I am duty-bound to repeat my strong recommendation for the Risks Digest! I want everyone here to go to the archive, pick one issue at random (they're all equally relevant to today) and read it through. You will be wiser.

In that digest I have been reading the work of some of the greatest security experts of the information age as they discuss and warn us on the the issues of quality in software and systems design for well over 10 years now (the first issue was in 1985). The older I get, the more it seems that absolutely friggin' everything that can go wrong was known beforehand and a workaround was available!

Sure people are stupid and make mistakes, but it is the structure of the whole project (in the case of a systems design for instance) that allows such mistakes to slip though and get into production, after which point it is in everyones' best interest to proclaim that it couldn't have been forseen, lest they end up taking some responsibility. That's it responsibility, the single most threatening thing in the modern world, a force so overwhelming that it threatens to drive civilization right into the ground as everyone flees its grasp.

Either mistakes like this price-changing loophole literally don't matter (which indicates something else very wrong with the way things work) or people had better start paying more attention before something really bad happens. Demand quality of your work and that of those around you!

Geez, I'm starting to sound like crazyinsomniac, I'd better quit here.

crazypedant!

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

In reply to Re: Electronic Pricetag Alteration by Albannach
in thread Electronic Pricetag Alteration by jcwren

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