They absolutely did think those things. They even had a name for "the cunning mind": "Dave".
And, not to argue whether DirecTV is more magnificent than whatever, but the attacks on it were neither "pissy" nor "little". They were more advanced than most of what we see on general purpose architectures.
Point missed. Were they more advanced than a global satellite network? There is simply comparison whatsoever. Exploiting a system is never as significant as creating a system.
That may well be true in DTV's case --- a point I acknowledged already --- but it's not true in security at large. Breaking an existing well-regarded block cipher, for instance, is far more significant than simply creating a new one.
And, not to argue whether DirecTV is more magnificent than whatever, but the attacks on it were neither "pissy" nor "little". They were more advanced than most of what we see on general purpose architectures.