The IT Nerd

Steve Ballmer has done it again. This time he opened his mouth and has predicted that newspapers will be dead within 10 years:

“There will be no media consumption left in ten years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”

I suppose there’s some amount of truth to that. I haven’t had a newspaper subscription in 10 years. I don’t know many people under the age of 40 who do as well. So maybe print newspapers will dead, but they will still exist on line. Still, I think he’s smoking crack mistaken when he makes this comment:

“If Newsweek is around in five years, I’ll buy you dinner.”

Trust me about two things:

1. Newsweek will be around in five years.
2. He’s going to be buying someone dinner.

What Ballmer is missing is that the delivery method will change, but that doesn’t mean that the death of the organizations that deliver the content to you will die. Though it may mean that the less healthy organizations may disappear.

Of course this comes from Steve Ballmer. Someone who doesn’t have a great track record of predicting the future (Zune, MSN, WebTV just to name a few). So keep that in mind when you he says anything about the future.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the IT industry’s clown prince as far as I am concerned. He’s had a ton of funny moments over the years, (as well as being the target for eggs) so I thought that I’d share a few of them with you.

First there’s this video of Ballmer selling Windows 1.0. He totally sounds like a used car salesman. One would argue that you would have to be to work for Microsoft. But then he moves on to what he calls “The bedrock of Microsoft” who are of course developers. Look at the sweat stains on his shirt. He really needs some of that clinical strength antiperspirant that’s appearing in drug stores near you. The best one has to be the infamous “Monkeyboy video” where Ballmer jumps around like a ADHD sufferer on speed. Did he not get his daily dosage of ritalin?

None of this behavior comes as a shock to anybody who knows him. According to Fredric Alan Maxwell who wrote a book on Ballmer, he once shouted ”Windows! Windows! Windows!” so furiously at a sales meeting in Japan that he ripped his vocal cords, requiring surgery. Now that’s a bit freaky. And then there’s his love of chairs and wanting to “kill” Google. That was something he said was a “gross exaggeration.” Given everything that I’ve cited, I’m not so sure.

All in all, an entertaining personality. I hope he hangs around for a bit so that more of his erratic behavior makes it onto Youtube.