by Tony Long

Leading off with a stupid quote from President Bush might seem a little too easy, perhaps unfair, a bit like stealing candy from a blind kid or something. But in a year chockablock with moronic quips, obtuse observations and mind-boggling inanities, you still have to put Dubya front and center. He is, after all, the most powerful man in the world.

“One of the things I’ve learned on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgotten the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It reminds me of where I wanna be sometimes.”
– Bush, asked during an interview with CNBC if he ever googled anybody.

“The Google.” How quaint — if it were coming from your grandmother. (And that would be Google Earth, Mr. President.)

Here’s a real beaut, also from a prominent political figure. For breathtaking cluelessness it actually surpasses Bush by a wide margin. But coming as it does from a mere U.S. senator, it must necessarily be subordinate. Rank has its privileges.

“They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material.”
– Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) deconstructs the frustrations of (we think) file sharing, during a speech opposing net neutrality before the Senate Commerce Committee.

OK, the guy is 85 years old. Ordinarily, you’d cut him some slack. But Stevens chaired that committee — which oversees regulation of the internet.

In the interest of being fair and balanced, like Fox News, it should be noted that famous liberals can have trouble getting it, too. Here’s CNN’s Larry King, admitting that he’s never used the internet before:
“What do you do? Punch little buttons and things?”

And how about this one, from Eric Schmidt, CEO of internet Wirtschaftswunder Google:
“We actually did an evil scale and decided (that) not to serve at all was worse evil.”

Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil.” When the company started doing business in China, it had to amend that motto slightly. Google took heavy flak for bending to the oppressive regulations severely limiting free speech on the internet there. Schmidt defended staying in the market (an important word to remember here), saying that even though “we weren’t wild about the restrictions, it was even worse to not try to serve those users at all.” This is what Schmidt’s “evil scale” concluded, apparently. Presumably, his accountants concluded the same thing, but for very different reasons. A number of parody sites drew their own conclusions.

This next quote, by Seagate CEO Bill Watkins, doesn’t necessarily qualify as lame. It’s certainly cynical, but to some folks it probably just sounds honest:

“Let’s face it. We’re not changing the world. We’re building a product that helps people buy more crap — and watch porn.”
– As quoted by Fortune magazine during a corporate dinner in San Francisco recently.

Love him or hate him, Bill Gates has been pretty successful over the years, but he’s never been much of a prognosticator. Back in the early ’90s he prophesied that the “internet will never amount to anything.” He followed that up in 2004 with an airy dismissal of the iPod during an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “I don’t think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be.”

Gates was forced to eat crow on that one, too, which he did this year in a speech at Stanford University, where he described the iPod as:
“… phenomenal, unbelievable, fantastic.”

It was also in 2004 when Gates proclaimed that, “Two years from now, spam will be solved.” Given this guy’s penchant for picking winners, let’s hope he doesn’t spend too much time at the track.

And speaking of Microsofties, Gates’ caporegime in Redmond, Steve Ballmer, he of the infamous Monkey Boy dance, is a veritable trove of colorful, catty and occasionally just plain stupid observations. His 2004 classic — “My children … in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least in one dimension I’ve got them brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod” — is hard to beat. But he didn’t exactly take a vow of silence during 2006, either:

“I want to squirt you a picture of my kids. You want to squirt me back a video of your vacation. That’s a software experience.”
– Ballmer, riffing on the virtues of the Zune.

“You’re not asking that and I don’t want to answer that.”
– Interviewee Ballmer, instructing a reporter for CRN on how to ask a difficult question.

Hubris is a common malady in the ego-bloated tech world, and Ken Kutagari, the chairman of Sony’s video-game division, can sling it with the best of them. For sheer arrogance, it’s tough to top this:
“The next generation begins when we say it does.”

Given Sony’s miserable year, you have to fear for the next generation.

This one sounds like a guy doing a little butt covering:

“The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It’s not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things.”
– That would be Nicholas Donofrio, IBM’s executive VP of innovation and technology, in an interview with ZDNet Asia. Sounds like a guy who could use a little vacation.

“I would buy a Mac if I didn’t work for Microsoft.”

Not a lame quote but definitely a foot-in-mouth pronouncement, coming as it did from Microsoft executive Jim Allchin in an e-mail to Messrs. Gates and Ballmer. Naturally, it found its way out the door. The lame part came later, when Allchin felt compelled to “clarify” things in a follow-up e-mail released to the press:

“In the e-mail, I made a comment for effect about buying a Mac if I was not working for Microsoft. Taken out of context, this comment could be confusing.”

Fire for effect. Roger Wilco and out.

Source: Wired News

by Evan Hansen

Tech execs say the darndest things. And so do shuffling presidents, and disgraced scientists, and Wikipedia fakers. It’s time to relive 2005′s biggest spoken gaffes.

“Screw the nano.”
– Motorola CEO Ed Zander

Cell-phone makers hoping to break into the music business got little traction in 2005 in the face of Apple Computer’s iPod dynasty. The shortcoming was made all the more glaring for Motorola, when its Rokr iTunes phone debuted alongside Apple’s newest entry, the iPod nano. (Motorola later issued a press release saying Zander’s statement was a “joke.”)

“I’m going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f***ing kill Google.”
– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in statements attributed to him in court documents by former Microsoft engineer and recent Google hire Mark Lucovsky

The accusations flew fast and furiously in a high-stakes court battle between Microsoft and Google over alleged employee poaching. Drama aside, the case highlighted a tectonic power shift in the technology industry brought on by post-IPO Google.

“Walk this way, talk this wa-ay.”
– Intel chairman Craig Barrett

The most embarrassing executive antics of the year came early in 2005, as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and joined Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler in a duet. Silicon.com has the video.

“Most people 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

The music giant responds in an NPR interview to complaints that anti-copying technology on some of its CDs creates serious security vulnerabilities in computers.

“You’re obviously from France.”
– Intel CEO Paul Ottelini

This zinger deflects criticism when a reporter with an accent asks why Intel is so far behind Advanced Micro Devices on a dual-core server chip. After the laughter subsides, AMD continues to assault Intel’s leadership position.

“All research up until now has been conducted in strict observance of the government-set guidelines.”
– Korean stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk

The cloning pioneer initially denies accusations that he broke ethical guidelines in conducting stem-cell research, but eventually admits he lied to protect co-workers. Later, he withdraws a groundbreaking research paper amid accusations of falsified data.

“I know what I don’t know, and to this day I don’t know technology and I don’t know accounting and finance.”
– Bernie Ebbers, ex-CEO of WorldCom

At his $11 billion telco fraud trial, Ebbers tries to pin the debacle on ex-WorldCom CFO and state’s witness Scott Sullivan. The jury is not convinced, and Ebbers is convicted of conspiracy, securities fraud and false regulatory filings on all counts. An appeal is pending.

“Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the shuffle.”
– President Bush

Brit Hume interviews the president about his iPod on Fox News, as recorded in a hilarious transcript published by The Washington Post.

“It was done as a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong.”
– Fake Wikipedia poster Brian Chase

A false post linking journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. with the Kennedy assassinations spilled over into public debate over the merits and failings of Wikipedia, a publicly maintained database of encyclopedia listings open to all comers. The controversy ends with an anticlimactic apology, but raises tough questions about the reliability of a new brand of participatory media, loosely dubbed “Web 2.0.”

“Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop — I think a more realistic title should be ‘the $100 gadget.’”
– Intel chairman Craig Barrett

At a press conference in Sri Lanka, the head of the world’s biggest chipmaker disses a plan by Nicholas Negroponte to give the world’s poorest children affordable computers.

“(Telecoms) and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!”
– SBC Communications CEO Ed Whitacre

Intimations of a “two-tiered” internet emerge in this Q&A with Business Week. The frustrations come out near the end of a year that saw the telecom industry begin to shake off bankruptcies and fraud only to confront an inescapable paradigm shift in the shape of broadband.

Source: Wired News