The bloggers who spent an hour with Bill Gates yesterday are taking a little heat today for not asking tougher questions. Geek News Central expresses disappointment and offers a list of questions it would have asked. Among them:

• What are the changes to the Zune that will be made due to the public bashing Microsoft has taken?

• Why has Microsoft Ignored Podcasting?

• When is Microsoft going to live up to a promise to make Windows security a #1 priority?

But whatever your opinion of their questions, at least the bloggers were more straightforward than Charlie Rose was. Here's how the veteran journalist began his televised interview with Gates at Stanford University last month: "Let's assume that you were not 50, but it was back when you were a junior in college, and you were so propelled by an idea that had already galvanized your attention -- the potential of the PC -- that you left Harvard and with Paul Allen you started Microsoft, and all the things that happened. Is there an idea today that, if you look back, has the same power as that idea had for you?"

Um, can we get a timeline to parse that one out?

In defense of the bloggers, I can say from experience that coming up with good questions for the Microsoft chairman isn't easy. It isn't enough for the questions to be tough, concise, relevant and interesting. They also need to bring out informative, original responses from someone who has been asked thousands upon thousands of questions over the past three decades.

Before interviewing Gates in the past, I have spent a lot of time brainstorming, researching potential topics, reading back over his recent interviews with other people, and asking knowledgeable people what they would want to know. These are a few of the questions I've asked him in the past two years:

• What's the future of Windows-based software development in a world where Web-based programs are generating so much buzz?

• Are there any features of Windows Vista that the U.S. antitrust settlement is keeping you from including, that you would otherwise want to include?

• Is Google going to put Microsoft out of business?

That last one was my attempt at shock value. For the record, it didn't work.

Looking back now on some of those past interviews, I second-guess some of my choices, and the way I phrased certain questions in the moment. And unlike the bloggers at the Wednesday event, reporters frequently have the luxury of asking multiple questions and follow-ups, to make up for the ones that bomb.

If there's ever another session like the one held at Microsoft on Wednesday, the bloggers might want to consider working with each other -- and their respective readers -- to collectively generate a list of top questions beforehand. At the same time, it would be best to do it in such a way that Gates and others from Microsoft wouldn't see the questions in advance.

But here's the real question: Given the chance, what would you ask Bill Gates?