Arrests For Selling Poison-Ware In Spain

An anonymous reader writes "Spain's FBI equivalent has arrested the management of a software company (Google translation; Spanish original) for selling custom software to small and medium-sized businesses with 'controlled errors' that resulted in the software bombing on a predetermined date. They would then charge for fixing the problem and press the client into buying a maintenance contract. More than 1,000 clients were affected."

Microsoft

[Dexter Herbivore]

Sooo, they were following the Micro$oft business model then?

Re:Shenanigans!

[Jade E. 2]

how about this one, does it contain bugs?

10 PRINT "Meshach is never wrong!";
20 GOTO 10;

Yes, BASIC doesn't use semicolons at the end of lines.

Re:Microsoft

[badboy_tw2002]

Mod parent up! Epic slam at the '$oft, brah.

Re:Microsoft

[ElectricTurtle]

Those who did not learn from the history of Windows 3.0 are doomed to repeat it.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch

[zennyboy]

I live here in Spain and this doesn't surprise me. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, I'm surprised someone managed to program something so reliable they had to code in a time-bomb to make the software fail!

Spanish coders did that!

I'm proud :-)

(English ex-pat)

Re:Shenanigans!

[icebraining]

Nice post!

Re:Shenanigans!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then there is Toyota - their cars are randomly programmed *not* to stop at random intervals.

[rimshot]

fun captcha = Kicked

Re:Shenanigans!

[MichaelSmith]

10 PRINT "Meshach is never wrong!";

20 GOTO 10;

I'd count an infinite loop as a bug...

All of my microcontroller programs have infinite loops.

Re:Shenanigans!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but there is a remote kill switch. I bet you didn't know this, but that, combined with the OnStar keeps the driver from entering teh GHetto to buy drugs if he is under 25 years old... See you gotta insert your license into a slot under the dash, give up a small blood sample, and... Oh wait... That's next year's model. We will present all the new models, right after tonight's commercial free episode of Bonanza..

See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet..

Re:Yet another argument for Open Source. B-)

[nacturation]

How often does anything that looks like an obfuscated C contest entry actually get committed to a repository ?

Check out any project on SourceForge that is written in Perl. :)

How dare you, my mother is a saint!

[SmallFurryCreature]

I wonder which programmer should be more worried, the one who can't read the above, or the one who can.