Bill Gates no longer world's richest man

[Raph's Girl]

HAHAHAHAHAHA....who the heck is Carlos Slim?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080306/us_nm/billionaires_dc_7


Warren Buffett, the famed U.S. investor who heads Berkshire Hathaway Inc, replaced his friend and Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates as the richest man in the world, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday.

The magazine estimated Buffett's worth at $62 billion in its annual ranking of the world's wealthiest people.

Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim came in second with an estimated worth of $60 billion, pushing Gates to third place after 13 years of holding the No. 1 spot.

The magazine estimated Gates' worth at $58 billion.

Buffett's rise to No. 1 was particularly noteworthy, Forbes said, as it came at a time of great financial turmoil and as Buffett has begun to siphon off part of his fortune to charity.

"Even though he is giving away a piece of his fortune each year, the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, the source of Warren Buffet's wealth, has been rising very rapidly," Chief Executive of Forbes Magazines Steve Forbes said, noting Buffett's fortune climbed $10 billion in the last calendar year.

Buffett in June 2006 announced plans to give 85 percent of his fortune away, granting it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities. Bill Gates serves on the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway and is a long-time bridge buddy of Buffett's. Gates has also given a substantial amount of his fortune to the foundation.

Buffett, often called the Sage of Omaha, has been lauded among investors for his preference for investing in larger companies with easy-to-understand businesses, large or dominant market shares, consistent earnings, and strong management.

In the early 1960s, Buffett started to invest in Berkshire, then a struggling textile maker, and took it over in 1965. Since then, he has transformed it into a holding company for more than 50 companies, ranging from Benjamin Moore paint and Dairy Queen ice cream to Fruit of the Loom underwear and Ginsu knives.

Gates has held the No. 1 spot since 1995, when he unseated Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a Japanese real estate tycoon. Tsutsumi fell off the billionaire's list last year after receiving a suspended prison sentence for falsifying financial statements and insider trading in 2005.

Slim, a former stock market trader, is known for buying up struggling, cheap firms and turning them into profitable cash cows. He built his fortune by privatizing former Mexican state telephone monopoly Telmex. America Movil, a Telmex spin-off, is now Slim's flagship business and Latin America's biggest mobile phone company.

KEEPING UP WITH THE RUSSIANS?

The collective net worth of the world's 1,125 billionaires soared to $4.4 trillion, the magazine said.

The list of billionaires has almost doubled in the past four years, Forbes said. There were 469 U.S. billionaires, worth a combined $1.6 trillion, while the 656 billionaires who live outside the United States are worth $2.8 trillion.

Russia came in second place as home to 87 billionaires and Moscow is now the world's billionaire center, the magazine said. The Russian capital is now home to more billionaires than New York City.

India, China and Turkey also saw large gains in numbers of billionaires.

The world's youngest billionaire is 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, founder of social networking Web site Facebook. The magazine estimated his worth at $1.5 billion and said he is the youngest self-made billionaire to ever appear in the Forbes billionaire rankings.

Recent turmoil in the financial markets has taken its toll on the list.

James Cayne, Chairman of investment bank Bear Stearns Cos; William Pulte, who founded U.S. home builder Pulte Homes Inc; and Howard Schultz, founder of coffee chain Starbucks all fell off the billionaire's list amid declines in their companies' stock prices.

The decline in the dollar, a trend that Buffett himself has been betting on since 2002, provided a boost to billionaires outside the United States, particularly because the Forbes list is tabulated in U.S. dollars.

Here's the list:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank.html

[Cure]

inb4 people hatin' just cuz they're rich.

[Peanut]

Man, <3 Bill Gates. Especially his Microsoft retirement video. Pure Lulz.

[Drtooth]

Carlos Slim. Sounds like a bad guy from a 1950's Cowboy TV show, or some sort of Mexican cigarette spokesman.

[Deathknight]

I thought this happend already like a few years ago.

[Mecha Cow]

I'm pretty sure it did.

I'm not going to player-hate on Gates. I will, however, hate on that 23-year old billionaire. You are a disgrace to your slacker brothers everywhere!

[Sewer Bull]

I'm pretty sure it did.

I'm not going to player-hate on Gates. I will, however, hate on that 23-year old billionaire. You are a disgrace to your slacker brothers everywhere!

Jesus, that Facebook thing is so ****** :/

And Bill Gates lost half of his fortune a few years ago, but still remained in the first place as the richest guy on Earth.

[Warhorse]

Awe............A single tear rolls down my cheek.

Yeah right! I'm surprised the oil tycoons aren't the richest in the world, though the company Exxon/Mobil I believe is the wealthiest company in the world, with the biggest profits garnered every quarter. And they say they have no choice but to raise the price of crude oil. BS! Exxon's not doing too bad for a company that almost went bankrupt from that horrible ALaskan oil spill back in the late 80's/early 90's. I'd sure like to know how they came from almost bankrupt to number 1.

Well, Bill Gates downhill slide from number 1 probably stems from the Vista Program not doing so well, Gateway having very stiff competition from Dell and the PC having competition from Mac.

[Drtooth]

Yeah right! I'm surprised the oil tycoons aren't the richest in the world, though the company Exxon/Mobil I believe is the wealthiest company in the world, with the biggest profits garnered every quarter. And they say they have no choice but to raise the price of crude oil. BS! Exxon's not doing too bad for a company that almost went bankrupt from that horrible ALaskan oil spill back in the late 80's/early 90's. I'd sure like to know how they came from almost bankrupt to number 1.

Off topic, but reread your post. You answered your own question...

[Sewer Bull]

Yeah right! I'm surprised the oil tycoons aren't the richest in the world, though the company Exxon/Mobil I believe is the wealthiest company in the world, with the biggest profits garnered every quarter. And they say they have no choice but to raise the price of crude oil. BS! Exxon's not doing too bad for a company that almost went bankrupt from that horrible ALaskan oil spill back in the late 80's/early 90's. I'd sure like to know how they came from almost bankrupt to number 1.

I... don't think it is Exxon/Mobil responsible in particular for raising the prices of crude oil.

[iris]

He wouldn't remain the richest anyway. Over the last few years he's given away something like $2 billion, and used another $1 billion to establish his scholarship program. For a long time, he's been saying he plans to be like Carnegie and give away most of his fortune before he dies.

That's pretty cool.

(Don't worry, I still think Microsoft sucks.)

[Cure]

(Don't worry, I still think Microsoft sucks.)

I like how you say that as if no one would like you if you DID like Microsoft.

[愛]

Man, I hate Microsoft, too! Microsoft and their...successful business! Always have to make user-friendly and overall great software!

[Raph's Girl]

Gateway having very stiff competition from Dell and the PC having competition from Mac.

Gateway technically only exists in name only as it was baught out by Acer last year (October to be exact) for $710 million USD.

[iris]

Man, I hate Microsoft, too! Microsoft and their...successful business! Always have to make user-friendly and overall great software!
Ah, snark, how I love thee.

There are a few things I like about MS stuff, but those don't make up for the overall slapped-together, buggy feel of their products. I routinely use non-MS products, and by contrast MS products are intensely frustrating. IMO, most people use MS products more because of Bill Gates' marketing savvy than because Microsoft product quality warrants a large share of the market. Microsoft is the McDonald's of software companies... not that good, but convenient, cheap, and good enough that most people are willing to compromise.

As a marketer, I have nothing but admiration for Mr. Gates. He's a marketing genius. But as a tech consumer, I tend to shy away from anything he endorses.

[JameO]

Bill Gates may be filthy rich, but he's a Harvard dropout that started a company from the ground up, and grew to a multi billion corporation. All the stories about Gates asking for money to support his project, with his fellow workers that stood by him, and they looked like bums, but bums that made the world how we see it now, we send email, view the internet, and type everything we do. And like others have said, it's user friendly, right out of the box you can use it and learn pretty easy, while other operating systems and software might be a bit more tricky to learn, and require a more tech savvy person. But the point of Microsoft products being cheap? I highly disagree with that. Microsoft XP Home is still going to run you around 200 bucks, and Vista at around 300-400 depending on the version you get. And microsoft office going for 120-170 depending on where you get it. Where personally OpenOffice.org's products are incredible, they save in an obscene ammount of file types, and the beautiful part of it, it's free. And of course you can go with Linux, which can be customized to look like Windows, but of course, not as user friendly for the newbies of technology. While I still use Windows at home (XP and Vista) and I am loving it, but I am also opening my mind to the open source world, which is a great experience, that most people won't even think about.

[Peanut]

There are a few things I like about MS stuff, but those don't make up for the overall slapped-together, buggy feel of their products. I routinely use non-MS products, and by contrast MS products are intensely frustrating. IMO, most people use MS products more because of Bill Gates' marketing savvy than because Microsoft product quality warrants a large share of the market. Microsoft is the McDonald's of software companies... not that good, but convenient, cheap, and good enough that most people are willing to compromise.

I never f*cking get this. Am I the only one who's smart enough to not break Windows or something? Vista or otherwise. The only times I ever have any kind of problems is when I'm dealing with shady sh*t on my PC. Other than that, I never have a hook with Microsoft products.

[JameO]

Alot of people love to blame their operating system on their problems. The operating system ain't going to function as it should if you happen to download and end up getting a trojan or a virus, it will obvious fail, yet they believe that it's the operating system. Only thing I have had wrong with Vista was that the installation cd I got from Dell, is not including a crucial update, so when I reformated, I could not install 95% of the software I needed due to the permissions problem, but a windows update fixed that and my vista experience has been smooth. Another great example is people trying to run Vista on a pentium 3 processor with 256MB ram. Time to upgrade people, computers are dirt cheap these days!

[iris]

I never f*cking get this. Am I the only one who's smart enough to not break Windows or something? Vista or otherwise. The only times I ever have any kind of problems is when I'm dealing with shady sh*t on my PC. Other than that, I never have a hook with Microsoft products.
Nothing's broken. There are just things that are very easy to do in other non-MS programs that turn into complicated messes in MS programs.

One example: In order to get 'Data Analysis' to show up on the Tools menu in Excel 2003, you have to take your cursor and highlight the data you want to analyze. Why? Just... because. If you don't magically know this fact, you're going to waste a lot of time looking for the feature. You may even think the feature hasn't been installed, in which case you're going to waste a lot of time trying to install the a feature pack that's already installed.

Most everyone uses Excel because it's convenient and "good enough," even though it can be a pain and sometimes corrupts information through inexplicable "helpful" conversions. Excel's an OK general-use spreadsheet program with some pretty bells and whistles. But the Data Analysis quirk above is only too typical of the strange programming decisions that pop up throughout MS software.

When it comes down to it, I prefer reliability over glitz, and that's just not how Microsoft thinks. Instead, Microsoft writes programs that try to read the user's mind and make "helpful" decisions. The major flaw in this plan should be obvious-- computers can't read your mind. At least, they can't read MY mind. So what should be good programs turn into frustrating, time-sucking agents of the devil.

If this has not at all resembled your experience with MS software, that's great. Lucky you. But I still think Microsoft sucks.

[JameO]

Interesting, although spreadsheet software is hard to figure out from just picking it up anyways so you have to know it pretty good to achieve what you want, but interesting. Not attacking you but what do you use in replace of it? Because all the software I have used is almost the same setup as Excel.

[ThirdMarioBro]

I never f*cking get this. Am I the only one who's smart enough to not break Windows or something? Vista or otherwise. The only times I ever have any kind of problems is when I'm dealing with shady sh*t on my PC. Other than that, I never have a hook with Microsoft products.

You're not alone. I've never had a major problem with Windows that didn't result from something I caused. I'll take Microsoft software over Apple's crap any day of the week.

Now, Xbox 3Sh*tty on the other hand...

[iris]

Interesting, although spreadsheet software is hard to figure out from just picking it up anyways so you have to know it pretty good to achieve what you want, but interesting. Not attacking you but what do you use in replace of it? Because all the software I have used is almost the same setup as Excel.
We don't have an alternative spreadsheet program. We just live with Excel and make sure to monitor things (like this (http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/a-big-excel-boo-boo/) and this (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q132686/), etc). It's good enough as a matrix calc program. But we often use just a text file format for transporting data (and that's often the way it comes out of the analysis equipment). I'd much rather store data in text files than Excel files because MS has compatibility issues from version to version. For advanced data manipulation, we use JMP, SAS, or some other stats software. We use something else to make graphs as well.

[JameO]

Interesting, I did not know that. I personally stay away from Office 2007 merely because I think it's menu system for Word is way to vista-ish, and I hate the menu button that drops down and has everything all in one, and that you have to click the save, then to click save as., way too bubbly for me. And also ever since my Office 2003 subscription ran out, I just went with open source just because it gets the job done just like office, sometimes better, and it's not worth paying for.