700 prosecutions?

[gareth evans]

In the news tonight are details about the 700
sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were
prosecuted for fraud by the Brit Post Office, with
some of the umfortunates being imprisoned while
others were bankrupted.

I wonder what was the abominable error foisted
onto those poor unfortunates by an incompetent
computer programmer in the employ of the Post
Office?

A mish-mash of integer and floating point
division, perhaps?

[chris]

Post by gareth evans
In the news tonight are details about the 700
sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were
prosecuted for fraud by the Brit Post Office, with
some of the umfortunates being imprisoned while
others were bankrupted.
I wonder what was the abominable error foisted
onto those poor unfortunates by an incompetent
computer programmer in the employ of the Post
Office?
A mish-mash of integer and floating point
division, perhaps?

Might have been just a few lines of code, but the
real problem was a management culture that saw
postmasters and other employees as some sort of
untermensch. Always on the fiddle and forever
untrusted. Everyone is a criminal etc. That and the
complete unwillingness to admit that they were
wrong, covering their backsides all the way to the
bank. Poor software development process and poor
or nonexistent testing before release.

People ought to be jailed for this, but doubt it will
happen...

[Andy Walker]

Post by gareth evans
I wonder what was the abominable error foisted
onto those poor unfortunates by an incompetent
computer programmer in the employ of the Post
Office?

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-post-office-appendix-1.pdf

Post by gareth evans
A mish-mash of integer and floating point
division, perhaps?

Nothing [AFAICS] so simple.

[...] Poor software development process and poor
or nonexistent testing before release.

From the above PDF [114 pages of detailed analysis]
that seems to be a very unfair description of what ICL and
Fujitsu [and others] did. "Horizon" was an extremely complex
system [one of the largest and most complex in Europe], which
was processing many billions of transactions, and was not in
itself responsible for the appalling way the sub-postmasters
were treated. I would suggest that anyone wanting to comment
further on the computing aspects of the cases should at least
skim the judgement first -- it's far too long, complicated
and technical to summarise here. FWIW, I started with much
the same attitude as you and Gareth, but then wondered how
well Messrs Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, ... might fare if they
were hauled up in court to explain every bug in Windows [etc]
over more than 20 years of use, millions of transactions every
day, millions of random hardware crashes, etc.

[g***@gmail.com]

Post by Andy Walker
but then wondered how
well Messrs Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, ... might fare if they
were hauled up in court to explain every bug in Windows [etc]
over more than 20 years of use, millions of transactions every
day, millions of random hardware crashes, etc.

I imagine it all might be a bit more reliable. And if that's what it takes to get them in prison, in this one particular case of
billionaire dickheads I'm willing to say WTF. If you can't stick Bezos in jail for the pissbottling, get him in for something.
They've done SO MANY things, just give 'em life on general principle. It'll still be more just than what the average person gets.

Zuck especially needs sticking in a Crimes Against Humanity tribunal.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

if love is a drug, then, ideally, it's a healing, healthful drug... it's
kind of like prozac is supposed to work (without the sexual side
effects and long-term damage to the brain and psyche)

[Vir Campestris]

Post by gareth evans
I wonder what was the abominable error foisted
onto those poor unfortunates by an incompetent
computer programmer in the employ of the Post
Office?

You'd think that someone would have though it odd that the number of
prosecutions seemed to be rising suddenly. But apparently not.

Andy

[Andy Walker]

Post by Vir Campestris
You'd think that someone would have though it odd that the number of
prosecutions seemed to be rising suddenly. But apparently not.

The number of prosecutions going up isn't "odd"; you move
from a manual system to a computerised system, and so you get hard
information printed out in flashing red that "Here be a discrepancy"
instead of humans trying to spot things and mostly being unable to
prove what's happened. The odd thing is that there was a complete
audit trail of every transaction, and they seem not to have thought
it worth looking at those in dispute. Or perhaps they didn't know
about it, as it was primarily for the computer people rather than
the fraud department?

[Thomas Koenig]

Post by Andy Walker

Post by Vir Campestris
You'd think that someone would have though it odd that the number of
prosecutions seemed to be rising suddenly. But apparently not.

The number of prosecutions going up isn't "odd"; you move
from a manual system to a computerised system, and so you get hard
information printed out in flashing red

I want that printer - printing out a flashing light seems quite
a technical feat.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:04:10 -0000 (UTC)

Post by Thomas Koenig

Post by Andy Walker

Post by Vir Campestris
You'd think that someone would have though it odd that the number of
prosecutions seemed to be rising suddenly. But apparently not.

The number of prosecutions going up isn't "odd"; you move
from a manual system to a computerised system, and so you get hard
information printed out in flashing red

I want that printer - printing out a flashing light seems quite
a technical feat.

Nothing special about the printer, the ink OTOH.