Those with aspirations of unfettered wealth look for clues everywhere. From top schools to unique talents, they build profiles of what it takes to become absurdly wealthy ... as though the process can be blueprinted. Well, if you're looking for answers, the Forbes 400 list is a great place to start. If anyone has mastered the art of making money, it's this collection of billionaires. They have the answers, and you are ready to learn.

A look at the lives of the Forbes 400 implies that the most important attribute is the ability to sift through ambiguity. Contradictions abound, meaning that shades of gray hold the answer to your burning desire for riches. Should you go to a great school? Well, yes ... but only if you're going for an MBA and plan to work for a major financial firm. But, you can still go to an Ivy League school if you're not studying finance but join Skull and Bones. Of course, dropping out of Harvard can be a great way to launch a career in the technology field.

It's tricky. There are no easy answers. But, the road to billions is littered with the corpses of aspiring magnates who thought it wouldn't be difficult. So, don't just read the seven attributes after the jump. Understand them. Read them twice. Then, your future financial situation will be assured.

Or, you can just do one of those chain e-mails and wish for wealth.

[Thanks, Forbes and MSNBC]

This post is part of our feature on Money Losers of 2008. See all 20.

There's no doubt about it -- times are tough. People are struggling to find work and to pay the bills as the value of their homes and savings dwindle. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer.

Or do they? It's all relative, of course, but world's billionaires have been taking some big hits too. We take a look at Sheldon Adelson, Kirk Kerkorian, and Lakshmi Mittal in their own separate posts, but here are some other billionaires who have lost billions this year (courtesy of Forbes and Business Sheet).

• Brothers Anil and Mukesh Ambani of India's private conglomerate Reliance lost $32.5 billion and $28.2 billion, respectively.
• Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, lost $16.5 billion. Shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) are down about 32% since the beginning of the year.
• Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen lost $12.3 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, while CEO Steve Balmer lost $6.5 billion. Shares of Microsoft are down 46% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, cofounders of Google Inc. (NYSE: GOOG), lost $11.9 billion and $11.7 billion, respectively, and CEO Eric Schmidt lost $3.8 billion. The share price of Google has fallen 55% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), lost $8.2 billion. Shares of Oracle are down 21% since the beginning of the year.
• Media maven Sumner Redstone lost $7.2 billion. Shares of his private investment firm National Amusements fell 70% this year.

It's been three weeks since our Money Face-Off feature ran here at BloggingStocks and on AOL, offering you the opportunity to share who you though had the financial edge in a series of twenty head-to-head match-ups. So I thought I'd take another look and see how things have worked out.

It's hard to pick just one big winner. In terms of the largest lead over a rival, Ivanka Trump easily beats Paris Hilton with 89% of the vote. Others holding big leads over their opponents include Tiger Woods, Warren Buffett, Steven Spielberg, and Rupert Murdoch.

In terms of receiving the most votes, the clear leader is the Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart match-up, with just short of 150,000 votes. Other big vote getters were Tiger Woods vs. David Beckham, Rudy Giuliani vs. Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs. In terms of the liveliest discussions in the comments, the winners are Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart, Erin Burnett vs. Maria Bartiromo, and Bono vs. Angelina Jolie. Also check out the comments for the J.K. Rowling vs. J.R.R Tolkien, Tiger Woods vs. David Beckham, and Ivanka Trump vs. Paris Hilton posts.

As for the face-off posts here that got the most attention, the clear winner is Erin Burnett vs. Maria Bartiromo, with more than 13,000 hits. Lindsay Lohan vs. Britney Spears and Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart also attracted lots of readers.

Results for all the face-offs follow below, but keep in mind that the voting is still open. It's not too late to add your vote or let us know what you think.

Two things you need to know about Googlefight.com, a website my husband discovered a few days ago. First, it is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), although I'm sure free publicity is always appreciated. Secondly, it can quickly become the cause of profound procrastination. The innovative but simple site simply compares two inputs (provided by the user) and ranks them in terms of their respective number of results gleaned from Google's search engine. Each "fight" takes mere seconds, and the time passes quickly as animated stick figures slug it out.

Of course, I had to start with my own name (I probably think this blog is about me). I pit myself against a co-worker who also has a unique name (Mark Fightmaster). Aha! Google FIght found 634,000 results for "Beth Gaston Moon"; 57,200 for Mark (I do have about 6 years of seniority over him at our company, so that was hardly fair). But when compared against Pamela Anderson, I lose, 634,000 to 7.73 million (I have a feeling they round their numbers).

Some other matches I conducted before begrudgingly heading back to work:

• Hillary Clinton (9.1 million) defeats Barack Obama (2.62 million)
• Fred Thompson (10.6 million) defeats Rudy Giuliani (2.05 million) - to be fair, this may be pulling for more than one "Fred Thompson."
• Ben Bernanke (2.62 million) defeats Alan Greenspan (1.96 million)!
• Steve Jobs (88.5 million) defeats Bill Gates (44.6 million)
• Howard Stern (2.09 million) defeats Don Imus (1.98 million)
• 50 Cent (68 million) defeats Kanye West (6.72 million), despite what the numbers say
• O.J. Simpson (15 million) narrowly defeats "criminal justice system" (14.4 million)
• Mets (26 million) defeats Yankees (22.9 million)!
  

The site is hardly scientific, but it's interesting and certainly fun. According to Google Fight, some of its classic battle royales include God v. Satan, Luke Skywalker v. Darth Vadar, and Mohammad Ali v. Mike Tyson. Victors are God by a landslide, Vadar (hooray!), and Ali (again, by a hefty margin). Let the madness begin here.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

It's been a week since our Money Face-Off posts ran here on BloggingStocks, and less than that since the Money Face-Offs were featured on the AOL welcome page, and the response has been terrific. Many of the face-off polls have had more than 50,000 votes, a couple of them approaching 100,000.

The biggest response came to the Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart match-up. So far, about 75 percent of respondents feel that Oprah is the more successful media magnate. Not that much surprise there, as Oprah's fans are legion. Interestingly, though, of the twenty-some comments the post has received, most of them are pro-Martha.

Another clear leader is Bill Gates over rival Steve Jobs. About three quarters of poll votes have gone his way, despite all the buzz recently about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and the popularity of its products. Maybe readers are just happy that Gates is stepping down. Let us know what you think.

Alan Greenspan seems to be everywhere these days, promoting his new book, including Comedy Central's The Daily Show and NPR's Fresh Air. In our match-up of the current and former Fed chairs, Ben Bernanke vs. Alan Greenspan, more than 70 percent of respondents have voted for Greenspan. Comments to the post are mixed, but seem to me to focus on Greenspan, whether pro or con.

This post is part of our Money Face-Offs feature. Let us know who you think comes out ahead in this head-to-head match-up, and check out our other Money Face-Off posts.

The technology stories of the 1980s have a lot to do with the dawn of the PC era. IBM was about to license its personal computer technology to the open market (leading to the rising popularity of Microsoft) and Apple's computers were a hit-or-miss proposition with consumers as el-cheapo PCs made their entrance and became the dominant force in many homes and offices. Remember 1,200-bps modems and bulletin boards, folks?

Microsoft's arguably illegal tactics made it flourish in the 1990s under CEO and company cofounder William H. Gates, and the debate continues to this day whether the Windows 3.0 and Windows 95 operating systems were in part copies of Apple's MacIntosh operating system. Suggested viewing: Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Apple seemed dead in the water in the mid '90s, and Microsoft was growing by leaps and bounds. Bill Gates became the richest person in the world on paper (which would last more than a decade), and Steve Jobs came back in 1997 to try and resurrect a floundering Apple that had not done much in terms of innovation or growth under then-CEO Gil Amelio. Gates seemed on top of the world; Jobs, not so much.

It was supposed to be the highlight of the D-All Things Digital conference. The two icons of the computer age, on stage together.

As it turned out, it was primarily two middle-aged men reminiscing about old times. Steve Jobs of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Bill Gates of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) have long competed for the big money in the electronics world of the last 25 years. Jobs had the Mac and the iPod. Gates had Windows and owned the PC universe. Apple has the hot hand now and Microsoft is struggling outside its core OS business.

Both men agreed that online web applications would not take the place of operating systems and other critical features which are downloaded onto computers. But, as the inventors of Windows and Apple Leopard, it would only be natural to take that view.

As Jobs said during the conversation: "You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead." And that was probably the high point of the evening.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

There are two kinds of CEOs: innovators -- who come up with growth ideas -- and janitors -- who cut costs and instill discipline. There are times when it's best to invest in an innovator, and others when a janitor generates superior shareholder returns. What does this mean for stocks? Potential buys include Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), and American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG), and potential holds include Hewlett-Packard Co. (NASDAQ: HPQ), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

This thought came to mind after reading an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray's new book -- Revolt in the Boardroom: The New Rules of Power in Corporate America. It's a measure of his clout that he got the front page [subscription required] -- albeit of the Saturday edition. Murray's argument is that "boring" CEOs are now on the rise "in the wake of ... Enron" (a hackneyed expression that should be banned from the journalistic lexicon).

Following journalistic convention, Murray extrapolates a trend from three cases. He argues that boards have appointed "boring" CEOs -- I call them janitors since they are the executive equivalent of a clean up crew that comes in after a rock concert -- to avoid their predecessors' scandals. He cites the "boring" examples of Jim McNerney at Boeing, Martin Sullivan at AIG, and Mark Hurd at HP. They can boost the stock price for a while by cutting excess cost and instilling process discipline.

But they often fall down when it comes to generating revenue growth ideas. This is where investors can benefit from an innovator CEO -- the archetype of which is Apple's Steve Jobs. For investors there are two problems with such innovators:

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

It seems that the competition that has been brewing between Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has never really died down from the late 1970s, even as both companies have had ups and downs in the stock market and in the consumer products market as well. The battle between Apple and Microsoft has been (and will be) a perfect case study for future business textbooks at the best universities, as the fight between the two has been nothing short of amazing in the past 25 years or so.

Apple

Apple's start began with Steve Jobs (visionary guru) and buddy Steve Wozniak (tech guru) trying to find a way to get customers buying the personal computer before the market and world even knew what a personal computer was. Steve Jobs was trained in calligraphy and wanted the PC experience to be just as much an art and visceral, visible experience as a technical, computer program-interface experience. With that vision, and with a little help from friends, the two Steves started selling Apple's first PC products out of a garage about 27 years ago in the Southern California area, after Jobs dropped out of college due to lack of funds and general boredom.

What transpired throughout the early 1980s was the rapid growth of Apple Computer Inc. as the PC powerhouse at the same time it was grabbing the attention of MicroSoft (later renamed Microsoft Corp.) founder Bill Gates, who had dropped out of Harvard to pursue his vision of coming up with a PC operating system that he could "license" to all the big hardware manufacturers to use on their machines. But, Gates needed a nice interface to ensure his product was better than Apple's.

When Forbes.com staff writer, Matt Woolsey, embarked on his exposé of billionaire homes, he noticed an interesting pattern: most billionaires, though they have the means to live anywhere, choose to live at home. Or, at least close to home. And some -- like Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen -- choose to live with their mothers.

But let's start with Bill Gates, ranked No. 1 on Forbes Billionaires' List and valued at $56 billion. His 66,000-square foot Medina, Wash., hillside compound features a "1,000-square foot dining room, domed roof library ... 60-foot pool and five acres of space." Not only that, according to Woolsey, Gates' home has secret passageways and antechambers, hidden bookshelves and a framed Harry Potter Junior Wizards official membership certificate.

Paul Allen, meanwhile, lives with his mom. To be clear, his Mercer Island, Wash., compound -- which includes his own 10,000-square foot mansion -- has a separate home for his mother. Apparently, she held him to his "one-day-when-I'm-a-billionaire" promise.

With Apple's iPod and other products firing on all cylinders these days, current CEO Steve jobs appears to be on top of the world. His company's products are ultra-cool and are doing extremely well, Jobs is having great success with Pixar Studios as well as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and AAPL shares are doing very well year after year.

With the impending release of the Apple iPhone, it seems that Apple (and Jobs) can do no wrong at this point in time. One can make a case for Apple products being more popular in the consumer electronics and computing field than they ever have been. Not a bad decade for Jobs and company, so far.

Contrast this with the impending departure of Bill Gates from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) to focus on his worldly philanthropic efforts. I am a great admirer of Gates and the philanthropy that bears his name based on the projects he donates to and funds. It's been said that the rise of Microsoft and MSFT stock was made on ill-gotten strategies, illegal monopolistic tactics, and other not-good things. Have those who have bought Microsoft products (default on almost every PC these days) actually subsidized the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? Hmm.

That aside, the release of Windows Vista -- so far -- is what I what consider to be a nonevent for the software giant. Sales are not expected to ramp up nicely for quite a while as critic after critic says that the consumer market should be just fine with that older copy of Windows XP.

Is Windows Vista, which has been torn apart viciously already by reviewers, just another upgrade without much potential except for padding Microsoft's bottom line? If history judges it that way, then Bill Gates will leave Microsoft with hardly an explosion at all. The one lingering -- and hugely important -- piece of Gates's legacy won't be at Microsoft at all.

[Disclosure: I own MSFT shares as of 3-9-07]

MacDaily News reports today that Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Chairmen Bill Gates will share the stage at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference this year. These two titans will jointly discuss the history and future of the digital revolution in a supposed, unrehearsed and unscripted conversation, on May 30 with The Journal's ace tech reporters (and "D" co-producers) Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Both Jobs and Gates have made numerous individual appearances at this conference, but the two have never previously shared the stage and limelight. The question is which one will outsmart the other as many will be watching as they discreetly sell their distinct and competitive companies in this friendly format. (Just consider Apple's "PC versus Mac guy" series of TV commercials, which Gates says "bugs him.")

It seems that Apple has been one step ahead of Microsoft in the consumer product sector as it has bested Microsoft in the digital music market, the phone market, and is gaining rapidly in the personal computer market. But Gates has a leg up with the X-Box and still-dominant computer operating system, let alone software.

This unscripted tete-a-tete may even be better than the Apple TV spots.

What would happen to the arguably most iconic and hip consumer products company if the charismatic and intricate design aficionado Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple Computer? With longtime nemesis Bill Gates announcing last week that he'll be stepping down from day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, that leaves the door open for Jobs to do the same -- if he's ready. Our friends over at TUAW have noodled on this question, so let's examine from a business standpoint and weave in the philosophy of Jobs.

Both in their 50s, Jobs and Gates have one of the most unique and fiercely competitive rivalries in business history. While Gates chose to license his company's flagship computer operating system over 20 years ago, Jobs has been incredibly determined to keep control over the Apple universe for as long as he's been leading the company which he co-founded. Both approaches, by any measure, have been successful, although Microsoft gets more attention. Or is that Apple?

Over the last five years or so, both companies have been in the spotlight many times, with Apple creeping past Microsoft with the company-making iPod line of digital everything players. Sure, we could talk about the computer lines, but what's in the mind of most consumers right now is the iPod, which defines Apple to the market at large. The MacIntosh operating system is a superior product, but that plays second fiddle to the iPod's success at the moment.