Four-second cost efficient dilemma for Mr Microsoft

It's no secret that Bill Gates is not short of a few cents. By a spooky coincidence Mr Microsoft l could have dug into his personal dollar pile this week and come up with $37 billion plus to snap MCI from the jaws of WorldCom and still have a few dollars to rattle around. Such dizzying heights gives vertigo to those attempting to get a handle on Gates' wealth, but happily there are sites on the Internet dedicated to making the incomprehensible comprehensible. The Bill Gates Wealth Index, the Bill Gates Wealth Clock and the Bill Gates Net Worth Page are regularly updated by sad, dysfunctional individuals beyond the reach of therapists. For example, at the last assessment in July, Bill was amassing roughly $150 a second. Were he to drop a $500 bill on the ground, calculations suggest that it might cost him $600 to bend down and pick it up, based on a assumed reaction time of four seconds. Not a cost-efficient exercise. Theoretically it's argued he could give $6.16 to every person on earth and still have $47,833,287. His wealth, if expressed in single dollar bills, could form a thin line of greenbacks which would stretch to the moon and back eight times. Naturally such data is by now historic, distorted by share price fluctuations, the unknown component of the Great Man's physical co-ordination and the growth in global population. Now, on the basis of current indicators . . .