Facts - 1995
1. Bill Gates earns US$250 every SECOND, that's about US$20 Million a DAY and US$7.8 Billion a YEAR!
2. If he drops a thousand dollar, he won't even bother to pick it up bcoz the 4 seconds he picks it, he would've already earned it back.
3. The US national debt is about 5.62 trillion, if Bill Gates were to pay the debt by himself; he will finish it in less then 10 years.
(Read more facts after the break......
4. He can donate US$15 to everyone on earth but still be left with US$5 Million for his pocket money.
5. Michael Jordan is the highest paid athlete in US. If he doesn't drink and eat, and keeps up his annual income i.e. US$30 Million, he'll have to wait for 277 years to become as rich as Bill Gates is now.
6. If Bill Gates was a country, he would be the 37th richest country on earth.
7. If you change all of Bill Gate's money to US$1 notes, you can make a road from earth to moon, 14 times back and forth. But you have to make that road non-stop for 1,400 years, and use a total of 713 BOEING 747 planes to transport all the money.
8. Bill Gates is 40 this year. If we assume that he will live for another 35 years, he has to spend US$6.78 Million per day to finish all his money before he can go to heaven.
Last but not the least: If Microsoft Windows' users can claim US$1 for every time their computers hang because of Microsoft Windows, Bill Gates will be bankrupt in 3 years !!!!!!!
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistan warned the United States it risks losing an ally if it continued to accuse Islamabad of playing a double game in the war against militancy, escalating the crisis in relations between the two countries.Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was responding to comments by U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, who said Pakistan's top spy agency was closely tied to the Haqqani network, the most violent and effective faction among Islamic Taliban militants in Afghanistan.
It is the most serious allegation levelled by the United States against nuclear-armed and Muslim-majority Pakistan since they began an alliance in the war on terror a decade ago.
"You will lose an ally," Khar told Geo TV in New York in remarks broadcast on Friday.
"You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people. If you are choosing to do so and if they are choosing to do so it will be at their (the United States') own cost."
Mullen, speaking in Senate testimony, alleged Haqqani operatives launched an attack last week on the U.S. embassy in Kabul with the support of Pakistan's military intelligence.
The tensions could have repercussions across Asia, from India, Pakistan's economically booming arch-rival, to China, which has edged closer to Pakistan in recent years.
A complete break between the United States and Pakistan -- sometimes friends, often adversaries -- seems unlikely, if only because Washington depends on Pakistan as a route to supply U.S. troops fighting militants in Afghanistan, and as a base for unmanned U.S. drones.
Pakistan relies on Washington for military and economic aid and for acting as a backer on the world stage.
But support in the U.S. Congress for curbing assistance or making conditions on aid more stringent is rising rapidly.
The unilateral U.S. Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May took already fragile relations between Pakistan and the United States to a low.
Relations were just starting to recover before the Kabul attack. Both sides are now engaged in an unusually blunt public war of words.
The dangers could be enormous if Washington fails to arrest the deterioration in relations with Pakistan, a largely dysfunctional state run by a feckless, military-cowed government and teeming with Islamist militants.
At stake are the fight against terrorism, the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and - as Islamabad plays off its friendship with China against the United States - regional stability.
HUMILIATION
"Anything which is said about an ally, about a partner, publicly to recriminate it, to humiliate it, is not acceptable," said Khar.
The United States has long pressed Pakistan to go after the Haqqani network, which it believes operates from sanctuaries in North Waziristan on the Afghan border.
Pakistan says its army is too stretched fighting its own Taliban insurgency. But analysts say the Islamabad government regards the Haqqanis as a strategic counterweight to the growing influence of old rival India in Afghanistan.
The Haqqani network, Mullen said, is a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).
The charges come amid mounting exasperation in Washington as the Obama administration struggles to curb militancy in Pakistan and end the long war in Afghanistan.
Mullen, CIA director David Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all have met with their Pakistani counterparts in recent days to demand Islamabad take action against the Haqqani network.
Any Pakistani offensive against the Haqqanis would be risky. The group has an estimated 10,000-15,000 seasoned fighters at its disposal and analysts say the Pakistani army would likely suffer heavy casualties.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by John Chalmers and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Hammacher Schlememr insists that the 28-gram, one inch-squared device works perfectly well, despite being the size of a marble.
The gadget is set to hit the shelves for 100 dollars.
"Although The World's Smallest Camera is only slightly larger than a marble, it takes still images and records video just like much larger cameras," the Daily Mail quoted Schlemmer's General Manager Fred Berns, as saying.
"It comes with a wrist lanyard that keeps it close to hand and enables ease of portability," he added.
The camera can reportedly take JPEG images with a resolution of 1600x1200 and comes complete with autofocus.
Just like regular pieces of photography equipment, this camera also connects to a computer via a USB cable
Facebook craze has reached all age groups. At times to keep a watch or to be at pace with the world, moms, dads, aunts and uncles are getting on to Facebook. The big question is will kids add parents to their friend list? Will they unfriend a few others to be friends with mom and dad? Parents commenting on posts, pictures and reading comments from other friends. Is this fun? Will it restrict your activity on Facebook? Or is it a great way for the two generations to come together?
By Ernest Scheyder
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - All that glitters is not just gold, with prices for silver also expected to strongly rise within the year due to a worsening economic landscape.
Silver , the second-most popular precious metal, has historically traded in tandem with gold prices , and in the past 12 months its price has more than doubled to roughly $40 an ounce.
"What we're seeing in prices of silver now is a completely natural response to the economic malaise," John Smith, chief executive of Silver Standard Resources, said on Tuesday at the Denver Gold Forum, one of the largest gatherings in the world of mining investors, analysts and executives.
"This is not a sector to rent. This is a sector to hold," Smith said. "What we're seeing in the world is not an issue that going to be solved quickly."
Economic concerns in the United States and Europe, as well as political unrest in the Middle East, were all cited as contributors to silver's rise.
Silver is cheaper than gold, has scores of uses that gold does not -- it is the best metallic conductor of electricity -- and there's about 15 times more of it in the earth's crust than gold.
"I'm very bullish on silver, and I think we'll see it at $50 (an ounce) within the next six months," said Silver Wheaton Corp CEO Randy Smallwood said.
"I'm very bearish on the U.S. dollar," he added. "As long as we continue to value silver in terms of U.S. dollars, I see continued opportunity for silver to keep growing."
Some silver miners are going so far as to link their dividend payouts to silver's price, mimicking a move by some gold miners.
Hecla Mining became the latest silver producer to take such a step on Tuesday, saying that for every $5 increase in the price of silver it would increase its quarterly dividend by a penny.
For graphic on silver vs. gold ratio, click http://r.reuters.com/cud83s
Gold prices, also, are expected to jump, with many executives expecting them to breach $2,200 an ounce from their current levels around $1,800.
"So much of what happens to silver happens to gold, and with gold being such a safe haven there's a crisis of confidence," said Coeur d'Alene CEO Mitchell Krebs. "Investment demand is going to continue on the gold side and translate into the silver side."
Steve Busby, chief operating officer at Pan American Silver, said a weak euro and dollar are fueling the silver price jump.
"I personally believe that the futures of the world hard currencies looks bleak, and this will continue to drive silver prices upward," Busby said.
Busby is not alone, with many silver CEOs seeing their product as a sure defense against whatever comes down the economic pike.
"When you look at the critical mass that's trying to solve these issues, it just really highlights the fact that perhaps there isn't a solution," Silver Wheaton's Smallwood said.
"Maybe the only way you can solve this is devalue your currency down to the point where people are just losing faith in fiat currencies."
(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Richard Chang)
While Microsoft co-founder Gates' fortune swelled by $5 billion in a year to $59 billion, according to the US business magazine, Bharat Desai with $1.35 billion gets the 329th spot with Vinod Khosla two notches below at 331st place with $1.3 billion.
Kenya born Syntel co-founder Desai, 58, an IIT, Bombay graduate founded the outsourcing outfit in 1980, took the company public in 1997 and now has some 16,200 employees. Shares have jumped 20 percent over the past year.
Fellow IITian Vinod Khosla, 56, according to Forbes 'is the rare Silicon Valley venture capitalist able to generate profits from a clean tech portfolio.'
The Indian-born engineer, who made his early fortune as a cofounder of Sun Microsystems, recently vowed to give away half his fortune to charity when he signed Bill Gates' and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge last April.
The Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman and CEO Buffett's fortune decreased by $6 billion - the largest dollar-amount loss by anyone on the Forbes 400 this year, to $39 billion, the magazine said.
He was the only person among the top 20 on Forbes' list to see his fortune shrink from a year ago.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison rounds out the top three richest Americans with a net worth of $33 billion, $6 billion more than last year.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was the biggest dollar gainer on the list, with a net worth of $17.5 billion that earned him the No. 14 spot.
Forbes said the combined wealth of the 400 people, including 42 women, on this year's list is $1.5 trillion, with an average net worth of $3.8 billion, up 12 percent from last year.
Pakistan's top leadership "condemned in the strongest terms" the assassination of Afghan High Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was playing a key role in negotiations with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani "condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack" that killed the former Afghan President in his home in Kabul, said a statement issued by the Foreign Office.
"On behalf of the people and government of Pakistan, the Pakistani leadership has conveyed to the brotherly people and government of Afghanistan extreme anger and shock on the terrorist attack," the statement said.
The Pakistani people "stand by their Afghan brothers and sisters in this moment of grief on losing a visionary leader who was actively pursuing peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan", it said.
The statement described Rabbani as a "friend of Pakistan" with whom Islamabad was "working closely within the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Commission for Reconciliation and Peace on a vision for peace and prosperity in Afghanistan".
Rabbani was "martyred by the enemies of peace in Afghanistan," it said.
A suicide bomber with explosives hidden in his turban killed Rabbani in the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations in Afghanistan.
His death is being seen as a major blow to the effort to begin negotiations with the Afghan Taliban.
Google Inc and Facebook trotted out a variety of new social networking features in back-to-back announcements on Tuesday, underscoring their intensifying competition for Web surfers.
Google integrated its flagship search engine into its 3-month old social network -- with membership now open to the Internet public -- and expanded its "Hangouts" video-chat feature to allow mobile use and broadcasting.
The company said on its official blog its well-received Hangouts feature -- where up to nine people can link up and chat with a user on video -- will be available on camera equipped smartphones powered by its own Android software. Support for Apple Inc iOS devices "is coming soon", it added.
And a user can now host an online broadcast with this feature -- recording a session and broadcasting it live for public access online. Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am will host the first "Hangout on Air" on Wednesday, Google said.
"Hangouts should keep pace with how you socialize in the real-world, so today we''re launching it on the one device that's always by your side: your mobile phone," senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said on the blog post.
For its part, Facebook said it was introducing a new "ticker" on its users'' home pages, providing real-time notifications of what friends are doing on the service. Facebook also revamped the service''s main news feed to flag important items -- such as a new baby announcement -- for Facebook users who have not logged on for a few days. Facebook also changed the way photos are displayed on the site, increasing the size of pictures that appear in a users' news feed.
Facebook is the world's No 1 social networking service, with more than 750 million users. The company has rolled out a series of improvements to its service recently, many of which seem designed to match features Google has used to set apart its rival social networking service, Google+.
Google did not say how many people had signed up for Google+ so far, but confirmed the social network was now open to all, whereas previously it had been invitation-only. Analysts estimate upward of 25 million users have joined Google+ since its inception.
The company also made its search engine available from within the social network. Users can search from Google+ and get results not just on the network, but from the worldwide Internet.
Google's infant social network, which counts Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a member, has met skepticism so far. Some are waiting to see if it can maintain the rapid momentum of its first months.
If CEO Larry Page's brainchild -- which some say mimics better than Facebook the instinctive categorizing of friends that occurs in real life -- takes off, it will come at a pivotal moment for its bigger rival. Facebook is widely expected to go public in 2012.
"We're nowhere near done, but with the improvements we've made so far we're ready to move from field trial to beta," Gundotra said.
The sell-off across sectors has pushed the equity benchmarks further down. The 50-share NSE Niftyplunged 100 points to 5,033 and the 30-share BSESensex lost 328 points to 16,737.
Federal Reserve flagged "significant downside risks" to the economy on the last day of FOMC meeting yesterday. Also, Moody's Investors Service cut debt ratings on financial companies like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi.
Asian markets were witnessing heavy sell-off. Hang Seng crashed 4%. Kospi and Taiwan lost 3% each. Nikkei slipped 2%. Shanghai and Straits Times were down 1.7% each.
Sharp fall in European futures too were pointing weak start to the European opening; France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were down 2-4%.
On the home turf, the BSE Realty, Metal, Auto, Bank and Capital Goods indices fell 2-2.6%. Power, IT, Oil & Gas and FMCG indices dropped 1-1.6%.
Heavyweights Reliance Industries, Bharti, TCS, SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and L&T plunged 2-3%. However, BPCL bucked the trend; gained 1.5% on fall in crude oil prices. Nymex Crude was trading around USD 84 a barrel.
Market breadth too worsened; about five shares declined for every share gaining.
At 10:09 hours IST : Nifty slips over 1.5% on broad-based selling
The market extended losses on the back of broad-based selling, reacting to sharp fall in global markets after Fed signaled that there were downside risks to US economy. The 50-share NSE Nifty lost 86 points to 5,047 and the 30-share BSE Sensex fell 273 points to 16,791.
If Sandeep Bhatia, executive director and head of sales, Kotak Institutional Equities is to be believed, the fall can be sharper. "Since 2008, the market has only seen infusion of liquidity. There could be further downside to our market. It can trade down to 15,000 in October as it has been a historically bad month," he said.
Among Asian markets, Hang Seng, Kospi and Taiwan crashed 3-4%. Shanghai, Nikkei and Straits Times fell 1.7-2%. The Dow Jones Futures slipped 0.5%.
The Indian rupee was trading at 47.73 per dollar, down 0.41 from previous day's closing value.
Tata Motors, Sterlite Industries, DLF, Hindalco, Tata Steel, Tata Power, SAIL and Reliance Communications were top gainers among largecaps. These stocks gained 3-4%.
However, BPCL and ONGC were marginally in the green.
India Securities, SBI, Tree House, Stride Arcolab, Tata Steel, L&T, Reliance Industries and Tata Motors were most active shares on exchanges.
About 518 shares advanced as against 1381 shares declined on BSE.
At 9:19 hours IST : Sensex plunges over 250 pts on global sell-off; Re @ 48.8
The Federal Reserve in its meeting yesterday said there was "significant downside risks" to the economy. This weighed heavy on the Indian equity benchmarks, which fell 1.7% in opening trade.
At 9:18 hours IST, the 50-share NSE Nifty tanked 87 points to 5,046 and the 30-share BSE Sensextumbled 276 points to 16,790, led by fall in metal, technology, financial and ADAG stocks.
Technology stocks plunged 2-3% despite rupee falling over 1% from previous day's closing value to 48.8 per dollar.
Sterlite, Sesa Goa, Tata Steel, Hindalco, Reliance Communications, Reliance Infra, Reliance Capital, TCS, Wipro, HCL Tech, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, SBI, Reliance Industries, L&T, DLF and Ambuja Cements were witnessing selling pressure.
The CNX Midcap fell 95 points to 7,372. About 8 shares declined for every share rising.
Mundra Port plunged 5%. IVRCL, HDIL, Punj Lloyd and JSW Steel were down 2.5-3.5%.
However, Everonn Education was locked at 5% upper circuit for seventh consecutive session.
Global cues
Asian markets were trading sharply lower. Hang Seng, Kospi and Taiwan plunged 3-4%. Shanghai, Nikkei and Straits Times were down over 1.5%.
(Updates with request to judge in second paragraph.)
Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. said Oracle Corp. lowered its damages request to at least $2 billion in a patent and copyright dispute over Android software, according to a court filing.
Google, which said the estimate includes $1.2 billion in damages for unjust enrichment in 2012 alone, asked a federal judge to exclude parts of the calculation that it says aren’t supported by the evidence.
In July, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco threw out Oracle’s earlier estimate that it’s entitled to as much as $6.1 billion in damages in a lawsuit claiming Google infringed its Java patents when it created the Android operating system, now running on more than 150 million mobile devices.
Oracle’s new damages report “ignores governing law and the guidelines of this court’s July 22, 2011, order,” Google lawyer Robert Van Nest said in a letter to Alsup yesterday.
Alsup ruled in July that a new estimate should start as low as $100 million, a figure that Mountain View, California-based Google was offered in 2006 to license Java from Sun Microsystems Inc. Google rejected that offer by Sun, which Oracle later acquired.
Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Redwood City, California-based Oracle, the largest maker of database software, declined to comment on the Google filing.
The two companies have made little headway this week in negotiations aimed at resolving the lawsuit, a person briefed on the talks said. Google Chief Executive Larry Page and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison participated in a settlement conference that lasted as long as 10 hours on Sept. 19 and returned to federal court in San Jose, California, today for further meetings with a magistrate judge.
“It’s good to be back,” Page said as he arrived this morning. “I look forward to a productive session.”
Ellison declined to comment when he arrived at court.
The case is Oracle America Inc. v. Google Inc., 10-03561, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco)
--With assistance from Pam McLean in San Jose, California, and Brian Womack and Aaron Ricadela in San Francisco. Editors: Peter Blumberg, Michael Hytha
A finance ministry note to the prime minister's office (PMO) this year said the 2G spectrum scam could have been avoided if then finance minister P Chidambaram had insisted on spectrum allocation through auction. This revealed cracks within the UPA leadership and exposed the coalition to attacks from the opposition, which latched on to the note on Wednesday night, demanding the resignation of Chidambaram, who is now home minister.
Chidambaram said in a meeting with then telecom minister A Raja on January 30, 2008 that “he was for now not seeking to revisit the current regimes for entry fee or revenue share” of spectrum, says the note.
The department of economic affairs note, dated March 25, 2011, was issued with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's approval. Finance Ministry's note
The turn of events has given a fresh twist to India’s most high-profile corruption case — valued at as much as R176,000 crore by the CAG — in which Raja, former secretary S Behura, and several promoters and top executives of telecom companies are behind bars in Delhi’s Tihar jail.
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said, “It was very clear from day one that Chidambaram agreed to A Raja’s formula. If he had stuck to the finance ministry officials’ position that the spectrum shouldn’t be allocated in 2008 at 2001 prices…he should step down.”
CPI national secretary D Raja said the note was a serious issue and the PM should explain what action he had taken since March. “The CBI should probe the entire matter and once that happens, Chidambaram's position as home minister becomes untenable.”
The Congress declined to comment on the issue. “BJP is jumping to conclusions. It should stop being in a hurry on every issue. Let's wait for a while,” party spokesperson Renuka Chowdhary said.
The document said Chidambaram wrote a “secret note” to the prime minister on January 15, 2008, five days after the department of telecommunications granted licences to new operators.
He recommended an auction-based mechanism for future allocation (beyond the start-up spectrum of 4.4 Mhz) and treat previous spectrum allocations — in this case, the 2G — as a “closed chapter”.
Even then, finance secretary and current RBI governor D Subbarao said in February 2008 — after allocation was fixed — that the department of telecom could still have gone for an auction, irrespective of the decision taken earlier.
“The DoT could have invoked this clause for cancelling the licences in case the ministry of finance had stuck to the stand of auctioning the 4.4 Mhz spectrum,” said the note provided by the PMO to an RTI activist, Vivek Garg.
New Delhi, Sept. 18: The directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) is trying to ensure that airlines do not resort to excessive fare hikes during the festive season.
The regulator believes the airlines, including the low-cost ones, are likely to raise fares by at least 10 per cent. Airlines expect the passenger load factor to touch 85 per cent to 90 per cent in the next three months.
Players such as Jet Airways have already resorted to a round of hikes after the oil companies raised aviation fuel rates by 2.5 per cent last week. Jet has increased the fuel surcharge on its tickets by Rs 200 from September 17.
"Depending on the route the price of tickets will increase. While there would be a 10-per-cent hike on the price of tickets of tier II destinations, the prices for tier I cities will increase as much as 15 per cent," said an official of an NCR-based low-cost airline.
The DGCA is taking steps to prevent any steep hikes. Airlines have been asked to keep it informed about any increases.
The tariff analysis unit, set up by the DGCA to monitor abrupt rise in prices, is also monitoring fare patterns.
"It is being monitored every day on an hour-to-hour basis. We will ensure that airlines stick to norms and do not increase prices exorbitantly. Prices are bound to increase as demand would be highest during the coming months but checks and balances are already in place to tackle them," said a senior DGCA official.
Industrial growth fell to a meagre 3.3 per cent in July this year on account of poor performance mainly by capital goods, manufacturing and mining sectors, reflecting sluggishness in the economy.
Growth in the factory output, as measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (LIP), had stood at 9.9 per cent in July last year.
During the April-July period of this fiscal, IIP growth stood at 5.8 per cent, as against 9.7 per cent in the corresponding four-month period last year.
Output of the manufacturing sector, which constitutes over 75 per cent of the index, grew by only 2.3 per cent in July compared to 10.8 per cent expansion in the same month last year, according the official data released today.
Production of capital goods declined by 15.2 per cent in July, in comparison to a growth of 40.3 per cent in the same month of 2010.
The growth in mining production was 2.8 per cent in the month, down from 8.7 per cent in the same month last year.
Production of intermediate goods fell by 1.1 per cent during the month under review against a growth of 8.5 per cent in July 2010.
Consumer durables grew by 8.6 per cent in July as compared to a growth of 14.8 per cent in the corresponding month of last year.
However, electricity production improved witnessing a growth of 13.1 per cent in July this year as against a growth of 3.7 per cent in July, 2010.
Non-durable consumer goods (FMCG) production also grew by4.1 per cent in July, compared to a decline of 0.9 per cent in the same month last year.
Meanwhile, the industrial growth number for June this year has been maintained at the provisional figure of 8.8 per cent. However, the IIP numbers for April has been revised downward to 5.3 per cent as per the final revision from the previous estimate of 5.7 per cent.
The fall the industrial production numbers, as shown by the latest data, suggest continuation of the sluggishness in the economy, experts said.
The IIP had expanded by 5.9 per cent in May but there was brief revival in June with industrial production growing by 8.8 per cent.
India's economy grew by 7.7 per cent in the April-June period, the slowest in six quarters.
India Inc had attributed the slowdown to rising interest rates which have led to an increase in the cost of borrowings, thus hindering fresh investments.
The Reserve Bank has hiked interest rates 11 times since March 2010 to tame inflation. Headline inflation has been above the 9 per cent mark since December last year.
