>Johnny's mom is an incompetent mother because she failed to test the cheese >that she put in his ham sandwich for E.Coli, salmonella, lead, melamine, and >every other possible contaminant, and he threw up in gym. > >You are saying that it's the vendor's responsibility to analyze the >microcode of every third-party component and find every possible bug, and >that failure to do so is proof of incompetence? Seriously?
This is exactly how melamine got into the food supply. Downer cattle made into meat patties. Salmonella burgers. E.Coli salad. Lead on toddler toys. Not to mention goods made with child labor. You may think it is all right for the vendor to take a "see no evil" attitude. I don't. I don't think Trent Lott's ideology is valid. Johnny's mom should not be expected to equip herself with a biological testing lab just to feed her family. Unfortunately if we adopt your "see no evil" attitude she does. After Reagan fired the food inspectors we got wave upon wave of contaminated food and resulting deaths. The burden of knowing what is in a product is correctly attributed to the seller. They are the one with the profits and the resources. As an engineer I know that manufacturers do analyze and test the components of the products they sell. I also see that some companies think that such responsibilities do not apply to themselves. The source code in question is readily available. One commentator noted that the stupid error was plainly visible: "I found this in just about 20 seconds, before I looked at the explanation". http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/01/the_z2k9_problem.php ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
