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More IT hilarity
May. 19th, 2009 01:59 pmIt's always difficult reporting legal actions. Hell, it was hard enough in the old days, but at least then you only had one country and one legal system to worry about. These days, you never know what minor rule of contempt or libel you might break when uttering the most innocent comments.
With that caveat stumped out upfront, you might want to translate some of the following into my normal, rather more blunt style.
The National Union Fire Insurance Co of Pittsburgh (owned, lol, by AIG), has filed a case in a California court against Nvidia -- a manufacturer, as a judge might say while checking his notes, of "so-called graphical processing units, whatever they may be".
The backstory here isn't a matter of who is right and who is wrong -- it's just a brilliant example of what appears to happen as soon as an IT company, led mainly by IT people (Nvidia's CEO was an engineer first, a marketing man second, and a senior executive third) heads off into the real world.
Nvidia made a number of GPUs that caused problems in laptops. My limited reading on this technical side of the matter is that a bit too much heat is alleged to have been generated for the cooling fans. But the alleged flaws in the GPUs (flaws which appear to have been accepted by Nvidia) are neither here nor there.
In the middle of last year the legal threats from HP, Apple, Asus, Dell, Toshiba etc started to come in. Nvidia, as would be required by its professional indemnity insurance policy, put its insurer (the aforementioned NUFI) on notice. Plus 1 for Nvidia here. At least it got that bit right.
Unfortunately, at this point, Nvidia seemed to head off into IT lala land. It is reported to have negotiated settlements with the computer manufacturers (including a $10m deal with Toshiba) and then asked the insurer for the money. NUFI, unsurprisingly, told Nvidia that if anyone was going to do some negotiations, it would be NUFI, not Nvidia. In addition, said NUFI, perhaps exhibiting that standard frustration that we all feel when on the phone to an IT helpdesk in Mumbai, it would be quite nice for NUFI to be sent a few details of the case (meaning, of course, the number of field failures, the number of units shipped, and so on).
Nvidia, still in IT heaven, is said to have promptly sent NUFI gazillions of sheets of technical crap explaining why the GPUs had failed/caused problems, and no sheets whatsoever delineating what NUFI want to know (ring any bells for anyone who has emailed an IT company detailing a problem?).
However, NUFI had one big advantage over we mere mortals, one which perhaps Nvidia hadn't spotted. This was that everyone in Nvidia needed NUFI rather more than everyone in NUFI needed Nvidia.
NUFI perhaps just said to itself the equivalent of "fuck this for a game of soldiers", and filed suit, alleging that Nvidia had breached contract.
I have an image of the Nvidia boardroom, a kind of IT geek landscape with "senior executives" (i.e., late 30s, perhaps early 40s) talking about prots and prods and meths (protocols, products, methods, obv) while a few others play on 80s retro Apple II refurbs, and four others play fusball. They'd dealt with this "problem" thus far the way all IT people seem to deal with problems -- being in IT means never having to say you are sorry. Now, suddenly, the lawyers walk into the room, tell Nvidia's board that the insurers have told IT company it isn't getting any cash, and asking the Nvidia board what they plan to do about it.
Next thing you know, the board en masse has turned into some kind of conglomerate Rain Man, holding their heads in their hands and rocking backwards and forwards on their haunches, sticking their hands over their ears and shouting "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" as loudly as possible because, as all autistics know, this is the best way to make a problem go away.
Oh well, it probably didn't happen like that, but I think that it will make an interesting legal case, if it gets any coverage....
++++++++++++++
Bad news on the Ashes front for the England team. It appears that the Australians have turned up...
With that caveat stumped out upfront, you might want to translate some of the following into my normal, rather more blunt style.
The National Union Fire Insurance Co of Pittsburgh (owned, lol, by AIG), has filed a case in a California court against Nvidia -- a manufacturer, as a judge might say while checking his notes, of "so-called graphical processing units, whatever they may be".
The backstory here isn't a matter of who is right and who is wrong -- it's just a brilliant example of what appears to happen as soon as an IT company, led mainly by IT people (Nvidia's CEO was an engineer first, a marketing man second, and a senior executive third) heads off into the real world.
Nvidia made a number of GPUs that caused problems in laptops. My limited reading on this technical side of the matter is that a bit too much heat is alleged to have been generated for the cooling fans. But the alleged flaws in the GPUs (flaws which appear to have been accepted by Nvidia) are neither here nor there.
In the middle of last year the legal threats from HP, Apple, Asus, Dell, Toshiba etc started to come in. Nvidia, as would be required by its professional indemnity insurance policy, put its insurer (the aforementioned NUFI) on notice. Plus 1 for Nvidia here. At least it got that bit right.
Unfortunately, at this point, Nvidia seemed to head off into IT lala land. It is reported to have negotiated settlements with the computer manufacturers (including a $10m deal with Toshiba) and then asked the insurer for the money. NUFI, unsurprisingly, told Nvidia that if anyone was going to do some negotiations, it would be NUFI, not Nvidia. In addition, said NUFI, perhaps exhibiting that standard frustration that we all feel when on the phone to an IT helpdesk in Mumbai, it would be quite nice for NUFI to be sent a few details of the case (meaning, of course, the number of field failures, the number of units shipped, and so on).
Nvidia, still in IT heaven, is said to have promptly sent NUFI gazillions of sheets of technical crap explaining why the GPUs had failed/caused problems, and no sheets whatsoever delineating what NUFI want to know (ring any bells for anyone who has emailed an IT company detailing a problem?).
However, NUFI had one big advantage over we mere mortals, one which perhaps Nvidia hadn't spotted. This was that everyone in Nvidia needed NUFI rather more than everyone in NUFI needed Nvidia.
NUFI perhaps just said to itself the equivalent of "fuck this for a game of soldiers", and filed suit, alleging that Nvidia had breached contract.
I have an image of the Nvidia boardroom, a kind of IT geek landscape with "senior executives" (i.e., late 30s, perhaps early 40s) talking about prots and prods and meths (protocols, products, methods, obv) while a few others play on 80s retro Apple II refurbs, and four others play fusball. They'd dealt with this "problem" thus far the way all IT people seem to deal with problems -- being in IT means never having to say you are sorry. Now, suddenly, the lawyers walk into the room, tell Nvidia's board that the insurers have told IT company it isn't getting any cash, and asking the Nvidia board what they plan to do about it.
Next thing you know, the board en masse has turned into some kind of conglomerate Rain Man, holding their heads in their hands and rocking backwards and forwards on their haunches, sticking their hands over their ears and shouting "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" as loudly as possible because, as all autistics know, this is the best way to make a problem go away.
Oh well, it probably didn't happen like that, but I think that it will make an interesting legal case, if it gets any coverage....
++++++++++++++
Bad news on the Ashes front for the England team. It appears that the Australians have turned up...
