you can imagine that the meaning of "bricked" has devolved a bit. A lot of times a unit of somesort can be reflashed, or have just the right comm signals sent to it.
So "bricked" sort of depends on the skill level/tools availibility/knowledge avalibility/persistance of the user. It isn't necessarily permanent. Though for some item's like computers, it often isn't worth it to the company to bother resucissitating it.
Looking at wikipedia, there are divisions known as "soft brick" and "hard brick" :/
Brick (electronics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
where hard brick would require a jtag programmer (and appropriate hex files).
One mans junk is another mans treasure.