In a move that should come as little surprise, Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, visited Carnegie Mellon University this past Thursday. Gates, who is also the namesake for the new Gates Center being built on campus, stopped at Carnegie Mellon for the last leg of his college visiting tour.

The line for the lecture started at around 1:40 PM in the University Center, and within an hour it stretched from a small table on the 2nd floor, all around the 2nd floor of the UC, down a set of stairs, and then circled again on the bottom floor. The amount of people in line trying to get a peek at the famous billionaire software tycoon was not surprising, and room in Rangos where the lecture was being held was, expectedly, not enough for the many people waiting. I myself, after waiting in line for about an hour, snagged a ticket to McConomy where a simulcast of his lecture was being held. I missed out on a free T-shirt, but still managed to catch the lecture, which was also being broadcast online and on cmuTV (channel 17).

After a short introduction by President Cohon, Gates stepped onto the stage to huge applause. A humorous video concerning his last full time day at Microsoft was reeled, with cameos from a multitude of celebrities and famous personalities. Afterwards, Gates got down to his speech, a broad affair with the central topic of software applicability, and the many worlds in which software can play a part. This intermingled with the socially conscious second half of the lecture, detailing Gates' philanthropic works on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

After the hour-long speech, a question and answer session followed. Various students of Carnegie Mellon did everything from ask him to autograph something (three requests, actually) to bombarding him about heavy hitting topics such as corporate intentions regarding charity. There was no mention of Apple Inc. or Open-Source software anywhere to be found, a surprise coming from a technologically aware audience like Carnegie Mellon.

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