you know I wish I had Bill Gates' y2k budget - looks like he just filed to sell another $234 million in stock...wow we could even afford to order the fancy freeze dried stuff on that kind of a bankroll!

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/tc/story.html?s=v/nm/19990206/tc/microsoft_84.html

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), February 06, 1999

Answers

He also has donated $3.3 billion to two foundations that he and his wife control. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/02/biztech/ articles/06gift.html

"Gates and Wife Give $3.3 Billion to Their 2 Foundations

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, have given $3.3 billion to their two foundations, the president of one of the foundations said Friday.

The gifts bring the total assets of both foundations to nearly $5.5 billion, putting the William H. Gates Foundation in the top 10 foundations in the United States in assets, and the Gates Learning Foundation in the top 30, said Sara Engelhardt, president of the Foundation Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks foundations.

Ms. Engelhardt said that with the donations, Gates, 43, has given away more money than any other living American philanthropist.

In 1998, the two Gates foundations gave away more than $150 million, she said.

The William H. Gates Foundation, which received $2.2 billion, focuses on world health and population issues and traditional grant making to universities and dozens of other organizations. Grant recipients have included Duke University, of which Ms. Gates, 34, is an alumna; the Seattle Public Library, and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

The Gates Learning Foundation received $1.1 billion and its name was changed from the Gates Library Foundation. It will use the additional money to broaden its scope, which had been bringing computers to public libraries in low income areas, to education and take its mission overseas.

"Our primary focus will be libraries, but we also plan to look at new and other areas to support," said Patty Stonesifer, president and chairman of the foundation.

"No one else among the top 10 foundations has a living donor, and very few in the top 50," Ms. Engelhardt said "It's very unusual for a living philanthropist to have assets of that size go into a foundation. Not since the time of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller in the early part of this century has that happened. . ."

. . . Gates is the wealthiest person in the world. He owns 515 million shares of Microsoft, a company spokesman said, so his personal fortune varies with the stock price. Friday it would have been more than $80 billion.

The donation brings the endowment of the William H. Gates Foundation, which is run by Gates' father, William H. Gates Sr., to more than $4 billion. The Gates Learning Foundation's endowment is about $1.3 billion with the new gift."

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), February 06, 1999.

The head of Sun Microsystems is advising companies to begin stockpiling computers in case the asian y2k problem delays orders.

But don't worry about food, the government says stockpiling food is absurd. Besides, we can always eat the computers if we have to.

-- a (a@a.a), February 06, 1999.