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Bill Gates Plays Secret Santa To Reddit User
An anonymous reader writes "Gates fulfilled a Reddit users wish-list by buying several items and donating to a listed charity organization, although he did pass on getting the iPad on the list. From the article: 'The true identity of Rachel's Secret Santa was finally revealed when she found a photo of Gates holding the stuffed animal and the signed donation sent to Heifer International. An inscription in the book with a "really nice message" and note from Gates wishing Rachel a Merry Christmas and a Happy Birthday was the topper.'"
She opened the gift before Christmas. What's up with that?
could he not have tossed in a surface instead (I guess then they could count it as a sell, lord knows he probably has a pile of them in some closet)
666 more days till Windows 8 EOL
and link to something.. ANYTHING slashdot has done in the last few years.
what does slashdot do?
Scratch that. We pontificate. We're very good at that.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds -- Albert Einstein
Come on! It was a nice gesture. The man didn't _have_ to do this, but did anyway. This brought some joy to the world that wouldn't have been there otherwise and in my book that qualifies as a good thing.
(So M$ and BG has done some (very) objectionable things. I agree, but this wasn't one of them.)
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this, but I can't resist:
iPad: So expensive, even Bill Gates takes a pass!
Of course, his saving grace is he didn't see fit to punish her with a Surface, at least.
Yes, indeed there is blood on that man's hands. I too remember the Great Internet Explorer Wars. Saw many good people lose their lives in that dark chapter of human history. What brutal, senseless suffering, and all because machines came pre-packaged with this one certain browser. Damn it Bill, why did you have to go and include a browser with every operating system, you heartless, greedy bastard! Were those ill gotten gains worth it?! And now you think you can just undo the sins of your past by eradicating malaria, hunger, and illiteracy? Well, it won't work! None of that can compare to the horrors of browser/operating system bundling. Truly, Micro$oft money is blood money.
Do you think he reads Slashdot, too?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Typically happens during Google I/O where they give away toys costing about twice what the conference costs to attend.
From the two years that I attended, I got 3 Android phones, a Google TV and preview access to Google Wave (which, in hindsight, was more like the proverbial lump of coal, but it's the thought that counts, right?)
Attendees in the years since have gotten Google Glass, MiFis with free service and I'm guessing quite a bit more.
Saying this is probably some form of sacrilege, considering my tendency to avoid MS products when possible -- my everyday desktop is Debian, for example -- but I have no problem separating the company from the man.
I don't like Microsoft's business practices, and generally don't care for their software, but Gates himself always seemed like an overall decent* guy with a passion for software and technology, unlike Jobs, who always sounded like a jackass to me. There's an irony in that, given the fanatical following of Jobs and general distaste people display toward BillG, presumably due to the business practices of Microsoft and ubiquity of its products.
Even if it's a PR stunt, it was a nice one, and handled in a classy way. He could have given away a bunch of XB1s and other branded products, for example, but didn't. What he did was thoughtful and nicely done, and he didn't even do it in a way that bragged about how many zeroes were on the donation made.
* Which doesn't mean he's a flawless person or always a nice guy. I'm sure he has plenty of flaws; if nothing else, he condoned or ignored Microsoft's various shady tactics over the years
You are being too kind. How they cheated out Tim Patterson and resold "DOS" with a huge profit. How Stacker killed the hard-drive competition. How about Windows 3 hard coded error messages that killed DR-DOS, besides strong arming major suppliers into installing only DOS and then Windows in exchange for major "discounts"...how about hidden APIs and bug fixes to Windows 95 that only were applied when you installed Office. OS/2 was also clearly sabotaged from the inside, they were only there to steal the ideas. Or their sabotage of the Java APIs to prevent it to become a stable ubiquitous platform of development. How they swindled netscape and the HTLM standard. How Exchange had code to make IMAP protcolols slow to further the agenda of Windows/Outlook workstations. The creation of ASP to disrupt PHP. The inclusion of anti-virus in Windows. How they obfuscated so much protocols like SMB and the Office documents to delay their reverse engineering. How their business model is to continually disrupt their own products to create a need to buy the latest, and the latest training.
Look how much free publicity it scored him, if it was truly altruistic why did he pop his picture in there?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Maybe because he wanted to give her something memorable instead of just donating to charity in her name?
Personally I'd think that note and photo were the far more valuable portion of the gift. For anyone who collects things like signatures, it'd be a family treasure. I know I'd be framing it and putting it on the wall, as proof that I once was contacted by the elusive Bill Gates.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Scratch that. We pontificate. We're very good at that.
Nah, we just hurl profanities and insults at each other in a misguided attempt to feel important. You numpty :P
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Bill Gates has done more good for this world since he stepped down as the business leader of Microsoft then any of us will ever manage to do. As a business man he was decisive, aggressive and focused. He was arguably the best at what he did. As a philanthropist he appears to be doing the same thing.
It would have been easy for him to sit back with his riches and let them pile up and do nothing. But no, he does the hard thing. He tries to help the world be a better place, he tries to help the human race as a whole and you guys just continue shitting all over him for it.
Fuck Slashdot. I cannot even count how many years I have been here and you fucks have ruined it. Back in the day there would have been some conversation of this but it would not have turned into the circle jerk of wannabes waving their nerd peens.
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA
Reddit: "Cool! Well-done Bill. Sounds like a good charity that helps people.. Cute cow. Funny you didn't send her a Surface, ha ha ha. Merry Christmas, everybody!"
Slashdot: "FUCKING RAPIST! Yeah, RAPIST."
Jesus Christ.
He started a charitable foundation with a donation of about 40 billion dollars, and while it isn't perfect (what $40 billion venture is?) it has made great strides in alleviating poverty and eradicating disease around the world. And he did this well after gathering more money than any one man could have any hope of using in his or his grand children's lifetimes; what exactly does he need PR for again?