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Hype Vaporware, Go To Jail?
Tim Dierks writes "The New York Times (registration required) has an article describing a federal case against executives in Enron's broadband data division, based upon the charge that Enron claimed that a software platform was more complete and more functional than it actually was. It seems to be that if this case holds up, most of the software industry is guilty. Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?"
Guess Duke Nukem Forever is really screwed...
I think vaporware is critical on all levels in many different arenas. Not only for consumers but for developers as well. If companies aren't able to throw out plans and ideas then innovation is stifled. For consumers this give people a great place to see what is coming soon and to learn to expect more from technology companies thus pushing more and more creativity in the industry.
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I prefer realistic figures and advertising myself, but it doesn't sell products as well. I think enforcment of proper promotion of products is good, just like false advertising laws.
Because by this point we'd probably have to execute the Duke Nukem Forever team and that just seems unfortunate...
All's true that is mistrusted
If release dates are touted and pushed and touted and pushed, would that constitute vaporware? I know of one company in particular that was guilty of that severely until August 24, 1995...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
In this case I suspect the govt' is just trying to further stick it to Enron and set an example.
3d Realms and the DNF crew are really in for an exciting time in jail then?
I guess the new level in Duke Nukem Forever will be the 'Licence Plate Factory'.
I don't know if this specific case is the right or wrong way to go about it, but there are a great many American companies that desperately need to have the fear of law put into them.
just b/c release dates get pushed back does NOT mean that their products are "vaporware".
;)
Do they lie about their stability and capabilities, probably
At last we will get justice for Team Fortress 2.
How about we apply the same logic to overstated legal claims, too? Especially those designed to spread FUD about a particular product, hmm?
If hypeing vaporware is a crime, then we don't have enough prison cells to lock them all up. We'll have to build more. Let's start today. Tell 3D Realms they've got until monday to deliver Duke Nukem Forever, or they're all going to the cornhole corral.
How ya like dat?
IDNRTA, but is this applying to future predictions that don't hold true (ie. Duke Nukem Forever will exist sometime)? It seems Enron claimed that something existed at the time they said it, which didn't hold true. Surely companies should be able to state that their product will be at point b in production by date x, (whether they truly believe it or not) and then have it at only point a when date x rolls around.
I'd be curious to see, specifically, what the "functionality" the case is talking about. I was the lead QA engineer for a time on the Broadband Streaming Media platform.
The organization had a LOT of sharp engineers. Unfortunately, the management was completely incompetent and didn't allow many of the better engineers to have a say in functional requirements/technical specifications.
There was also a disturbingly bad attitude that pervaded the works at EBS as well. Case in point: during one meeting, I made the point that the service level metrics they were using were horribly vague. I didn't believe we should do business like that (goodwill is, I think, an important concept in business), but their response was "oh, if they'res a problem, we'll just sick our lawyers on them." Assholes.
I suspect that an answer common to comments here will surface once again;
Closed Source projects would be mostly 'at risk', as they can claim to do anything without simple review by the user/the masses to make sure of this.
Open Source, however.. the client has the code, and can determine for themselves, or have determined by others, that the program will or will not live up to any claims.
In other words - yet another instance where Open Source would be exempt from common practice based on the premise that if somebody has the code then they have the means to verify, bugfix, adjust and invetigate claims themselves.
Enron sells/sold data??
Also, just for reference, even if the prosecution succeeds, it just means that you can't lie to shareholders about vaporware. There's still nothing wrong with sowing FUD against competitors by making vaporware claims in your advertising so long as you keep them out of your stock prospectus and annual report.
Maybe they could just call it a "system."
Of course, it might be considered too non-deterministic for that. They could call it "Thing" and try to get exclusive rights to the word.
There goes Microsoft! Finally, a law that can be used against them...
Actually, they've proven themselves effectively above the law, as demonstrated by the 'penalty' they faced for the laws that were already used against them.
It's just the executives who go to jail. That's one of the risks that go along with the insane salaries, bonuses, interest free loans that get forgiven when they become inconvient, stock options, etc.
Of course, if there were any real justice, every person in every marketing department everywhere would be forced to use nothing but vaporware to create their copy...
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
I fear the day a judge decides if a feature is implemented. Even if the decision is about "a reasonable person would conclude," we'd have yet another set of SCO lawsuits. Just what the world needs.
It's interesting to see the possibility of a company called on vaporware though. Large companies get screwed all the time by sales people over-inflating the features of new versions forenterprise level software that they are shoehorned into buying in order to keep support of previous versions. Business is hurt by these tactics so much more than consumers, but it has become a (laughable) standard practice.
Now if only we could find a way to punish software that did get released and just plain sucks (Microsoft Bob anyone?).
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How will we describe it May be the tao of programming will decide it for itself
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Yes but for offenses having nothing to do with software... ;)
For a start, most of the Microsoft execs would be in jail. Let's see ... life without Ballmer ... Yep! Clearly better off.
See what I've been reading.
I think we can attribute this same kind of advertising to what you would see on TV in the middle of the night. "It slices! It dices! It feeds your pets!" This is the kind of marketing that everyone has grown used to. While in the computing industry there are numerous sites which review software products, the ability to download demos or trials, and then you can avoid the whole problem by using OSS..
"Buyer Beware"
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
based upon the charge that Enron claimed that a software platform was more complete and more functional than it actually was.
Boy, this sort of behavior is rampant among companies small and large. I have known several small software companies whose sales divisions were always making promises that were not grounded in reality. Promised functionality that had simply been discussed, but was not actually in code at the time. I'd say to the sales managers, "what the hell are you doing?" to which they would reply, "making sales".
That was hugely dissapointing for me as I would much prefer a product based sales strategy where something is not announced until it is ready as opposed to a timeline driven or sales driven paradigm where products tend to be pre-announced and then released half-assed.
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There should be a more definite version of what's legal and illegal in promoting software. If you're making ludicrous claims just to get press, and never intend on backing things up, there should be consequences.
If you fully intend on writing the software to implement what you hype, then it should not be as big an offence.
The problem is sorting things out. Some of it would become obvious with code audits, but you could just as easily gloss over enough BS code to make it look like fake hype is the real deal.
I just realized why my coffee tastes like crapinade.
Law is notoriously slow to catch up to technology. It was years after the first car showed up that someone had the bright idea to install traffic lights, or impose a speed limit. More recently, file trading took the RIAA completely by surprise-- it was many months before they even acknoledged the problem, let alone started to take legal action.
.Mac service... not from vulnerabilities, but from sheer load on the infrastructure. All it takes is for some pissed off, Mac-using litigator to realize that negligence on the part of Microsoft is damaging a public utility, and we're off...
In the case of damaging actions which are currently part of accepted business practices, I think we'll start to see the law come around. I'm particularly interested in when the first major lawsuit against Microsoft will appear for lost business due to mass internet slowdowns from Outlook virus propogation.
I just clicked over from MacMinute, where they reported the BugBear virus had slowed the
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
How would you feel if you bought a V8 Buick, took it home, opened the hood and discovered a 6 cylinder motor? And what if you complain, they promise a new motor within 2 weeks, and you never get the upgrade? I'd be first in line to sue.
Why should software be any different?
Blatant fraud aside, its the seller's fault if the buyer is an idiot? Everyone knows vendors are usually talking up whatever they need to to make a sale, all the more reason for very careful scrutiny of what they offer. Maybe if everyone learned a little about what they are buying or perhaps had whatever was being offered checked out by knowledgable people this wouldn't be an issue.
In any case, where the hell is my flying car?
I agree that tossing out ideas must remain legal, but there are different types of vaporware. I for one see no reasons why it should be legal to imply that you have a reasonable capability to deliver something when you know that you probably don't. That is called initiating fraud in libertarian terms. If I tell you I can build a house for you and all I know how to build is a basic shed, but I'm in the process of learning how to build a nice house, don't you think that's not merely tossing out an idea but rather fraud?
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I just hit "submit" only to find that everyone else was posting a Duke Nukem remark too. That's a lot of community pie in the face for 3DRealms. Must suck to be them.
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I can't wait for the day that it's illegal to make a banner look like a window, with a close button. or an OK button... or even make it look like an Instant Messenger window (I have a screenshot of a popup doing this!).
Im suprised Microsoft/apple/AOL/whoever hasn't sued the pants off these banner companies for "stealing" their intellectual property and mimicking their GUI.
And just to stay on topic:
I think false advertising in any sense, software or other, should be illegal. When someone advertises features for a product, and I buy that product, those features *better* be there and work as expected!
I think it's high time for the software industry to get a slap in the face. I've heard it said that if structural engineers produced the same quality of product as software engineers, no one would go in buildings because of the danger of a random collapse.
no comment
Seriously, look at all the stuff Enron pulled off and the thousands of people they hurt - and the best they can do is try to slap them with hyping some vaporware? C'mon here people!
Boss: How is that <insert latest project here> coming?
Me: Oh, I'm almost done
My Brain: Mental note. Start that damn project
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Good! I'm sick and tired of buying software that is NOT up to par as the advertisements claim to me.
For example, if I were to buy a car that was advertised at getting 80 MPG, I'd
*EXPECT* 80 MPG!
What is even worse than that is, you can't take the software product back!! (Or at least I have NOT found a store around here that'll take the product back)
Microsoft does not sell vapourware.
All their new innovations have already been developed by someone else.
...now that Enron itself turned out to be a vaporfirm.
I think it would be great. It's the marketing clods and PHBs who oversell capabilities, product, and deliverable dates.
Let's not even get started on Microsoft's legal status under such a regime.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Sadly, in practice, all I foresee out of that is lots of lawyers stirring up trouble and making lots more money, and very little improvement for the end-user.
Let's face it, part of the reason we have so much shoddy software about is because we, the end-users, encourage the behaviour (yes, I'm a Brit), by buying from whoever is first to market, rather than waiting for someone to release a quality debugged product. So, the people who cut corners are often rewarded and those who try to do "the right thing(TM)" are punished.
Of course, this Enron product was not a clear cut scam. Misleading the customer is one thing, and its done all the time. Outright lying is quite another thing.
(Oh good, I just checked my mail and my new Enron Penis Enlargement Pump arrived!)
Why not apply it to the film and music industry while we're at it. Someone should be accountable for Kangaroo Jack...
Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?"
If "overpromote" means we can now lose the phrase "not warranted for any particular use" from the various EULAs, then yes, we'd be better off. Software developers and distributors would then have to be people of their word, and their stuff would actually have to do what they say it does.
Maybe the New York Times reporters should get screened as well ;)
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
At least the part where you mentioned that the trolls are usually the first to point out changes in slashdot. This is why I'm burning karma on what I feel is an important question. It may be FUD, it may easily be true...I'd like to know which.
The problem being, due to the nature of trolling, using them as a news source is unreliable at best because of exagerrating and fact twisting.
However, they are a better source of information than nothing. ['nothing' being the slashdot SOP ]
Look at the history of the softare industry and you'll see that honesty is the best policy.
Case in point -- Phillipe Kahn decided to "open the kimono" a bit and show off Paradox for Windows 18 months before it was ready to ship. Stock values went through the roof and people thought it was going to come out practially at any moment. Especially when he said it would be shipping in six months (18 months later it finally *did* ship).
If they'd only known at the time just how rehearsed all of that was. When they realized Paradox for Windows *wasn't* going to ship any time soon, stock values dropped sharply and Borland was investigated to see if any wrongdoing had occured. Fortunately what had been decided was that Borland's board of the time was just stupid in showing a product too soon. R&D knew it wasn't ready, but overzealous management thought that R&D was just being too cautions. Next time, listen to those who are being honest with you. Don't listen to just what you want to hear...
Today Borland (and many other software companies) all have the same policy; "We'll show it to you when it's ready. When will it be ready? When it is, that's when."
Personally I think *every* software vendor should be honest in the cost and timeline of something. And the same holds true for other vendors as well. Look at King County, Washington and the now demolished King Dome. They took the lowest bid on the dome from a company that simply couldn't deliver based on the the timeline and cost to contruct the dome. The result - Seattlites for *years* had to content with something that was dark, dismal, looked like a garbage can, and is still *being paid for today* even tho it's been demolished and replaced. If they had gone with an *honest* vendor and an *honest* price, who knows - it might still be standing today....
Now should you, as a software vendor, be held civially or criminally liable when you are less than honest about what you can deliver and when? No. I think you should be punished accordingly - your business should go elsewhere and you should simply cease to exist when your customers disappear. That's what's happened in the past and it's been effective. Many of the companies that couldn't deliver on their promises have gone. Or they *learned* (as in the case of Borland) and have gone on to thrive.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
Between saying you expect to release a product with certain features on a given date and not making it, and saying that you have a product that has certain features right now when you don't.
A release date is a plan. Plans change. A statement that you have something you don't is a lie.
paintball
This is already illegal for publicly traded companies. Just look at any press release and you'll see all the required legal disclaimers about "forward looking" information and all that. But you can still get into trouble by misleading shareholders.
I tend to find out about the functionality of software I have written when the press releases come out. I'm always scratching my head, asking myself "when did I add that? Who got the idea that it could do that?" I think the people who write the press releases should at least consult with me and the other developers before getting carried away.
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Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?
It might be a better place without the overpromotion of the functionality and features of a lawsuit.
This is a tough call. On the one hand it's not uncommon to hype a non-existant product in order to gauge market acceptance. But on the other hand it's a bit fraudulant, especially from an investors point of view, particulary if the investor was coaxed into investing into a company based on the belief that there really was a new super widget about to be released. I guess it depends on intent. (Hard to prove.) Are they doing a legitimate market survey or are they pumping their stock? Looks like more money for lawyers.
When all else fails, run.
Itâ(TM)s not the action itself that was illegal, but the end to which it was done.
The point of this article is not that it should be illegal to taught a feature and then not ship it, but rather that doing so with the intended effect of artificially manipulating the market is illegal (and always has been). Most of the time, I think that you can argue that the effect that these kinds of practices have on the market is negligible; the tech market is fairly savvy to the hype most people spew. The difference in the Enron case is that the market was so out of control with optimism that it failed to question anything. Enronâ(TM)s guilt is in manipulating that optimism.
If they had said their software could do something extrodinary, which it in fact couldn't i would understand the fuzz.
But simply saying "This is better than the rest" is just general promotion.
When you apply for a job somewhere, you also "add up" a bit, don't you?
You may know PHP, and is decent at it. But are you an expert?. Of course you would tell the employer that you are.
Why not sue Microsoft while we're at it?
I mean, they say their O/S is stable, and we all know that ain't entirely true.
Anyway, i may be seeing this from another angle than the rest... my 5 cents.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
TM
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Well, I don't think that I am much different that every other person who has managed a project - an internal project not for public knowledge. I would say that everyone who ever reported to me, shade the truth, fibbed, stretched the truth and out right lied to me. Some were more guilty of it but if there was one thing that everyone understood - the truth could get you fired so lets hide it.
American companies are already obliged to not overestimate earnings. Why not make them tell the truth about software features and release dates?
Of course most companies will end up declining to comment on features or release dates at all until way into the beta testing phase. I think this would be a benefit to the market and will make people plan on what's available, not on vaporware. Sure, that may end up delaying some projects, but the overall stress level will be lower.
Just remember folks, Diakatana was VaopurWare for quite a while. Be careful what you wish for.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?"
The world would be a much better (happier users) and safer (less security risks). The Borg would lose its monopoly if people really knew how badly engineered Microsoft software is put together. I'm not trying to be a troll, but everyone here on Slashdot knows that M$, for a while, was coming out with weekly security updates for Internet Explorer and Internet Information Server. Even the US government hinted that M$ better get its act together and repair its flawed products after 9/11, saying that our information infrastructure was at risk to attacks. Apple seems to do a better job of weeding out the bugs before the public en mass downloads any updates to Mac OS X. And Apple is certainly much faster at fixing known bugs in its software. Look at how fast it was in clearing up the iTunes internet sharing flaw - one week to get the update out, only to be thwarted again by the UNIX heads playing around with port numbers, etc... At least the music is "protected" from sharing not "in the know".
Those bemoaning the loss of hype aren't thinking very far forward. The only companies whose hype is actually believed are large companies, not startups. Therefore, forcing people to become legally liable for lying about the capabilities of their software, will improve the chances for small productive companies. I don't know how software engineers can really defend this practice of hyping. If hype is outlawed, the product of their labor (aka "the true product") becomes more important, and therefore software engineers themselves become more important. I'm in favor of truth.
Let's see .... do we make people give truthful and accurate information about their businesses and products (when they choose to say something) or do we let people say anything they feel like saying?
When I was in law school, I learned a name for the act described as:
- Knowingly stating false information; or recklessly stating information with disregard for its truth or falsity; or omitting information with the intent to create a false impression;
- With the intent that another rely upon your statements;
- Where the other party actually relies upon your statements; and
- Damages result.
It was called FRAUD. Then again, maybe law school somehow affected my sense of how the software industry is supposed to work. You decide.Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Free market research. But that company is all but out of business now.
Only if it's illegal to say that drinking a certain type of beer is going to get you more women.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
It is one thing to "talk about what's coming"; it's quite another to misrepresent. Misrepresentation is -rampant- in most aspects of advertising nowadays. Look at automotive and computer/software advertising if you want examples.
Oops. And I thought he meant the "Forever" part to be the false claim...
I suppose you have to break down the argument into what a product -does- and what benefits it will give you. Perhaps lying about the actual features of a product is bad, but it seems a much more difficult problem to sort out who's lying about what the benefits of the existing features are. What beer isn't supposed to make you a sex god? Which software product isn't going to save you millions of dollars? Which car ad is going to tell you in big, bold letters on the screen that driving like that is going to get you some pretty serious jail time? Flat-out lies right there, but how could you call the companies on this?
If you're not allowed to hyperbolize about your product, then the entire marketing industry is doomed. I'm pretty damn sure that the folks at McDonalds couldn't give a flying proverbial at a rolling donut whether I'm smiling or not.....
you can claim that you want to add any feature you care to.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
at what point are the lines between vaporware, puffery and the Expected Fitness of the Product for a Particular Purpose (the definition of law used in negligence/torts involving warranties, no i'm not a lawyer, but i am the son of one, yes that does make me an asshole ;)) drawn? i admit i didn't read the article but can you sue AOL because it doesn't really offer the best internet experience ever but they advertise it does? at what point is software complete enough to be considered warrantied for whatever purpose it's supposed to perform (if quickbooks fucks up my business's financial records do i have recourse against them? just an example)
there are lots of ISPs out there who claim their services are "100 times faster than dialup" (i'm looking at you timewarner) but i've never seen 560 KB/s downloads, is this false advertising?
just some things to think about
I know a few medical companies trying to produce the next miracle drug that doesn't have a product. They're listed too. Stocks keep shooting up if the chemists suddenly find a new thing.
How is this any different from a software company trying to produce a product?
"Guess Duke Nukem Forever is really screwed..."
Don't you get it? It's never going to come out! That's the joke! Naming it Duke Nukem' Forever is the entire thing as a one-liner! They never intended it to be released!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Imagine trying to explain subtle technical and marketing issues to a judge and jury, issues that may be difficult enough for those of us in the industry to understand. Is this REALLY what is promised or not? Is it true under one situation but not another?
I expect a few big-time decievers MIGHT get in trouble over this, but I'd expect most cases like this to degenerate into such arcana that any results would be meaningless since we wouldn't be sure those sitting in judgement understood the issues, and people would manipulate that lack of knowledge.
My 2 cents.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
We've got all these "software executives" who know nothing about s/w. They promote all this stuff because, "Our developers can do that, its easy..." Then the developers get stuck working all kinds of overtime, then the developers can't get these great promises completed, then the executives get pissed off and fire developers, then the company loses business, then the executives lay off all the rest of the developers.
That's been my experience anyway. Stupid executives.
[FromTheMorning]
Never mind the agreement between the marketing team and our development team that marketing cannot promise a delivery date on anything before at least having a short conversation with us first - it can often be that surreal, on par with a Dilbert cartoon ...
"Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?"
While I don't think any sort of government punishment is called for, I think the world would be better off without product hype when the hype-ers know that it will either be not this functional, or not even have this function whatsoever.
The punishment is already there. It's when the public and investors start doubting every word a company says.
"THE disorganization led to a poisonous culture in the broadband unit, former executives said, with the only available means for advancement often being to attack the technologies and strategies of other executives..."
Wow. Doesn't sound like any place I've ever worked. Nope...
I think this would be a very difficult law to apply fairly across the board. There are so many degrees of 'false' hype - it could be anything from promoting features that are genuinely planned for the final product but were delayed by an unforseen problem, all the way to wishful thinking or boldface lies from the marketing departments.
So if a well intentioned plan doesn't pan out, someone could be found guilty, while at the same time if a marketing lie is somehow actually pulled off, the more flagrant offender gets away clean.
Like a lot of legal issues, it's mostly about intent. I think you'd have to prove two things- one, they was clear knowledge that what they're saying is untrue and/or impossible, and two, there would have to be an intent to defraud. If it's not a public company, the only offense possible would be deceptive advertising, which would only apply if they were already shipping the product while still lying about it's capabilities.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I don't know if Apple and Quark had any sort of 'arrangement' with the OS X version, but Quark definitely dropped the ball and hurt Apple sales.
Frankly, I'm now using InDesign, which is native OS X and *so* rocks over Quark I can't believe I ever touched that pile of code. I've been spreading the word, and Quark may become vapor itself...
not that anyone is going to respond, or even see, a comment from an AC, I just didn't want to get flamed for being behind the times (pun unintended).
What ever happened to appending NY Times articles with partner=XXX? Is there anyway to see the article w/o registration now?
I would expect that the Greman readers of
Whin I lived there in the early Late 70's, early 80's one of the cultural differences between Germany and the United States that stood out was that the law prohibited making false claims, and was strictly enforced. If Volkswagen claimed that it's car was better than Ford of Germany, it has better be specific, and provable, not just opinion, inference, subjection.
And the Government took great joy in persuit.
So would software be better if it had to tell the truth? Again, Ask Germany.
Hey,
Is the software industry the only one that "overpromotes"?
see any weapons of mass distraction yet?
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
My Hp1200 does go anywhere near 12ppm...
My NIC doesn't give me 100 megabits.
When I upgrade the firmware on my linksys 802.11g router, i know i'm not going to be getting the 54mbits I was promised originally....
yada yada yada...
Today's topic: Would the world be a better or worse place if we prosecuted software companies just like anyone else when they commit acts of false advertising?
Divide up into small groups and discuss.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Sweet Merriam-Webster! What the hell are you trying to contract with they'res? "They ares?". Pay more attention in your middle school english class and try there's or there is.
Remember this round robin DNS and NAT product is groundbreaking
Its easy to be groundbreaking when you are digging in the fields of well-tilled ideas.
The sad part is people will pay $$$ for this 'groundbreaking' product.
Nobody would argue that it is critical for companies to announce where they are going, both for developers and customers.
However, I have a big problem when a company says something exists or can do something when it doesn't. This is fraud.
I don't see any issue for noting on advertisements and product packaging that a product will be able to support a given feature with an expected firmware upgrade or additional feature/download/whatever. The Internet is ideal for telling customers what is happening with their product and when/how/where updates will be available which will add the missing features.
The carrot and stick for Vendors? I know that in my own case when I've bought something that didn't work as advertised, I make sure that people hear about the issues - while they sold one to a sucker (me), there is a net loss of all the people I can influence.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
One of the developers is quoted saying:
"If we had been given eight months to a year, it would have been amazing."
Poor guy seems to be suffering from development delusions. I think at any given time a project is always 8-12 months from amazing, but those last 8-12 months never seem to go away.
Because I don't think the Pentium chips really "make the Internet faster."
~Philly
It seems like it should be punishable in some way by the decieved.
let's analyze some examples in other disciplines.
NFL recruit says I can run the 40 in 3secs and it's really 5 seconds. NFL scouts recruit without checking first (like that woudl happen) in order to be first and are out XXX millions that could have been spent on the dude that actually runs it in 4secs.
You tell a nice lady you have 8 inches and stuff a sock to look bigger. She's stuffing her bra though, so it's ok. Plus, you shouldn't be paying for this, even if you call it an investment.
Lying on your resume...
Vaporware...
It's got an 8cyl in there (it's a 4 cyl).
Seems exaggerating for money is lying, which is defrauding, which should be (what's the word?, repre...means you should be able to get your money back, reparable???) .
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
They did the same thing. It was the CTO founder who did the hyping and lying.
You can't imagine how difficult it was listening to him falsely claim to investors and customers that we had technology that did not exist yet.
It was serious fraud.
The board finally fired his ass but it was too late. They had burned through all but $22 million of the $72 million in investments from major VCs, Oracle, AOL/TW, etc. The investors smartly pulled the remaining funding and shutdown the company.
"System of systems" my ass. Think "scheme of schemes".
It happens to the best of us.
I can't see how it could really hurt anyone.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
i thought we had laws for false advertising..
At the time, I seemed to be the only person in the world that noticed Microsoft paid $12 Million for a song with the chorus "You make a grown man cry..."
This was a satisfying counterbalance to the wait and the hype... (not to mention being surprisingly prescient)
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
But a lot of people have made valid points. What constitutes "vaporware"? Does the mere inclusion of such a wish list make these features vaporware?
I think that, rather than having the courts do this, let the people figure it out. True, it won't work out so well (Windows 95, anyone?), but why should the courts have a say in how the market operates?
This sig no verb.
Get this. AmigaDOS 4.0 is STILL "coming just next month".
I think it kinda beats duke nukem forever by a good decade!
So, what happens in this case: The engineers/ programmers start the project, and are later asked by sales to come up with a list of features. The sales people start the hype train. Project goes over budget (or some VP thinks it's takig too long), and it gets release before it's time?
Now you've got software that doesn't do what you said it would. It happens in manufacturing, and I'm sure it happens in every other industry.
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
Think about it.
The International Herald Tribune has the story on their site with no registration or pop-ups: In Enron case, criminalizing hype.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Most grevious offender: Duke Nukem Forever
Sure things were still under development, but they (pretty much) worked, I saw them work myself.
EBS always got a bad rap, but from what I saw most of it was undesereved, the tech was there, the market wasn't.
It seems to me that there are plenty of legit targets for the Feds to go after concerning the Enron case, they should go after them there's no need for a witch hunt based on trumped up claims. This can only hurt the governments case against the real criminals involved.
There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it's all dark
It would be a MUCH better world for lawyers.
If something like this happens, would it be just for software? Where does the line end? This is a very gray area. How many times have you seen roads or bridges "scheduled to be completed by and yet you're still taking a detour six months later? Does that mean we'd get to send the DOT or workers to jail? New features for phones, new concept cars that are supposed to be in production in X years, restaurants that are supposed to open...this kind of thing happens all the time. Hell, do I get to send my mom to jail because "dinner is almost ready" and so I had to stop building my model and sit around waiting for another 20 minutes? Where does it begin? Where does it end?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
yeah, it was great, written by a company that thought it was good security to run their ftp server on a non-standard port and have all their source code available there.
Enron paid $30 Mil for them because they thought they were in a bidding war with Sun.
Sure, stuff was built without using interagent because the dev teams could never deliver what they promised. 2 years after buying Modulus to aquire the technology, they bought Warpspeed communications to provide the same software.
Oh yeah, and after being purchased, a company of size 8 went to a dev team of over 50. Apparently, no one ever read "The Mythical Man Month"
Just wrap the entire campus with barb wire fence.
10 MD
Puffery, exaggeration and just plain lying to the public about your product is usually considered pretty tame stuff, especially if you qualify your fibs with enough weasel words ("we believe", "according to" "you should see" "tests show", etc.). Even if you don't qualify them, but use your tall tales primarily to sell the product, you usually don't incur the govt's wrath (health claims excluded). No one is generally prosecuted for falsely claiming they make the best widget or for failing to meet a delivery date. However, lie or exaggerate to the "market" in order to affect your stock price, (in other words, investors, analysts and the SEC) and all hell breaks loose. Looks to me like this is probably what the fuss is about. It's not necessarily right (why do investors get more protection than customers?) but I don't think it's anything new, Times article notwithstanding.
I think it depends, you cannot exactly enforce companies have to meet federal standards for product deadlines. Then no one would know what's going on.
But perhaps companies should be held liable for failed features if they cause harm to the user company/user in certain ways if they release features that don't work as intended.
It all comes down to that. Marketing people are not accountants or financial analysts. Their job is to oversell everything. Then the legal department has to come in and put disclaimers all over the press releases.
but it seems like the software industry feels that it is immune to every product liability law or false advertising law there is in every other industry. I don't see how software is so special that it's in a league of it's own.
I don't trust any of Markoff's reporting since he libeled Kevin Mitnick. The fact that the NYT continues to employ him should have been a signal that bigger problems -- i.e. Jason Blair -- would surface at the paper. I'm just waiting for them to let Markoff go.
What a fuckin' troll!
This makes sense if from a monopolist's perspective but I fail to see what good hype/vapourware does for innovation, investors and especially consumers. Other then to scare away investors from a small company or to falsely lead consumers away from a possible real alternative only to embed it the next version of your product.
Fuck... wake up!
Hail to the king baby!
Why should software be treated any different than other goods?
I'd be curious to see, specifically, what the "functionality" the case is talking about. I was the lead QA engineer for a time on the Broadband Streaming Media platform.
Curious enough to register?
I mean, c'mon. What ads, for any product, have you seen that did not stretch the truth.
Best
Fastest (they ALL can't be the 'fastest')
Make you more appealing to women (beer)
Run faster and jump higher if you buy my sneakers.
Gimme a break!
Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?
Overpromote in what way? If you say that a feature exists, knowing that it doesn't, with the intent to make a profit, that's fraud, and you should be charged criminally with it.
One sticking point you might notice with my definition is that you have to know that you are lying, and that has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
"In the mean time, we're making some changes to throttle the number of
points going into the system. Right now for every 10 comments posted,
7 moderation points are used. The unintended problem is a
disproportionate number of Score:5 funny comments which just aren't.
There are a few things I could try, like making Funny have a default
-1 setting (creating a ceiling of 4 for funny comments for anonymous
coward). I don't want to stretch the range outside of -1, I'd rather
make 5 harder to attain. Maybe require more mod points to push scores
higher than some threshold, like double the moderation to get from 3-4
and 4-5. The problem is that Score:5 is a great way to read Slashdot,
but to many Score:5 comments dillutes the value of reading that way.
Anyway, the short term solution is simply to cut mod points by 20-30%
and see how that helps."
Wonder if I can get my money back for Windows 98 then?
This would make software advertisements look a lot more like prescription drug adverts. A sunny day. Flowers blooming. People smiling. A dog catching a frisbee. A woman jogging. Announcer enthusiastically suggesting, "Ask your doctor if Zeraflax is right for you!"
And, even though I don't have a clue what Zeraflax is, who wouldn't want a prescription for flowers blooming on a sunny day?
If the side effects are that my dog can now catch a frisbee, I'm buying it whether it's software or drugs.
SharkJumper
What is so difficult about the usages of "there", "their", and "they're"? Why should anyone expect complex software to work correctly or be completed on time when its creators are so careless in their use of the English language? I contend that this lack of attention to detail probably carries through to their work, and that rather than "incompetent management", these developers just don't care enough to get it right.
As long as you have specific claims that are provably true, then you can say almost anything you want in UK ads. At the moment, for instance, the bank Alliance and Leicester is running a series of ads for personal loans where they list most of their main competitors with names and ridicule their rates, giving the advertized rates of the competitors in question.
Most of Europe have pretty strict rules on advertizing that make certain types of claims illegal. For instance, few countries would allow you to say that your product is "best" without proof that it is best according to some objective standard. Similarly, few countries allow comparisons with competitors unless the comparisons are specific and provably correct. However, vague claims are generally ok, such as saying something makes you "feel better" etc.
Similarly, implying things with images, instead of saying it outright, is usually ok, and that's how most ads work anyway. Not many ads say "you will attract lots of women that will want to have sex with you", they show a guy using the product attracting lots of women instead, and we infer "promises" that were never actually made.
After reading many on the comments here I have a number of things I would like to say. First, for the last 16 years I have tried to honestly create solutions that are innovative and useful. At the same time I have tried to set expectations and schedules that were achievable. This can be a difficult process and is made more difficult by both the engineers and management.
At one company a number of years ago (who shall remain nameless), I was told by my manager to cut my schedule in half. This should be based on hireing 3 new engineers (doubling my staff). And then she said it did not matter if they were actually hired (we had no reqs for them) because it was expected that software schedules will slip.
I the other side I have not been selected for several very interesting projects as an engineer because I was honest with the manager about the chances of success on time. I would not commit to having a product on a data I knew could not be achived. On at least two of these I was brought in in the end to try and work some of the problems out. One was so badly done I left for another company rather than be stuck with it.
Since then I have been just and engineer on a couple of projects and back in the low level manager / project architect position on a couple others. I now have an MBA and more training in project managment. I still do not know how to adaqutly bring the two levels together.
The MBA tought me some basic business information which has helped me alot. It also tought lots about managing employees that I beleive are more contributors to the problem than solutions. And I think this is the basic problem with Enron Broadband screw up.
Enron is just one example of the problem. The whole dot com crap more of the same. Most of it starts with somebody who has an idea, builds a business case for it and downplays all the problems. Expectations to investors are set that are unrealistic due to lack of business sense. Investors put money into it no understanding the technical road blocks and set expectations back to the company that are unrealistic. A great deal of this goes beyond tacking a calculated risk.
In this industry, everyone has a grand story with a kernel of truth. Open source software is no different. I like it because I can take the source and solve my own problems if I have the time. However, a very small percentage of people can do this so it is at best a minor argument. Much of the claims I have seen over the years are out right fraud. I left companies that were good because a buy out changed companies from engineering to hype / fraudulent.
Big business in the US is based mostly on hype. To keep "market share" this is necessary. Enron Broadband was a hype. It had a core of truth masked by hype in a search for that all important market share. In this case it was also fraudulent because its hype was so large that it was out right lieing and not just streaching the truth. It occured because business in the good old US of A is about making money and NOT about producing products. As long os the multi nationals can keep paying off politicians this will not change.
My tirade is ended. All of you who stated you could go to jail if this is true, check your resumes. In the economy today getting fired is just as bad as going to jail. Maybe you are guilty.
No, but the world would be a much be a much better place if people paid less attention to marketing and advertising.
Looks like some old tried-and-true methods for reporting are even more useful today:
1. Be honest...let your boss overrule you, but be honest. Your boss may well be aware of other factors you don't/can't know...valid business reasons.
2. Document up the significant/questionable decisions made in a confirming e-mail (good/bad/who-cares)...to your boss and higher-up, if you believe it opens the company to liability/fraud. The goal here is to have an e-mail path folks can refer to...and make sure everybody agrees on what to do.
3. Save you outgoing e-mail to disk and perodically save it off-site, respecting company confidentiality, privacy, and security restrictions. At a minimum, copy it to another file/system/directory on your network where it will be saved to long-term storage. Lawyers/Government folks can subpoena this stuff and go through it if things get criminal.
4. Don't run out and do something questionable just based on verbal instructions...make sure you send the confirming e-mail...gives folks a chance to change their minds, deal with changing requirements, etc. This has saved my posterior on many occasions as an architect/dba/designer...
5. If it don't smell ethical, it probably isn't. You definitely want some protection if it comes back to bite you...confirming the order (and put in words like "...unless I hear differently from you in e-mail or writing before X, I will perform these actions you have ordered...") will save you a lot of legal expenses.
6. You can go overboard on everything, but I think most people will know the right balance to document. Think of it (and sell it) as "confirming the tasking resulting from the meeting/decision". Or as "Trust but verify"...
This probably sounds like excerpts from the Big Book of CYA, which it is in part, but also helps your boss keep focused on what you are working on. And if a schedule is revised from higher-ups, it will point up from you...and save you from explaining/defending yourself.
NASTY REALITY ALERT: What you don't want to do is be told to check something in and have your boss declare it done...with no confirmation or status indicating it was not ready...it then gets into a "you said...I said" situation that sleazoids can weasel out of. Yes, you can have your career defined somewhat by these actions (certainly has happened to me--had to change jobs) but you're not going to be sued or have trouble sleeping at night because of this...If you can't be (perhaps tactfully) honest as a software professional, you should change careers...that's what's caused this mess... END NASTY REALITY ALERT
I figure the execs will get hammered and some developers who really lied through their teeth will get slapped.
Big question remaining: If software development gets offshored, who is liable? Will folks have to sue developers or their companies in India/Russia/Phillipines/etc. for recovery? Or will the U.S. executives making these outsourcing decisions and taking delivery of the products be on the hook...?
I don't think the Hogan's Hero's answer by Seargent Shultz ("I know nothing!") will work anymore...
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
And maybe this would've kept it that way. Suddenly, I'm in favor.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
As far as I can tell in Europe you are not allowed to make comparative publicity (or were not allowed until recently). You can tell how surprised I was when i saw the US ad on the war between cola and pepsi.
This is why you can't say "we are better than X", but you can say "we are the greatest on earth !".
Disclaimer : it may be now that comparative publicity is allowed within certain limit, I can't say for sure since I went away 5 years ago.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The way new, custom-designed enterprise software gets created is on a project basis where payments are made in advance for the development of a system. As the company builds the system, interim progress reports make sure they're going in the right direction. The problem is that what's really happening is the purchaser is paying for the development of a new piece of software, and the expertise that's developed by the software company can then be sold on in numerous other projects, but the client won't see a penny of that.
I forget the case, but the one I studied was in the Eastern Europe banking sector a little after the fall of the Berlin wall. A US software company promised to bring this eastern european bank into the modern age on a level to compete with the systems of all the Western banks, but had vastly overstated their experience in the banking sector, and the project was basically a big money extraction operation that allowed the software company to develop expertise on the back of a gullible company.
Needless to say it went to court and things got settled, but the real cost was the delay in getting up to speed with western banks. By the time the bank finally got systems that could match the services of their newly arrived competitors, they'd lost huge amounts of market share.
Salocin.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
for CmdrTaco's opinion of +5 funny posts.
The problem is poor moderation (which is to be expected given the
group-think nature of this site). When all you've got is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail.
Guess what! start using png graphics (instead of gif), spell and fact check
stories (like a real "editor"), don't add lame-ass comments, and read
your own site, a significant chunk of offtopic posts would disappear.
Of course it can ... but I'm not sure if vaporware warrants a lawsuit per se. The real crime in the case of Enron is not overhyping, but rather not delivering on contractual agreements. That's quite a separate issue from hyping vaporware, and is a crime not limited to the software world.
Enron was a public company, and therefore required to provide accurate information to its shareholders. That's the difference.
mykepredko wrote: At the time, I seemed to be the only person in the world that noticed Microsoft paid $12 Million for a song with the chorus "You make a grown man cry..."
Did you also happen to notice what the fade-out vocals said "you" could make a dead man do?
Let's say you're designing a video data link. Your boss doesn't know and frankly probably doesn't care about the clever compression and variable bit rate stuff you've implemented. If you got into stuff like channel characterization and configurable modulation parameters, the glazed look in the higher-ups faces would make you wonder if the water at the meeting had been spiked with thorozine. So you simplify, and say you can send video up to 5km away. Now this isn't a false statement, it just doesn't say that at that range you have increased compression and a lower frame rate. However, from that simplified description, someone, somewhere, may end up saying you can send 1080i signals for miles.
The point here is that even when there is no deception intended, product descriptions have to be understandable to a large number of people of. This results in a generalized description which is open to mis-interpretation.
So you were the one who posted it to rec.humor.funny?
Me too. The issue is, if vendors are evil, and if customers are dumb, then there is little else to do in our current, decadent culture.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
This isn't simply hype. This has been charged as fraud. Basically, they made claims about what they could do _today_ and took investor money based on those claims. There's a big difference between saying "Wait till you see my software, it will be ten times faster than the other guys" and "We have a working perpetual motion machine. Give us some money based on that fact".
Like This?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I have often said that if you sold real estate like software is frequently sold, you would end up in prison. If you were to sell used cars like software is often sold, you would end up in prison. IMO, of course.
It really twerks me off that companies that are honest and open about thier product lose, while charlatans who over inflate win. Whoever makes the wildest claims, wins.
And whatever you do, if you are on an internal IT staff and mgt. buys a SPOS of a software package, if you call it for what it is you could end up unemployed.
I hope to return to school and get out of IT soon. The ethics and morality of the field are just too awful for me to take much longer.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's been a slashdot item before because of it's being "almost released"... IN reality though they are talking about this patch and the "work" done on it at Blizzard for 2 years.
I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank
And a good one indeed. Only problem is Sales and Marketing people don't have the corner on scumbag routines. They have most of it. (Lawyers have another piece of it.)
Some programmers too are scumbags. If I were a scumbag Project Manager or Executive or Sales and a programmer started doing this, preventing me from dishing out fake sells, keeping me from my commisions, I'd go find another programmer who was [1] Young and dumb to try fulfill my request [2] Scumbag programmer who will nod and let me fill my empty orders or [3] Even bigger scumbag programmer who will stop the documentation at my request so I can fill my request as long as I can scratch some itch he's got (ie hook him up with that pretty thing in finance or push finance to sign off on that new laptop for him). There's a reason why business people are successful. Who says barter is dead? They do it everyday to push an agenda.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Yes, the Duke jokes are (mildly) funny. But the key factor you're ignoring: Enron was not just hyping a product before it was ready. EBS was claiming to have metered streaming capabilities, and selling this service to customers, when they did not actually have it. The lies ought to stop before the money changes hands.
Okay - TWO people noticed it back then.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
When are they going to start selling tickets to watch Bill Gates get ridden by Bubba with his "Man Pussy destroyer"
It's legal to engage in puffery, over-optimism, and even outright self-delusion. That leaves lots of room for crooks to hide. They can always say "we believed it ourselves".
(If you need an actual legal education don't listen to me).
Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?
Too many of society's current problems have to do with the ever-widening gulf between "legally acceptable" and "morally unacceptable", particularly in the business world. WorldCon, Enron, the whole investment banking industry pump 'n' dump of the late 90s, the car dealer, and many commonly accepted marketing practices can ALL be blamed on people doing "what's legal" but which are by any common standard of ethics dishonest.
Even spam (especially spam?) can largley be blamed on people marketing "products" which really don't work or for promoting "deals" which really aren't.
It'd be great to see more significant penalties and more streamlined punishment procedures for what essentially amounts to dishonesty for dollars.
The case of vaporware is essentially just a subset of the larger problem, and can be a particularly malicious tool used by big companies against small companies when product choices and switching are high-cost endeavors.
If I say I'm selling a V-8 and it's actually a V-6, that's illegal. There should be no difference in the software world! The companies know what the software does, and if they say it does more than it really is capable, they are attempting to deceive their customers.
stuff |
Developer: You can't Be Serious that they want all these features! I can deliver 10% of that if we're lucky. Manager: We'll Negotiate, but we should be able to deliver some of that in phase 1. The rest will have to wait. Marketing: We'll going to deliver all the features our competitor has, but with 1/3 the cost and 1/2 the time. Sales: Oh yeah! of course you will get the Thought Controller Interface for no additional charge. CFO: I need to book $50 million revenue for the current quarter for this project. CEO: Time to get more options from the board.
You must be a manager. You can write correct engish from the start but do not care about wether the product will actually work. And you post as anonymous coward becuase you do not want to be known.
As a software engineer I care first of all how the product functions. For the documentation I work with tech writers.
This is great news! And I'm hoping it doesn't stop with software.
This needs to apply to the implicit suggestions in all advertisements. Drinking a particular brand of beer will not make you popular, and the suggestion should be punishable by law. Driving a certain car will not get you laid, and the suggestion should be punishable by law. And so forth and so on.
And MOST importantly, campaign reform! Politicians are the biggest source of vaporware there is. If you make promises during your campaign, and then fail to put up credible effort to make them reality, you should spend at least as long in jail as you did in the office.
Fuck them all. And then fuck them again!
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Looks like this company is in trouble.
Iesus Christus magnus est.
if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you? I can hear my mom's voice....
I wonder if this will result in a regulation board similar to what the EPA has done for (to?) engineers?
For those that do not know, in order to claim something in engineering, it has to meet certain requirements as set by the EPA. If those guidelines are not met, it is not a certifiable plan, design, or implimentation. Basically, the EPA has page upon page of redundant guidelines that have to be met which engineers have to comply with in order to work. These guidelines are excessively wordy and require a large degree of decemination in order to understand.
I wonder if this sort of thing being instigated as a software requirement would cripple the industry, or provide a stimulus for better software (which means more consumer interest, it would seem).
I s'pose there could simply be a software claims board that reviews software to make sure they have the features they claim, but I'd rather there be some sort of quality-assured guideline in addition.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
To overhype/promise on the features of anything and then underdeliver is a sure way to kill a business. As a business owner, I've seen many businesses go under because of this. It's unfortunate that the software industry doesn't seem to understand this fact. It's also ridiculous for people to keep clinging to the hope that the software company will eventually produce instead of finding another product (OSS software anyone?) to fill the need.
Don't get me wrong: some of the vaporware EVENTUALLY becomes reality but how much of that actually lives up to the hype? Not much.
I've learned that, to keep my customers satisfied, I have to fulfill their NEEDS, deliver on those promises, then go the extra mile by providing more than they expect. It's the best way to get customers to come back for more.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
You are wrong about puffery. Puffery is not a "slight" exaggeration... it is an over-the-top claim that is obviously not factual... like claims "this is the greatest car in the history of the world!"
Back to the original post, it is easy to define the endpoints of what should and should not be criminal vapor-hyping... if you do it to forestall consumers from buying a competitor's product... if you do it with the intent of making a competitor try to duplicate it.... Basically, if you do it to gain a competitive advantage, but know it is a feature/product that you aren't going to offer or not in the way you promote it.... that deserves some time in the iron-bar timeout room.
Announcing something that you simply fail to accomplish or not following through on something that the market tells you they don't want after you announce it.... is at the other end of the spectrum.
The grey area in between is the killer. You have to get into the state of mind, and big corps are good enough at masking the details, they will make what should be criminal vapor-hyping look like innocent failure to produce. They will introduce "weasel words" into everything... instead of saying "XX will offer 4x speed over YY" it will say "we hope for XX to offer 4x speed over YY"
Essentially, you will have to have a smoking gun memo saying "I know there are no plans for it, but lets announce that XX will have feature blah-blah anyway to preserve market share for 6 more months."
The only other way to do it otherwise, is to write a statute that requires a party challenged on its claims about future products to back them up... and then you get competitors doing it for harassment and to uncover a competitor's strategies. The FTC (and FDA) already has this problem in several areas.
Clear as mu
This isn't an issue, because anyone that installs commericial software (typically) forfits any right to protest, copy, refund, etc. before they even install it through the court-proven click-through EULA.
I suspect it would mostly apply to more of the custom-application market (banks, hospitals, restraunts, etc.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
No-Reg Courtesy of Google
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sun: "Java is a language that allows a program to run on any computer"
They better start working on JVMs for Atari 2600, 400, 800, Commodore 64, VIC 20, Timex-Sinclair etc.
I haven't read the NYT article (yeah, kill me), but I have more than a passing level of familiarity with the case. I used to work for Enron, and I have more than one former co-worker that I believe to be in discussions with federal prosecutors about testifying in this case.
I strongly suspect the functionality here was the Broadband Operating System, which was specifically the software support for trading operations. I wrote some of the software in the Pooling Point Control System part of the BOS, which was supposed to provide logistical support for the execution of bandwidth trades, i.e. our software expected to talk directly with the cross-connects and the switches in the pooling points. The case will probably turn on what the Enron executives told the analysts about what was the actual status of that development work at the time of the demonstrations.
I'm trying to be really careful, but let me say this: at Enron, it was a very macabre joke to repeat out loud the old chestnut about how Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From A Rigged Demo.
My advice to engineers who think they might be working for the next Enron: keep a diary, and keep it safe. When you are working for people who think they can deliver political solutions to engineering problems, you can expect that sooner or later your value to the team will be measured by how much leverage you have collected.
At Enron, almost all of the Lawful Good characters in the party were very low level players, and I saw a lot of my friends get screwed because they were sharp engineers but they weren't very good at power politics. Do I have strong opinions I am not voicing here? Yes. Do I wish I had kept a diary? Yes. Was I an accessory to a fraud? I sure hope not.
jhw
Hate to disappoint you, but I'm lowly engineer just like you. I post as an anonymous coward because I'm an old man and can't be bothered to remember one more password. I think you miss my point about poor usage of English - I'm not talking about poorly written documentation, but about poorly written code. I believe that elegant code & excellent communication skills (including grammar & regardless of the language) go hand in hand. Consider the incoherent babble of George Bush (Sr. or Jr.), and then imagine them as software developers.
When searching for a product or service, consumers will be presented a list of competing possibilities, along with price and clearly spelled out advantages and disadvantages of each. Consumers will always request this information (i.e., through the Internet, etc.) and will never be given it without asking (commercials, ads, junk mail, etc.)
Large companies (those with over 5 million dollars or more than 100 employees) that do not donate 99% of their revenue to the EFF will not be allowed to list any advantages, and will be required to exaggerate the disadvantages.
Large companies (like those mentioned above) will be required to provide free maintainance, service, repair and otherwise support for every product they sell for as long as it is in existance, even if it has changed owners multiple times since being purchased. Both parts and labor are paid for by the large company.
Individuals will be allowed to market their products, and will be encouraged to do so through a tax waiver that waives all taxes and even reimburses sales tax for all items for which a receipt is supplied.
For those of you too lazy to click a link from the FAQ...
Let me try to give you an analogy for Slashdot's homepage... The ultimate goal is, of course, to create an omelette that I enjoy eating: by 8pm, I want to see a dozen interesting stories on Slashdot. I hope you enjoy them too. I believe that we've grown in size because we share a lot of common interests with our readers. But that doesn't mean that I'm gonna mix an omelette with all sausages, or someday throw away the tomatoes because the green peppers are really fresh.
There are many components to the Slashdot Omelette.
Hence, Slashdot content is content he feels he would enjoy. Whether we enjoy it or not may be inconsequential, although he hopes we enjoy it.
If you were in charge, and you saw comments that some found funny but you found utterly useless, would you allow them to float to the top? You may, you might not. I'm not sure myself and might subject it to my mood. Altogether, I think people pay too much attention to the mechanics, and not enough on the stories.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
This admin is going after everybody but the guilty parties. Ken Lay knew about it by signing off on this crap.
MS is let off the hook even though almost all of the MS ppl lied on the stand. Martha Stewart is guilty and has lied, but she will have more done to her in a shorter period of time than has happened to Enron, MS, or Worldcom ppl.
It truely pays to be a republican who keeps paying the party. And we complain about the corruption in China or Russia.
Why should vaporware -- features that the next version will have, and which will be released "any day now" -- be more illegal than any sort of forecast? Of course it would be nice if vaporware didn't exist -- I believe vaporware is unethical -- but it would be really hard to come up with a definition of vaporware that's good enough to base a law on.
That said, the article says
This is complete bullshit, nothing more than FUD. If I as a developer lie about the features of the software I wrote, that doesn't absolve the company -- unless they can prove a vast conspiracy among the developers and the testers. Similarly if my employer advertises nonexistent features, the developers can't be blamed. If a GM car doesn't actually deliver on its claimed fuel efficiency, how is Joe Engineer responsible?Unlimited growth == Cancer.
...and from a customer perspective, the software worked fine. The main problem with the service was that the movies they offered were mostly crap. It was a couple hundred movies, and there were only 5 or so that I had any desire to see. The interface was a bit awkward, but the features worked reasonably well, especially for a trial. The best part about the trial was that Verizon throttled my DSL connection up to 8MBPS so that Video On Demand would work! :)
Turned it back down a couple months after the trial ended though.
From reading the article, it looks like VOD was just a small part of their broadband initiative, so maybe the "vaporware" issue was something else. Also, when this story first broke a couple of months ago, the reason the execs were in hot water was that Enron reported future, non-existant profit from their broadband operations.
This isn't just about "vaporware", it's about making unrealistic outlooks.
If company announces that it will have $10 billion revenue in the next quarter and the revenue will be $5 billion instead, company will be prosecuted.
For software company, making large vaporware announcements falls in the same category.
This doesn't concern most open-source projects since they aren't publicly owned companies.
If you've been gypped you get to kneecap the b'stard with a shotgun?
Hey, if he knew the dangers....
What does this mean if the software claims that (e.g.):
"This software may cause your cpu to experience nuclear melt-down, and your dog to run away with your wallet, hair to grow 6 feet long out of your nose, and your skin to turn green, with mauve polka dots."
Are you liable if it *can't* do that?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How is this any different than a company touting it's weight loss solution? A company says their product will do one thing but doesn't or does something else (harmful or detrimental). When it's a health-related matter attorney's and governments are quick to jump on board for the easy win.
I'm a software developer so I feel qualified to say this. One thing that makes me uneasy and very disappointed is when the marketing folks put their spin on my software. Suddenly, I'm trying to explain how my software won't convert used motor oil into root beer.
Software continues to get treated differently than ANY other product. There are no security regulations; no quality regulations; no performance regulations; hardly any regulations at all on software save the import/export regulations. There are a couple of exceptions -you can't reverse engineer it or the DMCA police will throw you in the klink foreverandeverandever AND any limitation that the RIAA and MPAA deem relevant. Am I a fan of regulation? In most cases, no. However, when people or companies are unwilling to self-regulate then there comes a point when it becomes necessary to a healthy society. Case in point - the aforementioned diet pills. There's the "deceptive business practices" line that these companies cross. For that, there needs to be some mediation.
That being said... How the heck do you regulate Vaporware? If we start regulating vaporware as empty promises then I want my local weatherman regulated too. Whetherman - whether it'll rain or whether it won't. Companies should never be allowed to make false claims about their product. "It'll do X" or "It has Y" when it won't or doesn't is just plain fraud. But when a company says "We're working on Z and it should be available soon." there's not much to do except sit and wait.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
If slashdot comments range from -1 to +5, one would expect a peak at score 2.
Let's use this story as an example, as it currently is moderated:
- 5: 19
- 4: 11
- 3: 19
- 2: 108
- 1: 79
- 0: 60
- -1: 16
Just eyeballing the numbers, they don't look like an unreasonable distribution, although 3/4 should be higher.Perhaps moderators should be required to browse at -1 nested. If they browse at +2, they can only see the high-moderated posts. If they browse threaded, they'll see top-level and high-moderated posts.
I worked as a contractor for EBS in Portland in 2000. at the time, the hectic schedules, rotating management and failed deadlines seemed like normal american business procedures. one of my main concerns was all the $$$$$$ enron was dumping in brand new equipment and man power. i heard the sun contractors get $300/hr, so if you talked to them for 15 minutes while getting a friday bagel, you just cost enron $250. :)
Looking back on it now, the broadband scam is crystal clear. everything we did was smoke and mirrors, the biggest trick was fooling the employees into thinking that they were getting something done. And boy were we fooled, the exaggerated salaries, free cell phones, PDA's, laptops, hi-powered sun workstations, etc.
Q:Who would complain about that?
A:no one.
we all slowly got laid off or quit. the internet bubble had burst and the $1 billion that went into EBS was gone. The few broadcasted events we did were done on a lick and a promise, after blockbuster and msn bailed on our biggest contracts, we have cards left in our deck. RIP EBS.
Or your definition of an operating system.
but don't register. If they get a few thousand interested readers who turn back at the registration page every day, maybe they'll come to their senses.
If you lie about some product in order to make money, or in order to boost your stock price, and know what you're doing, then it's fraud.
Very interesting stuff. I have to admit, back in the streaming media team, we used to say that the BOS acronym would be more correctly spelled without the O. Then again, teamwork was never Enron's forte, so I can believe I missed seeing something.
There were some serious kooks running around there: Diane Hetzel, that director of networks (both from Level 3, rather suspicious), Peter Ghavami, just to name a few. Good god man, I try to forget about it as much as possible.
Fastow gets $30 million, I get chronic tendonitis from working at the Portland NOC for long hours. What a great deal I got!
Can I get my money back for my ColecoVision ADAM computer?
That thing is the all-time king of vaporware. The list of promised titles was, quite literally, dozens in length (early 1980's, keep in mind.) Virtually none saw the light of day. Tunnels and Trolls, anyone?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Two words:
Microsoft Works
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Okay, so I went and read the NYT article. It says what I said, plus a whole lot else that I don't find particularly new. (Though, I was amused to see the name 'InterAgent' crop up in the context of the 'petty infighting' between engineering managers-- tells me a lot about who is talking to the reporters from the Times...) Loved the title: Deception, or Disarray? My answer: probably equal parts of both.
There are still some questions hanging in the air for me, but I'll keep them to myself. I'll say this: if what certain people told me in confidence about those analyst demonstrations in January is true, then I certainly hope it comes out. It was pretty disturbing to me when I heard the rumor.
I believe the prosecution is talking with people who will tell the truth in their testimony, but I am not optimistic that the government will be able to get a conviction. The story is just way too confusing and there are so many players that it's impossible to track them all. I'll bet the investigators and the prosecutors are lost in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. "There is a bone here."
jhw
I think a stiff penalty for vaporware overhyping would give folks like Micro$oft pause before they release software. It seems like their supposed superiority over folks like the Linux crowd and Apple before them is based largely on corporate disinformation campaigns and the like. Perhaps it would level the playing field by making software vendors accountable for the quality of their products. Think of the old, "if car-makers followed the same rules as software companies, your car would crash on the way to work at least twice a week," arguement.
"Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?"
Would Bill Gates be on death row?
Sig? What Sig?
Will /. ever have to prove that it posts "Stuff that matters?"
So, should a company that manufactures equipment designed to do scientific research "overpromote" the capability of its new system to, say, count the number of foreign bodies in a specimen of plasma? Or should a company which manufacturers a defibrilator "overpromote" the effectiveness of its new model's "hands off" mode ("Now detects arhythmia through clothing!!!)? Perhaps we can agree that this shouldn't be.
... MIDI 2 was a dream that died quite a while ago. You may not have been born.
... no sound ... but in addition my musical notation software doesn't playback either! I'm stunned. There's nothing in the documentation which indicates why such a disaster should happen.
But should a company be obliged to tell me, the consumer, that that killer app which I salivate over involves working with technology that is far older than the 1.44MB floppy drive (which I routinely avoid using at any cost)?
The killer app that I refer to (in my case) is MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which can be used to play back and record written musical notation through soundfont technology. What the hype doesn't tell one is that the MIDI interface hasn't been updated since the days of M$ DOS, and so MIDI device drivers aren't capable (for WHATEVER reason) of passing program control to and from the tone generators, like the way that any other device on my machine can do! Consider this: It is MIDI 1.1
But as a typical computer user, I don't know that. And what's more, would never suspect otherwise. I just bought my soundcard. It should work!
Now say I'm somewhat competent and have a computer beefy enough, so I get my $220.00 soundcard set up with the brand new copy of Windows XP that I bought for $300.00 (the sales guy said the soundcard needed it), and I succeed at rendering and recording some written musical notation (on the $300.00 musical notation software of my choice). It only took a week to do and I'm thrilled. I can't wait to try out modifying the $100 bucks worth of soundfonts that I used to make this music. The next day, I get up and install a $40 soundfont editor so that I can do this.
But as soon as I do so, I discover that not only doesn't the soundfont editor work
I bought the platinum model, so I have telephone tech support. The person at the other end hurriedly explains the situation to me, says it can be corrected by buying another soundcard, and asks if I want to be sent over to sales.
A thousand bucks later, and the guy asks me if I want to be transferred to sales. What am I gonna say? "Yeah, I'll take half-a-dozen."
Is anyone suggesting that only after reading over-generalized FAQs and interminable helpfiles, manuals and tutorials, after visiting websites and knowledge bases, and struggling for MONTHS (maybe YEARS) to make my latest and greatest soundcard perform as its manufacturer claimed it should, that I should then have to discover on my own that said soundcard manufacturer was merely talking out of its rear-end, and that I should be made to feel like I am no closer to achieving my musical goals than I was prior to spending lots of my money and lots of my time?
Is that person insane?, that I should be allowed to fitfully come to some glimmer of understanding six months later that, in order to pursue my musical goals, I will need one piece of MIDI hardware for each of the 6 apps that I need to run simulataneously? (Blurb For Marketing: Most machines have only 5 PCI slots.)
What am I as the consumer supposed to think?
I'll tell you what consumers begin to think. What they always think when stuff like this happens. They re-evaluate the technology industry as a whole and begin to lower expectations as to what it can and what it cannot do. They begin NOT to buy stuff, muttering, "It'll probably never work anyway." They take with a grain of salt EVERYTHING claimed by manufacturers, and back off from any company which offers truly creative products.
Perhaps we can agree
Either it works now or it doesn't. Either it does what it says it does in the brochure or it doesn't. If it does, great, more power to them. If it doesn't, then they should lose their shirt.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
- hype vapourware
- go to jail
- ???
- profit!
If you're not allowed to hyperbolize about your product, then the entire marketing industry is doomed. If you Hyperbolise about something that doesnâ(TM)t exist or is not done by youâ(TM)re product your company is doomed. Because people will simply stop believing what you say For example whenever McDonalds announce that they have a great new chicken burger made with only the finest chicken breast freshest salad etc. I donâ(TM)t rush out to buy it because past experience has shown me that McDonalds uses the cheapest products they can lay there hands on so the money that McDonalds spent on hyperbolising there product is wasted on me and considering there profit loss last year its not just me who thinks this. Also the number of people who believe everything M$ say about there product can be counted and the fingers of a blind butcher In the UK, you're not allowed to specifically say that your product is better than some other company's. Instead, you apparently just have to go on about how great your own product is. Now if that doesn't take the heart and soul out of marketing, then I don't know what does. Since when has marketing had a heart and a soul? You are allowed to say what you like about your product just so long as it is the truth and you have real proof, otherwise that is false advertising. There is nothing wrong with being banned from lying because lying is never a good thing for either side. Which car ad is going to tell you in big, bold letters on the screen that driving like that is going to get you some pretty serious jail time? They are not lying about the cars performance so they are perfectly fine if you want to follow the example of the advert and speed and possible loss you license thatâ(TM)s your dumb decision. The important thing is whiter the product is doing what it really can do in real life. Which software product isn't going to save you millions of dollars? LOTS if you canâ(TM)t prove that it will save you money compared to what they have that it is a lie What beer isn't supposed to make you a sex god? Personally I drink beer that tastes good. Also beer gives you the floppies (not disks) if you drink too much so that isnâ(TM)t allowed either. Flat-out lies right there, but how could you call the companies on this? Apart from the car example you are correct and you would not see adverts like those on UK Tv so they already have been called with fines. In short you can say what you like so long as you can prove this is the case if you have no proof you are lying. Also you only need to slightly change the adverts i.e. from: this product will save you a million pounds so give us a call to: this product may save you money so give us call. Because you would only need to prove it helped one company save some money instead of proving you could save all companies a million. It simply make advertising what it should be a way of informing the customer what is available to with out muddying the water. It also meens Marketers have to do work rather than con money out of people.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
So, the pointy haired boss is going to jail?
there are so many players that it's impossible to track them all.
"If enough people are responsible for a mistake, then no one is at fault."
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
More accurately, if enough people share the responsibility for a mistake, then no one really gets enough of the blame.
The problem for the prosecutors is not I think that too many people are responsible for the cratering of EBS. It's that there are so many players, it's hard to sort out the truly culpable from the merely incompetent.
There were three executives in the "Office of the Chairman" and there were something like thirty-six Vice Presidents that directly reported to them. One of my directors called those Tuesday morning teleconferences by the disparaging term the "Mosh Pit" meeting. (They were on Tuesdays, right? See-- I should have kept a diary.)
There's this beer-swilling conspiracy theorist in the back of my head who thinks the apparent disarray may have been engineered specifically to cover the tracks for a swindle of monumental proportions. Proving it happened, I think, will be next to impossible.
jhw
Survey sez: Where's the HURD? I bet Stallman's glad right about now GNU really is nonprofit.
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.