The 2005 IT Year In Quotes

PCM2 writes "InfoWorld is carrying a news story that sums up the year in quotes from IT executives. Lots of fun stuff to be had here, including former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers: 'I know what I don't know, and to this day I don't know technology and I don't know accounting and finance.' Also: 'We have so many rivals it's frightening. The week after next I will meet Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and I will [shake hands and]look down and see if I still have a hand.' - Sony's Stringer"

Comments

ESR such a dolt

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, mod this down... Eric Raymond is the biggest f*cking prick I've ever met. Microsoft's worst nightmare? I doubt Bill Gates is sitting at home having nightmares about the arrogant gasbag that is ESR. I met him a couple times so far. Each time he was condescending and rude. Against my better judgment I asked him to autograph a program guide. The fucker actually sneered at me and huffed. Contrast this to maddog hall or Wozniak or Linus (all of whom were absolutely pleasant and smiling). Shoot, even Richard Stallman who I'd thought would be an ass from all the stories I've heard was a nice guy, though really weird (and driven, and someone I'm glad fights for what he believes). But ESR, put a cork in him please.

A contender from Sony

[From A Far Away Land]

Mr. THOMAS HESSE (President, Sony BMG Global Digital Business): Most people, I think, don't even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?

The Real Jem;

[DNAspark99]

"What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy?"
  -- Eric Raymond, one of the prime movers in the open-source movement, who also describes himself as "Microsoft's worst nightmare" after he received an e-mail pitch from Microsoft asking if he was interested in a job. (Sept. 9.)

Re:What do you know?

[Kihaji]

There is a reason companies hire smart people to do engineering, accounting, and finance. It's because they know what they are doing.

CEO's are there to manage people, not tell Joe Beancounter that he forgot to carry a 1.

gotta be the rootkit quote

[YesIAmAScript]

"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" - Thomas Hesse, President of Sony BMG's global digital business division.

This is the quote of my year in my book.

This one has it all - sony, the queen, arrows, jam

[skeptictank]

"A company as big as this one ... has to organize its priorities. In the U.K. we call it the law of raspberry jam: the wider the culture is spread, the thinner it is spread." -- Howard Stringer, as he became Sony (Profile, Products, Articles) CEO. He also talked about having tea with the queen and her complaint that Sony remote controls have "too many arrows." (June 23.)

A female monarch older than most of the countries on the planet complaining about the remotes made by the first company to deploy rootkits in commercial products - that pretty much sums up the current state of humanity.

Re:This one has it all - sony, the queen, arrows,

[erikharrison]

I may also be true.

Queen Elizabeth the II is 79 years old. There are, what, 203 countries in the world, roughly, depending on how you count? Considering the revolutions in Africa, and the disolving of Soviet Russia, and the aftermath of World War II (which brought many colonized states into revolution and eventually nationhood) it's not hard to imagine that 102 countries have emerged in the last 80 years, depending on how one counts the age of a country.