>>37

I didn't say it was productive, but I bet it sure did feel good.

Teresa >>44

Lawyers are supposed to do their jobs instead of demanding that the bad guy do it. I understood someone to claim upthread that he couldn't possibly *understand* what the CEO was talking about. I gave the example of telling the hangman to tie his own fckng noose. The plaintiffs' lawyers are, in fact, supposed to do their own jobs, even though they're on the side of the angels. Note that understanding doesn't mean agreement.

I think that CEO just doesn't know any better techniques than profanity for dealing with people who don't want to do their jobs. It probably got him through life up to that point, even though it's not right.

Disclaimer: That CEO is probably not someone I'd want to bring into my personal life.

>>23

Perhaps the plaintiffs' lawyers were getting away with being rude to most of the defendants because the plaintiffs, as a whole, were in the right and the defendants, as a whole, were in the wrong. I could see a CEO who recognizes that he has little left to lose taking great pleasure in making rudeness harder to get away with.

As I understand it, lawyers often mark the relevant bits of files to save time when examining witnesses. Not doing so would seem to be a breach of etiquette, and I can see being disinclined to do the job of the guy trying to hang you. If I had an appointment with the hangman and he asked me for help tying the noose, I'd be inclined to tell him to tie his own fucking noose, even if I did deserve to hang.

NOTE: My theory of his annoyance at the lawyer in no way excuses the dishonesty that led to the subprime crisis. Lots of dishonest people saw quick bucks to be made, and it's coming back to screw us all. I'm merely saying that this exchange isn't proof of this CEO's bad character.

As an added benefit, "quality of life" is such a nebulous concept that it'll be utterly trivial for the psychometricians to come out with whatever numbers their bosses need in order to look good.

polar bear in a snowstorm?

http://cyberniklas.de/pongmechanik/indexen.html is an electromechanical pong (I think it was covered here a while back).

I've designed some flashable embedded firmware and dealt with some flashing mechanisms designed by others. I believe it would take effort to make an upgrade procedure as brittle as the Apple fans claim this one is. The background fits better in a blog post than a comment: http://bear-cat.livejournal.com/8890.html

#4: Short analogies seldom help because relevant parts differ. Of course disabling the rev limiter would allow physical damage. See below for an attempt at a true analogy.

On preview:

#12: I thought the contract was with AT&T. Apple intended to ship a device that wouldn't work with other service, but apparently they failed.

#13: When designing a flashable device, I always make sure there's a way to recover from a bad load. This involves a (preferably write-protected) boot block that tries to obtain and install a new load if the current load is corrupt or if the user sets a jumper/hits ESC/whatever.

Here's an attempt at a better analogy (too bad it's so long; normal automotive business models aren't quite as slimy as cellular ones, so there's a lot of extra exposition):

Some car companies have remote access to a diagnostic bus as part of a telematics service (you can call in when the "check engine" light comes on and find out what it means, etc). Suppose Acme Motors runs such a service that also does firmware upgrades, so they can avoid the inconvenience of having to get all owners of copies of a bad load to drive to the dealer for an upgrade.

Suppose further that someone releases a software patch to allow Acme cars to burn non-Firemaster fuel, which they can't do when they leave the factory. (To buy Firemaster fuel, you have to sign a contract with a kickback to Acme, but you can buy an Acme car without signing a contract.)

Acme could use the remote-diag feature to probe each car for the patch and then disable all those they found with it.

The strawman Acme-fanboy position would be something along the lines of "you voided your warranty by modifying your software, so of course anything that happens is your fault, even though Acme did it on purpose."

Can someone who defends Apple but thinks Acme is in the wrong explain how the situations differ?