Bill Gates Plays Secret Santa To Reddit User 118
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.'"
not the first time (Score:2)
Anybody else seriously disturbed by this? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:This is done in the hopes Reddit will reciproca (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is done in the hopes Reddit will reciproca (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Numpty? You insensitive clod!
If he wasn't giving her an iPad (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:If he wasn't giving her an iPad (Score:4, Funny)
Why not just slap her in the face? She'd probably like that better. . .
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it's you who should be ashamed if a slap to the face equals rape to you. Go back to tumblr, social justice warriors don't really work here.
Re: (Score:2)
although buying someone a surface is pretty near to rape, I don't think slap on the face quite counts. so you're now making everyone into a rapist because they didn't use their mod points on it! what the fuck? do you have any fucking idea how real rape victims would feel about that?? are all the women in the world who have slapped someone in the face RAPIST SLUTS????
so please go fuck yourself. sincerely, the spirit of christmas.
ps. and a happy goatse to all from the golden girls reunion at the gnaa!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Would have doubled their sales figure for the Xmas season, too!
Re: (Score:2)
Why check his business bigotry at the door, and get her the iPad she wanted?
Re:If he wasn't giving her an iPad (Score:4)
I'm inclined to interpret this as a nod from Bill that every action still counts as a move in his game. Can't ever turn it off.
Re: (Score:2)
Turd Polishing (Score:1)
More of a PR ploy than a "secret" if he's going to put a picture in there. Reminds me of all those awesome Microsoft commercials through the years.
Takes a big roll of paper towels to get that blood off your hands. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Turd Polishing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
If the return address just said bill gates, she wouldn't believe it (just some reddit user trying to stay anonymous)--now she knows it was him and can forever tell the story of how Bill Gates gave her a christmas present.
As to the content of the gift...the book and the stuffed c
Re:Turd Picking (Score:2)
Yeah, I pick up other people's garbage on a very regular basis; Not for any noble reasons, I happen to walk there and it offends my eye.
Also in case I forget what pieces of shit most folks are, it reminds me.
Re: (Score:3)
He started a charitable foundation with a donation of about 40 billion dollars [wikipedia.org], and while it isn't perfect (what $40 billion venture is?) it has made great strides in alleviating poverty and eradicating disease around the world. And he did this well after gathering more money than any one man could have any hope of using in his or his grand children's lifetimes; what exactly does he need PR for again?
Re:Turd Polishing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, indeed there is blood on that man's hands. I too remember the Great Internet Explorer Wars. Saw many good people lose their lives in that dark chapter of human history. What brutal, senseless suffering, and all because machines came pre-packaged with this one certain browser. Damn it Bill, why did you have to go and include a browser with every operating system, you heartless, greedy bastard! Were those ill gotten gains worth it?! And now you think you can just undo the sins of your past by eradicating malaria, hunger, and illiteracy? Well, it won't work! None of that can compare to the horrors of browser/operating system bundling. Truly, Micro$oft money is blood money.
Re: (Score:1)
oh dude get over it, business is business. Of course its cut throat, theres billions of dollars to be had.
This is not tiddlywinks, son.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
TIL you can buy something outright and resell it, and you're "cheating out" the previous owner.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Nice list, you got a little carried away though. The Office documents are not obfuscated as much as designed for another time and lazily modernized (they are dumps of the in original in-memory representation of the documents in C++ saved to disk). And I don't think they "swindled" the HTML standard. IE4 was the first browser to implement CSS1 and HTML4, Netscape were the ones trying to abuse their dominance by making their own extensions. Of course after MS won, the situation changed and MS slowed down and
Re: (Score:2)
The creation of ASP to disrupt PHP.
You do know ASP was introduced in 1996, before PHP became popular? That was during the PHP/FI 1.0 days, which were followed by PHP/FI 2.0 before it became PHP 3 and started resembling the PHP we know today.
No, ASP was introduced to unseat Perl, which was the defacto language for CGI scripts at the time.
30 years of substandard software (Score:2, Troll)
Don't get me started on Beos. I don't care so much that they killed the OS, but they buried the technology too. Beos had a multimedia filesystem with working meta data that was fully searchable in near re
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, indeed there is blood on that man's hands.
Remember this blood [latimes.com]? It continues to pour [grist.org].
And now you think you can just undo the sins of your past by eradicating malaria, hunger, and illiteracy? Well, it won't work!
In fact, the Gates foundation will cure none of these things.
The cow was needed for the ritual sacrifice (Score:2, Insightful)
666 more days till Windows 8 EOL
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
You mean, keeping track of who is being naughty or nice and reporting it to the NSA, CIA, FBI, local law enforcement, and other commercial entities?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Hahaha (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, his saving grace is he didn't see fit to punish her with a Surface, at least.
Yes, MS screwed up the original Surface sales projections so badly that their corrected sales projections (and thus manufacturing capacity) for the Surface 2 are so low that they cannot meet demand. Have you been under a rock? This has been in all the financial press as a huge negative for their revenue and profit numbers.
So... Bill Gates isn't going to be giving away some device when there is a line of people waiting to buy it.
Bill Gates reads Reddit? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The possibility that I might have flamed and insulted Bill Gates without knowing it really brightens my day. It makes my diminutive heart grow 3 sizes larger all at once. It's like Christmas for me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bill Gates is a career criminal
Helmed Microsoft during a period in which it was found to have abused its monopoly position and engaged in other various anticompetitive behaviors, for which he was found personally (partly) culpable. Pardoned by Ashcroft under Bush.
who has hidden his wealth in a charitable foundation which invests the bulk of its money in evil corporations which kill people.[Citation needed]
Long, long ago, there was this citation [latimes.com]. But now we also have this newer citation [grist.org] to play with.
This stuff isn't even from naturalnews. You can share it with your friends.
Re: (Score:3)
the first would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing in the spirit of harmony and peace...
...and the second would be for $30 million a month to be given to me, tax-free, in a Swiss bank account.
(Thanks, Steve Martin!)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If his Geek Card is still valid, then yes, I'm sure he does.
He probably gets a hell of a giggle out of the ranting fanbois on all sides of the arguments now that he's retired from the industry...
Re: (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/~billgates [slashdot.org] :P
Micorosft may be evil, but Gates seems nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Nothing new... (Score:2, Funny)
I would have preferred the cow delivered... (Score:2)
...to my house.
I'd have to buy a chest freezer to fit all the meat, but a whole cow would last me 6 months.
The 'WHOOOSH' did not pass..... (Score:2)
On a practical and related note, several years running their was a guy I worked with that would buy several young steers and pigs to raise to butchering size. He had the perfect setup at his home to do this.
We would all chip in a modest fee to support the feeding and raising, he would take them to be 'processed and give us a call to come pick up our meat.
He got his 'free' for the work, and we all got range free, and range fed pork and beef at about 40% of current 'but it in the supermarket prices', and it
Quit being douches! (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Comparison (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot: "FUCKING RAPIST! Yeah, RAPIST."
Jesus Christ.
Re: (Score:1)
what? (Score:2)
teddy bear
magazine
iPad
donation to her favorite charity
So Bill Gates, one of the richest guys on the planet got her, and didn't even get her all of what she wanted, because of his business plan. What a dick! It doesn't mention how much the donation was.
I didn't think that actually worked! (Score:2)
So I should have been reposting those "Bill Gates will give you $10,000" messages on Facebook!?! Damn!
Re: (Score:2)
Totally. And wait, there's more... a lot more:
Gates is not at all a newcomer to "the elite" as many are led to believe. The familiar story (see Wikipedia, Biography.com) of how he's just some regular upper middle class guy who gambled everything, quit Harvard, and managed to trick IBM top management into an exclusive software deal which ultimately became the platform which propelled him into becoming the world's richest man (worth approx. $75 billion) - leaves out some very interesting details.
Like how he'
Re: (Score:2)