an endangered species, and I'm not sure if there are any breeding pairs left.
change for change's sake (Score:3, Insightful)
We've had desks for a long time now with for example a big hole in the middle covered with glass and a computer monitor angled up below it. What I don't need is a computer that is also my desk. Why? Just because we can? I want to be able to upgrade those two things independently. Most people have phones in their bedrooms near their beds, but that doesn't mean we need phones built into beds!
"One of the biggest changes will be how you interact with the device. The devices themselves will get a lot smaller,..."
Make the devices as small as you want, but please keep the UI portion of it sized to, oh, I don't know, maybe the operator? (Cell phone "keyboards", I'm looking at you.)
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Desktop (Score:2)
So, in the future, we'll be working on really tiny desks? That doesn't sound very ergonomic.
Missing The Point. . . Maybe? (Score:1)
I suspect Gates is alluding to the fact the engineering aspect of software development is still quite new. To put it into perspective, software engineering has been around for what, 30 MAYBE 40 years? How long have humans been building bridges? thousands of years?
So as you can see, there is a long way to go for improvements into the engineering
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To put it into perspective, software engineering has been around for what, 30 MAYBE 40 years?
To put into a real perspective, Microsoft software engineering has been around for about 3 years, that's when they changed everything to a 'cool' new technology. I'd say give it 10 years and it'll be another new one, but they're changing it all the time with new stuff that keeps plopping out of MS development/architecture/framework teams.
The reason we build good bridges is because there's only 2 or 3 designs. 1 suspension bridge is pretty much the same as another, when they do try to make something new (eg
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Suspension bridges have a few critical areas where they HAVE to function. They basically have to support and channel the weight into the load bearing parts of the structures. You can do this in several ways, aesthetically. Not all are created equal.
The same is true for conventional bridges and cars. Angles play a huge role in structural integrity. Everyone gives new car designs crap for being flimsy in an accident, but they are engineering marvels. True - you can't
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But yes, the base designs are the same, but I think you forget just how important the little changes are
No, I don't. Really I think the little changes are what drives us forward in a progressive way that improves everything, little by little, step by step we get better. (my original posting may not have emphasised this properly).
Look at the new software products and its never a little change, its a large change each time. This is a problem, if they built on what they had, improving it, we'd have good software that would be a it boring, certainly not 'cool' and 'new', but it'd work a lot better.
And strangely I find myself agreeing... (Score:2)
Of course his own products, and the incompetence and greed of his company, are a major factor that it is taking so long...
Hey Bill, did you notice the 'I' in 'IT'? (Score:2)
The 'I' in 'IT' means 'information'.
What does your software manage ? does it manage information or bits?
All that is needed for an explosive growth of information technology is for software to stop managing bits and start managing information...
The Contridiction of Bill Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
Productivity vs. Procrastination (Score:1)
Gates Says "A Lot of Work" Ahead In IT Development (Score:1)