Ballmer Poops On The Post's Coffee Table

You gotta love Steve Ballmer. He's like the crazy uncle at the family reunion that wants to sing karaoke with a lampshade on his head. I imagine that when the Washington Post asked for a wide-ranging interview with the Microsoft CEO, they figured they'd get all sorts of inside spin in Ballmer's tussle with Yahoo! chief Jerry Yang, or maybe a sneak peek into Ballmer's future vision for Microsoft. Ballmer was pretty tight-lipped about his opinion of Yang, and Microsoft's future, for a change. But he was more than willing to tell the Post that there would be no such thing as print media in a decade or so. Awkward.

In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down -- my opinion.

Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 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...

...Also in the world of 10 years from now, there are going to be far more producers of content than exist today. We've already started to see that certainly in the online world, but we've just scratched the surface. . . . I always take my favorite case: I grew up in Detroit. I went to a place called Detroit Country Day School. They've got a great basketball team. Why can't I sit in front of my television and watch the Country Day basketball game when I know darn well it's being video-recorded at all times? It's there. It's just not easy to navigate to. 

Allow me to translate this for the Post reporter: You're going to be mowing my lawn within ten years.