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Fr I feel like they need some explanation in this show for laymen that the fundamental issue here is not "COMPUTERS SCARY", it's that literally no competent sof

Fr I feel like they need some explanation in this show for laymen that the fundamental issue here is not "COMPUTERS SCARY", it's that literally no competent software development team works on the assumption that they are infallible, and if they do these are the consequences. Fallibility is fine, the problem is that Fujitsu and the Post Office were so scared that admitting fallibility was somehow a massive moral failing. It's not. You just be prepared for it and then none of this would have happened. As an SE this is what I was thinking while watching the show throughout. But, as a layman you probably would never understand this nuance.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
I don't think it was fear that led to them lying about the fallibility, but hubris. They knew that they had sub postmasters signing that the records were accurate and so they could get them to pay up for the "missing" amounts or face going to prison. They knew the software had many bugs but decided to use that to bully their employees and steal money from them.
- VBprogrammer 3y ago
  > They knew the software had many bugs but decided to use that to bully their employees and steal money from them. I don't really see how this argument fits. In my understanding the amounts in question were in the range thousands to tens of thousands. It seems implausible that those sums of money, while life changing for the individuals involved, would ever move the needle at all for any of the companies involved. In fact the only people who made money out of it are likely the lawyers.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    I suspect it was more to do with bullying than the profit. Make an example of a few sub postmasters and the rest will be too scared to raise a fuss or else be sent to prison.
    - VBprogrammer 3y ago
      Yeah, I can buy that. The enquiry even today was discussing how some postmasters were forced to agree not to blame Horizon in return for reduced charges. If that's the mentality then it absolutely fits. Presumably those people potentially faced contempt of court charges if they continued to blame the system.
  - helboi4 3y ago
    Seeing as the post office is publicly owned it feels like it shouldn't be trying to scam people for money. Nobody is seeing some massive profits from it anyway and their salaries will be decided by the government.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> Fallibility is fine, the problem is that Fujitsu and the Post Office were so scared that admitting fallibility was somehow a massive moral failing. It's not. Fujitsu was a contractor; the contract was a PPI (Public-Private Investment) contract. The deal was that Fujitsu developed the system at their own cost, and ran it in exchange for a cut of each transaction. I know something about this work; back in the 1980s, I worked on a bid for what was then called Post Office Counter-mechanization. This was probably the third attempt to automate Post Office counters; previous attempts had failed. FWIW, we lost the bid; I think it was won by ICL, the forerunner of Fujitsu. That third attempt failed, of course. To work on this bid, I was loacked away in an office on my own for 6 months. The requirements were delivered as two metres of lever-arch files, full of paper forms; each form described an input screen, or a report, or a processing operation, or a storage requirement. 90% of these forms were blank, apart from the name of the operation. It was impossible to do a serious job when so little of the required data was supplied. And we weren't allowed to talk to the Post Office about the requirements; that would have risked the entire tender being overturned in court. If the Fujitsu PPI contract was handled in the same way by the Post Office, and I assume it was, then it would have been impossible for Fujitsu to deliver a working system. But now we see Alex Chalk, the (current) minister in charge of the Post Office, suggesting that the compensation money should be extracted from Fujitsu. It may turn out that Fujitsu have some hard questions to answer; but for now, it looks as if this mess falls entirely on the shoulders of incompetent Post Office managers.
- helboi4 3y ago
  That makes a lot of sense thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like the post office may have set Fujitsu up to fail. This makes a lot of sense since I doubt Fujitsu does not have the expertise on board to make something functional.
lupusreal 3y ago
"Computers scary" is a perfectly valid takeaway for the general public. "Computers scary... because programmers/IT are fallible" isn't wrong but it's needless detail. The important thing is that people stop trusting computers to only output infallible truth, and "computers scary" gets that point across efficiently.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

I don't think it was fear that led to them lying about the fallibility, but hubris. They knew that they had sub postmasters signing that the records were accurate and so they could get them to pay up for the "missing" amounts or face going to prison. They knew the software had many bugs but decided to use that to bully their employees and steal money from them.

VBprogrammer 3y ago
> They knew the software had many bugs but decided to use that to bully their employees and steal money from them. I don't really see how this argument fits. In my understanding the amounts in question were in the range thousands to tens of thousands. It seems implausible that those sums of money, while life changing for the individuals involved, would ever move the needle at all for any of the companies involved. In fact the only people who made money out of it are likely the lawyers.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  I suspect it was more to do with bullying than the profit. Make an example of a few sub postmasters and the rest will be too scared to raise a fuss or else be sent to prison.
  - VBprogrammer 3y ago
    Yeah, I can buy that. The enquiry even today was discussing how some postmasters were forced to agree not to blame Horizon in return for reduced charges. If that's the mentality then it absolutely fits. Presumably those people potentially faced contempt of court charges if they continued to blame the system.
- helboi4 3y ago
  Seeing as the post office is publicly owned it feels like it shouldn't be trying to scam people for money. Nobody is seeing some massive profits from it anyway and their salaries will be decided by the government.

denton-scratch 3y ago

> Fallibility is fine, the problem is that Fujitsu and the Post Office were so scared that admitting fallibility was somehow a massive moral failing. It's not. Fujitsu was a contractor; the contract was a PPI (Public-Private Investment) contract. The deal was that Fujitsu developed the system at their own cost, and ran it in exchange for a cut of each transaction. I know something about this work; back in the 1980s, I worked on a bid for what was then called Post Office Counter-mechanization. This was probably the third attempt to automate Post Office counters; previous attempts had failed. FWIW, we lost the bid; I think it was won by ICL, the forerunner of Fujitsu. That third attempt failed, of course. To work on this bid, I was loacked away in an office on my own for 6 months. The requirements were delivered as two metres of lever-arch files, full of paper forms; each form described an input screen, or a report, or a processing operation, or a storage requirement. 90% of these forms were blank, apart from the name of the operation. It was impossible to do a serious job when so little of the required data was supplied. And we weren't allowed to talk to the Post Office about the requirements; that would have risked the entire tender being overturned in court. If the Fujitsu PPI contract was handled in the same way by the Post Office, and I assume it was, then it would have been impossible for Fujitsu to deliver a working system. But now we see Alex Chalk, the (current) minister in charge of the Post Office, suggesting that the compensation money should be extracted from Fujitsu. It may turn out that Fujitsu have some hard questions to answer; but for now, it looks as if this mess falls entirely on the shoulders of incompetent Post Office managers.

helboi4 3y ago
That makes a lot of sense thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like the post office may have set Fujitsu up to fail. This makes a lot of sense since I doubt Fujitsu does not have the expertise on board to make something functional.

lupusreal 3y ago

"Computers scary" is a perfectly valid takeaway for the general public. "Computers scary... because programmers/IT are fallible" isn't wrong but it's needless detail. The important thing is that people stop trusting computers to only output infallible truth, and "computers scary" gets that point across efficiently.