Another take on .Net
Gates said Microsoft's software-to-software model, aka, .Net, will allow information to be customized and accessed wherever customers need it. He added that such a model will provide user-controlled privacy and notification via information agent technology.
It will be based on products that provide rich user interfaces, with speech, ink, and multimedia handling capabilities. And it will require Microsoft's forthcoming generation of development tools, operating systems, and desktop office products to run best.
Gates attempted to differentiate software-to-software model from the peer-to-peer model that Napster made famous. He said peer-to-peer doesn't rely as much on servers, to provide a rich computing environment, as it does on clients.
"Sometimes you want the server to provide the richness," Gates said. A pure file-sharing model is inadequate, Gates maintained. "Rich information needs to work in all ways -- client-to-client, client-to-server, and sever-to-server."
