Leave Steve Ballmer Alone

Microsoft evangelist Anand Iyer certainly knows how to write an attention-getting blog headline with this one:

Steve Ballmer is misunderstood

Writes Iyer:

I think people have to realize that this man sleeps like 4 hours a day, if that. Every word coming out of his mouth has the potential to change the world in some way. It'd be ridiculous to think that everything he says out loud hasn't been planned or rehearsed multiple multiple times (some people think he just mouths off).

The upshot of Iyer's piece is to suggest that Ballmer's toughest critics - - including, these days, some employees of Yahoo who could become employees of Microsoft - - aren't taking into consideration the whole of the man, Steve Ballmer.

In the comment section of Iyer's blog, this response appeared:

From his interviews he does not appear to be that intelligent and does not know how to respond and at times seems to be ignorant of Microsoft things. Take today's announcement today about Interoperability: Someone asked if Microsoft will continue with the standardization of Open XML and Ballmer, instead of expalining (sic) that Microsoft will not only continue with this standardization but has also even published documentation for the binary formats of previous Office, he instead gave a standard legalistic answer. Also, the way he presented its like reading from the press release. It appears totally unimaginative and extremely boring.

Ballmer has been called many things in his career, but the word "boring" probably doesn't top the list. Then again, "misunderstood" probably doesn't top that list, either.