Thank you, Bill, for this wonderful talk. And the students here, and the developers here in China are very excited about your visit. There are so many questions from so many people. You know, we have to find some way to figure out and to ask some questions. We received thousands of emails from the audience, and I selected a… that many questions here. So let me try to divide them into different categories. I’ll start with some question quite personal. So I hope you don’t mind. The first question is: “Mr. Bill Gates, Do you still write the code? How many hours do you spend on coding every day or each week? Or when was the last time you wrote any code?”

“I still love to write code. You know I, in the early days of Microsoft, I reviewed everyone’s code. And it was kind of fun when I knew all the lines of code. But, of course, we’ve gone far beyond that. Most of the code I write is actually just so I can learn. You know, I… I’ve written C… C-sharp programs, to understand about that. I’m writing some web service programs, so I can see how hard it is to do that. I’m really trying to think now how we make it so people don’t have to write so many lines of code. Sometimes when I meet with product groups, and they say something is going to be very hard to do, I say to them, “Oh, I could come in this weekend and do that.” But I’m afraid they… maybe they don’t really believe me anymore, because it’s… it’s been a long time since I’ve done that, I have to admit.”

The second question: “So, Mr. Bill Gates, I was told about people in Microsoft work very, very, very hard. So how many hours did you work?”

“Well, I think, you know, hard work is a really great thing. And the fact that people love their jobs, they’re very committed to their jobs, they… they believe in the vision of what we can help create. We… we are very strong on that. We also think that people should work in a way that would be sustainable. You know, we want people to have a long career. We want them to have a good balance in terms of family activities and their work. And so actually sometimes we tell people, you know, they’re even working a little much. In my case, I… I generally work about, oh, 60 hours a week. But, you know, there’s a lot of things that… that I don’t have to do, you know. It’s been a long time since I’ve mowed the lawn or, you know, done certain things. So I’m either working or I’m getting time with the… my family and a few hobbies. And so I can still be very intense. I take two weeks a year where I just go off and do nothing but… other than read and sleep a little bit and think about the future of software. And that’s so I can catch up with the very rapid developments that are taking place. I need that kind of intense concentration. And so, you know, because I love my job, I… I… I… I do like working long hours.”

Thank you Bill. So… so Bill, there’s a question about Microsoft product. “So we have heard about the codename ‘Longhorn’, Windows, next generation Windows operating system. So when can we have that?”

“Well, we’re hard at work on Longhorn. And this is a… a release that I’m very excited about, because of the… the use of XML, the advanced graphics, and really storing information in a very rich way. Today when we deal with information of different types, we have to learn many commands. When we deal with sets of photos or sets of mail or sets of files or fonts, it’s all different commands. And by having a very, very rich file system, Longhorn will deliver a unification that gives you more power for all those things, but it’s simpler because you just learn one set of commands. It’s such an ambitious release that we don’t know the exact date. We’re making very good progress. We hope to have a early version out to developers for them to give us feedback this year. And then, you know, sometime in the next several years, we’ll have… have Longhorn. So we’re working as fast as we can, but we want to make sure we get it exactly right.”

Thank you Bill. The next… the next question is about the open source. So this student asks, “What are your viewpoints, the good and the bad, regarding open source software? And I’m learning Linux in my college. I was told about the new Windows CE 5.0 will have at least seventy percent… seventy… seventy percent of the source code available for the… for the developers. Can you tell us more?”

Yeah, the… Microsoft thinks that the… in many cases giving out the source code is a very good thing. There’s many issues around… around open source. In… in many ways, having community development is… is a very good thing. It’s also very good to have commercial development. It’s through commercial development that we get jobs. We get new companies. And there’s really a virtuous cycle that the government takes money and helps fund the universities. Those universities do a lot of good research, and then companies are created out of that. They… and that’s where the jobs are created that generate the taxes that then allow this ecosystem to continue to work very well. And so there’s always been a balance between free software and commercial software. There’s some things that commercial software can do very well: things around upwards compatibility, things around coordinated innovation across the different pieces. But, you know, we’re always gonna have these two things in… in the marketplace. Really reaching out to the community, sharing more of the source code, I’d say that’s the best practice that both the commercial world and open source world are doing a better and better job on that. And so definitely if I was a student today, I would spend a lot of time understanding Unix and the… the work going on there. And I would spend a lot of time understanding Windows and the work going on there. In fact, I think I can say that those are the two operating systems that will have most of the… the usage in the years ahead.”

Thank you Bill. “So I’m a student in college, and I’m thinking about taking my master’s degree in software… software engineering. But I’m really worried about is programming is still a… a great job where I make a lot of money by doing more programming?”

“Well, be careful to not do open source programming. You know, that’s… that’s a trap that people sometimes get into is if the university work is done open source than it can never be used to… to start a company. Let me state very clearly that the opportunities in software, both in terms of terms of the work being fun, the work being important, the work being high paying –I think, you know, it’s the best area to go into. And, you know, this is what’s going to change the world. It’s not, you know, needing more, you know… there’s nice professions like being a lawyer or a stock broker or things like that. But those professions aren’t going to change the world. The only other thing besides software that is changing the world is the work in biology. And, in fact, the intersection, the way those two play together, is a… a very hot area that I think everybody should follow and find interesting. And so software work is… is fun, and… and the potential is there.”

Great. I think it gives a lot of hope to this student. So there’s another developer asked, “So I’m a developer in a local software company. And we… we are always compared with our Indian counterparts, and both countries have a lot of things in common: a very big market, a deep talent pool, greater potential. But it seems to me India is being so much better than China. I’m very frustrated. Now why is that? Can you tell us?”

“Well, I think it’s very impressive that with all the incredible things going on in China, China’s always looking at is there anyone doing it, something better. Is there anything we need to learn, you know. What has the US done about innovation and intellectual property? What has India done about outsourcing and saying ok, even if it takes five years, ten years. You know, China’s gonna make the investment to be world class and all of those things. I had a… a meeting with the… the… the ministers involved in… in education. And they were, you know, saying, “Are we doing the right things?” And I… I certainly think the strategy’s in place. English skills are very important –and the quality of the software training. And this is something where Microsoft is partnering now with the universities, you know, trying to make sure the curriculum is really strong, up to date, and… and turns out lots of people. India had the advantage of having the… the history of some English speaking, and they had the Indian Institute of Technology. And I think it’s great. There are… there are things to learn from India. There are things to learn from The United States. Don’t lose sight of the fact, though, that China is… is amazing in terms of its leadership in so many areas. And… and that the fact that China’s such a powerhouse in manufacturing and other areas means that you will developing software skills and using those and then able to take that expertise and… and engage in… in software export. And… and helping that take place is one of the commitments we have as a… a company here in China.”

Thank you Bill for encouragement. So I… I also got a question about the Ya-qin. I’m going to ask you this very frank question.

“What’s that?”

You recently promoted a Ya-qin Zhang, former Director of, what, Microsoft Research Asia, to be the corporate VP responsible for embedded system and, more importantly, mobile… mobile. So is this because you think Ya-qin knows more about the Chinese mobile market? Or what is really the reason?

“Well, it’s… it’s really exciting for us to have Yan… Ya-qin come to headquarters and drive what is a… a big growth area in… in probably one of the hottest areas of… of innovation. What you’ll see more and more is… is that as we have great people in China, some of them will come and… and join our headquarters and… and make up the top leadership team there. You know, Microsoft is a very global company, and, you know, we have people from all over the world. And that’s fantastic for us. In China in particular, you know, Ya-qin, Kai Fu, a lot… lot of people here are… are making huge contributions. And so it’s… it’s a promotion, and we… we have very high expectations.”

So does… it doesn’t mean that, you know, with Ya-qin’s knowledge of all this particular market, as a mobile market that Microsoft’s just going after for?

“Going?”

Going after. So the… the China’s mobile market. Is this something you are going after?

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The… the… we’re actually going to have a higher percentage of our mobile development activities taking place here in China. And, so we’ll have a mix of development going on in The United States and development going on here. And Ya-qin’s in a… a great place to coordinate that. The mobile market here really is… is quite phenomenal. And, you know, his background and… and the learnings from this market, and some of the surrounding markets, will be key for us getting it right. That’s an area where The United States is… is not a leader. And so it’s particularly important for us to look around the world.”

“So I heard about Microsoft talking about a trustworthy computing and the secure computing. In this networked environment, what do you think, what are those problems, you know, relating to security?”

“Well, I think it’s interesting that… that the industry and Microsoft are learning so much about these security issues. You know, before we can turn to companies and say use the internet for all your communications and really rely on that in this super deep way, we… we do need to make these security advances. And so it’s certainly a… a… something that could hold back the full potential of using the internet if we don’t get all these pieces in place. This includes being able to show a company that they’ve done the isolation properly and that they’ve got the updating processes in place, so that, even if somebody’s malicious, it’s not easy for them to get in and to attack their network. And so that term, trustworthy computing, involves a broad range of activities. It’s become our top priority over these last several years. There’s actually a release of Windows that, an intermediate release that’s focused on this, coming out in the next few months. And, you know, so we’re… I feel very good about the progress being made there.”

Thank you Bill. “So Mr. Bill… Mr. Bill Gates, I’m very tired of receiving so many spam emails. Is there a good program from Microsoft that I can download today and solve this problem?”

“Well, we do have our filtering technology, and it’s based on a fairly rich so-called basing model that looks at the mail that is normal mail for you and the mail that is abnormal mail, and uses a lot of information to get that accurate. That’s able to eliminate somewhere between 80% to 90% of spam. And so even today, I… I recommend to people using those tools. It’s as we add the additional proof elements and make sure that mail is authentic that we announced an industry cooperation called Caller ID for Mail just a few weeks ago. As those has come into place, that’s where we’ll really get to… to the next level of spam elimination. And so, you know, we are very, very involved in… -it’s interesting how we’re using very state of the art techniques to solve this problem.”

“So… so Bill, what is your dream computer?”

“Well, I, you know, I’m personally someone who loves the… the tablet computer. The idea of being able to go into meetings and have my notes in ink and to be able to send off messages right while I’m in that meeting, navigate the information, annotate the presentations. You know, I… I think we… we should have every student have a tablet PC. You know, the tablet has a microphone so it can record what’s said. And eventually that’ll be connected up to the speech recognition. Of course, it’ll be connected up to that wireless network. And so for part of the time I’ll use the tablet. Then when I go to my desk, today I have three 22-inch LCDs. So I have a big visual area, and I can have my schedule, my emails, my browsing, and just really take full advantage of my field of view. In fact, we’re inventing new techniques for window management and document layout because what I have today, although it’s expensive, eventually that kind of screen technology should be available to everyone. And… and so what I have when I walk around, what I have on my desk are slightly different. And the software should make it automatic that those work well together.”

Sounds like a very good workspace for you.

“It’s great.”

“Bill, I’m a graduate student who studies speech recognition. I attend the…the Dr. Kai Fu Li’s talk about a year ago in Beijing. Dr. Li said that speech recognition is… technology seems always ten years away. So twenty years ago, people said the speech will be available in ten years. Ten years ago, Kai Fu Li said that speech will be available, you know, in ten years. So what is your view? Will we ever get the speech recognition?”

“Well, the progress is pretty incredible. But it’s fair to say that all of the problems that relate to matching human capabilities are respect for the human brain and its ability to use context and… and deep reasoning. Our respect for it goes up and up as we try and create the equivalent thing. For example, the way that… that… if we compare a computer recognizing speech to a human when there’s no noise and there’s no context, just reading random words in a perfectly silent environment, the difference today there is not so huge. But when we add in noise and we add in the human’s ability to use context, we still see quite a difference. And so techniques that… that can eliminate the noise and that can create… add those contextual understandings, those… we need big advances in both of those before we can start to match human capability. Now for small vocabularies, computers are already doing very well. Some of you may use, you know, the ability to call up a phone number by using speech with your phone. And… and that’s pretty good. But the dictation problem, where we use a large vocabulary, that is still many years ahead of us. I have to say I’m an optimist again, even though like Kai Fu I’ve been wrong in the past. I’m an optimist that really this is the… the time period we’ll solve those things. And we’ve got a much better model of what needs to be done. And there is clear progress. We’ve put out our speech server product just a few months ago, and we have a lot of very happy customers that are using that.”

Yeah, here’s a question again about working at Microsoft. “Bill, I was told that interviewing at Microsoft is very, very difficult. And what should I study? How hard should I study so that I get a chance to work for you?”

“Well, we have quite a variety of jobs. You know, the… some of the key jobs we’ve been talking about here are the software development jobs. And, you know, there, I think, writing a lot of code yourself, looking at code, understanding performance of that code –really understanding how the machine works and being able to articulate for the software projects you worked on, why you did the architecture one way or the other, maybe even some mistakes that you made in architecture. Those are the people who can come and make the greatest contribution. Sometimes today you can take computer science and not really get a model in your head of how the pieces fit together and… and how that can be simplified. And so really hands-on on development, knowing what’s going on inside the machine, and… and we’re working with the universities to make sure that –not just the top universities but lots have courses that can work in that way. That, along with the, you know, kind of an excitement, a commitment to advance the state of the art in software, you know, that’s the kind of person we’re looking for. And… and, you know, we’ll be doing lots of hiring in the years ahead.”

MSN:ruddyli@hotmail.com

MSN:ruddyli@hotmail.com

MSN:ruddyli@hotmail.com