THERE WAS a lot of anticipation at the spacious The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino at Las Vegas last evening. Everybody "who could" wanted to hear Bill Gates last International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote address. Thousands of journalists and technologists queued for some four hours in snake-like lines that wound around several floors of the Venetian Hotel to hear him give his tenth and final CES speech.

As most people know, Bill Gates will retire as a full Microsoft employee next July. In just under six months, Gates will retire from full-time work with the software company to devote his time and energy to his philanthropic project The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims for global equity in health care and education. He plans to travel extensively mainly focusing on these two social issues in an effort to help poor communities in developing nations.

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