Optimistically yours!

While Bill Gates gets busy spending Warren Buffet’s generous $1.5 billion donation within one year as stipulated by terms of donation, it’s time for the ‘Bill Gates is sharing his fortune’ chain letters to return with a vengeance.

This mail’s been doing the rounds since long and has come to me about a dozen times now. It’s not malicious like the google mail – just plain funny, unless someone gave out their bank account details or credit card number to receive Bill Gates’ money. Here goes...

Dear Friends,Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period.For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque.Regards.Charles S. BaileyGeneral Manager Field Operations1-800-842-2332 Ext. 1085 or 904-245-1085 or RNX 292-1085

Hahahahahhahaaaaaa. It even gives contact details. Guuufffffaaaawwwww!!!
Consider this: the above proposition is an impossibility for two reasons:

1. If Bill Gates was this stupid, he wouldn't be what he is.
2. Read the stories below and see what similarity it bears to the chain letter.

There is a well-known story of the man who invented chess. The local ruler was so pleased with the invention that he offered the inventor a great reward in gold. The inventor suggested an alternative reward: he would get one grain of wheat on the first square of the chess board, two grains on the second square, four on the third, eight on the fourth, etc., doubling the number of grains each time. The ruler saw that this must be a much better deal for him, and accepted. The board has 64 squares. How many total grains of wheat did the ruler have to pay the inventor?
Answer: The number of grains on the 64th square is 2^63 (2 to the 63rd power). The total number of grains on the board is 2^64-1. These facts can be easily deduced by considering just the first few squares, and generalizing your findings. A proof can be done using mathematical induction, or geometric series, or binary arithmetic. 2^64-1=18,446,744,073,709,551,615. That happens to be much more wheat than exists in the whole world. In fact, that amount of wheat would probably just fit in a building 25 miles long, 25 miles wide, and 1000 feet tall.

A similar puzzle: Take one sheet out of your newspaper, and fold it in half, then fold it in half again, and again, and again. Can you fold it 30 times? Pretending that you can (you probably can't fold it more than eight times), how thick would it be after 30 times? Assume the paper is 1/500" thick or 1/200 cm. thick.
Answer: The newspaper, folded 30 times is about 34 mi. (54 km.) thick. A few more folds and you could reach the moon!