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"It's either Segways or Strangeways"
Tech quotes of the year - from Steve Ballmer to Homer Simpson...

By Natasha Lomas

Published: Tuesday 23 December 2008

May

"The whole idea that the PC industry is good, better, best, faster microprocessors, more memory - that psychology of the PC industry is so yesterday. Not a single person believes it. Sony doesn't believe it. Dell doesn't believe it. HP doesn't believe it. God knows Apple doesn't believe it. Nobody believes it anymore."
-- Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in an interview with silicon.com sister site CNET News.com

"We have to be realistic about the history of this technology. We have to remember that this is not new - this has been done, this has been tried before. And there are other ways to provide a large screen and a Qwerty keyboard without compromising them by putting one on top of the other."
-- RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, discussing touchscreen technology in an interview with silicon.com - several months before the launch of the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm

June

"Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!"
-- Mars Phoenix Lander tweets its discovery of water on Mars

"So, as we arrive at iPhone's first birthday we're gonna take it to the next level."
-- Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, introducing the iPhone 3G at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco

"Someday they will write that Microsoft has peaked, and someday they will be right... When they predict my death, they never reincarnate me."
-- Former Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, on the eve of stepping down from day-to-day duties at Microsoft in an interview with silicon.com sister site CNET News.com

"We're going to hell. It's not a good place to be."
-- Professor Lachlan MacKinnon, head of the school of computing and creative technologies at the University of Abertay, Dundee giving his assessment of the UK's IT skills crisis

"My personal belief is that within two years' time most music will be free."
-- Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher in an interview with silicon.com

July

"I worry about what is going to happen when the government go to the next stage and can do everything they say they want under the draft communications data bill. To centralise all that data for them to data mine... I do not trust people looking at that to not look at mine or your habits and make the wrong assumptions."
-- Earl of Erroll, Lord Merlin Hay, voicing concerns over technology facilitating the government holding increasing amounts of data about citizens

"O2's new home represents an important step in the history of the business; it highlights our lasting commitment to Slough."
-- Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefonica O2 UK, discussing investment in its new HQ, not very far from its old one, also in Slough

Click here to read page three of tech quotes of the year...