The Software Conspiracy: Why Software Companies Put Out Faulty Products, How They Can Hurt You, and What You Can Do about It

by Mark Minasi and Dashka Slater

In 1905, Upton Sinclair blew the whistle on an unsanitary meat packing industry in The Jungle. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071348069
• ISBN13: 9780071348065
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Software Consipracy

Great book. Really great book. I absolutely loved it. Reading this book has helped me to become a better programmer. It's just great. Really great. I love it.

Educating the public

Despite what other reviewers said before me, I would like to bring a different point of view. Maybe Mr. Minasi is a sunday afternoon programmer who's doesn't live the everyday life of a "real" programmer but he brings to us something precious.The software industry is sick and needs to be regulated. He expose clearly and honestly why we, customers, should be more concerned about software quality and our rights to use these products with a reasonable set of conditions. Making a product gives a company the right to receive money for its work but that previlege should also come with *responsabilities* towards the customers. So far, software manufacturers get away with it but YOU as an accountant, an architect, an engineer or a doctor are fully responsible for every act you perform. Why should it be different for these companies ?The issue of the license agreements is even more pathetic where abusive clauses are added as new versions comes out. The customer has no right what so ever against crappy softwares. It's clearly explained in his book...Finally, the whole point of this book is to provide a good understanding of the industry and also educate the public toward our rights as customers to buy and use good quality products. If we let them make the rules, we will loose big time and that's what this book brings up.

About time this has been exposed.

This has been happening for years! This is the only industry that has the 'End User Agreement'... '...by your agreement in using this software, and whatever happens to you because of this software, we are not liable.' Holy damn! Imagine other industries having such an agreement? 'By using this vehicle, and if anything goes wrong, for instance the steering wheel collapses or the fuel tank ruptures during normal usage on a highway, you may not hold us liable..." Or how about the food industry requiring an EUA? Or how about such things as a television? Would you put up with a television that occassionally malfunctions? Have you folks seen all the sharewares that the coders themselves release as 'beta' but still require you to register it if you want to continue use? It is BETA! They should be paying us to test and find the bugs for them.So why do we allow the software companies to perpetuate this?I for one am sick of it. The EUA should be abolished. We should not have to waive our rights to use a software. Especially after we purchased it, and we cannot return it once opened. If we were allowed to return a software after we used it and found it to be buggy, then this might be somewhat more acceptable.There has to be some serious changes in this industry. As harddrive and memory increases in size, coders are lead to believed they can bloat the software as much as they want because users wouldn't be worried about space. But the more bloated software are, the more chances there are for conflicts and bugs.

This book is required reading for everyone today.

I would rate it 10 stars if they would let me. Software is an important part of our lives. Therefore having quality software is also important. Unfortunately the software companies seem to think that consumers don't care about quality and reliability. This book describes their attitudes, the consequences, and what to do about it. It even describes how the companies are working on making it legal for them to knowingly shipping to the consumer bug ridden software, and giving the consumer no recourse for this practice. This must stop and the book presents solutions to this. So if you ever had a problem with software (and who hasn't) buy and read this book. It is that important.

Scary-great halloween story-but so true!

Mark is god, still. Great book, it's going to be a classic