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The Software Conspiracy: Why Software Companies Put Out Faulty Products, How They Can Hurt You, and What You Can Do About ItMay 1999
Publisher:
  • McGraw-Hill School Education Group
ISBN:978-0-07-134806-5
Published:01 May 1999
Pages:
271
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Abstract

From the Publisher: A world-renowned technology expert reveals the true cost to business and society created by little-known problems rife within the software industry. Software kills Yes. Industry insider Mark Minasi argues that it routinely destroys millions of work hours,files,deals,and ideas. Most of us are familiar with conputer problems,but how manyrealize that software victims also include people: a 7 year-old killed by bad fuel-injection software in a Chevrolet in Alabama,28 U.S. Marines lost to a missile-chip malfunction,200 people on a flight to Guam blown to bits when an altitude warning device failed. Minasi believes it's time to get mad at the industry that allows such things to happen. From his unique vantage point,he delivers an incisive and highly readable expose that calls computer makers and consumers to account. He reveals how companies inexcusably get away with thumbing their nose at quality,and tells what all of us can do to stop it. Software Firms to PC Users: "BYTE ME". Avoidable software "bugs"a cute word for defectshave directly cost the loss of millions of dollars and hundreds of lives. 90% of the bugs that consumers report to software vendors were already known by the vendors before the product was shipped. Powerful software CEOs think that you're completely unaware of software quality and that as long as they keep adding useless features,you'll keep buying. Software firms routinely spring conditions on you after you've paid for their product,but before you can install it on your computer: conditions they won't let you see before you pay for it; conditions that absolve them for any wrongs the product may do to your dataandabsolve you of any rights you have to ownership,or even use of the product you paid for. The software industry maintains software police who can obtain warrants to enter your business and fine you hundreds of thousands of dollars if you are not using the software according to the industry's complex rules and keeping the IRS-like records that they require. Why does the industry do this Because they can. Because we let them. Consumers who would otherwise howl with outrage over any other kind of product that turned out to be so shabby have been conditioned to give the software industry a free ride. Veteran journalist and computer expert Mark Minasi now explains why it's time to punch some tickets. As Upton Sinclair took on the meat packing industry in The Jungle,Mark Minasi exposes the conspiracy of contempt,complacency,and arrogance of the software industry. An industry now as powerful as the automobile industry was in the sixties and seventiesand as vulnerable.

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