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Gates: Hardware, Not Software, Will Be Free
orthogonal writes "That's small-'f', not capital-'F' free:
according to Bill Gates, "Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free -- I'm not saying it will be absolutely free --...." Gates expects this almost free hardware to support two of the longest awaited breakthroughs in computing: real speech and handwriting recognition. He further predicts -- ugh! -- that software will not be written but visually designed."
First person shooter.
This reminds me of a cool hack that uses Doom as a "process manager". Killing a Doom baddie basically "kill -9"s the process.
Trolling is a art,
- Chip makers will contine to create advancements and will want their R&D dollars back, just like Mr. Gates. This is why software is expensive; it is cheap to to burn a CD but time consuming to develop.
- Two words
.. advertising costs.
- Chip makers delay the release of new chip sets if they have significant inventory of other models. This keeps the prices of current chips artifically high until the manufacturers feel they can't milk any more out of consumers. Chip makers will be sure to not release new products until demand is there and they recover R&D costs for older chips.
- CPU and memory chips account for less than half the cost of a PC; disk drives, monitors, DVD/CD drives, cases and motherboards make up the rest. These items have too many mechanical/structural parts to realize significant savings from improved chip manufacturing techniques. Even if the memory and CPU were free, systems will still cost a few hundred dollars.
- Some people will always want/need advanced features, and computer systems and chip makers will always charge a premium for those items.
- Chips contain software (on-board video, BIOS,etc.). I doubt if the makers of those software components will start giving it away. But, if open-source alternatives became available, those items would realize additional savings. I would not be surprised if more software wound it's way into hardware as the cost of updating firmware becomes cheaper. Hardware video drives can be a lot more effective than OS video drivers.
Until chip manufacturers stop releasing new products every few months (reduces R&D), stop advertising, and create an entire system on a chip, including structerual components, external interfaces (wireless??), storage, and displays, computer systems will never be 'almost free'.I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Just try to visualize (pun intended) a fairly simple event driven program with lines connecting all events, triggers, functions, data and UI components and you get the idea.
But the visual aspects of pure "compatible" HTML (as in not CSS and Divs, which many design shops still stay away from) are hacks. So you have these editors trying to visually do something that HTML was never intended to do. Dreamweaver, the best of these editors, was oft called "the moody woman" at one shop I worked at, as you had to know just how to coddle it it wouldn't do what you wanted, or even what it was supposed to. Handwriting the code was still superior for these hacks...
Then CSS/Layers became totally (mostly) supported. Now WYSIWYG editors work QUITE well... (Even some non editors generate perfect code. Photoshop's image ready generates some very nice code)
Anyway, point being, when something is designed to be designed visually it can be visually designed much easier. *grin*
Okay. Let's put aside the silly "Microsoft is Evil" stuff for a minute, and look at the industry in general has gone over the past 15 years.
The price of the average "IBM" PC sold has dropped by roughly 400% since I first bought one in 1989. At the same time, processor speed on these average machines has increased by 50,000%. If this trend continues, and I see no reason for it not to, the average computer in 15 years will have a 10 THz processor and cost $125.
Now, the while the cost of hardware continues to go down, the cost of software continues to go up. The number of people who are needed to build the massive applications to make use of 10 THz will be huge. Somebody's got to pay the damn programmers, right? So the price of software will continue to go up. Even if OSS succeeds and the operating system and incidental programs are free, the CUSTOM programs will be expensive.
Therefore, it makes sense to give the hardware as an added bonus with the software. The same way you have cell phones given away with calling plans today. This isn't a Microsoft thing...this could easily be an IBM thing or an Adobe thing, etc.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Just a general note, since it looks like it came up a couple times: I don't think Gates meant RAD or anything RAD-like. Note: "He further predicts -- ugh! -- that software will not be written but visually designed."
Software is written because software is a set of instructions. Software is a set of scripts that respond to events. If software were spatial and totally right-brain (and analogous to engineering or construction), AI would work, and software would probably rely on the immutable laws of physics and chemistry, rather than homespun rules. When I write software, it is frequently because I am taking a "break" from other totally creative pursuits.
The only visual constructions relating to software engineering (SE) that I consider appropriate, are those that relate a large system in terms of its data, logic, and interfaces. This is not necessarily the Rational Unified Process with UML -- indeed, I tend to think people take that too far (eXtreme Programming seems to take a nice perspective on SE in this regard). People also like to relate Classes to real-world objects, usually real-world objects that relate to "parts" of the project. This is tempting but is, I feel, usually inappropriate! A good compromise is a balance between the format of the data (with appropriate, thin, "agnostic bridges"/Classes) and an easy access point for real logic (the Model, of the MVC pattern). I would also recommend a sort of laid-back attitude when developing software: don't live your life by a paradigm or methodology, especially in an immature field (SE) that has a lifetime of problems to solve. You know what problems need to be solved. You also know that not once did you wish you could draw a picture instead of write code. I mean, what the hell? Someone take Johnny Mnemonic away from Gates.
If the software you write, however, is modular enough that you can arrange the pieces/modules/methods like components in a circuit, then go for it. However, this level of widespread code reuse is frankly fantasy; reuse will remain, I believe, as it has: generic libraries used in a custom fashion, i.e., not suitable to be "visually" "dropped-in." Code generation is nice, but it's only appropriate for certain large-scale applications (like large database-driven applications).
If one is to believe Gates on this issue, one is also compelled to believe that Microsoft's research and development department has created software practices at the forefront of software engineering (and indeed computer science. Remember computer science?). I do not believe this to be the case, and I'd make the indictment that this "release" by Gates is purely worldfair in nature, and is for the hoi polloi.
It's not that insane, and remember that Gates is a billionaire in part because his company has been abusing its monopoly. To an extent, if he wants something to happen, he can make it happen. What he means by "free" is that users will "subscribe to" software and in doing so, receive a machine on which to run that software, effectively for nothing. This is what Microsoft wanted to accomplish by bullying retailers not to bundle other operating systems. My guess is that they will attempt to use "Trusted Computing" (or some technology just like it) to make their intention into a reality; if you want to run Microsoft's software you will have to run it on computers which only run Microsoft's software or software written by Microsoft's partners (in other words, companies which have bought the right to have their software run on MS's hardware). So they can make the cost of hardware approach zero, so long as they can be sure the hardware is only usable for purposes for which they can make some money. Of course, all of this depend on governments around the world letting MS get away from it.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room