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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

Wired did an article about high tech connected homes. The section on Larry Ellison had an anecdote about how Larry got frustrated with his system and threw the remote at a wall, smashing it.

He made one of the engineers drive out to his house with a new one on a Saturday night.

Now, the fact that this story is true is telling enough, but what sort of experience did the writers have with Larry that inspired them to put in that story that paints him as a petty, tyrannical manchild?

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Ellison is the kind of guy who lands his private jet late at night, knowing he will have to pay fines for night noise, then sues over it.

I hadn't heard of this, but it's true: www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judge-clears-Ellison-for-landing-at-night-2909426.php

Ehh...Larry has a point. If you care about noise levels, don't use weight as a proxy - just use noise levels. Why can a big, quiet plane not land at night, but a tiny noisy plane can?

Noise is ephemeral and therefore harder to prove.

As the other guy says, it's hard to prove in court which noise came from which plane, but besides that, they may have used weight as a proxy for distinguishing between military and civilian aircraft ("tiny noisy planes" tending to be military), and, also, perceived loudness[1] is a function of both decibel level[2] and pitch[3] (that is, a whistle will be at a higher decibel level than a drum we perceive as equally "loud"). It's intuitively plausible that larger planes tend to make lower-pitched sounds.

[1] amplitude

[2] amplitude * frequency

[3] frequency

"It is regrettable that a dispute about one airplane has consumed so large a quantity of human and economic resources and that the parties have found compromise so difficult"

So much hate. Just because someone has enough money to file a lawsuit and keep it alive for years doesn't mean the other side should somehow be penalized for not compromising with the fool.

I think the google guys did the same, no? Not that it makes the behavior better or normalizes it, but just that he's not the single exception.

It's Wired. Tangential anecdotes, the wilder the better, are their existence.

> He made one of the engineers drive out to his house with a new one on a Saturday night.

Did it occur to anyone that that engineer might be happy to be picked as the one to drive out and do that? To some people that is the way to get noticed and stand out with the boss (or king, whatever).

> tyrannical manchild?

Like any anecdote we don't know the full story here and exact circumstances. Just the fact that juxtaposed against what people have be told about Ellison it appears that he must certainly be 'a tyrannical manchild'.

This is the most Hacker News “please rich daddy notice me” thing I’ve read in years.

Maybe it was sarcasm? I hope it was sarcasm, at least, or that the OP is young enough and hasn't had the chance to learn yet.

    threw the remote at a wall, smashing it.

That’s a tantrum. Is there any empathetic version of this story where someone over 45 looks like a grownup doing it?

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