Ballmer SLAM-DUNKS $2 BEEELLLION bid for LA Clippers Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might not be in the software business anymore, but he has reportedly still found a way to one-up longtime rival Larry Ellison: by outbidding the Oracle tycoon for a major US sports franchise in the form of the LA Clippers. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Ballmer has won a …
The LA Clippers, coming to last place real soon. Ballmer is too much of a control freak for anyone to actually run or coach the team without Ballmer being directly involved in every decision. How to make a team "worth" $2 billion worth far less, have Ballmer own it.
He should try the wrestling business, there you can throw chairs and it is all part of the show.
Would be a Big Brother series solely populated by billionaire egomaniacs (and Donald Trump, whose ego probably exceeds even the actual billionaires) without their staff or chequebooks.
I suspect one would eventually end up eating the rest.
I'm not sure why the first comment got me thinking about this, but it did.
@Ren Bren a non-contact sport- I don't know where the idea comes from that everyone seems to think basketball is a non-contact sport. I used to get injured much more from contact in basketball than I did playing rugby. There's loads of contact in basketball, you just have to keep from handling someone when they are shooting and you can't just clatter your way through people who are standing their ground (which you can't in football either)
The Clippers were originally in San Diego, a port city and were suitably nautically named after the "clipper ships" which were extremely fast sailing ships that traveled from the U.S. East Coast around Cape Horn to California.
But now that Ballmer is buying them, it would be great to see Clippy brought back as the new team mascot, with some guy in a Clippy costume performing trampoline-assisted basketball dunks during halftimes!
And I guess this thankfully ends Donald Sterling's "I'll fight to keep my team until the end" posturing. "I'll fight til' the en....Oh wait, did you just say $2 BILLION?! OK, here are the keys..."
Another non believer.
Clipper was a fantastic tool, a geat way of making DOS database applications, which were fast to use, fast to write, reliable and flexible.
As to clone, no, just the natural progression of XBase.
Clipper (or CA-Clipper) was XBase, tons of tools, some excellent replacable database drivers, and still many programs in use.
All those great addons, Blinker, Funky (sp), Novlib, Advantage XBase Server, things like this made for some pretty powerful applications.
We were using serial comms libraries, Netware task libraries, client server libraries, lots of links to C as well, with our own C code.
Clipper was the pinnacle of Xbase not just a clone
...why our rebel colonial cousins get so het up about basketball and baseball.
On our civilised side of the pond, we leave these games to schoolgirls and call them by their proper names, viz Netball and Rounders.
Perhaps after all, that nice Mr. Ballmer really is a big girl's blouse...
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