Do you ever feel like this in a project meeting?

[grouchobyte]

Put yourself in the position of the attorney. The other three are the usual suspects. The photocopier is just the vehicle. Substitute your widget project for the photocopier. You are leading the meeting. Now, feel alone?

[ataradov]

Have they ever seen a real deposition? It is typically more boring than watching paint dry. That's one hell of dramatization there.

[XOIIO]

Oh man, that was great.

[Brumby]

I had to laugh ... but maybe for a different reason to most.

I understand the manufacturer (of the equipment identified at the very end) has gone to great pains to dissuade the use of their trademarked name incorrectly - for fear of it becoming so commonly used that it becomes a generic word, which causes trademark issues.  They have been battling this for ages.

The whole skit is based on the confusion from that very usage that they want to eliminate - made delightfully clear in the last line.

[T3sl4co1l]

FYI, it's not a skit -- it's a true dramatization; well, true in the sense that the dialog is verbatim, though the delivery is of course hammed up a bit.

Tim

[DenzilPenberthy]

I more often feel like this in project meetings...

[grouchobyte]

Thats another great video. I was planning on attaching that link as well but decided one was was enough. What I love about the 7 red lines video is the fact that the engineer is dealing with complete morons which is very much like reality. I've often felt completely alone until I started comparing my experiences with other engineers and realized....its not me.....its them. I'm okay. I just gotta get out of here.

[grouchobyte]

Or in more recent years......

http://youtu.be/DYu_bGbZiiQ

Why do some people embrace his crap? I only endure it when my clients pay me huge sums of money

[ajb]

Regarding the original video...as absurd as the dialogue is made to sound, we're seeing it out of context and highly dramatized.  In context, if the case did in fact hinge on the precise definition of the term "photocopy" (which the one lawyer says it does, and if you read about the case is true), then it was perfectly prudent on the part of the subject of the deposition to make the lawyer define the term before answering the question.  Imagine you're the IT guy at a county government office, minding your own business, and suddenly you're being deposed for a state supreme court case about your office's policies.  You didn't make those policies, but your bosses did, and now you have to make sure you don't screw it all up by being careless and saying the wrong thing despite this lawyer's best efforts to trip you up, but you're also under oath.

The NY Times article linked from the video actually has a comment from the deposing lawyer, which is telling (emphasis mine):

David Marburger Cleveland, Ohio April 28, 2014
I'm the lawyer who deposed the photocopier witness. The testimony didn't end with "Xerox." Here's how it proceeded:

Q   Xerox. Is the machine made by the Xerox Company? Is that why it’s called Xerox?

A   No.

Q   So Xerox is being used generically as opposed to
describing a particular brand; is that right?   

A   All of my life I’ve just known people to say xerox. It’s not commonplace to use the terminology that you’re using.

Q   You mean people say Xerox instead of photocopy?

A   If you’re referring to a type of machine where you place a
piece of paper on the top and press a button and out comes
copies of it, they usually refer to it as Xerox.

Q   Have you ever heard it referred to as photocopying?   

A   Not with my generation, no.

An Ohio law allowed counties to charge $2/page for "photocopying a document." Cuyahoga County claimed that dubbing a CD that contained thousands of digital representations of pages of recorded deeds = "photocopying a document." The actual cost to the county of dubbing a CD was about 31 cents. The county demanded an average of $5,000 for each dubbed CD. As I said in an earlier comment: The deposition wasn't angry, and the witness didn't act scared. I sat back much as the actor playing my opposing counsel does in the video, and tossed out questioning to see how far the witness would go in disclaiming knowledge of photocopying in an office setting. The idea was to use the witness' own testimony to make him look disingenuous.

[zapta]

One of the things you need to be careful in depositions is not to let the other side sneak in presumptions. For example, if you are questioned about design doc number X and the question refers to it as "that design doc with 3D IR heated chamber", you want the question to be rephrased and use a proper 'design doc number X' before you answer. Otherwise you implicitly admit that that design doc includes "an IR heated chamber for a 3D printer" which can be used against you. It this case, one of the lawyers says clearly "the word photocopy is an issue in this case".

Depositions are adversarial processes and the other lawyer is not your friend. Generally speaking engineers have problem with depositions because they try to 'explain difficult technical details' and often provide more information than the question required. For example, if the question is 'what is Arduino?',  'it's a company name' or even 'can you please be more specific' are valid answers.

(I am not a lawyer).

[joeqsmith]

Really enjoyed that first video. 

For example, if you are questioned about design doc number X and the question refers  Generally speaking engineers have problem with depositions because they try to 'explain difficult technical details' and often provide more information than the question required. (I am not a lawyer).

I was called on for a project that I was involved with.  Once all the formalities were taken care of, the first question the lawyer asked me was if I had worked on a "real time"  blah blah blah.   My response, "could you please define real time for me".   We were done just that quick.