Bill Gates Systems Quotations

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.

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

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

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.

We will never make a 32-bit operating system.

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.

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.