You know what I say to this.....? Mr. Gates sold out a long time ago with deceptive, illegal and unprofessional behavior. I have to say even on a local level, the Microsoft crowd has something to be desired. His empire creeks with the LINUX assault. It could not happen to a nicer guy.
RC
-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Wirt Atmar
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HP3000-L] OT: Bill Gates talks up computing as a career
From today's NY Times:
=======================================
March 1, 2004
Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career
By STEVE LOHR
AMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 26 - Bill Gates went on a campaign tour last week,
trying to reinvigorate his base, as they say in politics.
The number of students majoring in computer science is falling, even at the
elite universities. So Mr. Gates went stumping at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard, telling
students that they could still make a good living in America, even as the nation's
industry is sending some jobs, like software programming, abroad.
"Will this create more competition? It will," he told students at M.I.T. on
Thursday. "It means the U.S. will have to keep its edge in skills."
Later, noting fears of widespread job losses, he said in an interview, "But
people are way overreacting."
Mr. Gates urged the students to stay in the game, no matter where they worked
- for Microsoft, a rival, a start-up, a research lab.
Matthew Notowidigdo, who came to M.I.T. five years ago and will receive his
master's degree in computer science in May, has chosen not to. The head of the
department said Mr. Notowidigdo, a 22-year-old native of Columbus, Ohio, was
one of his brightest students, who would be welcomed at any computer science
Ph.D. program in the country.
But Mr. Notowidigdo has decided not to be a software engineer. Instead, he
plans to head to Wall Street this spring to join the bond trading desk at Lehman
Brothers, where he will work on research and analyzing fixed-income
securities. While he may pursue a Ph.D. someday, he says it will be in economics rather
than computer science.
Enrollments are down at the best computer science schools, where the
potential stars of technology's future are groomed. Professors say there is less
enthusiasm for the discipline among students, and they worry it may be more than a
lingering disenchantment after the dot-com bubble burst.
In an effort to counter the trend, Mr. Gates, who personifies technological
optimism and the potential payoff, sought to reassure students that their
futures were no less bright in an era of outsourcing. The effect of computer
technology, he told them, is just beginning and opportunity abounds. Computing, he
added, is an ideal field for fine minds to make a difference in society.
"We need your excitement," he told students at Harvard. "Most of these jobs
are very interesting and very social - you work with lots of smart people. I'm
excited about the future of computing, and I'm excited to see how each of you
can contribute to it."
But Mr. Notowidigdo's expertise in software design and programming are also
valuable tools on Wall Street, as sophisticated computer programs and models
are increasingly used to sniff out profit-making opportunities in the financial
markets.
And he said his summer job last year, doing programming work for a New York
investment bank, also influenced his plans for the future. The bank's
technology department was outsourcing some software work to India, and as part of the
project, programmers from Wipro, a large India outsourcing firm, were brought
to New York. Mr. Notowidigdo was impressed at the level of their skills.
The outsourcing trend, Mr. Notowidigdo explained, "factors into my thinking
about what I want to pursue as a career."
His current path as a technologically adept investment banker, he decided,
gives him "a broader set of skills and is less risky than software engineering."
Mr. Notowidigdo arrived at M.I.T. in 1999, when technological exuberance was
in the air and the allure of computing was at its peak. Now, even at elite
schools like M.I.T., the number of students choosing to major in computer science
is down.
John V. Guttag, head of the university's electrical engineering and computer
science department, points to the "worrisome" downward trend. In the current
academic year, 229 sophomores selected his department as their major, down from
282 in 2002 and 342 in 2001, a 33 percent decrease in just two years.
Nationally, there is a similar trend. The Computing Research Association's
annual survey of more than 200 universities in the United States and Canada
found that undergraduate enrollments in computer science and computer engineering
programs were down 23 percent this year.
M.I.T., like other universities, is seeking to counter the trend by
emphasizing that computer science is increasingly a collaborative discipline, involving
work with experts in other fields of business and science to solve all kinds
of economic and social problems. "What we have to emphasize is that a good
computer science education is a great preparation for almost anything you want to
do," Professor Guttag said. "It's a terrific time to be a computer
scientist."
That was the central theme of the Gates tour, which was planned and carried
out with the precision of a presidential event. Political veterans were
consulted. Aides did a "walkthrough" two weeks ago, checking locations, logistics and
travel times. Mr. Gates met with dozens of professors at the five campuses
and nearly 5,000 students attended his talks.
After it was over Thursday night, Mr. Gates, pacing in a basement conference
room at Harvard, explained his purpose. "Computer science is about to be able
to accomplish things that people have been working on for decades," he said.
"Yet there doesn't seem to be the buzz, excitement and understanding of that so
that the best young people are drawn into it."
With each lecture, his message was that because of ever-faster machines,
improved software and the accumulated wisdom of decades of research, computer
science was on the cusp of genuine breakthroughs in areas like speech recognition,
artificial intelligence and machine-to-machine communication. These advances
may take five years, 10 years or more, but they are not so far off now, he
said. The trouble with the dot-com years, Mr. Gates told the students, was the
delusion that technological revolutions happen overnight, without years of hard
work by bright, talented people like them.
Yet already, Mr. Gates told them, the established disciplines - ranging from
biology and astronomy to industrial design and finance - increasingly rely on
computer analysis and modeling. And the new disciplines, like nanotechnology,
are deeply computational.
In that regard, he got no disagreement from Mr. Notowidigdo, the M.I.T.
student who has decided to enter the field of financial services. He said he had no
regrets about his choice of major. "It opened so many doors for me," Mt.
Notowidigdo said. "And understanding computational technology is going to be
essential to almost any field in the future."
Mr. Gates said electronic commerce had not yet even begun, and that huge
gains in communication, convenience and productivity are on the near horizon. He
acknowledged that there were challenges to be overcome in areas like privacy
and computer security, skipping lightly over the fact that security flaws have
bedeviled many Microsoft products. But even the headaches, he said, are merely
intriguing problems for smart computer people to conquer, and profit from.
Mr. Gates scoffed at the notion, advanced by some, that the computer industry
was a mature business of waning opportunity. In one question-and-answer
session, a student asked if there could ever be another technology company as
successful as Microsoft.
"If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can
learn," Mr. Gates responded, "that is worth 10 Microsofts."
=======================================
Wirt Atmar
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