It looks like there more than a few misty eyes around Microsoft's Redmond campus today, where even the man of the day himself wiped away tears as he bid his official farewell to the company. According to Reuters, Gates was joined on stage at the employee-only event by CEO Steve Ballmer, who reportedly got choked up himself as he heaped praise on Gates, saying that "there's no way to say thanks to Bill. Bill's the founder. Bill's the leader," adding that, "this is Bill's baby." Ballmer also talked about how he had contemplated leaving Microsoft just a month after joining the company, only to have Gates persuade him to stay by saying "You don't get it. You don't get it. We are going to put a computer on every desk and in every home." Say what you will about some of his predictions, but he was sure on the mark with that one.

While Bill Gates' imminent retirement from Microsoft is understandably a cause for some quiet moments of reflection for some, it's also given folks an excuse to dig up some tidbits from Gates' tenure that have somehow gone unnoticed or unheralded in the past few years, one of the juiciest of which comes in the form of a 2003 email that Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligence has thankfully given fresh light. In it, Gates rips into "how Windows Usability has been going backwards" as he details his long, arduous attempts to download Moviemaker and buy the then new Digital Plus pack. While there's far to many gems to include here, a few of Gates' stand-out observations include how "crazy" it is that it took six minutes to install "a bunch of controls" before he was able to install Moviemaker, and his disappointment that he had to reboot his machine even though he reboots it every night. Eventually, after (apparently) getting Moviemaker installed, Gates decided to go digging in the add/remove program options to ensure that it was installed, only to find it missing, which prompted him to declare that, "someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable," adding that, "this program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up." Needless to say, we'd recommend hitting the read link below to check out the full must-read email.

It looks like Bill Gates is set to enthrall the masses at CES once more, as the Consumer Electronics Association announced today that he'd again be one of the featured keynote speakers, joining Panasonic's Toshihiro Sakamoto and Intel's Paul Otellini. Given Bill's upcoming retirement from day-to-day duties, it's also being speculated that this keynote could well be his last, making it an even ten following speeches in 1998 and a non-stop run from 2000 to 2007. What could he possibly have to announce on such a momentous occasion? We'll find out January 6th, 2008.

[Via TG Daily]

In its zeal to take over your living room, Microsoft announced the HP TouchSmart PC at the Gates keynote -- a desktop machine with a touchscreen interface designed to be an easy to use entertainment hub in the home. We caught wind of this unit back at the end of November, and the thing looks raring to kick the iMac's ass. It's coming loaded with a 19-inch touchscreen, AMD Turion 64 X2 dual core TL-52 processor, 2GB SDRAM, 320GB drive, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600, WiFi, Bluetooth, integrated 1.3 megapixel camera, integrated FM and ATSC HDTV tuners, a DVD±RW / DVD-RAM burner with LightScribe, Pocket Media Drive bay, wireless keyboard, mouse, stylus, front media reader, and more ports than the Dutch coastline. The TouchSmart will of course be running Windows Vista and be available January 30 to coincide with Vista's street date.

We fell hard so in love with all these wonderful execu-quotes, we're giving them a series here on Engadget, ala Keepin' it real fake, etc. We doubt there's nary a person in our millions-large audience who hasn't occasionally partaken in a copyright-infringing YouTube clip (must we mention Lazy Sunday?), or a even a bad no-no Torrented film; we certainly couldn't dodge the accusation ourselves. But you've kind of got to hand it to the world's richest man -- someone known for his fine-tipped views on intellectual property and piracy -- admitting to, then backing out of, then copping to watching pirated video content. Peep this tidbit from Mr. Gates to Mossberg and Kara Swisher in a recent WSJ interview:

Mossberg: Talk about YouTube. What do you think about that? Why aren't you doing something like that?
Gates: If we did YouTube, we'd be in a lot of trouble. First of all, people would say, "How do you make money?" Second, they'd say, what about all that copyright violation taking place up there. It's a neat site. I saw a bunch of old Harlem Globetrotters movies up there the other night, it's great.
Swisher: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters?
Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
Swisher: But those were stolen, correct?
Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.

Look, we aren't here to point fingers, and we do think they kind of backed him into a corner there. But call us crazy, maybe it's just time to face the fact that legal attacks to this and that video sharing site for short clips just ain't the way to get people to pay a hundred some-odd bucks for crappy cable service, y'know? Gates, we salute your candor, hypocritical though it may seem.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Every week Stephen Speicher contributes The Clicker, an opinion column on entertainment and technology:

You could all but see the gears turning in his head as he pondered the statement. "Clearly," he thought to himself, "I've misheard. He can't seriously be saying what I think he's saying."

"Excuse me?" Bill replied assuming that he would hear something different the second time around.

"That's right. Apple wants to build a Media Center PC."

There was a brief pause as Bill closely inspected his colleague. Blue Jeans, check... turtleneck, check... half-soothing / half-arrogant smile, check... This was the real deal; this was Steve Jobs.

"Let me get this straight…" Gates, now a little bit confused, continued, "You want to build a Windows Media Center Edition PC?"

"That's right."

"Apple?"

"Yes. Apple!"

"Let me come at this from a slightly different angle. You're telling me that Apple wants to ship a Media Center PC?"

"That's what I'm telling you."

"You do understand that Media Center is part of the OS?"

"Yes, I understand."