Bill Gates System Quotations

We will never make a 32-bit operating system.

Password systems really won't cut it. (Firms) need to move to multi-factor authentication, and a lot of that will be smart cards.

I like to read general biology - things about the immune system and advances in that area - because it lays the foundation for my part of the dialogue at the foundation about what things we ought to pursue.

There are ecosystems like coral reefs [at risk] through ocean acidification. Those are valuable things that we should protect.

By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited... The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.

It's the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change - as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass - the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that - so they're kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not.

Reliability is top of the list (of Windows 2000 features) ... People don't want to reboot their systems ever,

Our vision of what's important is exactly the same today, bringing together the best systems and the best software to empower people with rich information solutions.

Building a Digital Nervous System does not require some huge new investment in hardware and software. In fact, most companies have the key building blocks today.

Older systems were secure because they were isolated. You can't layer on top of a system elements to make it secure; you get too much of a mismatch between the components. This design approach is absolutely critical--thinking these things through from the beginning and not bringing security in at the end is very important. This has been a big shift for Microsoft.

The digital decade is not just about any particular aspect of computing, taking enterprises, knowledge workers and homes and building standards that connect all of those together. The key piece in the center is trustworthy systems, systems that do what you expect on an extremely reliable basis. So in each of these areas we have new scenarios, new ways that people will be using their computers that they never did before.

The appeals court already has affirmed Microsoft's right to build Internet capabilities into the Windows operating system to benefit consumers.

It's a concept that in the past might have been thought of as an executive information system that was just for a few top people, ... It'd take millions of dollars to set up, the system would be hard-wired, and it would provide only a subset of data. Today, in literally minutes you can add data and status reports and your personal digital dashboard will update that.

That kernel operating system ... is not the key area, it is the software you have to buy on top of that to deal with management, security and directories and things like that.

We also had the tragic events of September 11th, and I know for everyone that's caused us to step back, think about our priorities. It's a tragedy that affects us personally and affects our businesses. For the computer industry in particular, I think it highlights the importance of security, giving that far more importance than we've had in the past. We don't want our digital systems to have weaknesses that allow for tragedies, exploiting the weaknesses that are there. And so there's a renewed sense of focus on that.