R&D generally has been a bipartisan thing, because in the IT space, in the medical space, the U.S., the benefits to ourselves and the world and our economy have been very, very clear. I'm hopeful we can make a very strong case there. Energy is actually harder; it takes more time to get a product, but if you do it's a very, very big market and the constraints of doing that in a clean way are more obvious all the time.

If I hadn't given my money away, I'd have had more than anyone else on the planet.

It's easier to add things on to a PC than it's ever been before. It's one click, and boom, it comes down.

I think if you talk to the experts in any field where you have to take on a unknown challenge, where you're going to be working on it for a long time you'd find that to work themselves up to their best performance and really throw themselves into it, you know, spend all these hours in there and ah, give it their... give it their best that optimism plays a role.

Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It's fully synchronized with my office machine so I have all the files I need.

How much further beyond basic research the role of the government should be, you could have a really good debate about it. Almost nobody would say it's zero. But that's where at least we need the private sector to play a big role.

It's fantastic that Microsoft in the cloud space is one of very few companies that's got the critical mass, the particular emphasis on helping business customers get up to that cloud with all the unique requirements they have. It's very exciting.