Bill Gates

MOST OF the people who "lost" last week's election weren't even on the ballot.Offhand I'd said that a majority of pundits and about 100 percent of the scandal-wallowing TV news corps got creamed along with the bulk of the polling profession and a good portion of the corporate community, which spent the equivalent of a slow year's profits on electing a filibuster-proof Senate and a House of Representatives to match. Two conspicuous corporate losers were Bill Gates of Microsoft and Sandy Weill, co-czar of Citigroup.

Mitt Romney has a great deal of empathy for people like himself -- rich guys -- and he would serve them well as president. Of course, the wealthy have seldom not been served well by our commander-in-chief. Father and son Bush came from among the affluent, too, while Bill Clinton aspired to join their ranks and has defended Romney-style venture capitalism. Even Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street in 2009. Yet, of late, rich folks have been getting picked on by protesters and threatened with higher taxes by Democrats.

IT SHOULD be enough to say that since Microsoft is the property of Bill Gates and its other owners, they may do with the company as they please, including setting terms for the use and sale of its products. Yet critics maintain that such a large company is a threat to smaller competitors and therefore the government ought to restrict or even break up the company. But the size of Microsoft, which started with a handful of workers and now employs 30,000, is in fact crucial to why it deserves the support of all individuals who call themselves populists.

I like the way Malcolm Gladwell thinks. Let me rephrase that. I like the way Malcolm Gladwell makes me think. The New Yorker essayist and frizzy-haired thinker of deep thoughts has just published his third book on how to look at the world from an unexpected angle. It is titled Outliers: The Story of Success, and in it Gladwell shoots down that particularly American theory that success is a Horatio Alger combination of brilliance and determination. Those qualities certainly help. But Gladwell uses his special brand of pop sociology and a collection of intriguing anecdotes to postulate that timing has as much to do with success as grit and brains.

"The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest Man ... and the People Who Hate Him," by Gary Rivlin. Times Books. 360 pages. $25.Bill Gates is not merely the richest person alive; he's also just about the most unavoidable.His colossal software company, Microsoft Corp., furnishes the operating systems of most of the world's personal computers. His bland, bespectacled face has adorned innumerable magazine covers.His every action, whether it's building a $60 million mansion or getting hauled into court by the federal government, is parsed and pilloried in Web sites and newspaper articles around the globe.

Bill Gates for president in 2008? A new blog hopes so. The bloggers behind the site, billgatesforpresident.net, say they have no connection to Gates and insist that they are serious. Microsoft's founder in chief would make a great commander in chief, they say. "Please don't write this Web site off as a joke," the site states. "We are serious. We're not trying to make fun of Bill Gates whatsoever." The Gates supporters list four reasons for a Gates presidency. First, he's rich: "Yes, we believe being absurdly rich is a good thing for any presidential candidate.

Bill Gates is bullish on inflation. He's putting tens of millions into the Western Asset-Claymore Inflation-Linked Securities & Income Fund, which rises with consumer prices over the long term. The fund is managed by Legg Mason's Western Asset unit in Pasadena, Calif. Through his Cascade Investment vehicle, Gates has been buying the inflation fund (ticker WIA) at least since June, when he first declared ownership of more than 10 percent of its shares. In mid-June he owned 2.9 million shares worth about $36 million.

The leaders of several small warring countries and a giant in the computer industry have all been singled out as suspects. So have the World Bank, NATO and the credit card system.With the millennium in easy reach, a cross section of Christians who interpret the Bible literally, along with a good number of others who may never have opened a Bible, share a common vision of the future. They expect the Antichrist to appear any day.From the start of Christianity, candidates for the role of Satan's protege have never been lacking.

WASHINGTON -- Bill Gates' mega-philanthropy, the $22-billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is taking on a mega-institution -- America's high schools with multi-thousand student enrollments. In a series of announcements made from Alaska to Rhode Island, the Gates Foundation last week announced an initial $56 million in grants to start and support model schools that offer small, personalized learning environments. The timing couldn't be more opportune. The horrific 1999 shooting at Colorado's Columbine High School triggered many second thoughts about America's big, comprehensive high schools.

If Bill Gates wrote an advice column:Dear Bill,I'm crushed. My best friend "Debbie' is getting married. Naturally, I assumed I'd be the maid of honor. But I just found out Debbie has asked someone else, a heavyset woman on our softball team in need of a depilatory for her mustache.I feel hurt and insulted. Now I wonder if I should attend the wedding at all.-- Steamed% in Steubenville, OhioDear Steamed: I, too, was once left out of a friend's wedding party. I sat down at my PC for 36 hours straight and streamlined my CONFIG.

Bill Gates is bullish on inflation. He's putting tens of millions into the Western Asset-Claymore Inflation-Linked Securities & Income Fund, which rises with consumer prices over the long term. The fund is managed by Legg Mason's Western Asset unit in Pasadena, Calif. Through his Cascade Investment vehicle, Gates has been buying the inflation fund (ticker WIA) at least since June, when he first declared ownership of more than 10 percent of its shares. In mid-June he owned 2.9 million shares worth about $36 million.

NEW YORK - Bill Gates and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that they will spend $500 million to stop people around the world from smoking. The World Health Organization estimates that tobacco will kill up to a billion people in the 21st century, most of them in poor and middle-income countries. In an effort to cut that number, Bloomberg's foundation plans to commit $250 million over four years on top of $125 million he announced two years ago. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is allocating $125 million over five years.

Bill Gates is retiring, sort of. He is still only 52, and he is going off to spend more time guiding the world's richest philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He will still be Microsoft's chairman and largest shareholder, but yesterday was his last day as a full-time worker at the software giant, marking the unofficial end of his career as a business leader. And what a career it has been. Gates has been an animating force behind the personal computer revolution, helping to build a global industry and engineer blockbuster products such as Windows and Office.

Ken Schaffer recently bought a professional-quality camera. The Ellicott City business owner and amateur photographer wanted to learn the computer program Photoshop so he could play around with his pictures. That is why he spent a recent Thursday at Marriotts Ridge High School - where his daughter is a ninth-grader - doctoring a photo of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Schaffer followed along as two Marriotts Ridge students, juniors Patrick Talcott and Thomas Conchie, guided him through drawing a dotted line around Gates' head, then dragging the head off Gates' body.

If you hit it off with Mark Kresel - and chances are you will - he'll eventually want to know one thing: "Can I give you a birdhouse?" He'll ask in a voice husky with sincerity: "Can I?" The 58-year-old textile salesman has bestowed his handmade creations on the woman who sold him his daily Dunkin' Donut, his barber, his doctor and dozens of clients in exotic locations throughout Russia, South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Everyone in his Fork neighborhood - all up and down Catalpa Road, which is not a short street - boasts an original Kresel.

The new Zunes are coming! The new Zunes are coming! But will anyone care? Just weeks after Apple raised the bar with a refreshed lineup of iPods, Microsoft is poised to release a refreshed lineup of Zunes. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates showed the new Zunes, scheduled to go on sale in mid-November, to reporters this week. The original Zune now has an 80-gigabyte version; two new flash memory-based models come in 4 GB and 8 GB versions as well as several new colors, though none of the new Zunes is brown.

HOW WILL STUDENTS be effected (sic) by the new technologies?" asks a recent CD-ROM concerned with the future of computers and communications. The answer given, unfortunately, is "Every student will have more opportunity than the most privileged student had just a decade ago," not "They will rely too heavily on spelling checkers."

ALTHOUGH THE $2.25 million grant from a charity controlled by Microsoft Corp.founder Bill Gates isn't the largest gift to Johns Hopkins' School of Hygiene and Public Health from a private source, the contribution is significant: It will support public health initiatives that have made Hopkins revered in corners of the world where people have never heard of Baltimore.The Gates gift, spread over five years, will fund a Family Planning Leadership Education Institute to help health care leaders in developing countries design, administer and evaluate their own family planning efforts.

With a college degree in hand, you're ready to conquer the real world. Or you snagged that coveted internship and you're ready to experience what the workplace is all about. But before you enter the rat race, there are a few things you probably didn't learn in college that you need to know. I've asked Mary Crane, a business coach and consultant, to provide some advice for young workers on how to get ahead. Crane, a lawyer and former Capitol Hill lobbyist, trains young workers at Fortune 500 companies and law firms on business etiquette and other workplace issues, such as generational concerns.

MEXICO CITY -- Telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu has built a corporate empire so vast that it's nearly impossible for most Mexicans to go a day without slipping a few pesos into his pocket. Forbes magazine recently estimated his net worth at $49 billion. That represented a $19 billion increase from 2006, the biggest one-year increase in a decade for anyone on the magazine's annual list of the world's richest people. Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates' $56 billion helped him retain the top spot.