Bill Gates is world's richest man again

Bill Gates has once again become the world's richest man. I guess there are people who win in this recession after all, though Gates did lose $18 billion over the last year.

Forbes has updated its World's Billionaires list, and boy have things changed. The list has lost 373 people: last year there were 1,125 billionaires and this year there are just 793 people rich enough to have the title. Even these 793 have lost an average of 23 percent of their wealth. The economic downturn isn't being very picky. The average net worth sits at around $3 billion, which is essentially where it was six years ago. Of these 793, Bill Gates has managed to regain the top position, despite a loss of $18 billion. That's right, Bill Gates is once again the richest man on Earth.
Gates lost the title in July 2007 to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú. Helú was second last year, but now sits at third after dropping $25 billion. Warren Buffett, who was first last year, saw his fortune decline $25 billion. Here's the top 10 list as it currently now stands:
William Gates III, 53, holds a US citizenship, resides in the US, and has a net worth of $40.0 billion
Warren Buffett, 78, holds a US citizenship, resides in the US, and has a net worth of $37.0 billion
Carlos Slim Helu, 69, holds a Mexican citizenship, resides in Mexico, and has a net worth of $35.0 billion
Lawrence Ellison, 64, holds a US citizenship, resides in the US, and has a net worth of $22.5 billion
Ingvar Kamprad (and family), 83, holds a Swedish citizenship, resides in Switzerland, and has a net worth of $22.0 billion
Karl Albrecht, 89, holds a German citizenship, resides in Germany, and has a net worth of $21.5 billion
Mukesh Ambani, 53, holds an Indian citizenship, resides in India, and has a net worth of $19.5 billion
Lakshmi Mittal, 58, holds an Indian citizenship, resides in the UK, and has a net worth of $19.3 billion
Theo Albrecht, 87, holds a German citizenship, resides in Germany, and has a net worth of $18.8 billion
Amancio Ortega, 73, holds a Spanish citizenship, resides in Spain, and has a net worth of $18.3 billion

Bill Gates Dollars

Another way to examine this sort of wealth is to compare it to yours. Consider an average American of modest wealth. Perhaps she has a net worth of $70,000. Mr. Gates' worth is 800,000 times larger. Which means that if something costs $100,000 to her, to Bill it's as though it costs 12 cents. You can work out the right multiplier for your own net worth. So for example, you might think a new Lambourghini Diablo would cost $250,000, but in Bill Gates dollars that's 31 cents.
That fully loaded, multimedia active matrix 233 MHZ laptop with the 1024x768 screen you've been drooling after? Half a penny.
A nice home in a rich town like Palo Alto, California? Two dollars. That nice mansion he's building? A more reasonable $63 to him.
You might spend $50 on tickets, food and parking to take your date to see an NHL hockey game. Bill, on the other hand could buy the team for 50 Bill-bills.
You might buy a plane ticket on a Boeing 747 for $1200 at full-fare coach. In Bill-bills, Mr. Gates could buy six 747s (Not tickets, the planes themselves). Two for him, two for Melinda and two for young Jennifer Katherine.

What is Data Recovery

Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible secondary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Often the data are being salvaged from storage media formats such as hard disk drives, storage tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID, and other electronics. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage device or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system.
The most common "data recovery" issue involves an operating system (OS) failure (typically on a single-disk, single-partition, single-OS system), where the goal is to simply copy all wanted files to another disk. This can be easily accomplished with a Live CD, most of which provide a means to 1) mount the system drive, 2) mount and backup disk or media drives, and 3) move the files from the system to the backup with a file manager or optical disc authoring software. Further, such cases can be mitigated by disk partitioning and consistently moving valuable data files to a different partition from the replaceable OS system files.
The second type involves a disk-level failure such as a compromised file system, disk partition, or a hard disk failure —in each of which the data cannot be easily read. Depending on the case, solutions involve repairing the file system, partition table or MBR, or hard disk recovery techniques ranging from software-based recovery of corrupted data to hardware replacement on a physically damaged disk. These last two typically indicate the permanent failure of the disk, thus "recovery" means sufficient repair for a one-time recovery of files.
A third type involves the process of retrieving files that have been deleted from a storage media. Although there is some confusion as to the term, the term "data recovery" may be used to refer to such cases in the context of forensic purposes or spying.