Comments: Whether the above strikes you as a clever, much-needed dose of realism for today's youth or an unnecessarily vituperative browbeating, one thing you ought to be aware of is that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates neither wrote the words nor delivered them in a speech to high school students or anyone else. As happens with alarming frequency online, a text written by one person came to be falsely attributed to another and due to endless repetition the attribution stuck and became accepted as fact. The text itself a pared-down version of an op-ed piece that appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune on September 19, 1996. It was written by Charles J. Sykes, best known as the author of "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves, but Can’t Read, Write, or Add." Drastically edited by person(s) unknown, it began making the email rounds under Bill Gates' name in February 2000 and is still, as of this writing in 2005, far more often attributed to Gates than to Sykes — which is unfortunate, but, like the man said: Life isn't fair; get used to it. - http://www.indianpad.com/view/22541