Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates on Monday called on the academic community to recruit more students into the software field as the company introduced a $1 million fund for university research.
Gates calls for more software research
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Eugenia Loli
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This will be money well spent.
When you look at the request he is making and about of money he putting into the fund it is nothing… It he was talking about 100 Million dollar fund then he putting his money on the line…
Project I am tracking in top 100 universityin US for next generation research one university would burn throught in two month on CPU Architecure research, and 4 university on 12 month on software research.
I beleive he asking the right thing, it just we need a Carnigie or Rockefeller level of donation from the one richest men in history..
Project I am tracking in top 100 universityin US for next generation research one university would burn throught in two month on CPU Architecure research, and 4 university on 12 month on software research.
I would argue that these projects are mismanaging funds.
$1 million free Visual Studio .NET licenses for Uni’s 🙂
With all ‘research’ (i.e. Microsoft-funded and owned intellectually property) all based on Microsoft software, this is hardly any sort of ‘revolution’.
In fact, it is simple more of the same — this time, Microsoft is locking in universities to the Microsoft monopoly.
Microsoft is just a boring evil company, endlessly ruining the software industry. Whatever.
This way, there’ll be even more bright American coders not getting all those jobs that Gates and his ilk are outsourcing overseas.
Then there’ll be even more students, like myself, going back to school for things you can still make a living on.
Agreed! Even the brightest minds in academia can be outsourced to a cheaper very bright mind in the software world. Go to technical school and become a mechanic. Everyone has a car and you can’t ship it off to be fixed, yet.
I also agree with the previous commentor on the level of donation, $1M is a small project budget in a medium sized corporation.
Sorry, a bit OT, I am becoming very disheartened about my chosen industry.
Gates is lamenting the lack of graduate students in computer science, yet having a graduate degree in computer science is often the kiss of death. Many, many software companies don’t want to pay extra for the Master’s, let alone the Doctorate.
A whole MILLION?! Gee, you’re a gentleman AND a scolar, Bill. /rolleyes
Was this going to be annual payments over 26 years?
Heh, um, that would, of course, be sc*h*olar. How scholarly of me (let this be a lesson — the preview button exists for a *reason* :-).
This is, of course, a good thing. One million is one million, and despite other comments here, is nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, Bill could have given more, but he could have also given less.
…this is the equivalent of me giving a couple of bucks to a poor student.
It’s a PR thing, nothing more. I wonder if it comes with any strings attached (i.e. all your patents are belong to us).
I just left my Ph.D. program to go into the industry with a Masters. I’m sorry to disappoint Bill, but there are plenty of graduate students in schools. More industry coordination and cooperation (not money or warm bodies) is the single best thing that can be added to improve the quality of research exported by US universities.
Are you sure that is not suppose to be like 100 million or 1 billion?
From the article:
“Five awards of $200,000 will be given out to new faculty members taking novel approaches to computer science, Microsoft said. The winners will be announced in the first quarter of next year.”
WHAT IN THE F*%@ are any of you doing to help the situation?
More than likely not a damned thing. I mean, he is giving money to help with education in the discipline of compsci, and all you can do is bitch about how he should have given more, especially when in all likely hood you have given nothing?
I don’t think that this problem is going to be improved merely by throwing a million bucks at it — there are deeper structural problems here. For my opinion on the more fundamental problems, see: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc/20040713#whither_systems_resea…
I aggree, but still…..
It gets to the point where all the this garbage about
Microsoft and Bill being originally birthed from the 8th level of hell is just disgusting; especially when he is trying to do something positive for someone other than himself. The sad thing is that most of these “detractors” are probably complaining about things they know jack about; which is often the case.
The sad truth is that Masters and Doctorate programs are useful for one thing and one thing only: teaching. If you don’t plan on teaching, they are a waste of money and time.
And, of course, isn’t Bill the one that said programmers don’t need a computer science degree?
>The sad truth is that Masters and Doctorate programs are >useful for one thing and one thing only: teaching. If you >don’t plan on teaching, they are a waste of money and time.
You cannot get into research without a Ph.D from a good University. It is very narrow minded to say they are a waste of time just because you won’t end up as yet another programmer deploying yet another website or some other task that’s been done a million times. Research posts can pay very highly and you are rewarded with being on the cutting edge of technology working with great minds to explore subjects that have not been tackled before. Much better than being a code monkey in my opinion and far from a waste of time.
First Gates blows THIRTY BILLION PLUS on a stock dividend and buyback scheme to make his stockholders love him (and take the taint off antitrust suits and the universal hatred his customers and “partners” have for MS) instead of spending it on DECENT R&D, then he says to academia, “Gee! I’ll give you a million to get more computer science students!”
Thanks a lot, Bill!
Now just fuck right off!
I will trust them if… Bill was helping research no matter what the platform is on the students’ computers, but I’m affraid it’s going to sponsor MS platforms only, like MS always do
😀
Is this so that academics can license the algorithm patents Microsoft recently filed?
Bleh, I bet they will leech any new findings they make, and try to file patents for them as well.
> Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates on
> Monday called on the academic community to recruit more
> students into the software field as the company introduced
> a $1 million fund for university research.
I guess he’s running out of new ideas for software projects 🙂
It’s a rather strange comment since so many computer companies are going offshore with development these days — considering the number of software developers out of a job maybe he should be looking at ways of NOT KILLING OFF SMALLER COMPANIES with Microsoft’s business strategies.
Based on Microsoft’s current stock price, Bill is worth $31.68 billion. $1 million is .003% of this. Taking into account my savings and home equity vs. my student loan debt, I estimate my net worth to be about $700. So, not to be outdone by Mr. Gates, here’s my 2 cents – for those away at college wanting to become *good* programmers: use Linux.
I want to see vi taken to the next level! commands in pure binary and text input as ASCII code! >:-)
Anyway, I’m disappointed, then again, this is the typical US centric Microsoft; failure to see that the world doesn’t stop at the borders of the USA. Oh well, no wonder their profits are so crappy from their overseas business.
Mind you, Novell’s New Zealand and Australia branch just keeps growing each year. I guess those of us down under know a good product when we see one!
Cheap Ad from Micro$oft
E.g. like results i
of sponsored investigation must be published in BSD not GPL license?:)
When it comes to education, I don’t care who the money comes from, or how much is given. Education is best served through these donations.
Regardless of Bill’s intentions (there are of course way to many conspiracy theorists, when we really need strong scientific theorists), the fact remains that money is being given to education.
That is money well spent!
Just have one quick question, is it really that bad to study comp science right now in the US? No jobs left there? Just wondering, since I was considering a degree in comp. science. And also, is there any good business in making supercomputer clusters?
More promise is in Business and Computer Information Systems currently.
I heard that m$ has moved 70 researchers from, well, research, to their longborne project. Apparently m$ doesnt require themselves to do actual research any more since billg put that $1mil into that trust fund.
and what is business and computer information systems?