hubris

Of all the most cloying and over-rated virtues, for me self-deprecation is the worst. You know the sort of thing: people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I write a bit, only when they press me do I confess that I write for most of the national press in the UK other than the tabloids.

This is all good fun and most of us do it, particularly the Brits. Thing is, when it's someone like Microsoft telling us it's not such great shakes it starts to look like a simple attempt to ingratiate.

Take Steve Ballmer, who has just told the BBC that he thinks Microsoft is David to Google's...