I am no huge Ayn Rand fan, but I have no problem with Bill Gates making billions of dollars, either.

Believe me, Microsofts practices are no more unfair than Pepsi, Coke, or Hartz Pet Products.

And don't kid yourself... Bill Gates may have made his second billion because of "unfair" prcatices, but his first Billion was made on a better product.

Yes, Windows 1.0 sucked, but I am talking about MS-DOS. It had its faults... but does anyone remember CP/M? Yikes!

And as for the "Rich getting richer" this is hyperbole. When Reagan lead us to financial recovery, everyone was decrying that he only helped the rich. But the fact is that new millionares were produced at a faster rate during the Regan economy than at any other time.

There are plenty of things wrong with our society. The fact that Bill Gates has an "obscene" amount of money is not one of them.

If you want to see a society where just a few flourish and many suffer, you need to visit the FSU sometime.

Watch the Russian Mafia driving mercedes and then visit a lovely lass who makes $55 a month. THERE is something wrong.

As for the rest of your post about the AW... It simply is a reflection of the over all society. Ours is a society built on competition. That has slowly entered into the area of the family, where now the spouses compete with each other. I agree that this is a bad thing. I had a marriage end because of it.

I am delighted that I have found a woman who wants to join with me and form a family... not a corporation...

These kids now adays, with their IDEs and Application Servers have it so easy... LOL... I remember when "C" was considered a high level language!

Yikes, I'm feeling old!

I personally never worry that Bill Gates has too much money and that Microsoft is too dominant.  I rather look at the change that PCs have brought to the workplace and how they increased our productivity many times above what it is in less advanced societies.  Personal computers let me do more work and find information through the Internet that I could never get before.  I did a report a couple of weeks ago in just 2 hours that I couldn’t have done in 2 weeks 20 years ago.  Bill Gates became dominant because he was very competent and his competitors were not.  I can’t just say take it all away because he was better at running a business.  

I personally do know several people that have become wealthy and they worked their ass off to get there.  They started their own companies and everything they owned was at risk of being lost.  They did not have connections.  If a person gets a good education, then a decent paying job and saves their money all their life to have a better future, what’s wrong with that?  In life there are a few superstars, some pretty good guys, a whole lot of average and some real boat anchors that drag everybody down.  

At 62 years old I think it’s a little too late to get your ass in gear and improve your situation, so I would just advise you to coast into retirement and stop whining.  Not reading the NY Times editorial page would help since most of them are whiners.  I read the Paul Krugman article you mentioned and he does have some valid points.  A top executive at US Steel in the early 1970s was the highest paid executive and he made less than $500,000.  Now executives doing a lousy job will ask for 10 million dollar bonuses and then lay off thousands of employees to improve efficiency.  That really sucks and I’m watching it happen in my own company.  If I were them I would think more about how many people I'm screwing over so I can top some salary list.  

I don’t mind if a woman postpones marriage a little while to find a better husband but she is up against a deadline to have children.  Some of the girls I dated married guys that were big talk, little action.  They were stupid and suffered the consequences.  They should have waited to see if the guy amounted to anything.  

Oh, and I am an affluent nerd with affluent nerd friends.  As for my friends that got rich, I am happy for them.  

The problem with Linux, is that it's got the cross of Unix on it's back, and then the gui's are free... which leaves us with no competitive entities trying to derive a "better moustrap", which is where the best products come from, competition.

Bill Gates may not have "had product" which was his, but what he did have over and above everyone else, was business savy.  Drive and determination.  This is what determines the difference between success and failure.  I love linux, but I prefer windows because I can always get the job done faster, better and cheaper with a windows machine.  But for a server, I prefer linux or unix.

Bill Gates is rich in his own right, and not because he stole something, but because he decided to work and produce instead of sitting around cutting bait like the rest of the fools did.

jm2c.

I'll let you have the last word, as this isn't the right place for this discussion anyways - don't get me wrong, I love my linux machine - for the purpose for which it was intended.

cheers.

And I can think of b1tchy wives that made some rich guy's life more miserable.