Security Bullet In
Communiques from the security front, sir
Wednesday 10 October 2007, 9:28 PM
Ballmer: 'I love your daughter'
Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer has pledged to hire a 13-year-old cheerleader to work for Microsoft -- in nine years time.
In a not entirely serious exchange in a discussion about Vista at the Gartner IT Symposium in Orlando, a Gartner analyst was leading up to a question about Vista and the time it took to bring the operating system to market. She said how much her daughter liked the interface on Vista, how much she liked using the Gadgets, and how she used it for her cheerleader schedule.
At which point Ballmer interjected: "I love your daughter!"
The analyst responded: "You realise that'll be on the internet in about 2 minutes."
Ballmer said: "I know". Ballmer hastened to add that he liked that kind of end user reaction to Vista.
After some more discussion, the analyst added: "She's thirteen [years old]."
To which Ballmer responded: "We're going to hire her in about nine years."
"No don't. Trust me," the analyst said.
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