forbes

Bill Gates twixt Putin and pope at No. 4 in Forbes 'most powerful'

Wielding both wealth and influence, Bill Gates is the world's fourth most powerful person, as ranked by Forbes.

Rising to fourth place from fifth last year, Gates was cited by Forbes for his vast fortune. The Microsoft co-founder is worth $65 billion even after donating more than $28 billion toward various causes.

But it's also his mission and his influence that make Gates a powerful man.

As co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he's been on a quest to stamp out a variety of diseases around the world. As Forbes notes, Gates estimates that the … Read more

Steve Jobs -- The untold tales

Steve Jobs left strong impressions on the people he knew, and some of them have shared those impressions in the latest issue of Forbes.

Stories about meetings and encounters with Jobs are always intriguing owing to the multifaceted personality of the man.

This Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the death of the Apple leader, prompting the magazine to publish some of the "untold" tales about Jobs as related by friends and colleagues.

Web browser guru and now venture capitalist Marc Andreessen related a story in which Jobs showed him a prototype of the first iPhone in 2006. … Read more

Gates up, Zuckerberg down in latest ranking of super-rich

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates held onto his No. 1 position for the 19th straight year in Forbes' annual ranking of the 400 richest people in America.

Helped by the appreciation in Microsoft's stock in the last year, Gates' $66 billion net worth increased by $7 billion from a year earlier.

He was joined on the list by fellow tech moguls Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, whose $41 billion put him in the No. 3 spot. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos finished 11th with $23.2 billion. Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google held down the 12 and 13 spots … Read more

Microsoft's Ballmer challenges Vanity Fair's 'lost decade' claim

Did Microsoft lose itself over the past decade? Its CEO obviously doesn't think so.

In a Forbes interview published yesterday, Steve Ballmer was asked about the recent Vanity Fair article that charged poor management and bureaucracy at Microsoft with hurting the company financially and technologically over the past ten years.

Ballmer's response?

"It's not been a lost decade for me! I mean, look, ultimately progress is measured sort of through the eyes of our users," he told Forbes. "More than our investors or our P&L [profit and loss] or anything else, it'… Read more

Would you wear a TV?

David Forbes is a man with a fashionable vision.

After completing a working video coat with a mega assortment of color LEDs, Forbes has moved onto a smaller, slightly more practical application: an LED TV vest.

The $20,000 array is no slouch, using custom-made circuit boards that pump nearly 5 gigabits of data to 14,400 red, green, and blue LEDs.

Surveillance video technology limits the resolution of the video so content is watchable on the flexible vest, which displays content at 160x120. Battery life clocks in around 90 minutes, and runs off lithium-polymer batteries commonly used for remote … Read more

Zuckerberg voted 9th most powerful in the world

Power, unlike beauty, is less in the eye of the beholder and more in the hands of the cudgel-wielder.

The question, then, is just how much people ought to be shivering at the idea that Forbes has declared Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg the ninth most powerful person in the world.

Yes, it seems there are only eight people alive who can stop him in his quest to control precisely everything.

Who, of those eight, might be prepared to do it? At No. 1 is President Barack Obama. But he seems pleasantly disposed to Zuckerberg. They've even had dinner together. … Read more

Gates still richest but Zuckerberg climbs quickly

It's no surprise that Bill Gates is still the richest man in the United States, according to Forbes' newest list of the 400 richest people in America. Perhaps more interesting is just how quickly Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is working his way up the ranks.

Gates, 55, the co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, topped the list once again with an estimated wealth valuation of $59 billion, up from last fall's $54 billion. Second on the list once again was Berkshire Hathaway CEO and Gates pal Warren Buffett, 81, with $39 billion, down from $45 billion … Read more

Calculating the net worth of a dragon

Ever wonder how much Darth Vader might be worth? Or maybe Voldemort? I haven't, but when it's time to compile Forbes' annual Forbes Fictional 15, a list of the net worth of the wealthiest characters in fiction, it comes up.

This year, Smaug, the dragon made famous in Tolkien's "The Hobbit" who will likely be featured in the currently-in-production movie by MGM and New Line Cinema, makes the list at No. 7 with $8.6 billion--right between superhero billionaires Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark.

It's not an easy number to come up with, but Forbes writer Michael Noer does a handy job of doing just that--and he even shows his work.

He's put together a workable equation that starts by calculating the amount of precious metals in the dragon's bed of treasure by using information Tolkien included in the book (using Bilbo's height as compared with the pile); generally held "facts" about dragon treasure from sources like Dungeons & Dragons; and the real-world values of gold and silver coins.

The mound--675.6 cubic feet, if you must know--is then combined with the best-guess size of Smaug's diamond-encrusted underbelly (again, calculated with help from D&D sourcebooks at 684.6 spare feet) and the probable worth of other treasures (like the Arkenstone of Thrain) to get the final estimate.

As an expert on Tolkien and dragons (remember my D&D-inspired tattoo last summer? Yeah, I'm a Dungeon Master) and someone who's fairly decent with math, I can't find a hole in Noer's logic. While the $8.6 billion figure might not be exact, it's damn close enough, and I can't imagine anyone coming up with a more accurate figure.

If you can, you're more than welcome to give it a shot in the comments below. Just remember that, like Noer, you'll need to show your work.… Read more

Telecom tycoon beats out Gates for top billionaire

Forbes' latest list of the world's billionaires still points to Bill Gates and other familiar faces in the tech world, but Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim Helu again took first place as the richest.

Helu, whose family fortune is estimated by Forbes at $74 billion, up from $53.5 billion last year, owns America Movil, Latin America's largest wireless carrier. But the mogul upped his wealth over the past year through a series of mining and real estate deals as well as gains in the peso and the Mexican stock market.

Still in no slouch in second place, … Read more