Everyone and their grandmother are throwing out Dick Cheney jokes. It seems as though Bill Gates jumped on the bandwagon as well since that was his intro to the RSA Conference 2006 on February 14th. "Happy Valentine's Day. I'm really glad to be here at RSA. My other invitation was to go quail hunting with Dick Cheney. I'm feeling very safe right now." That wasn't the only significant thing the Chairman and Chief Software Architect said at the conference.

Mr. Gates said that the Internet has become such a critical infrastructure for productivity, for reliability, for privacy that the dreams we have can only be realized if we not only build secure approaches but make those easy to administer and make it so the users understand exactly what to expect. He went ahead and said that there needs to be a lot of invention and improvement from where we are today.

Mr. Gates made it very clear that Microsoft's future goals rested with the Internet and Security. He outlined the importance of relying on the net for "medical records, tax records, buying and selling, scientific data, important communications, including national security." Gates even outlined the four main ingredients that Microsoft feels are the most important; "the trust ecosystem, an ability to engineer for security, simple approach so that the models are quite clear, and finally, fundamentally secure platforms where the capabilities really are designed in, in a way that you don't have to pay much attention to them."

There was also a demonstration on security at the Keynote address which showed off Microsoft's new 'password replacement' InfoCard system. This allowed the presenter access to a fake car rental site by simply choosing an identity from a list of names. Slated for launch and multiple platform support later this year, Microsoft's InfoCard system will allow users to carry their digital ID around much like a wallet, allowing access to computers and protected information areas on demand. Gates referred to current password systems as "the weak link." For more info on his speech, go ahead and click here to see the full transcript.