"Man, some of the stuff they pass off as 'modern art' these days. Sometimes you wonder if it all could just be painted by a trained monkey!"

Has Gates dropped anchor?

That was the headline on a newspaper article speculating that Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has a new floating palace. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune ran the article August 20th about a mystery 199 foot, $30 Million yacht called the Méduse anchored offshore in Manatee County, Florida. The newspaper reporter talked with someone who confirmed that Gates owned the yacht. A local sheriff's deputy who talked with a crew member was given a Méduse t-shirt which had the boat's logo and its Web site address. If you go to http://www.meduse.com, you will find lots of information about the boat but no listing of the owner. We decided to do a little detective work of our own and did an InterNic search to find out who owned the domain name meduse.com. It's owned by Vulcan Northwest, a company owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. So does Paul Allen own the mega-yacht? Or is it really owned by Bill Gates and his old friend Paul's company set up the Web site for Bill? Check out the links...

Our joke Graphic "Bill Gates Quarterly" with Bill and his wife on their yacht, Big Dollars From DOS.

The article from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Has Gates dropped anchor?

The Motoryacht Méduse Web Site.

InterNic domain search on Vulcan Northwest shows ownership of meduse.com and all of the Paul Allen domain names.

Does Paul Allen need a $30 Million dollar yacht when he already owns a $60 Million dollar private Boeing 757 jumbo jet?

Are you looking to register your own domain name but found out someone got it first? The small island Kingdom Of Tonga wants to help. They have gone into the Internet domain registration business with their own unique extension .to. Are you a Star Wars fan? How about the address: www.R2D.to? But beware, unlike the U.S that will allow you to register any tasteless words you care to, The Kingdom Of Tonga sets a limit on what's acceptable. If you type in a nasty word they will scold you with the message:

"You filthy minded pervert! The Kingdom of Tonga admonishes you. Now go back and think of a name that you wouldn't be embarrassed to say to your mother."

Did you know AOL CEO Steve Case has his own home page? He shows you how he made the site. Our favorite sentence in the instructions is: "Step Two: After downloading the software (it only took a minute), I clicked on the 'Create A Page' icon. " Yeah, that "only took a minute" came after one hour and 50 busy signals just trying to log on to AOL!!!!! Check it out at: http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/stevecase/interactivity.html

Did you find a bad link on any of the sites above? If so please drop us a note at: