I think it's wishful thinking on Mr. Gates' part. He doesn't want us carrying around "little silver discs," he wants us dropping more money on Windows Media Edition PC's and such. Notice that he says we put them (the silver discs) into "computers" rather than saying that we use CD and DVD players... He's got a one-track mind, that guy. ;-)

Rob

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

When I was in High School, there was this big, big rush to hurry up and teach us all the metric system.

It was going to be "required" sometime in the 80's. "The whole country (USA) is going to be going all metric."

Today, the only thing "metric" in American culture is the 2 liter bottle of soda...and GM cars. :)

Kentwolf,

LOL! We must be of the same generation, because I remember them trying to scare the metric system into me and my fellow classmates, too!

Dan

Yeah, I'm a member of the supposed metric generation as well. Right up there with Pet Rocks and Mood Rings.

I don't think it would be controversial to say that Bill Gates might be excellent at extending Microsoft's reach, but I've never, ever seen him called a visionary before. I'm unaware of any innovative products or features to come out of MS (as opposed the technologies they've just bought).

The current DVD disc format will surely give way at some point, maybe in 10 years, I don't know. But Gates is the last guy I'd be looking to for real prophecy here.

Greg

Who ever thought that CDs are becoming obsolite?

Give the guy some credit!
There are already taking about HDDVD and the next next mega-holding DVD.

What I think is scary about this is that one of the richest men in the world who controls the PC market with his companies software, thinks it's a good idea that our PC's be able to recognize us and think for us also????

Sorry, but having a machine learn my habits and program my entertainment for me seems weird!

I remember when microwave ovens and computers were going to make our lives easier by providing more free time to the average American. Yeah right, like that really happened!

I think Bill (Antichrist) Gates is one scary dude.

He is scarry. :) Here's a list of things that are "obselete" but we still use:

cassate tapes
floppy discs
corded phones
SDTV
compact discs
coal power plants
cieling fans
wired keyboards & mice
VHS
Windows OS

Bill should know by now: obselete doesn't mean useless, less effective, less cost effective, and less used. Even if people were able to buy HDDVD's starting next year, not many people would buy them. Just because something is better doesn't mean people will go for it... who wants to replace everything they own every two years? :)

re: I never conceived that there would be a world without "records"

Don't forget that vinyl is still a standard in the (not so) underground music industry. No technology has replaced it. In the case of DVD's, the next generation disc will be exactly the same, but better. With backwards compatible players... the transition should go slowly but surely. Ten years does seem like enough time for that to happen. But I don't really know what is meant by "DVDs will be obsolete".

The wife has taught elementary music for 32 years. She still has a considerable investment in vinyl records for the classroom and uses them occasionally.

Upon seeing her place an LP on the turntable, a wide-eyed second grader exclaimed "Wow, that's the biggest CD I've ever seen!". We felt very old.

Remember, there's a difference between obsolete and obsolescent. Thanks to eBay, I can remain obsolescent for years to come.....

**Snort*** This from the guy who said "64kb of RAM should be enough for anyone."

I remember when cassettes first came out. We laughed at the people who wanted to use them for music because they were so limited compared to open reel. Now i've got a $120 cassette deck with far superior specs to my $800 open reel recorder. I remember when CDs first came out. My wife never knew and can't imagine a world without them. Now she records her own on a $350 computer system from Wal*Mart and they sound better than the tapes i used to record. Now we're moving into solid state storage. It seems very strange to me to hear sound playing back from a device with no moving parts.

I'm predicting that the next major storage medium will be solid state rather than disc based. Most of the new disc formats breed as many new compatability problems as they solve, and are only incrementally better than the previous generation. They are delicate, easily damaged, and require mechanical drives for playback. On the other hand, solid state devices suffer none of these disadvantages. Solid state storage is more expensive and larger than optical discs now, but the density and price are improving faster. Within a few years they could outstrip optical discs for storage space and price.

I can imagine us having small pda-style players with a socket for a credit card sized storage card. We'll be able to carry a substantial library, possibly multi-terabytes on each card and the price per byte will be much cheaper than DVD-R prices now. High-speed data ports will allow information to be copied between devices at several GB/minute.

There will be no digital rights management. The manufacturers and content producers will have decided that it is more cost effectve in the long run to abandon drm technology in favor of making cheaper and more popular devices.

Anyway, that's my prognostication. When will this happen? Possibly sooner than 10 years.

We Australians are early adopters, in this household DVDs are pretty well obsolete, why put movies on little shiny disks when they can be stored for instant retrieval from hard disks?
The technology already exists on Internet2 for download of an entire DVD in under 1 minute, why would you need to go out and buy a lump of plastic when you can have the movie on your HD in less time than it takes to walk to the car?
And all of that's before you factor in mpeg-4 compression.

It's for people on dialup like me. :D

Bill Gates will be obsolete in 10 years.

Randy

dholt, I hope you are joking using terms like antichrist in parenthesis with Bill Gates.

The guy personally commits millions of his earnings to improving conditions in the third world. He and his corporation have made good things possible for you and me that would not otherwise have been, so please give the inferences of evil a rest.

If you want to use the term, have a look at those whose daily living involves the manufacture, promotion and use of killing devices.

agree re solid state, spinning discs will become obsolete soon.

Example: for my upcoming monster-movie home theater system I'm creating, I'm thinking of daisy chaining a lot of high capacity 200gig+ drives together with a small lcd control panel, and simply copy the vobs over to the drives.

Then create a thumbnail movie interface player and voila! no more cracking open plastic cases and taking out silver discs and putting them into a machine, that's so... ANALOG. still.. the whole dvd thing.

Put my vobs on removable hard drives, please. That's all I need.

Then simply click to play any movie. The thing I haven't figured out is how to tie together a remote control like my sony that has a nice wheel control... ah well.

There is something like that on the market already, but it's very expensive... a lot less cost to make your own..


ken

Hard drives are still spinning discs though.

With his trillions I'm sure he's worried.

As far as personal tasks, I certainly don't want my computer to THINK for me...but to take over screaming at the TV from time to time when the Yankees are losing would be nice...

OK, that sounds great for your own home theater use. But how does a hard drive work as a distribution format?

Or are you envisioning that all video will be sent over the 'net?

LOL, Kentwolf:

I remember that metric kick, too! There was a building project I worked on back in the mid-1980's that someone decided was going to be completed totally in metric. It was a huge project, and more errors/ommissions were committed as a result of that decision to go metric (by the grace of God, none were attributable to me, LOL/whew!!!), that I was able to retire my brand new metric rule to the drawer where it safely resides to this day. Nothing wrong with metric - if that's the system in common local use - PAL vs NTSC - but the pronouncement of the death of "The King's System" was definitely premature.

Good analogy.

Caruso

Good one, Ralph. We're all musicians in my house - I must be of your vintage. My daughter and her (I think) soon-to-be-intended composer boyfriend came rushing to the house one afternoon, all excited at having found and bought up a trunkload of classical vinyl recordings from one of the local conservatories - I admit, I got excited, too - entire multi-disc albums from the faculty-only distribution section, rescued from a date with the junkyard for a nickle per title (not per disc, mind you, per title).

Anyhow, this young man, a fairly astute young musician (and a nice fellow, if I have to admit it, myself), started handling these beautiful items the same way kids from that generation throw CD's around. I had to reprove him and show him how to properly and gently handle a "real" disc by only touching the edges. It was an excellent opportunity for me to widen his eyes as I pulled out my old Nitty Gritty and cleaned 'em up.

I wouldn't want to give up the flexibility that the digital world provides, but there was something special in having to care for those big vinyl things - in watching the turntable spin. It's certainly fun to "go back and visit" from time to time - especially when you can take along a "young whipper-snapper."

Caruso