Captain Oblivious

At Microsoft's annual mid-January press conference, Steve Ballmer shocked and awed the crowd of reporters with a stunning rendition of "Putting on the Ritz," complete with soft shoe dance routine. The genial giant then launched into an announcement of Microsoft's plans to earn hundreds of billions of dollars by eliminating Lotus Notes once and for all. Microsoft released statistics indicating that, upon removal of IBM itself from the Lotus customer list, the Notes market share becomes "teeny, teeny, tiny." Ballmer indicated that the number of remaining Notes customers is so small it can no longer be measured. Despite the small number of targets, though, Microsoft announced a multi-billion dollar marketing and partner effort to convert those users to Exchange. According to Microsoft's projections, converting the incredibly small number of Notes customers will earn Microsoft $750 billion, money the extremely friendly corporation intends to donate to the US government to pay for the economic recovery so badly needed by everyone who doesn't work for Microsoft. Ballmer also announced that Microsoft has proven, in a third-party study, that their software is installed on every computer in the world*.

Joining Ballmer on the stage, legendary analyst Sara Radicatti and journalist extraordinaire Steve Forbes jointly announced a new book they've co-written: "The death of the internet." According to statistics scrupulously researched by Radicatti, use of the internet has declined precipitously over the next several months and will continue to decline even more. Forbes, meanwhile, stressed the uselessness of such so-called social software applications as Twitter, Facebook, and SocialText, pointing out that one cannot conduct an actual financial transaction on any of them alone. The two internet experts consider a theoretical digital abacus to be the next big thing.

*Microsoft, in a footnote, defined "their software" as any software ever written by an employee of Microsoft or anyone who was related to an employee of Microsoft. The software giant expressed gratitude to The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints for use of their extensive genealogical database, which allowed them to prove that everyone on earth is related to a Microsoft employee.