Sent To Jail Because of a Software Bug 239
First time accepted submitter toshikodo writes "The BBC is reporting a claim that some sub-post office workers in the UK have been sent to jail because of a bug in the accounting software that they use. The Post Office admits Horizon computer defect. I've worked on safety critical system in the past, and I am well aware of the potential for software to ruin lives (thankfully AFAIK nobody has been harmed by my software), but how many of us consider the potential for bugs in ordinary software to adversely affect those that use it?"
Open Source... (Score:2, Insightful)
and shit like this doesn't happen or can at least be properly traced back by a third party and gives people the means to defend themselves.
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then what, nothing in OSS land takes responsibility for itself, its free it (sort of works) if it doesnt fix it your self or fuck off
Re:Open Source... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Open Source... (Score:5, Informative)
There's another option that open source gives you that proprietary software doesn't: You can pay someone else to fix it. If it's really that irritating to you, but you really don't want to work on it yourself, why not use some cash to convince a developer to fix your bug? You'll get what you want, the developer will get some cash, and the project will have its bug fixed. Everyone wins.
What you're really demanding is that volunteers do what you want them to do free of charge. What will actually happen is that volunteers will do whatever they damn well please.
Re:Open Source... (Score:5, Insightful)
then what, nothing in OSS land takes responsibility for itself
Red Hat does. Even Ubuntu will to some extent. Any time you want you can get paid support for OSS and, given the right support contract and money they really will take care of you properly. The definitely take responsibility for the things they promise. (N.B. your two dollar desktop license really doesn't promise much at all).
Its free it (sort of works) if it doesnt fix it your self or fuck off
And this is the thing. We have seen before that people were sent to jail for bugs in breathalyzers [arstechnica.com]. In some cases people who claimed these bugs were in courts that demanded source; they were set free. In other cases the proprietary software companies behind the machines managed to get them locked away without a fair trial.
If the shit hits the fan with OSS you always have one more option and the possibility to approach multiple support suppliers. This won't happen for free and it likely won't be included in any existing agreements, however you may be happy for the chance to spend $15000 on software consultancy and not spend the rest of your life in some US State hellhole. Your proprietary software vendor will be thinking of all the other people that might sue about a bug like that and will never ever help you out of the problem.
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And this is the thing. We have seen before that people were sent to jail for bugs in breathalyzers.
I would have thought that an actual blood test would be mandatory for any case that goes to court before any sentence can be passed. If for no other reason, some cough medicines could get you into trouble this way without actually impairing you in any legal sense.
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then what, nothing in OSS land takes responsibility for itself
Red Hat does. Even Ubuntu will to some extent. Any time you want you can get paid support for OSS and, given the right support contract and money they really will take care of you properly. The definitely take responsibility for the things they promise. (N.B. your two dollar desktop license really doesn't promise much at all).
You don't even need paid support. Hire a computer programmer and tell him to fix it and part of his job is to upstream it. He needs to work well with upstream software projects. Move him from project to project. There you go.
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then what, nothing in OSS land takes responsibility for itself, its free it (sort of works) if it doesnt fix it your self or fuck off
If you buy in proprietary software that is broken, you need to get the vendor to fix it. If you've directly contracted a small software vendor to write the system for you then that might be fine. If you buy in FOSS then you can pay your vendor to fix it, or you can fix it yourself, or you can pay a third party contractor to fix it. Sure, if you decide to just install FOSS software yourself without paying a vendor then (surprise) you can't expect someone to fix it for you, but thats the risk you take if y
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Open source is a licensing model. Taking responsibility is part of the contract. The difference between open source and proprietary code is that you have the option of going to more than one company to get it audited or get bugs fixed with open source. You can negotiate a better support contract because there are multiple companies willing to take your money. If you're buying software without a support contract then you're in a similar boat with open source or proprietary software: with open source you
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Also, deliberate bugs and backdoors simply wouldn't be checked back in.
Re:Open Source... (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone assumes someone is already out there testing all open-source software, which is why it never seems to get done.
Also, deliberate bugs and backdoors simply wouldn't be checked back in.
TFA quote:
Ms Hamilton said that, by the time the figure reached £36,000, she lied to the Post Office - wrongly telling them the books were balancing just so that she could open the office the next day.
With closed-source, the choices Ms Hamilton has:
* keep covering the differences caused by the bug
* refuse to pay and instead sue the Post Office/Royal Mail with the hope they'll ask Horizon computer system to check. Not going to happen: the plaintiff carries the burden of proof, the Post Office has no incentive to do anything.
With OSS, Ms Hamilton has (alone or in by association with other sub-postmasters) the choice between:
* do the same as for close source. or
* hire a QA team and, upon obtaining the proof, sue the Post Office for the unwarranted requests, cost of source audit and other unspecified damages. The Post Office has the choice between to keep losing such suits or pay their own source audit/QA process and release the fixes in OSS.
I wonder which of the two would minimize the total social cost of the package maintenance (in the very specific terms of the "unseen costs" [wikipedia.org])?
Re:Open Source... (Score:4, Insightful)
A really wise post office chief would have done that audit before the first lawsuit.
Re:Open Source... (Score:5, Insightful)
A really wise post office chief would have done that audit before the first lawsuit.
Yes you are correct, but the trouble is that the word 'Postmaster' conjours an image of someone with authority over a medium to largish business. In reality a lot of postmasters in the UK are simply running a family business/ small shop that just happens to be the Post office as well. A lot of these people have no real business training, do some very simple bookkeeping themselves, and when some software comes along that they've never had to use before, that software had better be bug free and easy enough to use. Before anyone says no software is bug free, I know that, by bug free I mean 'not going to add 13,000 to the turnover of a small business seemingly at random' . In short I think blaming the Postmasters for not being wise enough is just a wee bit disingenuous.
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You don't seem to understand how the post office works in the UK. A sub-post-master is a mail-man.
His boss would be a full postmaster. Since the post is privatized technically all the subpostmasters are independent businesses, which means they are supposed to look out for themselves, they aren't really capable of hiring a QA team.
Your false dichotomy (Score:3)
In the context of a court case, judges have discretion to turn over closed source to for-hire special/expert witness review and presentment to the court. So your claim of only two choices for review (OSS wins the day, vs the P.O. can refuse to do anything) is evidently meant to convince the more gullible reader into believing OSS would have made the problems experienced by Ms Hamilton & co. easier to resolve. The sub-post masters would have to sue for satisfaction either way, and hire the special witn
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Your optimism is so cute! In this case, the P.O. threw a blue-ribbon panel at the complainers; it's plain they've got a problem, but TFA was so vague, I can't tell if they were open to investigation and negotiated settlement.
Agreed; I use FOSSy
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It would still be traceable, as the source code still exists, you just do not have it.
And in jail you are not going to be able to track down a bug anyways.
And this is the reason you would want closed source commercial software. Because then it would not just be you held responsible, but the vender who supplied the software as well.
Re:Open Source... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I reveal this source code to the sub-post offices and continue to buy from the vendor...
then...?
Re:Open Source... (Score:5, Insightful)
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A small shopkeeper (what most postmasters in the UK are these days) is shown to have a considerable amount of missing money. They are prosecuted by the post office and a jury convicts them. The fact the 'computer' says the money is missing is a part of the evidence against them but if the 'know' they didn't take the money and it can't possibly have been anyone else who works for them then surely they could already pay auditors to track the transaction records and show they don't make sense right? Except that would assume that they think to do it, are confident it will prove their innocence and can afford the considerable cost upfront.
Yes, in theory, open source lets you check. However a bug in a complex accountancy system is likely to be very difficult and if you didn't find the bug then it could actually strengthen the evidence against you.
I like open source; it is not, however, a panacea to all the worlds ills. The bigger question here is how a prosecution started by faulty accounting software ended in a conviction. Unless the defence did a very poor job, the prosecution overstated their case or the jury mis-applied 'reasonable doubt' surely this shouldn't have happened.
Re: Open Source... (Score:2)
Audit Trail (Re: Open Source...) (Score:2)
Not having the audit trail should be the crime.
Add to that the decision to prosecute without an independently verified audit trail, and the magistrates' decision to allow such prosecutions to proceed.
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Yes, in theory, open source lets you check. However a bug in a complex accountancy system is likely to be very difficult and if you didn't find the bug then it could actually strengthen the evidence against you.
I like open source; it is not, however, a panacea to all the worlds ills. The bigger question here is how a prosecution started by faulty accounting software ended in a conviction. Unless the defence did a very poor job, the prosecution overstated their case or the jury mis-applied 'reasonable doubt' surely this shouldn't have happened.
Complexity isn't always required to screw things up. You could do that using nothing but Windows Calculator.
I agree that open source is no panacea, but nevertheless I myself use GnuCash for my accounts, and it's pretty straightforward for most things.
The main thing, however, is that I don't blindly accept the computer's figures, I cross-check them.
The software provider carries certain obligations (moral, if not legal ones), but so do the users.
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According to the article she wasn't prosecuted over the missing money. She was prosecuted for telling her superior the books were in balance when they actually showed she owed the post office 36,000 pounds. She didn't have much choice -- they wouldn't let her open if the books didn't balance, and they weren't exactly working overtime to fix the bug -- but in the UK this is "accounting fraud." That's what she got convicted of. It's not fair, but technically it's what is supposed to happen when you tell peopl
In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
A government spokesman has stated they have "absolute confidence" in all their computer systems, and what happened to Mr. Buttle was merely an unfortunate accident that could have happened to anyone.
sounds like outsourcing or PHBs saying that (Score:2)
sounds like outsourcing or PHBs saying that with the real IT guys far from the real issues.
Re:sounds like outsourcing or PHBs saying that (Score:5, Insightful)
It is outsourcing. The sub-postmasters who are being charged with fraudulent accounting over the results of these bugs are mostly former Royal Mail employees who were sacked and hired back as independent retailers contracted to provide postal services with contracts that transferred all the risk onto the small retailer providing the service.
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talking about the IT outsourcing as well.
Re:sounds like outsourcing or PHBs saying that (Score:5, Insightful)
The sub-postmasters who are being charged with fraudulent accounting over the results of these bugs are mostly former Royal Mail employees who were sacked and hired back as independent retailers
...
Okay, so what they're saying is they fucked over the employees by taking away all their benefits and cutting their wages, they underfunded a software project that performed an apparently mission-critical function... and then fucked them over again when (surprise!) it didn't live up to the absurd demands of management.
Incompetence on this level by the government -- punishing the soldiers instead of the generals, has already lead to the failure of one major world economy whose various bureaucratic deitrius was "too big to fail", and I see Britain has failed to learn anything from the cluster fuck that is the remains of the US economy.
Well, British citizens... speaking as someone from the miserable colonies; It'll be nice to have some company.
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The Royal Mail is a private company, not government run. Naturally they went with the lowest bidder and tried out externalise all their risks and costs. That's how capitalism works.
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Okay, so what they're saying is they fucked over the employees by taking away all their benefits and cutting their wages, they underfunded a software project that performed an apparently mission-critical function... and then fucked them over again when (surprise!) it didn't live up to the absurd demands of management.
So, I take it the Postal Service is a government-enforced monopoly with no competitive pressures in the UK too?
Incompetence on this level by the government -- punishing the soldiers instead of
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A government spokesman has stated they have "absolute confidence" in all their computer systems
Citation please. Neither the summary nor the article quote anyone as saying that. It appears, unattributed, in a picture caption.
The article presents no evidence that the missing money was caused by computer bugs. Just that the software contains bugs. But any complex software has bugs. They say nothing about the severity or nature of the bugs. Did the bugs cause anyone to receive extra money? No? Just missing money? A program cannot just make money "disappear". There is still a transaction that it
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You make great points, but I am forced to disagree with you on your conclusion. I don't come to conclusion that "these people are just thieves that got caught and are now trying to get off".
There's a guy who I knew who was sent to jail. He was charged with murder of his girlfriend. There were steroids, cocaine, and a fatal seizure involved. Now, I'm not saying the guy wasn't stupid, but the prosecutor of the case stated the following: individually, the facts make it look like he was guilty of murder, bu
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Now, you make a very astute point. Nowhere in the article does it say where this missing money went. That is a very interesting point to me. You'd think it would be trivial for a reporter to find this out. From my perch, that means it can go any which way, because I don't trust government (in any country), I don't trust people and I certainly don't trust the media. This article leaves way too many questions.
I think that after prosecuting the poor victims they will have written off any unrecoverable 'losses' and the saved themselves a good amount in tax, it would be interesting to know how many post offices have just blindly accepted this bug and just stumped up the money with no one actually realising the mistake, in which case it just goes down as pure profit for the post office. In both cases the Post Office end up winners out of this 'creative accounting'.
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Hmm, yes surely there is some kind of an audit log. Every penny could surely be traced to where it went. A very strange story is this.
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Ummm ... second link in TFS. This one here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23233573 [bbc.co.uk]
Look at the caption under the "Post Office" picture. It reads:
also this from the body:
I suggest you try ctrl-f or cmd-f (looks like a clover on a mac keyboard) before doing the citation rant.
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Here's your citation:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22Mr.+Buttle%22 [lmgtfy.com]
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It was a very clever reference to the movie Brazil, where the bug was actually a bug (falling into the machine and changing "TUTTLE" to "BUTTLE")... which is a reference even further back to the very first computer "bug" and where the term first got its name. This unleashes a chain of events leading to the arrest of Buttle, with management having full confidence in their software until belatedly and begrudgingly giving restitution after the damage had already been done (much like in the article). The refere
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Read the article.
The one case it mentions where someone was actually convicted, she was not convicted because the computers said she was short. She was convicted because she told someone else the computers said she wasn't short. Since the computers were her accounting system, and she was lying about what they said, this was accounting fraud. I'd assume it's typical, and nobody (or at least very few people) has been convicted of stealing based solely on computer data.
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Tuttle or Buttle?
Why worry about bugs? The government will give you a refund!
helpdesk india or helpdesk must use script fail? (Score:3)
"I got to the end of one week and I was £2,000 short so I rang the helpdesk and they told me to do various things and then it said I was £4,000 short.
"They then said I had to pay them the £4,000 because that's what my contract says - that I would make good any losses.
"Then while I was repaying that it jumped up to £9,000."
System 'confidence'
Ms Hamilton said that, by the time the figure reached £36,000, she lied to the Post Office - wrongly telling them the books were balancing just so that she could open the office the next day."
it seems like the helpdesk did not have the power or know-how to see something is very wrong there or maybe they did see something looks off but it's not in the script. Or maybe they where near the max time per call and said said say it's balanced and I will pass this up the chain.
Re:helpdesk india or helpdesk must use script fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Similar thing happened to me ~10 years ago(another EU country). National Telecom kept insisting I owed them money, when I called to see WTF is going on not so helpfuldesk assistant said he can see my payment and it cleared but system still wants moar money, he knows its a glitch and I can ignore it. A month later I get a bill for 2x what they imagined I owed them plus interest. I called again, asked for name of helpdesk guy, asked him to check it and informed next bill comes like this I will be reporting fraud to the police with his name attached - he cleared whole thing in 10 minutes.
Yes, this was very asshole of me, but it goes to show where is a will, there is a way.
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Re:helpdesk india or helpdesk must use script fail (Score:4, Informative)
Dude, you're Australian. You're lucky to have some pretty strong consumer protection law on the books.
According to my Aussie friend if you have a problem with Telstra, or any other Aussie telecoms company, you contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman [tio.com.au] and your problem will almost always get sorted quickly. He's had to call them when Telstra have dragged their feet fixing his Internet connection. After he complained to the Ombudsman, Telstra were calling HIM back and apologising, and had a team out in his neighbourhood fixing the problem the next day.
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No, it's a surefire way of being treat like an asshole.
Nope, at least with Dell, being nice will get you lied to and blown off. Yelling and cursing will get your dead under-warranty equipment replaced.
Re:helpdesk india or helpdesk must use script fail (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way were you being an asshole? Someone (or something) was trying to defraud you, and you stood your ground and made them (or it) stop. That's not being an asshole; that's merely being responsible.
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In what way were you being an asshole?
Because it was just some poor guy at the help desk, who is getting paid $10 an hour (if he's lucky), and doesn't need someone to sue him for fraud to make his day worse. It's not his fault, and now he's making threats at him.
I'm not saying he did the wrong thing, just that the guy at the help desk didn't deserve the treatment he got.
Re:helpdesk india or helpdesk must use script fail (Score:5, Insightful)
*ahem*
The poor guy at the help desk: Was he, or was he not representing the company?
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[Yes, this is a trick question.]
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No, I mean trick. Though it's a trap might be an appropriate footnote.
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To the customer, he appears to be representing the company, but to his employer he is authorized to read the script and no more. Always ask for the guy's manager first if you need them to actually resolve a problem by doing something out of the ordinary.
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Good luck with that. I had to phone my car insurance company three times, the first two times I was promised a manager would call me back immediately. My tone went from polite but frustrated to full on shouting down the phone and threatening to come round and burn the place down angry at which point I was magically transferred to a manager. The first thing I said to the manager was that he was an arsehole for making it so difficult to reach him that I had to deliver such a torrent of abuse to a member o
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In what way were you being an asshole?
Because it was just some poor guy at the help desk, who is getting paid $10 an hour (if he's lucky), and doesn't need someone to sue him for fraud to make his day worse. It's not his fault, and now he's making threats at him.
I'm not saying he did the wrong thing, just that the guy at the help desk didn't deserve the treatment he got.
of course he deserved. he was working as the henchman for the company trying to fraud the customer - he was the company contact and was getting paid for being that company contact. shitty job, but working a shitty job at a shitty company doesn't really provide moral protection from assholeness, in fact it's pretty much the opposite. add to that the fact that he _could_ fix the problem he was exactly the right person to say that what the company was doing would not stand.
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Re:helpdesk india or helpdesk must use script fail (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem, I think, is that there weren't any books per se to begin with: Everything is tabulated with a computer, and the computer is wrong.
And when the computer is off by tens of thousands of pounds/dollars/whatever: OMFG.
But lying? No. Telling the truth is good, especially when it comes to official money. "I don't know what's happening because we're off by a huge amount of money, far more than we could ever accomplish in a day's business" is a good starting point.
(Just because the books are already cooked by some outside force, does not mean that one must continue to cook them.)
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Obviously YMMV, anecdote time, but...
I used to work in a role where I was responsible for reconcile the finances of a bank branch every day. Basically, we relied on the computer to tally everything up correctly. If the computer reported a discrepancy, I'd spend the next hour with a print out, pencil and calculator going through every transaction line by line until I found the exact key press where the discrepancy originated (not always easy if there were multiple and overlapping discrepancies). 99% of the t
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You may not understand what a "sub-post-master" does.
A sub-post-master runs a tiny little post office. The kind that doesn't have employees, or only has a couple employees. He's basically a mailman who can also sell stamps. Oh, and he's a private contractor so he can't get help from anyone in the government except the help desk. A subpostmaster simply does not have the money to hire an accounting guy full-time to go through the books every day.
where did the money go? (Score:2)
obviously the fucking computer program should have shown where the money went or what was bought with it supposedly.
that some people were put to jail without them even being able to show actual money missing(or the services the supposed money paid for) is a pretty big fuckup from the police as well.
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there is no circumstance where telling a lie about the books being balanced is an acceptable response
It was a good response if she was trying to cover up her theft of 36,000 pounds.
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In English I'd guess that would be an inventory. Which would work if they don't assume you've stolen the missing items.
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shoddy system for shore. but there is no circumstance where telling a lie about the books being balanced is an acceptable response in this scenario no matter how painful the system or process is, It just makes the problem 10 times worse.
I dunno, when your business is about to be shut down due to a computer glitch and there's nothing you can do about it... It didn't end well for her but I can certainly see why she did it. What would you do if the choice is between "lie" and "be shut down"?
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Sounds like a nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
So these employees were forced to use the UK PO accounting software, which had bugs, and which showed in some instances imaginary shortfalls that they had to repay with no way of defending themselves. Sounds peachy! I hope some judge throws the book at the UK post office and finds some way to redress the situation.
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Well about 100 of these sub-postmasters are looking at taking them to court over this so yes I suspect they'll win and win big given that people lost houses and went to jail over these bugs.
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That's not cost effective. We need to reach our efficiency goals.
Try healthcare (Score:5, Interesting)
We have special testing programs that are targeted at protecting patient safety.
We also have insurance up the wazoo (a technical term). Our PI Insurance covers us for several millions of dollars per claim, and hundreds of millions for class actions. It is our single biggest insurance expense for the entire organisation.
I'm happy to say that in 18 years, we've never made a claim against it, and we've never been notified of any negative consequence on any patients.
Send the manager to jail (Score:3)
Private Eye / Nick Wallis's article (Score:5, Informative)
Private Eye [private-eye.co.uk], a fortnightly UK satirical and news magazine first raised this issue
almost two years ago. Here's a link to the journalist's blog article. [blogspot.co.uk]
Re:Private Eye / Nick Wallis's article (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting comment at the bottom of the article that might throw some light on where at least some of the money is going. Mobile phone topups are apparently showing up as declined at POS (which should cause the retailer to not take any payment from the customer), while some time later the customer gets an SMS informing them that their account has been topped up.
They used the wrong EULA (Score:2)
Actually (Score:5, Interesting)
What I build every day directly relates to the stats and commission of a large number of people. The problem is I'm given flawed methodology from the outset by the managers and above of these people. They basically do not have the analytical or even basic math skills required to be writing the requirements they are in charge of. When I point out all the problems with how they want to approach what we're doing, all I get in return is talk of scope creep and lines like "you're trying to fix today's problems when what we need done is the design for tomorrows system!" which I'm assuming they got out of a book or trade magazine because I hear it repeated enough. None of it really matters when they're doing something as idiotic as dividing every month by 30 to get a daily average.
"well most months are 30 days"
No, most months have 31... what about holidays and weekends?
"See? It all averages out!"
You and I have entirely different definitions of "average" and... whatever, I've written all my objections into the design requirements, please sign off that you're ignoring my warnings, thanks.
"Done!"
Again, your peoples numbers will be completely wrong...
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Again, your peoples numbers will be completely wrong...
Did we learn nothing from Superman III?
The difference between the commission they're supposed to get and the commission the bosses signed off on goes into the "Information Systems Mainteance and Training Fund". They'll sign off on that too, just put it in the requirements. Oh, and send me a postcard from Tahiti!
"Ordinary" software? (Score:2)
You definitely can't call accounting software "ordinary", at least not in terms of risks.
It operates in an area with high legal risks for its users in case of an error, and it's not a revelation for the developers of said class of software.
The problem is trust (Score:5, Insightful)
They have misplaced trust in their computer system.
And misplaced lack of trust in human beings.
Accounting shortfall should not mean someone goes to jail.
It should mean a thorough investigation is launched, and the tool that first reported the shortfall should not be assumed to hold accurate information.
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I suspect the main result of this is going to be that nobody will want to be a sub-postmaster anymore. If you risk going to jail for other people's bugs, I doubt the risk is worth the extra revenue.
How it's even possible that someone goes to jail before a thorough investigation is another big mystery. I guess not only does the Post Office trust their buggy software too much, but the judge take the Post Office at their word.
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Yeah, that stuck in my craw as well. Obviously everyone is supposed to be all "Wooo 6 million transactions a day... they must be teh über-programmers! That system could never go wrong".
On second thoughts I should apply for a job. On a modern CPU I'd expect to be able to do 6 million things and find time to get a few of them wrong in less than a second! Must be able to get a cushy contract with performance figures like that.
The summary isn't very good (Score:5, Informative)
To resummarize:
Sub-postmasters, for those who aren't aware, are private subcontractors of the UK postal system. They are not directly employed by the government, they operate as private businesses.
The UK requires them to use specific software, called Horizon, to manage all transactions and accounting.
This software had a pretty serious bug that resulted in wrongly calculated shortfalls into the thousands of pounds. Their contracts, however, stipulate that they must make up for shortfalls themselves. Doesn't matter if the software is wrong, that's what it says, that's what it is (sounds like government to me...)
This bug went unfixed for years, despite numerous complaints and reports.
Some postmasters started falsely reporting the shortfalls as the obviously miscalculated numbers climbed to ridiculous amounts (tens of thousands) that would put them out of business by the end of the day. Because falsely reporting accounting numbers is illegal (even though the "right" numbers are obviously wrong and completely not the postmasters' fault), some of them were sentenced to prison, most likely due to the strict, unwavering and unreasoning nature of law.
Basically, they were users self-correcting for what they knew was a flaw in the software they were forced to use, and they went to jail for it or otherwise paid dearly. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. All in all, a pretty deplorable miscarriage of justice.
Re:The summary isn't very good (Score:5, Informative)
To resummarize:
Sub-postmasters, for those who aren't aware, are private subcontractors of the UK postal system. They are not directly employed by the government, they operate as private businesses.
The UK requires them to use specific software, called Horizon, to manage all transactions and accounting.
The Post Office is not state-owned.
FYI, the postal system in the UK was formally owned and operated by the state, but was split back in 1986 into Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail; the former was privatised. The Post Office operate the physical branches as well as selling some minor banking and telephony* services while RM, which is state-owned, deal with the actual delivery of mail. FWIW parts of my line of work would be much easier if the government actually did run the post offices.
*To make things more confusing, the old GPO also ran the telephones but that part was spun off into British Telecom long ago. Now the new Post Office also do telephony.
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Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
"The only winning move is not to play."
Their power is en masse - if they all tender their resignation letters on the same day for the same reason, it's likely to get the required attention and possibly they would not have to stay out of the position if the situation is dealt with.
But, really, is the job market over there so bad that they're willing to stay in a job that will either bankrupt them or see them in prison?
Normal in accounts (Score:2)
Face it: Software ruins lives. (Score:2)
We use the same system (Score:2, Informative)
Posting as AC for obvious reasons.
Our postal authority uses the same system (Horizon is the UK post office name for the 'entire system'). The counter system runs something called WebRiposte Essential written by an Irish firm called Escher. The way the system works is that everything you do on it is written to what is effectively a journalling system that is replicated peer-to-peer. It is extremely reliable, and Escher boast about it having never lost a transaction. This journalling system is indeed very sol
Definition of "software bug" (Score:2)
... how many of us consider the potential for bugs in ordinary software to adversely affect those that use it?"
Isn't that what "bug" means in the software field? After all, an error in software that doesn't affect anything relevant to users rarely (if ever) gets listed as a "bug". Bug reports are always the result of software getting something wrong in a way that a user notices. If the affect were beneficial, I sorta doubt that many users would report it.
not when you are a 1099 fedex does the same BS (Score:2, Interesting)
not when you are a 1099 fedex does the same BS
FedEx package after the FedEx delivery driver had a neighbor I didn’t know in my building in [redacted] sign for a package from Apple.
and then make the driver be on the hook for it even when they don't have all day to wait and it common to give stuff / leave stuff to neighbor or drop it your door when you are not home.
http://consumerist.com/2011/08/19/report-your-iphone-stolen-get-a-visit-from-the-fedex-thugs/ [consumerist.com]
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All i do is just to "code" the requirements, nothing more, nothing less.
I'm willing to bet you don't actually code to the requirements, and that your code has bugs that were not specified in the requirements. Because pretty near everyone's does.
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That and if you're coding to the requirements knowing full well they're wrong then you're just as complicit regardless.
Whenever I've been given a spec that I know is wrong I get it changed, change it myself, or go over the spec writers head if they wont budge and send an e-mail to the highest levels along the lines of "This has x issue. Do you still want me to implement this? Note that if I do go ahead and do it anyway I am not willing to take any responsibility for faults that affect us or the client", the
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No, really. Are you an idiot, or do you just play one on the Internet? For fuck's sake man, there are even disclaimers that state the software can't be used in nuclear power facilities.
My favorite "why we can't use Free software" argument is always "if we buy from Microsoft/IBM/whoever, there's someone to sue if it all goes wrong; if we use Free software we have to accept the liability" - a clear indication that someone's never actually read an EULA (although admittedly the limited liability clauses in EULAs may not actually be legal, but I've never heard of someone suing Microsoft when Word breaks...)
nit - mandating would have changed nothing (Score:2)
I may be nitpicking, but mandating competence wouldn't have helped at all. Having competent people would have helped.
Most likely there are already several laws, rules , and procedures that mandate that they give the support contact to a competent company. That didn't make it happen. Where I work, a government agency, we have all kinds of rules mandating secure computing practices. Our systems are absolutely insecure. You
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More importantly, we prostitute ourselves to the People With Money. If Money says "no time for proper testing", "no time for proper documentation", "no time for proper architecture", we cave in 99% of the time. IT people are often very, very knowledgable, but we have absolutely no spine.
There are always "business reasons" for doing things in a half-assed way. Even when that means that other people (like Bank clerks) will go to jail for this.
But that is just one symptom of a wholly rotten system of corrupt r