[opendtv] News: Bill Gates touts 'digital blue screen of death lifestyle'
- From: Kon Wilms <kon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:14:02 -0800
Oh, the shame.
Cheers
Kon
-- snip
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/01/05/financial0019EST0249.DTL
Despite suffering technical glitches that prompted jokes and guffaws,
Bill Gates promised Wednesday that Microsoft Corp. would help millions
of consumers stay seamlessly plugged into a world of digital music,
movies, video games and television shows.
In his seventh annual keynote speech at the annual International
Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft's chairman explained that the
proliferation of broadband Internet access and the falling price of data
storage are compelling people to put music, photos, movies and other
aspects of their life into a digital format.
"We predicted at the beginning of this decade that this would be a
decade where the digital approach would be taken for granted," Gates
told hundreds of technologists who gathered for his kickoff to the
world's largest electronics show. "It's going even faster than we
expected."
But while promoting what he calls the "digital lifestyle," Gates showed
how vulnerable all consumers -- even the world's richest man -- are to
hardware and software bugs.
During a demonstration of digital photography with a soon-to-be-released
Nikon camera, a Windows Media Center PC froze and wouldn't respond to
Gates' pushing of the remote control.
Later in the 90-minute presentation, a product manager demonstrated the
ostensible user-friendliness of a video game expected to hit retail
stores in April, Forza Motor Sport. But instead of configuring a
custom-designed race car, the computer monitor displayed the dreaded
"blue screen of death" and warned, "out of system memory."
The errors -- which came during what's usually an ode to Microsoft's
dominance of the software industry and its increasing control of
consumer electronics -- prompted the celebrity host, NBC comedian Conan
O'Brien, to quip, "Who's in charge of Microsoft, anyway?"
Gates, who was sitting next to O'Brien on a set staged to look like
NBC's Late Night set, smiled dryly and continued with his discussion.
Gates also announced several partnerships with telecommunication
companies such as SBC Communications Inc. and television networks.
Microsoft and music network MTV last month inked a deal that will
eventually allow people to send cable programs from rock, pop and
country music channels and Comedy Central to their laptops, hand-held
computers and other devices.
Gates also announced that Korea's LG Electronics SA, the owner of Zenith
Electronics, would build a DVD player recorder using Microsoft's digital
video recording software. The product, which will be available in the
fall, will attach to a television so users can record live shows onto a
DVD.
Although he accepted guffaws from audience members in the theater, the
technical hiccups didn't prompt Gates to engage in a hard-hitting
analysis of computer reliability and security. Power outages, hardware
failures and software bugs often inexplicably humble those who strive
for a Windows-based digital lifestyle, and world's most popular
operating system is also a favorite target of hackers, virus writers,
spies and spammers.
"We've had a fair share of success and a fair share of things we've had
to do version two and three of," Gates said.
Gates downplaying his company's shortcomings isn't surprising. He
founded the company to create software for the budding niche of personal
computers in the early '80s.
But now senior executives are eager to get a piece of the $108 billion
consumer electronics market in the United States, now dominated by Asian
brands such as Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and LG Electronics. It will
likely take Microsoft years to understand the consumer electronics
market and produce simple, glitch-free products for consumers' living
rooms, analysts say.
"Microsoft was founded by programmers and is still run by programmers,
and the bias of programmers is that software can do anything," said Paul
DeGroot, an analyst at Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft.
"While Microsoft's goal is to turn the PC into a superhub that does
everything -- plays music, works as a cell phone, stores your photos --
they're running up against the fact that most people buy discrete
components that do particular things."
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