Steve Ballmer booms at Wall Street investors

MICROSOFT CEO popped up in Wall Street to speak to investors. But he prefaced his remarks by saying there's a video going around showing him jumping and screaming.

He wasn't going to run around and scream, not even "investors, investors, investors," he screamed. He delivered this in a barely audible roar that must have reached all the way to Queens.

Microsoft has had an internal discussion about what it wants to do in the next 10 years. Bill Gates came back with a list of 70 innovations. One example is digital reading and writing. Ten years from now we won't see paper and pencil, he said, it will be replaced by superior technology that's digital. Right.

Microsoft is going to build and it's going to buy and it's going to do just about everything whether it's big or its small.

Microsoft wants to be first but it is prepared to come second and "outinnovate" the first guy. Products like Windows Microsoft had "worked at, and worked at, and worked at, and worked at". It introduced the first Windows in 1983 but it didn't pay back until 1993.

Windows "had to be watered" periodically. He said if Microsoft didn't keep it fresh, it wouldn't flourish. Microsoft doesn't get paid in China, Brazil, India and Russia because of piracy, he said.

He wouldn't be more specific about the introduction date of Vista than the vague statements he made last week.

You can hear Ballmer boom by going to the Microsoft site. Before you press the play button, retire ten paces. µ