"They found out later what happened. Apparently, a week after they'd headed out to sea, their satellite phone company changed the brand of SIM card that it used. And the company mailed new SIM cards to everybody who had a phone through the mail, the regular mail, even though people with satellite phones-- the whole point of a satellite phone-- is that you're not anywhere normal. Right? You're off far away on a mountain, or a desert, or anywhere that regular phones do not work."

This gets right to the heart of the matter regarding that often folks in ivory towers just do not understand how their products are being used in the real world... such as Windows wanting to "phone home" when you change some hardware in some port to update the broken CD ROM or insert Memory.

But SIM cards being mailed out to sat phone users that are no doubt in remote locations... classic "pointy haired boss" move.