bill gates - News, Features, and Slideshows

Bill Gates thinks new laws are needed to sort out the encryption conflict going on between law enforcement and tech companies.

Recent concerns from tech luminaries about a robot apocalypse may be overblown, but artificial intelligence researchers need to start thinking about security measures as they build ever more intelligent machines, according to a group of AI experts.

Death by PowerPoint presentation has become the norm but strong images and small amounts of data are better at engaging your audience, according to communications consultant Garr Reynolds.

U.S. Internet users have a limited understanding of what net neutrality means and what protections are contained in company privacy policies, according to the results of a national survey by the Pew Research Center.

If you have to watch just one more ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, make it this one from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. He geeks out as only Bill Gates can do by drawing up and demonstrating quite the contraption.

Politics collided with the world of technology this year as stories about U.S. government spying stirred angst both among the country's citizens and foreign governments, and the flawed HeathCare.gov site got American health-care reform off to a rocky start. Meanwhile, the post-PC era put aging tech giants under pressure to reinvent themselves. Here in no particular order are IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 tech stories of the year.

Steve Ballmer isn't necessarily a bad CEO. After all, Microsoft's on strong financial footing. But Ballmer made enough bad product decisions - Zune, Kin, Vista and perhaps Surface - to suggest that Microsoft employees, swayed by a forced-ranking employee rating system, told him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear. If that culture doesn't change, Ballmer's replacement will fare even worse than he did.

The end of each year sparks an occasion for rumination on the past, as well as a longing gaze into the future. We shined up our crystal ball, rubbed our chin for a while, and sought opinions from industry analysts on what the future holds for the enterprise software market.