Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1125 mails)
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Re: [opensuse] gnu libc manual wrong?? concat (const char *str, ...) doesn't work...
- From: Dirk Gently <dirk.gently00@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 05:49:08 -0400
- Message-id: <4FB37814.3000606@gmail.com>
Ted Byers wrote:
, now go back and modify the design so that mean time before failure is 3
years." The kid was devastated that the boss would demand such a sacrilegious
debasement of his first commercial product, and spent hours talking about it
with my father. My father told him that if he wanted to remain employed, he'd
have to do as he was told, however obscene that act seemed. While my father
was as outraged by the demand placed of the kid, he knew there was nothing
either of them could do about it. In brief, my father gave him the realist's
perspective: management makes the decisions about what gets done by whom, and
you either give them what they want or they will get rid of you. He had seen
it often enough before. Management wanted a product that would fail quickly,
so that the consumer could be more easily tempted to buy the next latest and
greatest product. Planned obsolescence he called it. I call it deliberately
marketing products you know are defective, but in a way that t
he defect
doesn't appear until after a usually short warranty period. My landlord told
me of a problem he had with his car, which was just 3 years old. There is a
known fault with the electrical panel in that it corrodes easily, but generally
not until after he warranty period has expired. He was told it would cost
$10,000 to fix it, and even though the dealer and manufacturer agreed it is a
manufacturing defect, it is not covered under warranty because it failed after
the warranty expired. Fortunately he knew a chap that works as a mechanic and
who knew both how common the problem is and how to fix it practically for a
song (so there was an inexpensive fix that the dealership also would have known
about but chose not to use). Clearly the attitude my father experienced with
management half a century ago is still commonplace among large manufacturers
now. And thy get away with it because no-one who cares about the issue has
pockets deep enough to challenge them. And it isn't jus
t the sof
tware industry in which this happens. It is all industries.
Three words: Class Action Lawsuit.
It's amazing how many hours a lawyer will work, without any money up front if he
thinks he can get a 1/3 cut of a $1 settlement for each of 10 million or more
plaintiffs, all combined into only one court case.
You don't go after a complete giant like Microsoft, you just go after a
smaller vendor of similarly shoddy software who can't afford to keep a
case in the preliminary phase for 10 years, and thereby set a precedence.
Once that's done, then you can go after the big fish. And if a judge gets
a product liability suit against, oh, say Windows in general for being a
crash-happy mess ... with precedence set in an earlier case .... then he'll
entertain strategic delying motions for only so long... after all the judge is
just as sick and tired of paying through the nose for crapware as everyone else.
I'm still holding out hope.
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kid, "OKFrom: Dirk Gently [mailto:dirk.gently00@xxxxxxxxx]It doesn't much matter what the laws have to say if you're in a David and
Sent: May-15-12 3:58 PM
To: opensuse
Subject: Re: [opensuse] gnu libc manual wrong?? concat (const char *str, ...)
doesn't work...
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2012-05-13 01:03, Anton Aylward wrote:
For the likes of us, the whole 'first to market and never mind the
bugs' attitude is JUST PLAIN WRONG!
You tell that to the bosses. They know not anything about programming,
just money.
What's needed is some liability lawsuits. All of these "Not fit for any
purpose"
on software packaging are just so much nonsense. I would argue in court that
they are nothing less than quaint decoration, because if the software vendor
REALLY believed that the software is not fit for any puropose, then they
wouldn't have gone to the trouble of advertising its capabilities (both in
the
media and on the package
itself) and writing and distributing user manuals expressing EXACTLY what the
software is supposed to do (regardless of whether it actually does it or
not).
Once management finds out that legally defending defective software takes all
the profit out of the "We got our bugware to market first"
strategy, we will see a change.
Product liability law doesn't tolerate this sort of shoddyness for even a
simple
lawnmower, why should it be tolerated in software which has far greater
impact on humanity?
Goliath situation. My father used to work in Quality control at an
electronics company that was, and still is, a huge international entity. In
that role, he worked closely with the design engineers. Way back when I was
a kid, he told of a story of an interaction he had with this kid fresh out of
university whose first task was to design a new transformer for the company's
home entertainment products. He was given the requirements and given time to
finish his design and make a few prototype to prove his design met the
requirements. After a suitable amount of time he had finished the design and
prototypes, and presented them to his supervisor stating that his design met
the requirements specified to a finer degree of tolerance than was required,
and that his transformers could be guaranteed to last a lifetime. His
supervisor examined the work and found the kid's claims justified, and then
told the
, now go back and modify the design so that mean time before failure is 3
years." The kid was devastated that the boss would demand such a sacrilegious
debasement of his first commercial product, and spent hours talking about it
with my father. My father told him that if he wanted to remain employed, he'd
have to do as he was told, however obscene that act seemed. While my father
was as outraged by the demand placed of the kid, he knew there was nothing
either of them could do about it. In brief, my father gave him the realist's
perspective: management makes the decisions about what gets done by whom, and
you either give them what they want or they will get rid of you. He had seen
it often enough before. Management wanted a product that would fail quickly,
so that the consumer could be more easily tempted to buy the next latest and
greatest product. Planned obsolescence he called it. I call it deliberately
marketing products you know are defective, but in a way that t
he defect
doesn't appear until after a usually short warranty period. My landlord told
me of a problem he had with his car, which was just 3 years old. There is a
known fault with the electrical panel in that it corrodes easily, but generally
not until after he warranty period has expired. He was told it would cost
$10,000 to fix it, and even though the dealer and manufacturer agreed it is a
manufacturing defect, it is not covered under warranty because it failed after
the warranty expired. Fortunately he knew a chap that works as a mechanic and
who knew both how common the problem is and how to fix it practically for a
song (so there was an inexpensive fix that the dealership also would have known
about but chose not to use). Clearly the attitude my father experienced with
management half a century ago is still commonplace among large manufacturers
now. And thy get away with it because no-one who cares about the issue has
pockets deep enough to challenge them. And it isn't jus
t the sof
tware industry in which this happens. It is all industries.
Those working for large companies often don't have a choice in the quality of
product they deliver. They deliver what management mandates. And the
consumers don't have pockets deep enough to let them fight a huge
international manufacturer.
Product liability laws sound great, but what good are they if no-one enforces
them, and if no-one who cares about product quality has pockets deep enough
to fight the large corporations on the matter.
Three words: Class Action Lawsuit.
It's amazing how many hours a lawyer will work, without any money up front if he
thinks he can get a 1/3 cut of a $1 settlement for each of 10 million or more
plaintiffs, all combined into only one court case.
You don't go after a complete giant like Microsoft, you just go after a
smaller vendor of similarly shoddy software who can't afford to keep a
case in the preliminary phase for 10 years, and thereby set a precedence.
Once that's done, then you can go after the big fish. And if a judge gets
a product liability suit against, oh, say Windows in general for being a
crash-happy mess ... with precedence set in an earlier case .... then he'll
entertain strategic delying motions for only so long... after all the judge is
just as sick and tired of paying through the nose for crapware as everyone else.
I don't think we will ever see a significant change.
I'm still holding out hope.
Cheers
Ted
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To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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