Gates Speaks at UT, Laymen Everywhere Confused
Bill Gates tells UT students about software, innovation and giving back.
By Matt Martinez, 8:39AM, Thu. Feb. 21, 2008
Here's the video of Bill Gates' last day working full time at Microsoft that he showed the computer science and computer engineering crowd during his lecture at UT Austin on Wednesday.
The man was really giving the whole self-deprecating humor thing an honest try. Wow, though.
Though Gates will still be an active as chairman of the Microsoft board of directors, he has said that he wants to shift his focus to the foundation he and his wife started, keenly titled the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Other than that, those of you not in attendance at the lecture could probably tell me what it was about as well as I could tell you.
First, he said the sky is the limit to the ever expanding realm of disk storage space, which is good, we think. Gates also wants Microsoft to be innovators of what he called "natural interfaces," phasing out this whole primitive mouse/keyboard debacle. In the near future, so sayeth Billy G, touch screens and tablet computers will become more pervasive and speech recognition will move more into the mainstream. He also talked about more combination of the TV/Internet experience, noting that the goal was for these outlets to become more and more personalized.
"Eventually, you'd like to walk into your living room and simply utter or point to a menu that has all the things you're interested in," Gates said.
Personally, I don't ever want my living room to tell me what I like.
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April 4, 2008
University of Texas, Bill Gates, Microsoft