Why is Bill Gates Back At Microsoft?

[JMcEntegart]

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Why is Bill Gates Back At Microsoft? : Read more

 

[clutchc]

Technology Adviser? Maybe to save the company before Windows 8 takes it down.

 

[hakesterman]

Because the shareholders know that they are pretty much Doomed without him.

 

[Datcu Alexandru]

Personally i would love if they either sell the xbox and whoever gets it can take it in a different direction so in the end we would have sony nintendo and ? each one taking their console in a different direction rather than fighting for exclusives and hardware specs.Or they take the xbox along with their vision of the cloud (yeah im starting to hate the term) and make what they originally wanted to do with xbox one but this time do it right and market it right. All digital is fine (just look at steam) but it needs to have advantages like price reduction, better support etc. Or if they keep the full price than that game better offer blow jobs for it.

 

[Blazer1985]

The moment I saw him dressed like an angry bird I KNEW he was up to something To answer the youporn devotee: "all digital" is more than fine until you hit the 20-50gb per game of recent AAA titles as it can take days on slower adsl.

 

[drwho1]

I will never care about "the cloud" no matter who's in charge.The day that I need extra storage, I will just build a home NAS.

 

[brandonjclark]

You're not the audience then, drwho1.

 

[ddpruitt]

Bill Gates isn't back at Microsoft, he never left. He's just taking a more active role. It makes sense considering this is the first time Microsoft doesn't have a CEO that was with the company from the beginning. Although I think the board doesn't know what it's doing, you could see the problems with Balmer miles away.

 

[vaughn2k]

Well I am not being optimistic about cloud storage and stuff. But I begin to realize, I need something out there, a storage whenever I am on the road, with only a smart phone on hand. Cloud storage gives me an advantage to pull-out my data whenever I need it, good thing is also the Skydrive advantage. it allows me to fetch needed files remotely. I mean this stuff is great, I am just hoping that enough security is in place, so I can place everything in cloud.

 

[Rhinofart]

@Multipleads.How on earth can you possibly attribute that to being Windows 8. Disk read errors go back to the very beginning of time (Well computer time anyways) And Any OS on earth can get a disk read error if there is an error on the disk! If your system borked like that, look to your disks rather than the OS.

 

[dakkon]

You guys do know that the term "cloud" does not only pertain to online storage? drwho1

 

[Jordan Nwokolo]

This Company is destined to fall in the near future..whoever in charge will not able to save it.

 

[coolitic]

Bill Gates as technology advisor? What I'm hearing is that they might actually make Windows 9 good!But since it's Microsoft we're talking about, there is a chance for disappointment.

 

[tableholder]

Bill gates in however you cloth or style him still looks like a geek. Its funny.Jokes aside, i hope that MS wont force windows users in the future to use "cloud storage". If they do that, then they better be prepared to face another angry mob like what they saw with Win8.Cloud compute in the other hand i would embrace lovingly. As long as they provide it for free. Like windows updates.

 

[boytitan2]

I just don't see the point of the cloud my music collection is only 20 gigabytes, most people stream videos, My manga and comic collection is under 20 gigs. My game collection is never going to go over 2 terabytes and I would never put a game n the cloud my whole problem with F2P games is how much of the game is in the cloud and not on your p.c. killing any modding one could do with it.Also cloud gaming is terrible look at Sim City just a horrible idea,Recorded video gameplays only use 150 gigs of space and that is because I am stubborn and still use fraps.Finally why create a extra step.I get het 25 megabit per second transfer speeds max with my internet which is not close to fast enough for the cloud transferring large amounts of date from 1 computer to another would be faster with a outdated standard like usb 2.0. So in general the cloud is just pointless why would some one use it you don't go and put files on your friends computer for back up so why use a strangers. Plus the personal storage you yourself can get makes the cloud just pointless.

 

[Jgriff]

To save it from what it has become.

 

[Grandmastersexsay]

"The cloud" is doomed to failure.

As a pretty good rule of thumb, anything that comes from a conference room is garbage. Even its name reeks of MBA douche baggerey. Just call it remote storage for crying out loud.

They just don't teach enough common sense in business school I guess. There are two huge problems "The Cloud" faces. First is the fact that the price per GB of hard drives and other physical storage media will always be decreasing. So 1 TB of online storage is worth less and less as time goes by. That means the money companies invest into server equipment, ect, depreciates very quickly.

The second problem "The Cloud" faces are ever increasing privacy concerns. More and more people are figuring out, if they have something stored "In The Cloud" advertisers and all kind of three letter agencies are scanning their data for information they deem useful. People are also learning that the saying, "if you have nothing hide, you have nothing to fear" is a flat out lie. Evidence of crime is not found, it is created.

Considering how trivial it is to set up your own free remote server, using your own hardware, I just can't see how "The Cloud" can support a multi billion dollar company in a market that is becoming increasingly hostile towards privacy violations.

 

[somebodyspecial]

Anyone putting info in the cloud is a moron. If you like your information being PRIVATE keep it IN HOUSE. Period. Hire or train good IT people instead of outsourcing your security. For a company like Netflix etc ok I get it. You're serving data all day, not really trying to protect it like credit cards, etc. But for personal or company info to be in the clouds? You should be fired for being stupid and have no business being in IT. It will never be hack proof if it's in the cloud.

Toms keeps pitching this cloud crap, and it is ridiculous. I pay no attention to the IT posts now because of this. It's almost as if their IT side here, is paid to pitch clouds, cloud certs etc. STUPID. Apparently I'm not alone, as most of those posts have ZERO comments on them... Well, because any decent IT guy knows you don't want ANY data in the cloud that you actually want protected.

MS heading to the clouds...LOL. This tells me one thing: My comments that OpenGL, WebGL, HTML5 etc will take over gaming via Android, linux, SteamOS etc are correct and MS is losing the desktop along with Intel. They are now totally defensive and reactive just like any empire who has sat too long on the throne and became complacent (IE Buying nokia to sell your OS because everyone has android which is free - too late, just like buying yahoo to catch google - two losers, BING/YAHOO don't make a winner). I look forward to the new regime which will also usher in a HUGE user base of units for game devs to make money on and hopefully better/LONGER games at some point (less risk with so many units to aim at). We should get more unique titles eventually instead of Call of Duty 65/Battlefield 39 or whatever...LOL. Little indie devs can make some great games that will make them millionaires. Write for the API's I mentioned instead of DirectX and you can port everywhere cheaply and easily which helps the little guys get on the map in a way that they never could years before. These API's allow you to shoot at a few Billion units rather than a few hundred million PC's, a few hundred million consoles (~85mil each and all needing a different version and far more coding) etc. It is far easier for them to make money without WINTEL/DirectX being dominant.

First games to help make windows/Wintel less appealing. Then watch as apps follow making Wintel...Kind of like RIMM etc But I expect both to survive, just my kids or their kids might not even know what windows looks like as they may never see it and may never own an x86 chip.

Like drwho1, I'll build a nas if needed (and am looking finding a great one now). They are cheap enough now, that cloud storage is pointless to me even if I thought it was safe. For around $650 you can get 4x3TB drive and a nas which is more than enough for my needs. Anything outside your house, or outside your business doors is OUT of your control. 2013 the year of hacks? ROFL@clouds futures. Even big companies can't seem to keep data safe inside or outside (I think due to crap IT but whatever), so best to trust yourself and train employees properly. I've been in multiple companies where servers were months out of date on updates etc and management seems to have no clue this is the case, which usually happens when they weren't IT themselves at any point in their careers but just managers in general. Police your IT or get police'd (so to speak) by China hackers etc... At this point your IT manager should probably have a background in IT security or servers at least, or prepare to be screwed soon.

 

[cats_Paw]

Everybody who wants to know about cloud knows enought.I keep some stuff on the cloud, but NEVER things that are remotly private.This new age crap of shoving down our throats new things like they are the future...3D tvs, bitcoin, cloud, DRM, 3 hour long games...Do these companies really think its a good long term plan for their company?I mean, sure it might work for a while, but eventually you WILL lose your customers.They are ignoring the most basic rules of sale/marketing:-Dont insult your customers by taking the for idiots.-Dont sell something if you know people wont buy more from you.And for the love of god, dont ignore your customers: when they say "WE WANT X"Give them X, not your vision of X.How can these companies be so.... (FacePalm).

 

[gnodeb]

I think that for end consumers, Cloud is nothing but marketing gimmick. It's obvious that Some of you thinks that Cloud is FTP server for fancy FTP clients (like SkyDrive, GoogleDrive, DropBox...). People who knows the difference between FTP/HTTP servers and Cloud will not talk about storage and certainly will not talk about privacy...

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

Because the shareholders know that they are pretty much Doomed without him.

Obligatory link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN0K58EfJSg

 

[Datcu Alexandru]

FOR GODS SAKE PEOPLE. Cloud doesn't mean just storage. it refers to cloud computing as well. you can use cloud computing and keep all your data localy and private just fine. See this is what i mean by marketed wrong. People don't even understand what the cloud is used for.

 

[Grandmastersexsay]

I wish people would stop being douches by trying to correct people about cloud computing. For 99.99% of the population, the cloud refers to remote storage, not virtual machines.

We're not talking about virtual machines, and Microsoft isn't either. Microsoft wants a Google business model where they make their money from targeted advertising.

 

[eriko]

I will never care about "the cloud" no matter who's in charge.The day that I need extra storage, I will just build a home NAS.

Yeah, you've got to be kidding me - trust all your most personal docs to the Cloud, after Dropbox & NSA, and others too?No way. Not ever.I got 25GB, (or something like that) with my HTC One. Rooted it, added new ROM, and never had to hear of Dropbox again.

 

[eriko]

Well I am not being optimistic about cloud storage and stuff. But I begin to realize, I need something out there, a storage whenever I am on the road, with only a smart phone on hand. Cloud storage gives me an advantage to pull-out my data whenever I need it, good thing is also the Skydrive advantage. it allows me to fetch needed files remotely. I mean this stuff is great, I am just hoping that enough security is in place, so I can place everything in cloud.

And that is just it - the security is absolutely NOT in place.NSA have got to all the corporations. Make your own NAS solution, and lock it right down.