Bill Gates

An influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn raised a question of dismissing Steve Ballmer from the position of a CEO of Microsoft. The response of Microsoft Corp's board was that it supports Ballmer and has no plans to replace him.

"His continued presence is the biggest overhang on Microsoft's stock," Einhorn told fellow fund managers at the annual Ira Sohn investment Research Conference in New York.

Microsoft's nine-person board, including Chairman and co-founder Bill Gates, supports Ballmer, a source close to the board told.

Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz joined the list of US billionaires who have pledged to give away at least half their fortunes in a philanthropic campaign led by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. To date a total of 57 billionaires have joined The Giving Pledge, which was launched by Microsoft founder Gates and investor Buffett in June. The campaign announced the new pledges in a statement late on Wednesday.

According to the list of the most influential people in the world which was compiled by the Forbes magazine Bill Gates is more powerful than Steve Jobs, while Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison doesn’t matter at all, because he was not included in at least some lower position of the chart.

"There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. Here are the 68 who matter," is how Forbes introduces its latest list of world tycoons: "The World's Most Powerful People".

Today almost everyone knows Bill Gates and his direct relation to the wide used Windows operating system and other products of Microsoft. While the times when Gates took direct part in the processes of Microsoft’s production have passed many people still believe he is the face of the Redmond company. However, according to an independent analysis and investigation of Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ITworld, the state of affairs is much far from what we may think.

 Forbes published its annual rich Americans ranking that showed the 400 wealthiest people in the US lost $300 billion of net worth in the past year. The list of wealthiest Americans, released on Wednesday, reports that Warren Buffet suffered the most with losses accounting for $10 billion in net worth as shares of his Berkshire Hathaway dropped.

Meantime, the list of the 10 riches Americans remained unchanged as compared with 2008. Microsoft’s Bill Gates still topped the rankings with a fortune of $50 billion, a $7 billion decrease against the previous year.

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Windows 7 is a top subject for numerous discussions today, that is why our editorial could not just give the topic go-by. In our article we would like to cover some aspects of the new system released by the technology brainchild of Bill Gates as well as some observations of critics and experts that conducted their independent examinations and tests of the new platform.