For all of you who find it galling that Bill Gates is the world's richest man, well, heck, you're not alone. C'mon, the guy's got the personal charisma of a turnip dipped in Dull Sauce. Even the true geeks of the world (and in case you're wondering, our hands are up) are more than a little chagrined that this besweatered dweeb croaking about "innovation" in his Kermit-meets-Marvin-the-Martian voice has enough money to buy the rest of the planet six times over, but he still won't shell out twenty bucks for a decent haircut. It's just offensive to anyone with a reasonable sense of universal karmic justice and the merest hint of a sense of personal style.

But let us ask you this: would Larry Ellison stealing the title of "World's Richest Man" be a step forward, or backward? Faithful viewer Stephen White passed on the shocking news in the form of a Wired article; apparently with Microsoft's recent stock slide and Oracle's Wall Street success, Larry "I'm Steve Jobs's Best Friend, So Nyahh Nyahh Nyahh" Ellison is just a smidgen away from taking the top spot. (Okay, so that "smidgen" is $4.6 billion-- with the way the stock market works, that is indeed a smidgen to these guys.) Never mind the fact that it might be neat for Apple to boast that one of its board members is the richest man in the world; what about your personal gut reaction to the idea that the only man who can amass more personal wealth than the utter dweeb pictured here (thanks, faithful viewer Mike McDonald) is a raving egomaniac with a penchant for racing yachts and landing his private jet on top of orphanages at 3AM?

See, in the words of Elizabeth Farrarini, a woman who claims to have had a "personal relationship" (wink wink) with Larry, "his attitude is, 'I'll do what I want to do, and I don't give a s**t about you. I can buy anything and do anything-- I can s**t on the floor and hire someone to clean it up.'" Now, aside from the fact that the man apparently speaks in asterisks (and what self-respecting billionaire does that, we ask you?), we can't help finding ourselves yearning for the halcyon days when the most we could despise about the world's richest man was the way he ruthlessly crushed his competition illegally and acted like it was his right. And the fact that he talks like a muppet. If we had a choice and we had to choose between Gates and Ellison, well, let's just say that this contest smacks more than a little of the American two-party presidential race. "Don't blame us; we voted for Steve!"