QuoteLog

“I still like you, TiVo. I hope your little deal with Comcast works out so I can use the brilliant TiVo service again. I hope you get off your lazy asses and build a HD TiVo. But until that happens, it’s going to be just a little bit easier to live without TiVo after dealing with your assholes in customer support.”

“Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated, unprotected access to readily available facts, let alone in capriciously using them to illustrate areas of concern. We apologise unreservedly, and will cooperate fully in helping Google change people’s perceptions of its role just as soon as it feels capable of communicating to us how it wishes that role to be seen.”

“There’s an old business phrase, from long before the Internet ... ‘Make a customer happy, and he’ll tell a friend. Make a customer angry, and he’ll tell ten friends.’ Today’s digital reality multiplies that by a couple of orders of magnitude.”

“Last year Wal-Mart imported $18 billion worth of goods from China. Of Wal-Mart’s 6,000 suppliers, 5,000 — 80 percent — are in one country, and it isn’t the United States.”

“The first half of the oil age now closes. It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital.”

“In 1945, corporations paid more than one-third of the government’s revenues. Now they pay only 11 percent because corporations, especially multinationals, are voluntary taxpayers. In a world increasingly without borders that block capital movements, corporations pay where the burden is lowest.”

“For a directory of employees, press 6. To hear the sounds of a penguin swimming, press 7.”

“I’d point to this as a warning for anyone who isn’t self-employed and who writes a weblog: watch out. Indeed, it’s a warning to anyone who isn’t self-employed and who wants to write in their own time. Corporate reach is threatening to deprive you of the right to self-expression.”

“I wish you and your families a slow and painful death!”

“If you don’t know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues’ initials on ‘em, and pass them along. When in doubt, route.”

“My experience with cellphone companies, airlines, and Internet providers has been so overwhelmingly dominated by ‘mistakes’ that I can’t believe that it amounts to anything less than an insidious new business model developed to prey upon busy lives.”

“It’s really a good thing those no-good weasels ran me off...”

“I fantasize about showing up at the office of one particular client wearing my PJs and dragging a sleeping bag behind me. ‘Who the hell are you? You can’t smoke in this office.’ ‘I was your designer, but now I’m homeless due to non-payment of my invoice of August 2001, so I’m moving in. Dear me, we’ll have to do something about those fluorescent lights.’ ”

“The ultimate moral defense for capitalism is that it stops people like Bill Gates and me from raising armies and starting religions.”

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’ “

“We are fighting for liquidity.”

“Enrongate or not, I’m glad to see Ken Lay retiring. Guy was stealing my Google hits.”

“We all are going to be bankrupt before the end of the year. There is not an airline that I know of that has the excess cash to handle this.”

“On Monday, when the stock markets reopen, every American should buy five or ten or twenty shares of their favorite stock. It doesn’t matter what, and it doesn’t have to involve spending a fortune. But if enough people did this, it could well serve to not only jump-start the markets, but boost consumer confidence and perhaps prevent the supposed psychological recession that some economists are sure will follow Tuesday’s tragedy.”

“Freelancers live in a land of Kafka and secret societies: blackballed without knowing why; email and phone calls not answered; no trial and no appeal.”

“We are a nation of business people, and we find art and artists threatening. We will take artists’ concerns seriously only if they don’t cut significantly into the profit of some industry.”

“I think Smithers picked me because of my motivational skills. Everyone says they have to work a lot harder when I’m around.”

“Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion.”

“I just think we’ve been using the wrong metric all along when it comes to the Internet. It’s not necessarily about sales. It’s about communicating with your customer.”

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the 9 to 5 hours.”

“In accordance with our principles of free enterprise and healthy competition, I’m going to ask you two to fight to the death for it.”

“The problem is that most corps think of their website as a marketing endeavor -- like a billboard -- instead of as a front office to their corporate headquarters. If they thought of their websites as places where they brought their clients, those websites would be much classier and elegant and usable -- same as their offices. You don’t let your marketing people run your front office; you shouldn’t let your marketing people run your website.”

“This company’s incompetence staggers us. Just when we think they can’t get any worse, they exceed all previous feats of non-service. A gibbon with an abacus would do a better job. Lord, if you are listening, smite these evil clowns.”

“As for company rules and policies, we have the Core Values and Belief’s, and our dress code - it’s good to be dressed. We also have one dress code recommendation - if you are going to be in a meeting with folks wearing suits, it’s recommended that you wear some form of footwear.”