2004: Gates declares death of passwords
"The move towards smart cards is the way forward," said Gates in his keynote at IT Forum, in Copenhagen this morning. "The idea is to have a smart card that connects up in the best way - a .Net based smart card."

Microsoft partner Axalto "has done a super job on this", said Gates. "We will be using their smartcards internally - each employee will use those to get in and out of the buildings as we used to connect to our machines. We're requring them. We will completely replace passwords.""