>>* All vendors are liars.
>No we're not! :-)
Individual engineers and even sales people might be not (although it is harder for the sales people in a typical corporation to hold their job if they insist on being honest). However, truly honest people are a statistical minority, while a big corporation has to employ the average cultural cross-section to stay large.
When investors put pressure on the management to make a profit, the management is very unlikely to make decisions according to their true beliefs about the quality of the product they are about to call "a release". They are also unlikely to sincerely put the customer ahead of their profit margins. In that situation, the customer position in their hierarchy of priorities will advance no further that the minimum level that is necessary to maximize the profit. While exceptions do exists, they are only few and in between.
One way to fix the problem is for the customer to learn to see through the hype better, and refuse to use substandard products even if it means going without. Then we might see emphasis on marketing through quality and word of mouth rather than brochures, expos, TV commercials, and pretty web sites.
-- Sasha Pachev AskSasha Linux Consulting http://www.asksasha.com
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