What they are doing:

Politicians say one thing and then go ahead and do another. When confronted, they'll double-speak, reframe the issue, or change the topic. Happens all the time - nothing new to politics.

But in this particular case, the gov't's packpedalling on their promises results in a good thing, so I'm not complaining.

I'm sure it was halfway decent... "But Rahinder from Apple support in Bombay told me 'I am sorry sir, but I do not know anything about returning an iPhone. Now can you please tell me how I can help you with your iTunes purchase.' I contacted Apple, didn't I?"

When you say "The rest of us", you should say just yourself.

I take issue with their ignorance toward the difference between a hacker and a cracker. (links to Eric Raymond's "The Jargon File")

Yup - that is exactly what I have got at work as well. I think the half-height walls are great cos they give you your own private area where you can zone out just code - but you still have the options of standing up to have a chat with anyone else on the team.

The only problem I have with it are the L-shaped desks. These are problematic when two or more developers are looking at the same screen - which I find happens quite often, especially when making architectural decisions about the software, and when one dev is showing another dev how to do ${programmingTask}. What tends to happen is we push the chair out of the corner of the L, and both of us sit on the table, which is not ideal.

I think the best desk configuration would be a cross shape, with half height walls, and straight (not L-shaped) desks.

Oh, and throw in one pair of noise-cancelling headphones for each dev. Those are worth their weight in gold in increasing productivity.

I returned an Iphone 3G in this spirit. "I don't know any other phone were I can't resent or forward a text message".