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I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

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Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#51

Post by astine »

Edootjuh wrote: post #36
orangethirty wrote: post #21

I just asked him the following question: Do you still program? I have always been incredibly interested to find that out.

I was very surprised he said Basic. Of course, he presume he doesn't do much hard core software engineering anymore, but I assumed that family was pretty much a thing of the past (and legacy code).

Gates founded Microsoft to sell a Basic interpreter. His company spent a lot of time keeping Basic as a core part of its line up long after it was considered passé. I suspect that Gates has some nostalgia for it.

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#52

Post by sanswork »

andrewguenther wrote: post #42
kmfrk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember http://formspring.me ? I think there just aren't enough interesting people doing Q&As for a business model based on this to make much sense. Reddit's AMA format is pretty bad, especially if it's a woman/girl answering questions, though.

I'm curious what someone's sex has to do with their ability to conduct an AMA...

The offensiveness of a large number of the comments that you have to scroll through while answering legitimate questions.

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#53

Post by bvcqw »

perry5000 wrote: post #31
larrywright wrote: post #16

Post-Microsoft Bill Gates is a much more interesting person. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but I have a huge amount of respect for how he's choosing to spend the money he made. Interesting contrast to Larry Ellison, for example.

Larry Ellison has put virtually all of his assets into a trust with the intent of giving away 95% of his money to charitable causes when he dies.

Checkout Oracle's payscale in SV, it's really low last time I checked...

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#54

Post by Karunamon »

danso wrote: post #15
freebsd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For all we know"? They explicitly state [0] that upvotes and downvotes are fuzzed, it really isn't a matter of some weird machination. [0] http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_how_is_a_submission.27s_...

Yes...I don't think I was clear enough about what I meant, in a statistical sense. I know that upvotes/downvotes are added artificially. I'm saying, it's hard to gauge the real ratio of upvotes to downvotes with this fuzz. The FAQ you linked to gives this example: a submission with 5 upvotes and 3 downvotes may be tweaked to say 23 upvotes and 21 downvotes. So the net number of upvotes remains the same. But the ratio…

>I'm saying, it's hard to gauge the real ratio of upvotes to downvotes with this fuzz.

This is the entire point.

That said, I wish they'd just ban spammers and give everyone accurate metrics.

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#56

Post by rayiner »

smackfu wrote: post #43
perry5000 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Ellison has put virtually all of his assets into a trust with the intent of giving away 95% of his money to charitable causes when he dies.

What's he using to buy all his boy's toys, like yachts and plans and sports cars? Or is that just a meaningless percentage of his wealth?

He said "95%". 5% of Ellison's wealth is 2 billion. His yacht was in the $200m range.

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#57

Post by recoiledsnake »

simba-hiiipower wrote: post #10
6thSigma wrote: post #4

He should do an AMA here!

..unfortunately it'd probably get flagged off the front page

Surprisingly(or perhaps unsurprisingly), this very post seems to be getting flagged a lot.

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#58

Post by jbackus »

smackfu wrote: post #43
perry5000 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Ellison has put virtually all of his assets into a trust with the intent of giving away 95% of his money to charitable causes when he dies.

What's he using to buy all his boy's toys, like yachts and plans and sports cars? Or is that just a meaningless percentage of his wealth?

Who cares if he spends his money on that?

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#59

Post by enry_straker »

dm8 wrote: post #25

Wow, Bill Gates thinks his portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley was very accurate ( http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_c... ). Even Woz had said that the film accurately portrayed all the personalities. However, we should appreciate Bill for his honesty. He is not shown in good light in that movie.

The keyword was 'reasonably accurate'

Re: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

#60

Post by enry_straker »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #28
sukuriant wrote: post #17

They've already said it on Reddit; but, he has to be the fastest Reddit AMA that I've ever paid attention to. He's responding to so much, so quickly; and a lot of the questions don't seem like ones he could pass off to someone else, not to mention the wording, etc seems consistent throughout.

That's probably because he's one of the more computer-savvy people to do an AMA.

It also helps that he is very quick, very intelligent, and has a sense of self-deprecating humor
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