新时代交互英语课件.ppt

Unit 3 Personal Heroes Contents Unleashing Your Creativity Warm-up Discussion What do you know about Bill Gates and Microsoft? Who is eligible to be your personal hero? Why? How have computers changed our life? Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of The Worlds Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gatess wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a centibillionaire.Since 2000, the nominal value of hisMicrosoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsofts stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought.Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667, and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett. Gates married Melinda French from Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine(1996), Rory John(1999) and Phoebe Adele(2002). The Gateses home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125