Corporate Espionage Leads To Faulty Motherboards

Champs writes "If you've gotten the feeling that they really don't make 'em like they used to, you might be right. This article at IEEE Spectrum tells the story of large batches of faulty capacitors sourced from Taiwan causing motherboards to eventually fail, with an interesting twist on the reason why these capacitors failed."

Comments

You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

This shows that quality comes at a cost. If you truly want to get good quality goods, don't expect to keep forcing the market to make cheaper and cheaper products.

Why would a company steal a formula such as this? so they ddn't have to pay as much for the 'real deal' and then henceforth could sell at a cheaper price and undercut others. When this happens quality suffers.

It has happened in many other industries and frank, I'm surprised it hasn't yet happened in something as stressed and pushed-cheaper as the motherboard and other componentry markets.

Rampant commercialism is causing problems like this.

Is this the whole story?

[amigaluvr]

Could it be that this isn't the whole story? perhaps the blaming on motherboards failing is coming from the manufacturers

Making improper motherboards with bad/cheaper processes, and then blaming some far-down-the-line capacitor maker who can't easily be traced. What then?

It's not unknown for things to be the opposite of what they seem.

I don't know who to believe any more. I would suspect however it's more than likely with cheaper and cheaper processes and manufacturing that the normal-spec caps can't handle shoddy workmanship

Then they fail.

Are we blaming the right people?

Chinese et al are thieves

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple chinese natives are busted for spying in the Silicon Valley.

Cisco is dealing with a Chinese company that flat out stole it's software.

Software piracy is rampant in the third world.

And yet, our corporations in their all knowingness replace american workers with foreigners who quickly secret out trade secrets.

And yet, our corporations in their all knowingness move important operations offshore - operations with american credit information, customer information, and YOUR information.

This is going to blow up in our faces - but it won't be the government's problem, it won't be the company's problem - it will be your problem when your identity is stolen from your very own bank records and you need to clean up the mess.

It will be your problem when you try to get service from a company for a product you purchased (whether real or a "financial instrument.")

Already I have heard of Indian programmers causing people trouble when they loose a contract - mailing virus's and shit to the company's email server or attempting to cause damage.

Lets face it, there is a whole different set of morals over there - a whole different idea of what is right to do, and what is wrong to do. Are they poor because of the political and social decisions they make? Or because "America, the man, is keepin us down!" Or maybe because they have no concept of capitalism, no concept of win-win, no concept of value.

American business is going to learn this the hardway.

A whole bold new marketplace? No. Steal our ideas, steal our technologies, and build up products to sell at home. And they will tariff or ignore our products (aka see how they hate MS because it is not-built-there, among more valid reasons.)

Re:Chinese et al are thieves

[1u3hr]

Steal our ideas, steal our technologies, and build up products to sell at home.

Yes, that's exactly what the US did. Look a little into what US companies did in the 19th C, when its companies stole industrial processes, published books, from European countries without permission or compensation.

Only when it had caught up and started to produce IP that it wanted to sell did it start to make and enforce such laws, and now of course uses massive pressure to force other, poor, countries into line.

Lets face it, there is a whole different set of morals over there - a whole different idea of what is right to do, and what is wrong to do.

As for "morality", the US is such an example of self interest in its relations with the rest of the world, that only your countrymen could keep a straight face when you mention it.

Re:No matter how many times I refresh....

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Hey, if you read the story you will find that there is a new twist to it - as in why the caps failed.

graspee

Re:No matter how many times I refresh....

[oconnorcjo]

I'm impressed. This is not the second, but the third time this story has been posted. People actually pay money to read this site? I'd do better flushing 5+ bucks a month down the toilet.

I hope you don't watch the news on TV or read the newspaper because when I do, they not only often have the same story on the same page with only a slightly different angle, they keep repeating the story over and over with nothing really new. Newspapers are notorious for that but people don't seem to be bothered that they pay a dollar to do so.

Re:Dupe again

[cyberlotnet]

I think that every time a editor posts a dupe story they should be required to donate $5 to http://www.eff.org/

If this rule was put into affect, the EFF would end up with enough money to take anyone to court, even have a head on battle with Microsoft!!