I’ve often wondered why it is that the computer industry can get away with releasing such shoddy products. In other fields, critical failures are taken far more seriously. Still, in these fields, management sometimes allows dangerous products to ship even when engineers know of a defect. Management typically decides (with some actuarial assistance) that it is better to leave the defect in place because the cost of fixing the problem exceeds the expected cost (in the probabilistic sense) of liability incurred due to the defect.

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