For two decades, Bill Gates has used his Comdex keynote speech to mark out his vision for technologies from the Internet to XML. This year he used the bully pulpit to make it clear that the industry is at one of its perennial crossroads.
Once considered simple nuisances attending the digital lifestyle, cyberattacks and spam have morphed into disruptions costing millions of dollars in downtime and wasted manpower. Against a backdrop of mounting customer frustration with insecure digital infrastructures, Gates laid out his vision for a new era of technology that removes much of the hassle of being a computer user. CNET News.com caught up with the Microsoft co-founder and chairman earlier this week to talk about the leadup to his "seamless computing" speech.
Q: You've been talking about seamless computing at this Comdex. Give us an overview of what's on your mind.
A: The key reason I picked the theme of seamless computing was to talk about the frontiers we still need to solve in the next few years. I see the things holding us back as being boundaries between different software systems...Why isn't e-commerce a reality? Why isn't managing your schedule digitally with friends and colleagues not a trivial thing to do? We can look and say that many of the problems are software challenges. Certainly, the solution to lowering operational costs on systems, the solutions to spam, the security challenges, the need to think of all these devices and how they work together--that's largely a software problem.
News source: C|Net News.com
Once considered simple nuisances attending the digital lifestyle, cyberattacks and spam have morphed into disruptions costing millions of dollars in downtime and wasted manpower. Against a backdrop of mounting customer frustration with insecure digital infrastructures, Gates laid out his vision for a new era of technology that removes much of the hassle of being a computer user. CNET News.com caught up with the Microsoft co-founder and chairman earlier this week to talk about the leadup to his "seamless computing" speech.
Q: You've been talking about seamless computing at this Comdex. Give us an overview of what's on your mind.
A: The key reason I picked the theme of seamless computing was to talk about the frontiers we still need to solve in the next few years. I see the things holding us back as being boundaries between different software systems...Why isn't e-commerce a reality? Why isn't managing your schedule digitally with friends and colleagues not a trivial thing to do? We can look and say that many of the problems are software challenges. Certainly, the solution to lowering operational costs on systems, the solutions to spam, the security challenges, the need to think of all these devices and how they work together--that's largely a software problem.
News source: C|Net News.com
These drivers correct a number of problems found in the 52.16 release of the display drivers for Windows XP and Windows 2000. These drivers are not WHQL certified and you may see a warning message from Windows to that effect. Despite this, these drivers are safe to install and use.
Updates to this driver:
Improved support for HDTV Modes
Corrected the following issues from 52.16:
Clone mode may be set for the GeForce FX 5600 although only one display is connected.
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra: When 4x FSAA is enabled, half of the screen is black in Tiger Woods 2004 introductory video.
GeForce4 MX 440 and GeForce4 Ti 4400, Windows XP: Blue-screen crash during Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat.
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra: Homeworld2 antialiased performance is slow.
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and GeForce4 Ti 4400, Windows XP: Rendering corruption in Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat.
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, Windows XP: “X2: The
Threat” benchmark is choppy or jerky in some places.
All GeForce FX: Intermittently, Warcraft III videos are not displayed properly on some systems.
It is easy on OS X, even my mom does it with no problems (I couldn't help myself, I had to say it
And is it just me or does that quote seem like a double negative?
In answer to Bill's point though, I think the problem is that the majority of people don't think they need them. Essentially we're talking PDA/Smartphone/Tablet territory here. At some point, when the technologies of PDA and mobile phone finally finish converging and it becomes near impossible to have one without the other in the same device, then yeah, maybe people will move in for it. But would your parents seriously shell out £250 for a glorified address book? Yeah, you can do more with it, but what if they don't want to? That's what's holding this idea back: The hardware that you need to do this contains so many executive bells and whistles, by all means useful to some people, but most of which average Joe does not need nor want. PDAs are seen as executive toys and nothing more. Those who use them fully will syncronise and try and integrate them as best they can, but it's not trivial because there isn't universal demand.
Additionally, even within the market share of people who do use PDAs and the PDA functions of a mobile phone, technologies like Bluetooth are still not 100% available on handsets nor on computers themselves. In many ways, the problems with making syncronisation and digital management is out of Bills hands - without the mass adoption of wireless on every PC and every handset, there wont be the concentrated efforts needed to develop the seamless software. We can at least hope, that despite this, Microsoft will have a good go anyway, and spark the industry on the subject. Some T68i support would be good :p
You know, you could say the exact same thing to 64 bit processors. (Compatibility VS. processing power) and the thing is I think the tech industry is shelling out new products too fast for the average consumer to adapt. I mean who really have the money and time to buy and adapt to new technologies? Is the processing power on a computer 2 or 3 year old not good enough to play games, create awesome media and talk to your friend while burning a disk?
Gamers are really the ones demanding these fast computers.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.