I will never understand how this empty suit keeps his job:

Steve Ballmer on the iPad: The transcript
"We'll talk about about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah."

No, those aren't the notes of a reporter who couldn't keep up. That "blah, blah, blah, blah" -- taken from the official transcript of Microsoft's annual financial analysts meeting Thursday -- is how Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer introduced what he said was one of the top issues on his mind: the competitive threat of Apple's iPad.

Press accounts of the meeting captured the key quotes:

• "They [Apple] sold certainly more than I'd like them to sell"
• "We've got everything on our side if we do things really right."
• "Some of you will say, well, when? When? And I say, As soon as they're ready."
• "It is job one urgency around here. Nobody is sleeping at the switch."
• "We're coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows."

But to get the full flavor of the train wreck that is Steve Ballmer in 2010 -- a salesman whose only answer to technological change seems to be the operating system he inherited from Bill Gates -- you might want to hear the quotes in context...

Source: Fortune Magazine

...at last the financial guys are starting to howl for his blood...