Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Bill Gates took a moment to set down with the folks over at The Daily Princetonian, to give his thoughts on a variety of subjects. Amongst the topics covered, including new drugs to combat Aids, to the totally unrelated topic of open source software, was next generation optical storage. It is often interesting to read what the worlds richest man has to say and below we can catch a glimpse of his thoughts concerning Blu-ray when asked: "Why is Microsoft not backing Blu-ray today '” a technology that many consider to be superior?"
It's not the physical format that we have the issue with, it's that the protection scheme on Blu is very anti-consumer. If [the Blu-ray group] would fix that one thing, you know, that'd be fine. For us it's not the physical format. Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts. |
"Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be." Yes, and when Edison invented the light bulb, there was some talk that it was time to shut down the United States Patent patent office as well. Perhaps this is merely an urban legend though.
Still you have to love it when this guy puts on his soothsayers cap and starts making predictions. Most of us can remember a few of his other revelations that never quite panned out. I suppose that he could be right, except it seems that technology never rests and even though the end of the line may be here for current laser writing strategies, we can expect to see some other optical storage methods to come along. For instance, we have already heard of holographic storage. One thing that's for sure, consumers will never feel safe archiving valuable data upon a HDD, whether it's theirs or one offered upon the Internet. I would say that the next generations of optical storage will count a lot more than Gates can imagine.
Source: The Daily Princetonian
