We're powerless
I agree with most, if not all, of the views put forward in the article, but I can't see a way that we can influence the situation. If we could report bugs, we know that the reports will likely be ignored (and in any event, user error reporting is rather like witness statements - you have as many versions of the crime as there are witnesses).
The only thing I can see that would halt this decline in software (and system) quality in its tracks would be for the powers that be to change laws to make the suppliers (and particularly the decision-makers higher up that stop engineers doing a quality job) legally liable for the consequences of failure - and I mean actual people actually being prosecuted.
Until that becomes a trend, I don't see any way out of this.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
