The quote, from Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore, is a sort of sad double entendre: The question is set up as a broad query about the state of the consumer electronics industry, but Stringer's answer sounds more like an off-record confession about his own company than a cool assessment of its industry. From Sony's point of view, the CE industry hasn't started to turn around; from Sony's point of view, Sony hasn't started to turn around: whichever was meant, these aren't the most reassuring words to hear from head honcho of one of the largest electronics companies in the world.

Anyway, cheer up Howard! People will buy your consoles, to play games, to sim-kill civilian hostages, for Christmas! It's how things are. [Reuters via Digital Daily—Apologies for the PS3 Spidey font. It had to be done.]

Here is the full quote in context from the program Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great.

"Well, he's done a fantastic job," Gates said. "Apple is in a bit of a different business where they make hardware and software together. But when Steve was coming back to Apple, which was actually through an acquisition of NeXT that he ran, Apple was in very tough shape. In fact, most likely it wasn't going to survive."

He continued: "And he brought in a team, he brought in inspiration about great products and design that's made Apple back into being an incredible force in doing good things. And it's great to have competitors like that. We write software for Apple, Microsoft does. They compete with Apple. But he, of all the leaders in the industry that I've worked with, he showed more inspiration and he saved the company."

Awww...how touching. [AppleInsider]

Between this quarter and the next, we can finally pass Dell

Not only that, they think they can "breach the gap" with HP as well. [WSJ]

Twitter user Beninato quotes Ballmer in saying "This will not happen again" and "We've pumped in some new talent," and Pjozefak gives the blockquote in our headline: Microsoft screwed up with Windows Mobile, and it should have already launched. We've seen a few promising bits previews of Windows Mobile, notably the browser in the Zune HD (it's not perfect, but it bodes well), but Windows Mobile has been a stinker for years now and Microsoft had better bust out the big guns to get it right with WinMo 7. [Twitter and Babbling VC via WMPowerUser via MobileTechWorld via Engadget]

Bradbury was speaking in defense of public libraries, and recounted an anecdote of Yahoo! asking him if one of his works could be made available on the Internet. Bradbury's reply? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet." He further elaborated, "It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."

Old people are funny sometimes. [NY Times, image also via NY Times]

The irony of a man in charge of a company who artists and consumers both hate making this statement apparently was lost on him.

Take this quote from the Washington Times:

Pointing to President Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon, Mr. Obama said: "I will set big goals for this country as president - some so large that the technology to reach them does not yet exist."

We all know saying and doing are two completely different things—especially when it comes to a presidential election. Hopefully, he will actually be able to pull some of this off. Hit the link for the rest of the list. [Junauza via Digg]

Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.

10 years? So you think that everyone will have a Kindle in 10 years?

Yeah. If it's 14 or if it's 8, it's immaterial to my fundamental point.

So what was his fundamental point? In 10 years there will be far fewer delivery boys to eat. But we'll be saving trees on napkins and newspapers.

Hit the link for more interesting stuff from Ballmer. [Washington Post]