There is a story, recounted in Robert Cringely's book 'Accidental Empires', that in 1990 Bill Gates was standing in the checkout line of his local store at midnight with a carton of ice-cream. Eventually it was his turn to pay and he put some money on the counter. He then began to search his pockets saying that he had a money-off coupon somewhere. The checkout operator waited, the ice-cream melted, the other customers behind Gates got angrier as Bill searched in vain for the coupon. Eventually the customer behind him threw down coins to the value of the money-off coupon and told Gates to pay him back when he earned his first million. Bill Gates, who at this time was worth about three billion dollars, took the money!

Fast forward to Christmas 1999. The trade paper, 'Computing', reports that Microsoft's Hotmail service suffered a glitch on Christmas Eve and Microsoft were scratching their heads over the problem. Meanwhile Michael Chaney, a Linux programmer, noticed that Microsoft had not paid the fee to re-register the password.com site address. This is used to verify user names and passwords for Hotmail's users and without the payment the domain name was suspended and users may have had problems logging on. To restore the service as quickly as possible Chaney accessed the web site of Network Solutions on Christmas Day and paid the fee. Chaney says that Microsoft thanked him for paying the bill and offered to refund the cost. Microsoft says it was grateful to Chaney for limiting the time the service was down and had launched an investigation into the matter. How much was the fee that Microsoft had not paid? $35!

I don't know how true either story is. Knowing Bill's affinity for money the first seems plausible! There are a couple of points related to the second story that seem strange. How did a non-Microsoft user find out that Microsoft had not paid the fee. Then, how could somebody unrelated to the owner of the site be allowed to pay the bill! Still, whether the stories are true or apocryphal they do bear a striking similarity and provide more Microsoft joke material!

Did you hear about the woman who was married to a succession of three Microsoft employees and still died a virgin?

Her first husband was in Training, and kept teaching her how to do it herself.

The second was in Sales, and kept telling her how good it was going to be.

And the third was in Tech Support, and kept saying "Don't worry, it'll be up any minute now...."