All Things Digital

QOTD

“Microsoft recently took steps to address concerns raised by the case, but nothing about this will mean higher prices for Windows 7 in Europe.”

– Bill Veghte, senior vice president for Microsoft’s Windows business group, says the company is not punishing Europeans users for its spat with European antitrust regulators.

QOTD

“It’s the most energy-rich material we have. It’s three times the energy content of gasoline on a pound-for-pound basis.”

– Oregon State University professor Roger Ely on chicken feathers

QOTD

“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.”

– Apple (AAPL) explains what really happened to the Hottest Girls app yesterday

QOTD

“If I have any serious illness, or something coming up of an important nature, an operation or anything like that, I think the thing to do is just tell the…the Berkshire shareholders about it. I work for ‘em. Some people might think I’m important to the company. Certainly Steve Jobs is important to Apple. So it’s a material fact. Whether he is facing serious surgery or not is a material fact. Whether I’m facing serious surgery is a material fact. Whether (General Electric CEO) Jeff Immelt is, I mean, so I think that’s important to get out. They’re going to find out about it anyway so I don’t see a big privacy issue or anything of the sort.”

– Warren Buffett says Apple has been too secretive about CEO Steve Jobs’s health issues

QOTD

“If there’s anybody that should possibly get a Nobel Peace Prize in the next time around, it should be the founders of Twitter who delayed the tuning up of their system in order for an amazing amount of tweets to be sent out in the last week or so.”

– Former Deputy National Security Adviser Mark Pfeifle

QOTD

“The Internet is a big distraction. Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’ It’s distracting. It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

— Author Ray Bradbury does not, uh, Yahoo

QOTD

“If you can’t text, then you Twitter. And, you know, my guess is in some of these countries that–that the leadership is kind of like me. They don’t have a clue what it’s about.”

– Defense Secretary Robert Gates

QOTD

“It’s important not to overstate the benefits of ideas. Quite frankly, I know it’s kind of a romantic notion that you’re just going to have this one brilliant idea and then everything is going to be great. But the fact is that coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great. It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what’s key.”

– Google co-founder Sergey Brin

QOTD

“RIM is too big. Apple is too big. Motorola has problems. When you look at all the assets that are available, what you have left is Palm.”

— Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton says Palm is a buyout target whether it likes it or not

QOTD

“Reading is an important enough activity that it deserves a purpose-built device….It’s a myth that multi-purpose devices are always better…. I like my phone… I like my swiss army knife too, but I’m also happy to have a set of steak knives. I get grumpy now when I have to read a physical book….The physical book has had a great 500 year run, but it’s time to change.”

– Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Kindle

QOTD

“GOOGLE GLITCH CAUSES SURFERS TO REAP PAGES OF FEAR; GOOGLE SCARES SENATE; GOOGLE STROKES PORN GUY”

– Reflecting on today’s “FEAR GRIPS GOOGLE” story in The New York Post, Google’s Matt Cutts digs up some similarly sensational headlines

QOTD

“I am a lover, not a fighter.”

– Dana Wagner, Google’s competition counsel, plans to hug it out with the Justice Department

QOTD

“To ensure that Microsoft is in compliance with European law, Microsoft will be releasing a separate version of Windows 7 for distribution in Europe that will not include Windows Internet Explorer. Microsoft will offer IE8 separately and free of charge and will make it easy and convenient for PC manufacturers to preinstall IE 8 on Windows 7 machines in Europe if they so choose. PC manufacturers may choose to install an alternative browser instead of IE 8, and has always been the case, they may install multiple browsers if they wish.”

– Bowing to regulatory pressure, Microsoft agrees to ship Windows 7 in Europe sans IE

QOTD

“BART’s excuse for ripping down the ad was that it was ‘too dark’ and not letting through enough light into the BART exit. However, we have pictures that show there was plenty of light coming through the ad (the ad is printed on a clear plastic material). We then submitted the following revised ad with a white background. A white ad would have let even more light through. However, it was rejected for having a solid white background (!). At the ad agency’s request, we then made the background completely transparent. After complying with all their requests to change the ad, we still haven’t been given a firm date on when the ad will be back up. Apple is a major BART advertiser (in the past they’ve plastered entire BART stations with iPod ads). Apple’s WWDC conference ends on Friday. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here. I’m sure our ad will conveniently be back up after WWDC ends.”

— DoubleTwist co-founder Jon Lech Johansen on the mysterious disappearance of the “Cure for iPhone Envy” ad his company managed to have placed outside Apple’s San Francisco store

QOTD

Yahoo-AOL would not happen anytime in the forever future. Yahoo is a much stronger property in a different direction and there’s no sense confusing all of that.

– Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz about a hook-up with the Time Warner (TWX) online unit.