I guess no (non-trivial) program is proven to be correct. That is not the point. Mistakes happen and nowadays there is infrastructure to deliver updates (which should not be an excuse to not even try to fix crucial bugs before release).
My question: Have you ever seen errors in paid software? I mean really bad errors. Errors so bad that the software does not remotely do its job or does not even start? I have.
How can software be released and sold for money if it does not work at all or does not even start? In the year 2003, before the law forbidding circumvention of copy protection (video, audio) took effect, I bought a cheap DVD decrypting/transcoding/burning program. Guess what: It does not do its job. It literally crashes almost instantly on almost any DVD. It makes Windows XP go bluescreen because of a bad driver for a virtual DVD drive. I tried hours and hours and DVD after DVD and was able to transcode one of them. What a great result.
In my current experiments regarding copy protected CDs I saw a lot of garbage related to the protections where a cracked version works a lot better than the original – I consider this (Falcon-) punching the paying customer into the face. But I also stumbled upon a not working program where the error is not related to DRM. Like in my previous entry it is another learning game for kindergarten kids (Caillou).
Now… Imagine you are a not very tech-savvy parent (in the year 2005) and bought a game on CD for your child. What do you do? Insert the CD into your Windows XP computer. Autoplay should start the colourful autorun.exe and you will certainly click on install. Some generic install wizard you have seen a 1000 times pops up and goes through flawlessly. Then you click on the icon on your desktop. The resolution goes to 640*480 and you get greeted with
"Ja" goes to the same error forever and "Nein" exits to program without changing the resolution back to the original values. Are there really people who get paid for delivering such things? I would be ashamed if I was responsible for this. There literally can't have been any form of testing this application on a standard (empty, only hardware drivers) Windows installation. If the program was tested at all, it must have been on the development workstation(s).
Yes, I'm getting old, unobservant and slow; I should have watched the installer. I could have known right away as the installer copied some .mov files. The error above means: "Apple Quicktime Player not available. Please install Quicktime."¹. Are average Jane/Joe supposed to deduct a missing Quicktime player from the above message box? How can a piece of software depend on another piece of software and not check for the presence of this helper application (and give a meaningful error if missing)?
My opinion: The people responsible for pressing stuff like this on a CD and demanding money for it, should make the acquaintance of one of the three objects from this nice fairytale (the object under my control of course). The reader may guess which of the three objects…
Again my question: Has anybody ever seen similar fails on commercial software?
____________________
¹ There is a folder QT on the CD containing Quicktime 5. But the Quicktime installer is never called by the main installer and the need for it isn't mentioned. Any shitty "interactive CD-ROM" in the 1990s containing Quicktime movies installed it if missing right with the game/program.
My question: Have you ever seen errors in paid software? I mean really bad errors. Errors so bad that the software does not remotely do its job or does not even start? I have.
How can software be released and sold for money if it does not work at all or does not even start? In the year 2003, before the law forbidding circumvention of copy protection (video, audio) took effect, I bought a cheap DVD decrypting/transcoding/burning program. Guess what: It does not do its job. It literally crashes almost instantly on almost any DVD. It makes Windows XP go bluescreen because of a bad driver for a virtual DVD drive. I tried hours and hours and DVD after DVD and was able to transcode one of them. What a great result.
In my current experiments regarding copy protected CDs I saw a lot of garbage related to the protections where a cracked version works a lot better than the original – I consider this (Falcon-) punching the paying customer into the face. But I also stumbled upon a not working program where the error is not related to DRM. Like in my previous entry it is another learning game for kindergarten kids (Caillou).
Now… Imagine you are a not very tech-savvy parent (in the year 2005) and bought a game on CD for your child. What do you do? Insert the CD into your Windows XP computer. Autoplay should start the colourful autorun.exe and you will certainly click on install. Some generic install wizard you have seen a 1000 times pops up and goes through flawlessly. Then you click on the icon on your desktop. The resolution goes to 640*480 and you get greeted with
____________________________
| Director Player Error [x]|
|-------------------------- |
| |
| Script Error. Continue? |
| |
| [Ja] [Nein] |
|___________________________|"Ja" goes to the same error forever and "Nein" exits to program without changing the resolution back to the original values. Are there really people who get paid for delivering such things? I would be ashamed if I was responsible for this. There literally can't have been any form of testing this application on a standard (empty, only hardware drivers) Windows installation. If the program was tested at all, it must have been on the development workstation(s).
Yes, I'm getting old, unobservant and slow; I should have watched the installer. I could have known right away as the installer copied some .mov files. The error above means: "Apple Quicktime Player not available. Please install Quicktime."¹. Are average Jane/Joe supposed to deduct a missing Quicktime player from the above message box? How can a piece of software depend on another piece of software and not check for the presence of this helper application (and give a meaningful error if missing)?
My opinion: The people responsible for pressing stuff like this on a CD and demanding money for it, should make the acquaintance of one of the three objects from this nice fairytale (the object under my control of course). The reader may guess which of the three objects…
Again my question: Has anybody ever seen similar fails on commercial software?
____________________
¹ There is a folder QT on the CD containing Quicktime 5. But the Quicktime installer is never called by the main installer and the need for it isn't mentioned. Any shitty "interactive CD-ROM" in the 1990s containing Quicktime movies installed it if missing right with the game/program.
