Dismissing rumors that he might be making a comeback at Microsoft, founder Bill Gates went down under to rule out the possibility of ever returning to the software behemoth full-time.

Instead, he says, he’ll be working full-time at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation until the day he dies. Gates stepped down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft in June 2008.

In an interview with Fairfax Media, Gates declared:

“I’m part-time involved with Microsoft, including even being in touch this week to give some of my advice but that’s not going to change – the foundation requires all of my energy and we feel we’re having a great impact.”

He also says some things about Steve Jobs, but nothing that will surprise you: he was a brilliant person who was tough on Microsoft because its machines outsold his machines by a lot, and he was kinder to Gates in his last years. Sounds about right.

Gates also pointed out that it’s summer in Sydney but that he wished it was a “tiny bit warmer”.

(Image courtesy of World Economic Forum / Flickr)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $250,000 to the Startup Weekend EDU series of events, the dedicated education-focused vertical within the non-profit.

The Startup Weekend organization, which is supported by the Kauffman Foundation and the social learning startup Grockit, offers intense 54-hour events where entrepreneurs come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups.

The EDU vertical within Startup Weekend was officially launched in September, and kicked off its launch with events in Seattle, San Francisco and Washington D.C. over the past month. This month, Startup Weekend will host its next EDU event in London from November 25th-27th. The organization will soon announce more events that will be taking place worldwide over the next 12 months.

“Given its dedication to education reform and extensive networks in the space, the Gates Foundation is the ideal partner for us to scale the Startup Weekend EDU initiative,” said Farb Nivi, founder of Grockit about the grant from the Gates Foundation.

To register for the London Startup Weekend EDU event, head over to edu.startupweekend.org.

Five years ago, I was working for a Belgian company that published the only weekly IT magazine in the country, Data News. I was not a reporter, but in charge of its online media products. When it was announced that Microsoft founder Bill Gates would be coming to Brussels to, for the first time, pitch Windows Vista to enterprise customers and partners at the MS Business Innovation Event, I jumped on the opportunity to convince the editor of the magazine to arrange for a camera to be placed in the conference hall so we could record his talk.

Believe it or not, but I remember actually having to argue a bit to make it happen. But I ultimately got my way, and we taped what I believe is the only footage of Gates speaking at that event. We put it up on YouTube – about a month after they were acquired by Google, come to think of it.

Anyway, I haven’t watched the video since 2006, but I kept on getting emails notifying me of comments on it on an almost-daily basis for years (to this day). There are now close to 1,900 comments on the YouTube video, mostly saying how boring Gates is – particularly in comparison to Steve Jobs’ presentation skills – and how big a turd Windows, and especially Windows Vista, really is.

Judge for yourselves, but I urge you to listen to what the man says, too.

A while ago, I decided to watch the video again myself, and I was struck by some of the things Gates talked about in that speech, so I figured I should share it on TechCrunch some day. I finally got around to it. Jump to 1:13 if your time this weekend is overly precious to you – I’ve transcribed some of things Gates said from that point on below:

The form of the computer is changing as well. It’s getting smaller, it’s getting more pervasive. If we think about the machine on our desk, it’s becoming a flat-panel device with a very large screen area. In fact, bigger and bigger, so that we can look at and deal with more information.

The portable machine is getting thinner, lighter and smaller, and in fact there’ll be a tablet form factor that you can carry around literally like a tablet of paper. And it’s comfortable enough to read off of that screen as you hold it in your hands; that it’s as good as having a magazine, a newspaper … the traditional way of reading.

If we think about using that device for a student, as it comes down over the next five years. To be only a few hundred dollars, and they’ll be able to use that instead of buying textbooks, they’ll get digital curriculum that’s superior in every way. That can be personalized, that can have video, can have interaction. The wireless Internet showing up on that tablet gives that student a chance to navigate the world of information in a very rich way.

If we think about the device in our pocket, obviously it started off as a pure-voice device. But now, with camera-like capability, starting to show maps, bringing us our mail, our schedule, becoming our digital wallet, storing all of our media, music and even videos that we want to take around. That device is getting amazingly powerful. In fact, it has the power that even a PC only had a few years ago.

I should note that I’m well aware tablet computers had been on the radar for many, many years even back in 2006, and some companies – including Microsoft and Apple – had been trying to make them a reality and a commercial success, so I wouldn’t venture as far as to say Bill Gates was laying out a vision of a future that existed only in his mind. I know he didn’t really say anything spectacular.

What is amazing to me is that Gates pretty much predicted the iPad back in November 2006, and that it took until April 2010 for the first truly commercially successful tablet to hit the market, by its rival Apple no less. The Windows 8 tablets ‘wave’ will be coming in the first half of 2012.

Enjoy the video:

(Picture courtesy of World Economic Forum on Flickr / Photo by Andy Mettler)

After the nuclear disaster in Japan at the Fukushima reactors, the general public is understandably skittish about nuclear energy once again. But not Bill Gates. Speaking today at a Wired business conference in New York City, he is talking up the benefits of nuclear energy, particularly next-generation designs. The backlash, he thinks, is overblown. “If you compare it to the amount that coal has killed per kilowatt hour,” he points out, “it is way, way less.” When an accident does occur, however, its effects are much more visible. “Coal kills fewer people at one time, which is highly preferred by politicians,” he says.

Gates is putting his money where his mouth is. He is an investor in his friend Nathan Myrhvold’s nuclear reactor startup Terrapower, which is designing one such next-generation nuclear reactor which produces one thousandth as much radioactive waste. But he also has investments in “dozens” of other energy companies, from battery companies to solar to biofuels. “We should pursue them all,” he says. “The amount of IQ working on energy today and the tools they have to simulate compared to 20 years ago is night and day, but it is unpredictable whether we will get a breakthrough.”

Solar and wind power have great potential, but they are intermittent sources of power. That is why Gates is bullish on nuclear. Advances in energy are necessary for the economy in general to keep moving forward, he argues. Gates sees three main problems which need to be addressed: cost, security, and environmental impact: “Other than it is too expensive, you can get cut off at any time, or it can destroy the planet, it’s okay.”

Cost is the key challenge new energy sources must surmount. “We get sloppy” in the rich world, he says, because we can afford to pay extra for solar or wind power. But in order to make a real impact, the costs have to become competitive with current fossil-based energy. “In 80% of the world, energy will be bought where it is economic.” says Gates. “You have to help the rest of the world get energy at a reasonable price.”

WHat about distributed energy where every house generates their own and feeds it back into the grid? Gates thinks that is a “cute” idea, but “it’s not gonna happen.” Bigger power generation facilities, such as solar fields in the desert, are necessary. “If you are going for cuteness, go after the those things at the home. If you want to solve the energy problem go after the big things in the desert.”

That was several years ago.

I realized how much my views have changed when the The New York Times asked me to write a piece for its “Room for Debate” forum this week. The paper wanted me to comment on the divergence of opinion between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  In a speech before the National Governors Association on Feb 28, Gates had argued that we need to spend our limited education budget on disciplines that produce the most jobs. He implied that we should reduce our investment in the liberal arts because liberal-arts degrees don’t correlate well with job creation. Three days later, at the unveiling of the iPad 2, Steve Jobs said: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices”.

Because I am a professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and given all the positive things I say about U.S. engineering education, The Times assumed that I would side with Bill Gates; that I would write a piece that endorsed his views. But, even though I believe that engineering is one of the most important professions, I have learned that the liberal arts are equally important. It takes artists, musicians, and psychologists working side by side with engineers to build products as elegant as the iPad.  And anyone—with education in any field—can achieve success in Silicon Valley.

Here is what I wrote for The Times.

It’s commonly believed that engineers dominate Silicon Valley and that there is a correlation between the capacity for innovation and an education in mathematics and the sciences. Both assumptions are false.

My research team at Duke and Harvard surveyed 652 U.S.-born chief executive officers and heads of product engineering at 502 technology companies. We found that they tended to be highly educated: 92 percent held bachelor’s degrees, and 47 percent held higher degrees. But only 37 percent held degrees in engineering or computer technology, and just two percent held them in mathematics. The rest have degrees in fields as diverse as business, accounting, finance, health care, and arts and the humanities.

Gaining a degree made a big difference in the sales and employment of the company that a founder started. But the field that the degree was in and the school that it was obtained from were not a significant factor.

Over the past year, I have interviewed the founders of more than 200 Silicon Valley start-ups. The most common traits I have observed are a passion to change the world and the confidence to defy the odds and succeed.

It is the same in business. In the two companies I founded, I was involved in hiring more than 1000 workers over the years. I never observed a correlation between the school of graduation or field of study, on one hand, and success in the workplace, on the other. What make people successful are their motivation, drive, and ability to learn from mistakes, and how hard they work.

And then there is the matter of design. Steve Jobs taught the world that good engineering is important but that what matters the most is good design. You can teach artists how to use software and graphics tools, but it’s much harder to turn engineers into artists.

Our society needs liberal-arts majors as much as it does engineers and scientists.

But I need to acknowledge the difficult reality: that employment prospects are dim for liberal-arts majors. Graduates from top engineering schools such as Duke are always in high demand. But PhDs in English from even the most prestigious universities, such as UC-Berkeley, can’t get jobs. The data I presented above were on the background of tech-company founders—those who made the transition into entrepreneurship.  Most don’t. And, as you can note from Bill Gates’ speech, there is a bias against liberal arts and humanities.

Angelika Blendstrup is an author and a lecturer who holds a PhD in Bilingual Bicultural Education from Stanford. She says that her liberal-arts background is “great for writing papers or PhDs, but it would be better to have studied engineering and have a choice of jobs”.

Charles River Venture Partner emeritus, Ted Dintersmith, on the other hand, received a PhD in Engineering from Stanford.  But he also studied liberal arts. Ted says “It doesn’t have to be either/or—I double-majored in Physics and English, and never regretted combining two such different disciplines”.

So there is no black and white here. We need musicians, artists, and psychologists, as much as we need bio-medical engineers, computer programmers, and scientists.

My advice to my students—and to my own children—is to study what interests them the most; to excel in fields in which they have the most passion and ability; to change the world in their own way and on their own terms. Once they master their domain, they can find the path to entrepreneurship. They can then come up with creative ways of solving the problems that they have encountered, and apply their ideas to other fields where their knowledge adds value. Maybe they can team up with the hard-core engineers who develop the clunky, inelegant, over-engineered products that Bill is famous for; maybe work with Steve to create the next iPhone or iPad.

You can read more views and witness the lively debate on the New York Times web site.

Editor’s note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School, Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at The Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University. You can follow him on Twitter at @wadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

Before I start rambling further thoughts about this, here’s a cool animation made by the folks at Albinal. Enjoy the rap battle between Beatbox Bill and Sinista Steve, and tell us who you think laid down the better verses (or alternatively, write your own):

According to a report by Joshua Pollack in the US Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

“[Russia has] approximately 12,000 nuclear warheads — about 2,600 of them deployed with “strategic” missiles and bombers capable of crossing the oceans — [and so] remains the sole force on Earth that could terminate the existence of the United States on any given day. America has its own massive nuclear arsenal to threaten Russia in return: about 9,400 warheads, including almost 2,000 deployed with strategic delivery systems…”

The World Nuclear Association, a nuclear industry trade group, not surprisingly suggests the conversion of nuclear weapons to energy. The establishment of power plants that can use weapons-grade plutonium and uranium, of course, could help the nuclear industry gain jobs and dollars in energy generation wherever it loses jobs in defense.

Even Bill Gates, who has invested in several energy technology businesses from TerraPower to Neos GeoSolutions, believes in reusing nuclear fuel for energy. TerraPower is trying to build a mini-reactor that could use spent nuclear fuel to power homes and offices, helping divert nuclear waste from storage sites. At his 2010 TED Talks lecture on energy, he noted: “A molecule of uranium has a million times more energy than a molecule of coal.”

Some still argue that the expense to build plants that can convert highly enriched uranium or nuclear weapons to commercial power is not commercially justifiable. Others believe nuclear power, from any sources, is not as clean and safe as other options, like solar or wind.

Clean energy entrepreneurs, who are vying for the support of government and other large investors, often reject the idea of calling nuclear a “clean” energy, thanks to a huge number of accidents on the U.S. historical record alone from Los Alamos to Hanford. That said, nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, or nitrogen oxides.

Health and environmental risks associated with life near nuclear reactors include: contaminated and over-heated ground water; increased risk of childhood leukemia; increased cancer risks overall; and in some areas, decreased air quality from steam emissions; as well as the threat of a nuclear accident.

Platts reports on Monday noted the Sellafield MOX plant in the United Kingdom — established to blend plutonium and uranium oxides into nuclear fuel for commercial power generation — has thus far failed to deliver the energy output its builders promised, and cost the country more money than anticipated.

According to the website of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the U.S. is building a similar plant at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina, due to become operational in 2016.

Image 1: Titan II Missile, at the Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley, Arizona via Evelyn Proimos (CC)

Image 2: A nuclear facility, with water vapor rising from its cooling towers, currently being built in Georgia, via the U.S. Energy Information Administration

Well, Steve Ballmer certainly had a productive week.

Over the past three days, the Microsoft CEO has sold 49.3 million shares of his company stock, Reuters reports. With the share price hovering around $27, the sale has made him about $1.3 billion. Not bad for three days.

And he’s not done yet. Ballmer apparently intends to sell as much as 75 million of his shares in total by the end of the year. At the current prices, that would earn him about $2 billion, all told.

Microsoft and Ballmer are both quick to say that people shouldn’t read too much into the massive stock sale. He called the move a “personal financial matter,” in a statement. But that won’t stop most from doing just that. As The Next Web wonders, why is Ballmer selling these shares right now with two buzz-worthy products, Kinect and Windows Phone, just hitting the market in time for the holiday shopping season? Does he not think they’ll help propel the company’s stock price?

Truth is, despite their huge financial success, not much has helped moved the company’s stock price over the past decade. In November of 2000, the share price was in the $30s. The highest it has gotten in that span is just about $37-a-share almost exactly three years ago. The price has gone as low as $15-a-share, but that was during the most recent economic collapse. Microsoft did split the stock in February of 2003.

Compare that stock performance to rival Apple, which has gone from around $7-a-share a decade ago, to $317-a-share today.

Others will wonder if this means Ballmer is on his way out as CEO. Again, despite the bottom-line success, there have been no shortage of calls for his ouster, partially because of the success rivals like Apple and Google have had during his tenure. ”I am excited about our new products and the potential for our technology to change people’s lives, and I remain fully committed to Microsoft and its success,” was Ballmer’s statement on the matter.

But one important thing to consider is the up-in-the-air issue of the capital gains tax. The likelihood is that it’s going to stay largely the same but go up a bit next year, but it could go far higher as the Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year. And when you’re talking gains in the billions of dollars range, that’s a lot of money Ballmer could lose if he’s not smart about his investments.

This news also comes just a month after it was revealed that Ballmer earned only 50 percent of his yearly bonus in Microsoft’s last fiscal year. Despite huge numbers for the year, Microsoft performance in mobile and tablets — or lack thereof — knocked his million-plus bonus down to about $670,000. But that’s chump change compared to what we’re talking about here, obviously.

And despite the massive sale, Ballmer will remain the second largest shareholder in the company behind only Bill Gates. He currently owns a little over 4 percent of Microsoft, compared to Gates’ 7 percent. That means on paper, Ballmer has been worth about $10 billion. And now he’s converting a nice chunk of that to cheddar. Ballmer. Baller.

[photo: flickr/orcnid]

Some people have insinuated the move was a calculated ploy to whitewash Zuckerberg’s image with the fictional and snarky “The Social Network” coming out and getting rave reviews. Although Zuckerberg sounded more media trained than I’ve ever heard him in his interview this week with Mike and Jason, the idea that he donated a sum that large to rebut at movie that’s widely-documented to be fictional is a stretch. Especially considering this week’s leaked emails and IMs weren’t exactly a smoking gun supporting the whole evil genius theory.

But I’ll tell you who will win big social capital points as “Waiting for Superman” gains steam: Bill “still the richest man” Gates. It’s hard to remember, but Microsoft used to be a widely admired company before the antitrust trial. The tide changed so much that Gates became a de facto pop culture villain whether you were a Microsoft fan or not. Hollywood described him as an evil genius manipulating his college-era-BFF well before Zuckerberg and “The Social Network” were a glint in Aaron Sorkin’s eye. He was creamed with a pie. He was mocked on the Simpsons for “buying out” aka wrecking Homer’s Internet company. And there were many other indignities. His name was pop-culture shorthand for Machiavellian. I’m not saying some of those indignities weren’t deserved. But driving home after watching a screening of “Waiting for Superman” my husband– an avowed Mac zealot– remarked that he suddenly realized he no longer hates Bill Gates.

The goodwill has been building for a while– the TED talks, the mosquito nets, the All Things D chum-fest with Steve Jobs, the truckloads of cash for the poor. But somehow seeing him in this movie, juxtaposed with an emotional story and kids that are hard not to root for, and given the fact that he’s gone out stumping for the film– well, it just Al-Gores-him-up a bit. (Although admittedly, that still may not be enough for Netscape founders and shareholders.)

Bill Gates thinks something is going to die too.

No, it’s not physical books like Nicholas Negroponte — instead, Gates thinks the idea of young adults having to go to universities in order to get an education is going to go away relatively soon. Well, provided they’re self-motivated learners.

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university,” he continued.

He believes that no matter how you came about your knowledge, you should get credit for it. Whether it’s an MIT degree or if you got everything you know from lectures on the web, there needs to be a way to highlight that.

He made sure to say that educational institutions are still vital for children, K-12. He spoke glowingly about charter schools, where kids can spend up to 80% of their time deeply engaged with learning.

But college needs to be less “place-based,” according to Gates. Well, except for the parties, he joked.

But his overall point is that it’s just too expensive and too hard to get these upper-level educations. And soon place-based college educations will be five times less important than they are today.

One particular problem with the education system according to Gates is text books. Even in grade schools, they can be 300 pages for a book about math. “They’re giant, intimidating books,” he said. “I look at them and think: what on Earth is in there?“

According to Gates, our text books are three times longer than the equivalents in Asia. And yet they’re beating us in many ways with education. The problem is that these things are built by committee, and more things are simply added on top of what’s already in there.

Gates said that technology is the only way to bring education back under control and expand it.

See also: Bill Gates’ Mind Is In The Gutter. Literally.

To wrap up the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA, Bill Gates took the stage to talk with host Brent Schiender. A big idea of the conference was the future of technology, especially as it related to the economy. Gates talked a lot about that, but perhaps in a way you wouldn’t imagine. His mind was in the gutter. Literally.

“Latrines are fascinating,” Gates said. The way he said it was in a bit of a joking manner, but he’s not kidding. He talked about how many books he reads on the subject these days. “No one wants to read about it — it’s one of the greatest under-investments,” Gates said.

“We’re gonna have a breakthrough in the latrines,” he continued. He said that while the flushable toilet is the gold standard, it isn’t efficient at all. Someone is going to fix that, according to Gates.

So what books is he reading on the subject? He named a few. One was Water and Sanitation. “It’s quite lurid,” Gates joked. “It’s a super-important topic,” Gates reiterated. “You can visit poor-world latrines and learn from that as well,” Gates joked.

Gates really does think about this topic a lot. Later in the conversation, he returned to it when talking about investing in certain types of education. ”When it comes to things like investing in new toilets, not much money goes into that,” Gates said.

“You end up with the low IQ guy on the toilets.”

Indeed.

EcoMotors makes engines that run on diesel or gasoline but have greater power density, weigh less and produce lower carbon emissions than conventional engines. OPOC engines are being developed for passenger vehicles, as well as for commercial vehicles, aerospace and power generators.

According to the company, an OPOC engine:

“operates on the 2-cycle principle, generating one power stroke per crank revolution per cylinder. It comprises two opposing cylinders per module, with a crankshaft between them, and each cylinder has two pistons moving in opposite directions. This innovative design configuration eliminates the cylinder-head and valve-train components of conventional engines, offering an efficient, compact and simple core engine structure”

OPOC engines “reduce the cost of transport without requiring any sacrifices by the consumers,” claims EcoMotors CEO Donald Runkle.

The engines are designed to work with existing infrastructures to easily replace engines like the four-stroke combustible engines used in many passenger cars. They will also be less expensive than these engines. Runkle expects EcoMotors will be able to first implement its engines in applications like gensets and begin putting OPOC engines in cars within two to three years. The company plans to make money through joint development agreements with existing engine manufacturers, licensing its technology and selling its own engines.

Runkle said the investment appealed to Khosla Ventures for its disruptive technology, and to Gates for the engines’ potential applications in developing countries.

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, was on Larry King Live on CNN last night. (Larry King’s still on the air? Gotcha.) He was there with his father, William Henry Gates, Sr., and they talked about a number of fun and exciting things. And wouldn’t you know it, the iPad was one of those things. His take on Apple’s “magical and revolutionary” thingamajig? It’s “not quite there yet.” That’s fair to say, no?

Said Mr. Gates:

We’re all trying to get to something that you just love to take to a meeting and use and it is not quite there yet. You need to have input. You need to take notes and edit things. Microsoft and a bunch of other companies are working on getting that final, ultimate product. [...] It still isn’t the device that I’d take to a meeting because it has no input.

I do generally agree with Gates here, that the iPad is just short of being all that it can be, but not for the reasons he lists here. Like, what’s with Gates’ infatuation with making the iPad meeting-friendly, so to speak? Since when have Apple products lived and died by how well they do in the corporate environment? The average person doesn’t look at the iPad, and lust after all those Apps, but then say, “You know, if only I could bring this into my team meeting, then it’d be perfect.”

Note that this isn’t the first time Gates has given his thoughts on the iPad.

The iPad is a consumer device. People use it to watch Netflix movies, not to fiddle with spreadsheets or whatever.

The movie Pirates of Silicon Valley (based on the book Fire In The Valley) came out in 1999. The final scene takes place in 1997 when recently-reinstated (interim) CEO Steve Jobs takes the stage at Macworld to announce an alliance with Microsoft to ensure Apple’s future — with Bill Gates’ head on a giant screen behind him. Times have changed. Jobs has now been the official CEO for the past 10 years. Apple no longer goes to Macworld. The world now has the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Apple has over $40 billion in cash in the bank, and is rapidly approaching Microsoft in market cap. It’s probably time for a sequel.

That sequel, according to one TechCrunch reader, is Iron Man 2.

Laureana Varisco Bonaparte sums up the movie as follows:

I just came from watching IM2, and the whole Stark=Jobs, Hammer=Gates is NOT subtle. The relationship as the public sees it, is right there. Hammer is Bill with better hair. And Tony Stark is………. the movie starts with him giving a keynote speech on a Stark expo. Should I say more? And RDJr’s facial hair makes him resemble Jobs even more (it makes his face look slimmer). It’s pretty cool and almost distractive.

Watch it.

Thanks for the daily awesomeness.

For those unaware, Tony Stark is the character played by Robert Downey Jr. He is Iron Man. Justin Hammer is the character played by Sam Rockwell. He is Stark’s true nemesis in the film.

We haven’t seen the movie yet (it opens in the U.S. on May 7), so it’s hard to say how accurate this review is. Still, wishful thinking or not, it makes me want to see it even more. Has anyone else who has seen it thought the same thing? Could screenwriter Justin Theroux have based some characteristics off of the two tech icons?

Of course, if Steve Jobs were Iron Man, I’m not sure the law enforcement would need to be involved in that iPhone leak right now.

Update: Laurena left us a nice little update in the comments:

From a July 2009 post on Newsarama:

Another newcomer to the set, Sam Rockwell, is portraying weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer. What little we saw of him in the trailer hints at a fast-talking sleaze ball. The actor says Hammer’s relationship with Stark is similar to the rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Emphasis mine – but that’s right from the lips of actor portraying the Gates role himself. So no, it’s not coincidental that some are coming away from the movie with that feeling.

How does Bill Gates inspire students to change the world? Tune in here to find out. Gates is kicking off a college tour today with a speech to students at UC Berkeley. He will talk about the big challenges facing the world today (poverty, health, energy, climate change) and what can be done to tackle them. The key is innovation in both the public and private sectors, using technology in smart ways, and changing people’s economic incentives.

Gates and his wife Melinda are spending much of their time and money on these issues through their foundation. But you don’t have to be a billionaire to try to make the world a better place to live. In partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we are proud to present his speech in the live video below.

He begins with a rhetorical question: “Are the brightest minds working on the most important problems? Probably not.”

Update: The archived video is now available below in two parts. The first one doesn’t start until ten minutes in.

Photo credit: Flickr/WEF

Bill Gates is spending most of his time these days with the Gates Foundation, which he started with his wife Melinda to take a new approach to philanthropy after leaving his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft. Gates has been blogging occasionally and taking to Twitter.

Today, he is going back to college on a speaking tour to encourage students to take on big challenges like fighting poverty, improving world health, developing new energy sources, and combating climate change. His first stop will be at UC Berkeley, and we will livestream his speech here on TechCrunch, starting at 11 AM PT.

But if he’s not… well, then we’re all in for a treat. Because the guy is tackling some seriously heavy issues. The latest is a project with Toshiba and Terrapower to create a nuclear reactor that can run for 100 years on a single charge of fuel. There are currently projects underway to create compact reactors that will run for 30 years, but 50-100 is the goal of the new “traveling-wave” style.

Gates is said to be putting a lot of his own money on the line, and the project should run into the hundreds of billions of yen, which is to say billions of dollars at least. I mean, developing a new breed of nuclear reactor isn’t a thing one does lightly. Well, guys, if this isn’t part of some master plan to rule the world, good job.

My last post triggered some interesting debates in the blogosphere about whether entrepreneurs were a product of nature or could be nurtured. It’s not black or white. People are a product of their upbringing and education. Average humans can achieve extraordinary feats when they really try. I’ll concede that, like some great athletes, some great entrepreneurs may have something different about them that gives them a special advantage (this is a topic that I am presently researching). But not every entrepreneur needs to reap the same fortune as Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to qualify as a success. You can build a good lifestyle business that pays the bills, or that does good for the world, and be considered a successful entrepreneur. (And you’ll probably be happier and gain more respect than most billionaires do.) Entrepreneurship isn’t all about the IPO.

I hold steadfast to my belief — based on my experience in building two great technology companies and in mentoring around 200 entrepreneurs over some years and on what I’ve learned from my academic research into the background and motivations of entrepreneurs — that entrepreneurs can be made. People born into entrepreneurial families may have the advantage of knowing the ups and downs of business, and, all else being equal, people from entrepreneurial families are certainly more likely to become entrepreneurs than others are. But the skills required to build, manage, and grow a business can be learned, and this education can level the playing field. VCs who judge entrepreneurs based on age, sex, ethnicity, or family background are doing their limited partners, and society, a great disservice.

There was one criticism of my last post that caused me to do serious introspection.  The question: was Bill Gates’s dad an entrepreneur? I cited Gates Jr. as an example of an entrepreneur who didn’t come from an entrepreneurial family. A number of readers, including Jason Calacanis, pointed, out that Gates Sr. was a partner in a law firm, and so an entrepreneur, arguing that my citation was therefore faulty.

I’ve debated and written about this issue before. The broader question is whether anyone who starts a business, whether it is a law practice, a computer consulting firm, or a dry-cleaning store, is an entrepreneur. Management guru Peter Drucker would have answered with a definitive No. He wrote, “Not every new small business is entrepreneurial or represents entrepreneurship… entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” Drucker didn’t mince words.

When I told this to some of my friends, I heard loud protests. Murali Bashyam, who started an immigration-law practice, insisted he was as much an entrepreneur as Bill Gates and his dad. Murali threatened, “if you decide that I’m not an entrepreneur, I might decide that the daily stress of growing and running a business, financial risks involved, and all the other headaches that come with creating something out of nothing is just not worth it. Maybe I’ll close up and go work for someone, where I can earn a steady and high salary and go home at 5 pm”.

Similarly, Sue Drakeford, who was Miss Nebraska 2001, had started a production company to host its own pageants and teach other African American women like her to gain the confidence and skills to compete in the real world. She wanted to provide a wholesome alternative to what she called the “cold-blooded cutthroat world of modeling and beauty pageants”.  But Sue was working full-time at a bank and ran this business on the side. Was she an entrepreneur?  Sue insisted she was.

After agonizing over this for weeks, I went to my friends at the Kauffman Foundation, and they referred me to their book titled “Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism”. Carl Schramm and Bob Litan wrote that all who take the risk are entrepreneurs, but that there are two types of entrepreneurs: “Replicative entrepreneurs”, who constitute the vast majority of small businesses (such as restaurants and dry cleaners), and “innovative entrepreneurs” — the rare few who bring new products/services to market or who pioneer new production methods (such as Walmart, eBay, and Dell).

Under the Kauffman definition, Sue would qualify as an “innovative entrepreneur”, because she is developing new services and pioneering new methods. In contrast, Murali would be a “replicative entrepreneur”, because he delivers a standardized service in a field that charges primarily by the hour for its time. Murali could well end up running a huge law firm and be worth many millions, but that doesn’t make him particularly innovative in his business model.

So Bill Gates Sr. was a “replicative entrepreneur”, and Gates Jr. was an “innovative entrepreneur” — whom Silicon Valley calls an “entrepreneur”. TechCrunch founder, Mike Arrington, who used to be a lawyer for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, would qualify as an “innovative entrepreneur”, because he created a new product (a blogging site) and was a pioneer in the new-media world.

You can bring innovation to “replicative” fields as Arrington did. Take the example of SunRun. The company installs solar cells — which is as mundane or “replicative” a business as you can get. But its CEO, Edward Fenster, developed a new business model under which his company installs solar panels on a customer’s house for little to no upfront cost and only charges for the power that customers use.  SunRun also insures, maintains, repairs, and monitors the system, and provides a money-back guarantee on the system’s energy production. This has made solar power available to the masses at an affordable cost and the company has become largest residential solar company in the country, operating in five states, and growing at more than 400% per year.

Another great example I’ve seen of an entrepreneur who has innovated in a replicative industry is Nand Kishore Chaudhary. He brought automation, supply-chain management, and professional business practices to the mundane process of carpet weaving and distribution in the desert state of Rajasthan, India.  By implementing modern production practices and ERP technology, he was able to grow a small business, Jaipur Rugs, that he’d run from his home into a world-class production and distribution company, which employed 40,000 workers and generated $21 million in revenue in 2008. This is in a land where PCs were, until recently, as scarce as rainwater.

What’s the moral of the story? Don’t listen to the naysayers who are simply defending their informed views and biases by telling you that it’s nature or some special DNA that makes entrepreneurs or leads to entrepreneurial success. Don’t even be discouraged if you’re in a mundane, replicative industry. You can learn the skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur, and you can innovate.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

A quick search on Netcraft shows that thegatesreport.com sure enough looks to be running on the Linux OS. But wait. The results also say that web server is Microsoft-IIS/7.0. That doesn’t sound right, so what gives? Well, it turns out that because Gates is using Akamai to mirror his sites’ content in the event of massive traffic (or more specifically, something like a DDoS attack), this data is being filtered through there. Akamai uses Linux for its servers, so that’s what OS is being passed back to Netcraft. But at the same time, to make things more confusing, the Akamai servers are still passing back the correct server header for Gates’ site: Microsoft-IIS/7.0.

How do I know this? Because the same thing happened in 2003 when it was humorously, but erroneously reported that Microsoft was using Linux servers to run microsoft.com. In fact, the same thing was going on: Microsoft was routing its traffic through Akamai, which again, runs Linux boxes. Microsoft has since apparently changed to its own servers since then so that they now correctly return Windows Server 2003 as their OS. That is likely what The Gates Report is running on as well given the Microsoft-IIS/7.0 web servers.

So sadly, no nice bit of irony here, it would seem. But if you haven’t yet done so, take the opportunity to check out Gates’ site, it’s really well done and full of good information.

[photo: flickr/world economic forum]

Even the Daily Show is fair and balanced! Jon Stewart interview Bill Gates last night and it was pretty interesting. When Gates isn’t trying to sell his company anymore he’s very mild-mannered and delightfully polite. Plus he dances like Pauly-D.