"As always, Gates runs scared. That's perhaps an oversimplification, but just as Gates is one of the few people to really understand and take advantage of the deeper implications of Moore's Law, he's also one of the few to understand that if the hardware capability doubles every 18 months or so, in three years any company can be obsolete and in five can be out of business--and it gets harder to keep up with the hardware advances every cycle. "
This is so true ... so few people internalize what Moore's law really means for product development. Some people (including me from time to time) luck out because their project is late ... but by then computers are fast enough to run the project. (7th Guest, which I produced, was a year late, thank God! Because there weren't any very many CD drives sold when it was supposed to be finished. But a year later there were boatloads of them.)
My favorite quote from either Bill or the Intel guy is, "People over estimate what will be possible in five years and underestimate what will be possible in ten years."
I'll say now: In ten years cars will be driving themselves (again, Thank God!). Because you can just see it might be possible in five years - so ten years is a good shot. I would love it if the next car I bought drove itself. I've had my current car 12 years, so if I can get it to last another 12 years, I'll be in fat city.
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