Philip Willan

ROME (IDG News Service) — Bill Gates outlined his optimistic vision of the coming digital decade in a speech to the Italian Senate Friday as open source advocates in penguin suits protested his visit and called on the Italian government to legislate in favor of the use of open-source software by the state administration as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous operating systems. Gates demonstrated a Hewlett-Packard Corp. Tablet PC for an invited audience of Italian politicians including Technological Innovation Minister Lucio Stanca and Communications Minister Maurizio Gasparri. Wristwatch computers five times more powerful than the first IBM personal computers would be on the market by next year, he predicted, saying they would offer real time access to... (more)