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Bill Gates Is Coming To A College Near You

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the your-class-will-be-assilmilated dept.

Xyn writes "Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates visited UW-Madison today as part of his 2005 College Tour, designed to promote greater youth involvement in technology careers. Gates discussed "The Impact and Opportunity of Technology: Why Computer Science? Why Now?" at a student forum."

25 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. Personally... by Pichu0102 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think he wants kids to grow up to replace Ballmer and NOT waste money on broken chairs.

  2. Quick! by gardyloo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Everyone line up with the shiny bits to welcome Bill! Now... aim....

    1. Re:Quick! by mboos · · Score: 4, Informative

      At Waterloo, where he's coming tomorrow, security is going to be very tight. They've even got metal detectors for the entrances. Only those with invites (they will be checking IDs) are permitted inside.

      One of my friends had wanted to get in - I was going to lend him my Google shirt just to see what the reaction was. Unfortunately, invites were limited and he didn't get invited.

      --
      --Mike Boos
    2. Re:Quick! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey, if I ran an empire and was going to Waterloo, I'd want tight security too. Gotta learn from history, you know...

  3. Answer by ravenspear · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why Computer Science? Why Now?

    Because we need people with more skill to fix up all your shit Bill.

    1. Re:Answer by Korgan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Bought CP/M for $25,000 then rebranded it and sold 'licenses' for a hell of a profit. :-)

      Still, he was a master of BASIC. He developed many BASIC roms for a lot of different machines in the late 70s and early 80s. DOS's BASIC was actually a derivative of much of his early code.

      He knew machine code and ASM pretty much inside out for much of the architectures he built a BASIC interpretter for. To be honest though, beyond some of the original BASIC interpretters, and the earliest versions of PC-DOS/MS-DOS, I really cannot think of anything he directly had a hand in. By the time Xenix and OS/2 were on the cards, they'd already hired a decent sized development pool. I don't think he had any hand in developing the Microsoft contributions to those code bases.

      I vaguely recall him being very involved in Project Bob, but I can't remember if that was as a developer or just a very interested manager. Not that it matters. Project Bob was dumped in favour of Cairo.

    2. Re:Answer by Tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Funny, but to be fair to Gates, all indications are that he was a hell of a programmer individually.

      You base this bold statement on which facts, exactly?

      The only software that wikipedia attributes to Gates personally was the Altair BASIC interpreter, and even that was co-authored with Paul Allen.

      So, where are your "indications" ?

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  4. Why to do computer science by cdrdude · · Score: 4, Funny

    What did the liberal arts major say to the compsci major?
    >
    >
    >
    >"Would you like fries with that order, sir?"

    --
    This sig is neither interesting, nor humorous. Including meta-humor.
    1. Re:Why to do computer science by flatt · · Score: 5, Funny

      What did the compsci major say to the liberal arts major?

      "Dude, shut up and give me a application already."

    2. Re:Why to do computer science by NilObject · · Score: 4, Informative

      To which the computer science major said "no" because money has been tight ever since his job got shipped off to India. :-/

    3. Re:Why to do computer science by OpenGLFan · · Score: 5, Funny

      What did the liberal arts major say to the comp. sci. major?

      "No, I won't go out with you."

    4. Re:Why to do computer science by __int64 · · Score: 5, Funny

      What did the liberal arts major say to the compsci arts major?

      "Didn't you mean 'an'?"

  5. Dare I Attend Class Tomorrow? by Cruxus · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was going to attend CS 480 tomorrow, but now I just don't know if it's worth the possibility of seeing the Evil One in person.

    --
    On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
  6. Wow by XMetal2001 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No matter what your opinion of him, if the Richest Man in the world suddenly showed up in your Computer Science class as a guest speaker, that would be mindblowing.

  7. The full tour by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're sad you missed out on the opening dates, don't worry, there's a few more to come:

    Wednesday: University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin.
    Thursday: University of Waterloo and Columbia University.
    Friday: Princeton University and Howard University.

    Found the dates on Kevin Schofield's blog, thanks!

  8. Re:How did he pick UW-Madison? by Beller0ph1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just a little background about the class: CS302 is our introduction to computer programming class. This is a pre-requisite for other classes in other majors. Some people even take it for "fun" to learn Java. Even though it is in the CS department, many other students from other science majors (Engineering, Physics, Math) take it. Heck, even the liberal studies people can take it if they are interested in Java programming. I think that would have been pretty neat to see him talk. I wonder if he actually did a little teaching? On Wisconsin!

    --
    "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams" -- Willy Wonka
  9. Do as you say or as you do? by JanneM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, a guy who famously became the richest person in the world by skipping college and leaving a technical career in favour of business is now trying to persuade people to go to college and study technology?

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  10. Come and get shafted, boys and girls! by SysKoll · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why Computer Science? Why Now?

    Come work in computer science, boys and girls! Why? Because you'll have an opportunity to experience first-hand the effect of offer and demand on the job market, when we at MS will lobby for an increase of H1B -- the ones for 2006 are already allocated.

    Because since the industry is mostly managed by lawyers and MBA, not engineers, you in the tech field will never compete with us lawyers and sons of lawyers for these coveted positions of execs who get a raise at the same time techies are laid off.

    Because in spite of all Bill Gates' public wailing for attracting talent, he spits on tech talent, and so do most CEOs. The only "talent" he cares really about is execs, especially sales and marketing execs. That's talent. Design? Programming? Architecture? A commodity at best. A cost to be outsourced.

    And you wonder why there is such a decrease in engineering and science students? Of course they want to work in finance and law. Do you think they are stupid?

    --

    --
    Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

  11. Gates Visted CMU a few years ago... by KewlJedi · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and was greated with this http://weblogs.asp.net/ajuneja/archive/2004/02/25/ 80113.aspx

  12. Cradle Robbing by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft depends on recruiting young developers more than on any other population segment it reaches - market, purchasers, legislators, investors, whoever. All that crazy-ass "developers developers developers developers, developers developers developers developers" ranting comes from the heart over there. But Microsoft has lost the zeitgeist in that segment - Linux got it. Otherwise, Linux's tiny market share, especially among normals, would never justify the amount of software developed for it by multi-platform vendors.

    Gates is out there trying to keep Microsoft looking cool to their most important audience. Too bad he's easily outcooled by an expat Finn and a cartoon penguin.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  13. Great Opportunity by max+born · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you happen to be there. Ask him lots of questions. Let's get something on the record. Here are some I can think of. Make up your own.

    Could Microsoft ever open its code and make more money from support than developement?

    What's up with Microsoft and Linux? Seems like you guys have the same goal of wanting to write geat software for the benefit of everyone. Why not collaborate?

    Microsoft was recently sued by 20 states and found guilty of violatling the Clayton and Sherman anti trust acts. What have you done to rectify that?

    It's still not possible to buy an MS-free computer from many vendords. Why? Will you personally pledge you will put no pressure on an vendors to sell "microsoft only" systems.

    Just keep asking questions. We want to know.

  14. Re:What else can CS give us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    What is left to study in Computer Science? What algorithms are still out there waiting to be uncovered?


    I guess you haven't seen the ten problems, huh?

    For starters, if you take any integer, and if it is divisible by two divide it, but otherwise multiply it by three and add one, what happens? Do you eventually reach 1 and stop for all integers, and can you prove it one way or the other? The 3n+1 problem is unsolved. So are several complexity problems, including where exactly factoring large integers fits in the complexity heirarchy. Quantum computing will provide a new medium for designing new algorithms. AI isn't exactly solved either.

    CS as a field of study is a dead end, unfortunately. The real progress to be seen in the future is not in the science of algorithms, but in the application of the existing corpus to our needs. This requires dreamers, not people who know the nuts and bolts.

    Most of the "dreamers" tend to choose the wrong algorithms and data structures because they know nothing of the theory, not to mention too many "dreamers" who think they will solve some hard problem in CS without knowing that they've already been proved intractible or NP hard.

    We still don't know if P=NP for Turing's sake!

  15. Re:What else can CS give us? by adrianmonk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What is left to study in Computer Science? What algorithms are still out there waiting to be uncovered?

    Well, for starters, nobody has even figured out whether or not P == NP yet. Sure, most people strongly believe P != NP, but nobody really knows for sure.

    Kinda along those same lines, cryptography is built on the idea that certain tasks can be computationally infeasible to one group of people (eavesdroppers) but feasible and practical for the people who want to securely exchange information. We have stumbled on some algorithms that seem to fit this in practice, but according to what I understand, there is not really a cryptosystem out there for which anyone can supply proof that the computations that look hard actually are hard. For example, if I recall correctly, RSA's security rests on the idea that it is computationally very tough to factor a product of two very large prime numbers. But we don't know that there isn't an efficient algorithm for doing this. All we know is that we aren't yet aware of one.

    There are other active areas of research. For instance, right now "managed code" systems like Java and .Net are in their infancy. Computers have only just recently become fast enough that it is practical to consider switching to just-in-time compilation, and the thing is, there are optimizations that can be done when compiling at runtime that can't be done when compiling before runtime. (For example, you can use real profiling data to automatically create code that is most efficient for the actual workload.) So there are bound to be a lot of techniques to be discovered in this area.

    And there are other potential areas of research as well. We are already starting to see dual-core processors because it's looking to be hard to increase processor speed in conventional ways. We could probably use some research on how to do parallelism in other ways, possibly even going beyond dual-core machines or even beyond Von Neumann machines. If we ever feel compelled to do that, let me tell you, there will be a whole bunch of research needed in programming languages all over again, because imperative languages mirror the architecture we are using now but won't be suitable for an architecture that lends itself to automatically taking advantage of parallelism.

    Finally, keep in mind where physics thought it was after Newton. It seemed that classical mechanics explained just about everything pretty well. Until Einstein came along and blew it all out of the water. For all we know, something like that could happen with computer science. Although it might be 100 years...

  16. Wrong approach by Percy_Blakeney · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Obviously, Bill Gates pulled this stunt in an effort to curb the declining CS enrollment in the US. The problem with his approach, though, is that this won't do anything to change the situation; the problem isn't that anyone considers computer science to be irrelevant, but rather that many people see it as having a limited future in this country. Look no further than the very visible layoffs due to outsourcing, and you will see why CS enrollment is down.

    If I had been in the class, I would have asked Bill the following:

    • What financial motivation do large software companies have to keep CS jobs in the United States?
    • Do you see outsourcing as a growing or shrinking trend?
    • If overseas workers are brilliant, low-paid, and trained in the US, then how will US workers ever be able to compete?
    • How would you compare the long-term job prospects in the US of a business major vs. a computer science major?
  17. Free MS Office for Linux to first 100 attendees ! by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If I were on such a campus, I'd paper the kiosks and announcement boards the day before with flyers promoting the event and proclaiming things like:

    Free MS-Linux preview CDs to all attendees!

    Free MS Office for Linux beta for first 100

    Sign up for free MS Linux Developers Kit

    That ought to make the question and answer session interesting.

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.