On Wednesday, 30 October 2013 at 21:18:16 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
On 10/30/2013 11:01 AM, Chris wrote:
"Poorly designed firmware caused unintended operation, lack of
driver
training made it fatal."
So it's the driver's fault, who couldn't possibly know what
was going on
in that car-gone-mad? To put the blame on the driver is
cynicism of the worst kind.
Unfortunately, that's a common (and dangerous) attitude I've
come across
among programmers and engineers.
There are also misguided end users who believe there cannot be
any other way (and sometimes even believe that the big players
in the industry are infallible, and hence the user is to blame
for any failure).
I know. A lot of people are like that. But who (mis)guides them?
The big PR campaigns by big companies who talk about "safety" and
"precision" and give users a false sense of security. Now that I
think of it, maybe the fact that they don't have a simple
mechanical backup is not because of the engineering culture.
Maybe it is to do with the fact that a product might seem less
attractive, if the company admits that it can fail by including a
backup mechanism.
