On: Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger"

[philwelch]

"Not a good reason, in Jobs's view, because the code could easily be reverse-engineered. No it couldn't, said Tim. Could, said Jobs."

I don't know where Jobs gets his instincts about this stuff, but he was totally right: http://tlb.org/scooter.html

[qq66 → philwelch]

I don't see any evidence that this is a "reverse engineering" of a Segway - it seems to be more of a "re-engineering" from scratch.

[InclinedPlane → qq66]

Is there a practical difference?

[qq66 → InclinedPlane]

Yes, a re-engineering cannot be prevented by the original company through secrecy, obfuscation, or legal threats.

[roc → philwelch]

It's easy: any code can easily be reverse- or re-engineered.

In a world where people crack encryption schemes or write open-source drivers for hardware without any documentation or specifications to speak of -- for fun, mind you -- it's the height of either arrogance or ignorance to assume that something won't be re-created just because it's hard.

[tlrobinson → philwelch]

And again:

"We have a few things they can't get," said Dean. "Specialty components with only one source."

"They'll figure out a way around that," said Jobs.

"I've spent nine years looking," said Dean, "and I don't think so."