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]

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 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.

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.