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Before starting xkcd, I worked on robots at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. As of June 2. 00. I live in Massachusetts. In my spare time I climb things, open strange doors, and go to goth clubs dressed as a frat guy so I can stand around and look terribly uncomfortable. At frat parties I do the same thing, but the other way around.

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Steve Ballmer Has a Plan to Let You Watch the NBA From Chris Paul’s Perspective. Steve Ballmer is in his third season as the Clippers owner. The team is better than the Lakers for once and has just seven years left on its Staples Center lease.

Where will it go from here? Ballmer joined The Bill Simmons Podcast to share his ideas on that, as well as his thoughts on the future of the NBA as a whole, including new ticketing models, software that could revolutionize the home- viewing experience, and how revenue sharing may need some tweaks. As he’ll tell you, not all of these will come to fruition. But they’re all being kicked around. Below is a portion of his conversation.

Listen to the full podcast here. This transcript has been edited and condensed. Ballmer Wants You to See the Game From Chris Paul’s Perspective. Bill Simmons: What’s the best idea that you’ve heard in . And yet it will be hard for us to realize its full potential without the league picking it up. I am excited about what you can do with software over the internet to transform the experience for a fan who is not in the arena. Whether they are on their phone ?

Instead of a center- court camera; I want to see the game the way Chris Paul sees the game. Software can actually let that happen. Simmons: So, Chris Paul would have to wear a helmet camera?

Ballmer: No! Software can figure it out. If we can’t figure it out this year, we can figure it out in two to three years. So yes, I’ll exaggerate how quickly it can happen. But it’s going to happen.

And you say, “OK, but you’ve got to have the rights.” We can do that here or we can do that in partnership with . But when the big contracts were signed with TNT and ABC/ESPN, that wasn’t part of the mix.

The league did the right thing, Disney did the right thing, Turner — everybody did the right thing. And yet, I’m still hoping that if we can prove out this technology we can get it adopted, because there are games that we don’t have the rights to even for the Clippers. There are games that are exclusive. And even for those games, even if we get the stuff figured out with Fox, we’re not going to have the chance to bring that to people. Nobody did a wrong thing, everybody did everything right, and yet, there’s still so much to figure out with digital.

And other owners have other concepts they’re playing with, this 3- D thing that Intel does —Simmons: VR. Ballmer: VR. There’s going to be a lot of things. The question is: How do you spin that together? Every owner’s got good ideas.

TheINQUIRER publishes daily news, reviews on the latest gadgets and devices, and INQdepth articles for tech buffs and hobbyists. Get the latest science news and technology news, read tech reviews and more at ABC News. Steve Ballmer discusses USA Facts with GeekWire. The former Microsoft CEO and current L.A.

Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows.

The league understands the importance of the rights that have been granted. But solving all that, that’ll be a thing that will require a lot of creativity, and could have a little bit of frustration, despite everybody being interested in the right thing happening. Streaming Games Is the Future. Simmons: You dabbled with the idea of doing a WWE Network–type of thing with Clippers games.

It seems like you’re still investigating it. What’s the biggest obstacle? Ballmer: Well, look. You can just stream games, who cares?

The key to me is getting some innovation going. Just streaming our games, which you can do on Fox Sports GO — and the business model is well established — probably is not value added. When you can let people, instead of just watching the game, when you can let them do the kind of stuff I said earlier: “I’m going to watch the game today, just the first half and see it like Chris Paul. I’m going to watch the second half and see it like Blake Griffin.” Or, “I’m going to watch this game where I can choose my camera angle, I can have any seat in the building, I can get instantaneous . You can get instantaneous . How much soda do you have before a game, like 8. Ballmer: I don’t drink any caffeine.

Simmons: No caffeine? It’s natural caffeine? Ballmer: Nothing Is Truer Than Truth watch online in english 1440p. Zero. Zero. Simmons: Amazing! Ballmer: I got off caffeine two years ago.

Simmons: That’s probably a good idea. Ballmer Has a Radical Proposal to Drive Away Opposing Teams’ Fans. Simmons: One thing that I’ve noticed the last couple of years — and it’s totally because of the secondary . There’s really no way to stop it because you know season tickets are expensive and nobody goes to 4. I think that’s the thing that’s changed the most about being a sports fan over the last 2. People now go to 1. And it’s not just the Clippers, but I know you’re a competitive guy, I know you’re like a “this is your team” kind of guy.

When you see those 7,0. Ballmer: Oh, it just drives me nuts. It really drives me nuts; it’s among the things that actually make me craziest.

Simmons: I figured. Ballmer: There was a guy two or three seats down from me wearing a flipping blue and gold, blue and yellow, whatever the hell I’m supposed to say . What are you thinking?” So it does drive me crazy. I mean look, there are ideas on how to do this differently. Simmons: Let’s talk about them. Ballmer: OK. And I’m not saying we’re gonna do them, I’d just tell you if you look at what they do in soccer in Europe, to the best of my understanding, you first have to join the club then you buy your seat.

Simmons: What do you mean join the club? Ballmer: You’re part of the football club. They’re all called football clubs; they’re clubs — you’ve got to pay a club membership and then buy a ticket. And you know you can join the club and not buy season tickets, but when you want tickets you can get them and you can come to the game because you can show you’re a member of the club. If you had to do both of those the front- runners who only come to see their visiting team, they’d have to buy a club membership.

That might scare them off a little for coming into our building. I’m not sure we’re gonna do it. Not saying anything, but I’m looking and thinking this stuff through, particularly if we’re going to do a new arena. In the current arena, there wouldn’t be any way to do it — the ticketing systems wouldn’t support it. But we’re studying what they do abroad and whether there are any clever ideas from other places that would let you pull something like that off.

Simmons: So you could study music, too. Like Pearl Jam created a club and their members get first chance at tickets and things like that. Ballmer: Well, you can even say you can’t come in the arena unless you can . You have to have done both, and guess what — how many Warrior fans living in L. A. You can’t come unless you join the club and you buy your ticket, even if you buy it on the secondary market you’d still have to prove you’re a member of the club. Now, I don’t want to scare people off. This is a fantasy in my mind.

Our season- ticket holders are just fine.(Getty Images)Simmons: I don’t think it’s that much of a fantasy, I think it’s doable. Ballmer: Well, right now it’s fantasy because we couldn’t even execute it and we’d have to decide how much it would screw up ticket revenue. Because, as you said, people buy season tickets and they come in with an expectation that they can sell off games they don’t want. Simmons: I like this. I just think it’s extortion. But what you’re describing is actually getting stuff out of it. Ballmer: I don’t know if this all works, but we’re studying a little bit of what they do with these football clubs in Europe.

You see mostly loyal fans in soccer games in Europe. In the U. S., football’s a little different because there’s only 1. So it’s a little different in football. Basketball and baseball, those are the two tough ones. A lot of games. Simmons: That’s an interesting idea to study what’s actually working with fan unanimity. Balmer: We’ll study and see if there’s ideas.

And If That Doesn’t Work, He Has Other Ticketing Ideas. Simmons: What do you think the future of season tickets is? But now it seems like the people who buy secondary- market tickets wait because they know there’s this late rush of 4, 5, 6 o’ clock people who can’t go and they can get in for half price.

What does that mean for the future of tickets? Ballmer: Well, I think the best way for me to say it is: Technology gives us unique opportunities.

We’re testing this thing this year we call Seat Bid where we save some seats that people can put up . And that means for some games you’re gonna make a whole lot more money, and some games we will make a whole lot less money. If the concept works over time, what you’d want to do is have a controlled marketplace that might go to an auction- bid system. Today, tickets go everywhere — the Warriors have come down kinda hard on this.

They basically say, “If you don’t sell your tickets back to us and let us sell them we cannot guarantee that you didn’t buy a counterfeit ticket so you better watch out.” Now they tried . You could only resell your tickets, I think, back through the Warriors. It’s a reasonable thing to do. You know Apple doesn’t let you buy an i. Phone wherever you want to buy them, you buy them at the AT& T or Verizon store or you buy them in the Apple Store or the Best Buy store.

They don’t let somebody go into Best Buy, buy a bunch, and then sell them out of the back of their closet. But that’s kinda what we do with season tickets these days. Simmons: My friend Nathan Hubbard, who used to run Ticketmaster and Live Nation and then went to Twitter and is still heavily involved in the whole ticket side — he doesn’t understand why sports tickets don’t work the same way an airplane . Or why there’s not more of a trail of who has the ticket. Should this be a more complicated system for reasons of security or for reasons of the team?

Once they sell a ticket it just goes out into the wilderness and they don’t know what happens to it. What else could we do? Ballmer: I think some of the ideas that your buddy talks about are very interesting. I think you would — I don’t know, I’m making everything up I’m about to say here — but you think back to the old days, there was no technology to let you do this and there are a ton of baseball games and you just walked through the ballpark.

There were always open seats and it was a little more like a movie theater.