Computer industry executives seem to spend half their lives making speeches at trade events and conferences – yet sometimes the words just turn out wrong…

We know Unix is dying… you can’t take a duck and turn it into a canary, it won’t sing: Jim Kelly, the IBM Corp program director for the AS/400 division.

Allowing an emerging business unit to cannibalize another is what’s put us where we are today: Bill Russell, head of Hewlett- Packard Co’s workstation division, on HP’s growing interest in NT against Unix.

The MSN [Microsoft Network] – its a loss. Expedia – a loss. MSNBC [Microsoft/National Broadcast Corporation] – a loss: Microsoft Corp’s number two executive, Steve Ballmer boasting that even Microsoft is able to lose money on its new projects.

It’s like one particle of dust touching another particle of dust in the Universe: Sun Microsystems Inc’s chief executive officer, Scott McNealy, on the irrelevance of the presidential campaign to his business.

The first places I want to see are the cellars, parking lots and toilets. If they are not clean, that’s a sign of bad management: Robert Colaninno, the newly appointed chief executive officer of crisis torn Ing C Olivetti & Co Spa, where he found the toilets misleadingly clean.

Keep some money back. Try to hide the profits. Don’t be too good: Yanki Margalit, chief executive of Aladdin Knowledge Systems, on life after an initial public offering, speaking at Etre.

At Microsoft we are just plumbers: Bill Gates, the chairman and chief executive of Microsoft Corp speaking on his company’s approach to the Internet.

Bill wants to be the world’s one and only plumber. And if you have a leak it might cost you a lot to get it fixed: Larry Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle Corp, on Gates’ plumbing ambitions.

Test the water in Silicon Valley, something strange is going on… Netscape never had a chance, never had a chance. They have zero chance: Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle Corp, on the other big player in Internet software, browser supplier Netscape Communications Corp.

What Grove Giveth, Gates Taketh Away: Bob Metcalfe, the founder of 3Com Corp, on how processing power from Andy Grove’s Intel Corp is quickly used up by the software from Bill Gates’ Microsoft Corp.

For what they spent, we could have given every business in Europe an Internet connection for free: Peter Dawes of Internet supplier UUNet on the bankruptcy of the fledgling Europe Online service.

We are now top of the class. We can’t copy any more: Craig Barrett, chief operating officer of Intel Corp, on its decision to invest more in original chip designs.

I’ve never seen a response like this. People are ready for this. They feel they are missing out on something dramatic: Hermann Hauser, the Acorn Computer chairman, on market testing of Internet terminals.

Unless a double digit percentage of revenues is invested in R&D, a software company cannot remain competitive: Dietmar Hopp, the chief executive officer of SAP.

Just because people have paid the fee doesn’t mean they are happy: Vania Joloboff on why the Open Software Foundation will build its own version of Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java language.

The intranet is just a passing fad: John Hart, chief technologist 3Com Corp.

If the island of Java were to establish a domain name that had Java in it, we would not go after them: a Sun Microsystems Inc official, explaining the company’s new policy of pursuing violators of its Java name.

Informix smells Sybase’s blood in the water. And it knows it must position itself as the number two database vendor before the world just concludes Well, there are only three database companies you would ever consider; Oracle, IBM and Microsoft: Ray Lane, who is the head of worldwide operations for Oracle Corp.

Unix missed the timeline. They [the Unix community] had the chance at least six years a

nd they missed it: Professor Doctor Hasso Plattner, the technical director of SAP, speaking on why its new Internet products will only run on Windows NT.

Like me, embed me, but treat me like an object: A T-shirt at the Apple Computer Inc’s developers’ conference.

Users should be able to proudly stand up and say they are Sybase users, instead of whispering it in a back room: Mitch Kertzman, former chief executive of Powersoft, now Sybase president and chief executive officer, speaking after announcing Sybase’s hybrid object-relational database.

We have tried it, it does not work, and all vendors that continue to try it will fail: Computer Associates chief executive Sanjay Kumar on efforts to build hybrid relational- object databases.