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Spotlight
Bill Gates Speaks to UI Students
Bill Gates, the chief software architect for Microsoft, chose
Illinois for his first stop on a three-day, five campus tour to
promote computer science and engineering to students. Illinois is
the only public university that is part of this tour. His February
24th talk, titled “Software breakthroughs: Solving the toughest
problems in computer science,” was designed to highlight work being
done at Microsoft, universities and research labs around the world.
Gates started his presentation by mentioning that Microsoft
hires more computer science graduates from Illinois than from any
other university. He also mentioned that the Millenium Scholars
program, which is one of his philanthropic efforts, currently funds
25 students at the U of I. This program provides need-based
financial support for minority undergraduate and graduate students.
Gates commented on the computer being the most powerful tool
ever created and mentioned that storage capacity is increasing at an
even faster rate than transistor chip power as storage capacity is
doubling roughly every 14 months and chip power is doubling roughly
every two years. In Gates’ view, “Software is where the action is,”
and software will allow the greatest opportunities for increasing
effectiveness in the future. He talked about
innovations that are underway at Microsoft including a Smart Watch
that could provide access to email, stock quotes, weather,
calendars, etc. and a Portable Media Center that would offer new
options for consuming media such as music and television. He also
mentioned the concept of future computer screens being like papyrus
so they could be unrolled for portability. In fielding a question
from a student about the emerging technology with the greatest
potential impact, Gates replied that this was the concept of a
natural interface that would allow for digital recording as we speak
or write.
Gates stressed the importance of research as the
driver of software development and stated that the U.S. leads this
process worldwide. Microsoft budgets $6.8 billion for R&D and
has collaborated with the Department of Computer Science on several
projects including Gaia (interfaces to control voice recognition,
video recognition and tracking software) and e-Fuzion (a wireless,
graphics tablet that allows pen-based, projected drawing).
Before the talk, Gates met with some engineering faculty to
discuss issues pertaining to trustworthy computing. Both the College
of Engineering and Microsoft are focused on security issues such as
the use of smart cards instead of passwords, fire walls, and
monitoring systems for abnormal behavior. Gates also talked about
the importance of wireless technology, particularly for countries
that can’t support infrastructure components like cable. The College
of Engineering is also leading this effort in collaboration with
corporations such as Vodafone.
Story contributed by Renée
Mullen, College of Engineering (posted 27 Feb 2004)
Full
text of speech Audio
segment from WILL broadcast
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