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The funniest IT quotes of 2009

Posted on 28 Dec 2009 at 00:00

From Pirate Bay's lovable rogue to David Cameron's Twitter tirade, Barry Collins picks out the choicest IT soundbites from 2009

The IT industry is rarely a rich seam of comedy. Few comedians get 30-minute routines out of the difference between USB and FireWire. But occasionally, just occasionally, techies deliver a delicious soundbite. Here's our pick of the quotes from 2009.

DON’T GET EVEN, GET MAD

“The court said we were organised. I can’t get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you’re going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime. We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.” Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde after the site lost its landmark case with the entertainment industry.

"If the developer is in the room, they have to say nothing. It's the shut the f**k up protocol. You sit and watch someone struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced." Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth lays down the ground rules for Linux UI focus groups.

“To allow someone to snoop on your internet traffic is to allow them to put a television camera in your room - except it [web snooping] will tell them a whole lot more about you than the television camera.” Sir Tim Berners-Lee puts the boot into Phorm, which swiftly lost the backing of its British ISP partners.

SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT

“Well, I think you know the answer to that.” Hugh Griffiths, Head of Mobile at Microsoft UK throws in the towel when PC Pro asked him how customers would get DRM-protected files off their phones when they changed handsets, using the ridiculously restrictive MSN Mobile Music service.

“We're getting bloated, yes it's a problem. I'd love to say we have a plan [to make it slimmer]. I mean, sometimes it's a bit sad and we're definitely not the streamlined hyper-efficient kernel that I had envisioned 15 years ago. The kernel is huge and bloated." Linus Torvalds, taking advantage of the fact that Linux doesn’t have a PR department during the LinuxCon conference.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Google chief executive Eric Schmidt makes an ad-hoc amendment to Google’s privacy policy.

“We have a significant release coming this year. Not the full release we wanted to have this year but we have a significant release coming this year with Windows Mobile 6.5." Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer does his best to kill all excitement about the release of Microsoft’s inevitably disappointing mobile OS.

“I'm super-excited with our progress." Bill Mark, Intel's senior research scientist talking about x86 graphics chip Larrabee in September, a mere ten weeks before Intel scrapped it.