I'm not a fan of frivolous lawsuits (hot coffee in the lap) because they generally take time away from lawsuits with real merit (asbestos, guns, cigarettes, etc). Most recently lawsuits have been lodged against Apple for the iPhone - One for the antenna issue and the other for the AT&T iPhone exclusivity. The first one is clearly an idiotic attempt at a money grab. Sure it's proven that holding the phone a certain way causes you to lose bars (I can't seem to reproduce this issue but others I know have) but so what? If you don't like the way your phone behaves, return the phone for a full refund. You haven't been damaged in any way that would require redress via a lawsuit. That would be like me buying a pepperoni pizza that didn't have enough pepperonis on it. I'd either suck it up or return it for another one that had enough pepperonis. If the pizza place couldn't deliver me a pizza with enough pepperonis on it because of a design flaw in their pizza making process, I'd just go but a pepperoni pizza from another place that could deliver me a pizza with the required number of pepperonis.

The second lawsuit is one that definitely will be beneficial should it prevail. Having the iPhone on multiple carriers will create more competition in the wireless marketplace forcing AT&T (and others) to compete more on price, service, etc. If nothing else, it'll mean that iPhone users will be dispersed across multiple networks so that the strain won't be on one network. To keep with the pizza analogy, this would be like if you could only order a pepperoni pizza from one place. Not to say that the quality of the pizza or the pizza place was bad but it's easy to see that if more places could offer that pepperoni pizza to their customers, this would benefit everyone in terms of more options, faster service, etc.

Dang... I'm hungry now.

Just read this story over at TechCrunch. Though the gist of it is technically more about file sharing and the music industry, it reminded me of the old days of 1999-2001 when all the dot-com douche bags (myself included) would cram into SOMA bars and think they were the kings/queens of the world. I distinctly remember a confrontation when one group of folks from Start Up A was monopolizing bar space and a group from Start Up B were trying to order drinks. As expected a little pushing and shoving match ensued with the requisite "Do you know where we work?" and "We're gonna buy this place!" was thrown around. Basically, young knuckle heads with too much money and too few failures in their young careers to know any better. A scant year or two later and most of them probably were unemployed. Another conversation I overheard was where a guy was talking about jumping to another start up only 3 months after joining his current one. His friend was saying "Do it man! That place is gonna take off! Take less money and get more equity. It's all about the equity man!" It was definitely a sign of the times.
 
As we have gone through one dot com implosion and are currently in the midst of a major recession, the number of young start ups has definitely diminished. Plus the fact that most start ups aren't getting monster investments and hiring just for the sake of hiring. The people who work at start ups today do it because they prefer to work in that environment versus trying to make a quick buck (believe me, there are far easier ways to make money than working at a web start up). This culling of the herd has definitely reduced the number of douche bags I see in the industry. But as the old adage goes, a douche bag never thinks he/she is a douche bag. Maybe someone is reading this and thinking, "This guy is such a douche bag." Wouldn't be my first time.