[coldtea]

>Programmers have worked very hard through the years to create the current liability-free environment; people die because of health care programming bugs, pilots crash because of avionics bugs, and people lose fortunes -- or welfare checks -- because of finance programming errors, but programmers just throw up their hands, and say that programming is hard.

Yeah, we've all noticed the rampant mass deaths of millions because of software issues...

/sarcasm

[stonogo]

So you're telling us that accidental death is okay as long as it isn't in the millions? How did you decide on that number? Where is the line drawn?

[coldtea]

>So you're telling us that accidental death is okay as long as it isn't in the millions?

Yes, of course. We take such decisions everyday. Cars lead to deaths from traffic accidents, and still we are ok with it as a necessary evil, since we want the benefits they provide.

If we restricted technology to "things that can cause absolutely no deaths" we would even have used fire (tons of people die every year from it). Heck, houses too can collapse in an earthquake etc -- we should make sure noone builds one until its 100% safe house (that costs some millions to build).

But my sarcasm was directed at the parent blowing this "deaths due to software" thing out of proportion, and making it sound like someone dies every minute from a buffer overflow.