"xxxx will donate 5 percent of sales .... to the Hurricane Katrina Relief fund at the American Red Cross."

Does this bother you? It bothers me.

It seems like companies are saying if you buy my product, I'll take the additional income and give some (or maybe even most) of it to the Red Cross. In this case it seems to be a marketing ploy to increase sales - a company gets exposed to a bunch of Mac users due via exploiting a tragedy. If they were not doing this they would not be on macnn.com.

Surely the richest country in the World can cope with this tragedy from it's own resources without the necessity for charity? How many billions were spent on the last shuttle mission?

I wholeheartedly agree! This is what my tax money is for. NOT for propping up failed business models for multinational corporations in distant parts of the world.

Seems like Mr. Ballmer would be best served by an investment in an anger management class.