In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY reporters, Microsoft founder and chief software architect Bill Gates shares his thoughts on controlling spam, competition from Linux, his personal security, software for wristwatches, what's worthwhile in life and whether Microsoft is boring.
- The cure for spam
- The effect of spam (and how much he gets)
- His job and priorities at Microsoft
- Boring companies, taking risks, and who's #1 (and #2)
- Desktop computers and what happened to the competition
- Longhorn - what it is and why you care
- Linux and other threats
- Business investment and the economy
- His personal security
- The Gates Foundation's work
- What's worthwhile in his life
Intel executives say their comany's Itanium 2 platform has reached the point at which the market has begun spending as much--or more--on Intel 64-bit processors as it does on competing RISC chips.
The company's claim comes as it begins shipping Monday the next-generation "Madison" version of the Itanium 2 processor in a configuration that provides for increased scalability of solutions built on the platform.
In addition to the new 64-bit processor, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel also began shipping Monday new 32-bit 2.8GHz, 2.5GHz and 2GHz Xeon processors.
Time is running out for Windows NT 4 Workstation. After Monday Microsoft won't be taking support calls for the venerable operating system. Part of the put-out-to-pasture plan that Microsoft calls Support Lifecycle -- where aging products go through a several-step process of increasingly-diminished support options -- the move means NT 4.0 Workstation users can turn only to the self-help online support for problem solving as of July 1.
NT 4.0 Server has a longer grace period, thanks to a Microsoft decision in January to extend telephone support and continue to issue security and bug fixes. NT 4.0 Server's drop-dead deadline is now Dec. 31, 2003.
Microsoft issued some strict guidelines last week for journalists and hardware manufacturers who would be referring in print to the company's new Pocket PC operating system, which launched under the newly coined "Windows Mobile" name. One example: "The term 'software' must come at the end of 'Windows Mobile' in the first mention of Windows Mobile (excluding headline copy), and then in at least 50% or more of the mentions thereafter."
At the height of the U.S. government's antitrust pursuit of Microsoft, Bill Gates and his execs were vigorously denouncing rivals Sun Microsystems and Oracle for using the feds to try to cripple the world's largest software company. For a while, it sounded like Gates was channeling capitalist doyenne Ayn Rand, saying in 1998 that the technology industry's successes were due to lack of interference from Uncle Sam, and claiming that "the government is still trying to slow Microsoft down."
Microsoft even launched a Web site, FreeToInnovate.com, through which you could send a note to your member of Congress, sign up for a get-your-hands-off-our-software newsletter or order "Freedom to Innovate" ceramic mugs and T-shirts.
Microsoft recently launched a high-profile campaign against spammers, but some critics say the company should be more introspective if it is serious about reducing the scourge of unwanted e-mail. The software maker and some of its competitors that provide Internet service and Web-based e-mail are outdoing one another with highly publicized antispam campaigns. These have ranged from lawsuits to technology and policy initiatives.
In the most recent example, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sent a letter Tuesday to customers in which he explained some steps his company is taking to reduce spam. The letter came a day after The Wall Street Journal published an antispam column penned by Gates.
Microsoft is still trying like heck to get early Yukon code in the hands of a select band of testers. Shipment of a small "private" beta for the next-generation SQL Server is "day to day," Stan Sorensen, director of SQL Server product management, told CRN Thursday. The company had hoped to get this beta to about 1,000 close ISV, joint-development and other strategic partners by the end of June. CRN also confirmed that some testers recently received e-mail from Microsoft alerting them to a July code drop.
Companies will not have to pay as much to keep their e-mail-addicted employees happy under new licensing terms established by Microsoft for the next version of Exchange.
Under the new terms, companies will pay a single fee for each person who accesses Exchange information, regardless of how many devices they use to do so. In the past, customers paid for each person and, if they used more than one device extensively, for each additional device as well.
The per-person fee of $67 is on top of a fee for each server on which Exchange is running. Microsoft charges $699 per server for the standard edition and $3,999 for the enterprise edition, which is aimed at companies with more than 5,000 employees. The per-person and per-device license fee is $67. Those fees remain consistent with the current edition of the software, Exchange 2000.
Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have strengthened their lineup of products that allow cell phone companies to bill for downloads such as games or ring tones. The moves signal a new battle brewing between the two software heavyweights to win a dwindling share of spending by cell phone service providers.
Providers are turning to downloads as a new revenue source. But most have billing systems that are a jumble of sometimes decades-old software, the result of mergers of different phone companies that created modern giants such as Verizon Communications and Verizon Wireless.
"There's a lot of hokey Band-Aid type of things so carriers can charge for voice systems, let alone the downloads they want to do," said Michael Doherty, a telecom analyst at market research firm Ovum.
Chairman Gates pledges to bring 'Penny Black' and other MS Research anti-spam technologies to market. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is continuing his anti-spam war, promising in an interview published on Thursday to implement a Microsoft-Research-developed scheme that would charge spammers for sending junk mail. Gates also said in the same interview that Microsoft is considering another research-developed technology that would delay by a number of seconds the delivery of spam to users' inboxes.