I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
A nice young man at Kings Cross station gives me three plastic wallets full of discount vouchers for the Guardian and Observer. I immediately start buying the Guardian every day – at 40p off, why not? I can stop any time I want to.
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Don’t get me wrong, as an agency person I am all for enthusiastic participation in marketing the client’s product, and as a committed testing specialist, I am all for putting my money where my mouth is, but in the following article from The Times, journalist Catherine Philp buys a bulletproof jacket from tailor Miguel Caballero and then allows him to shoot her in the stomach.
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Excellent article in today’s Guardian technology supplement by Bruce Schneier, security technologist and author. His hypothesis is that cars are well designed and software is not. This is because car manufacturers face liabilities if they make mistakes but software vendors do not. Further, both the market and the law support the status quo. He writes:
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The Nuremberg Defense is a legal defense that essentially states that the defendant was “only following orders” (“Befehl ist Befehl”) and is therefore not responsible for his crimes. The defense was most famously employed during the Nuremberg Trials, after which it is named.
Source: Wikipedia, Nuremberg Defense
The QA Department often hears the phrase “but it is signed-off” used by staff & clients to defend the indefensible. At this point, it is the QA Department’s job to persuade the team to do the right thing.
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Why would we not want to include packaging in the marketing mix for Quality Assurance?
Packaging. It is very important how the product is presented to the customer. The packaging is often the first contact that a customer has with it. Packaging can also be considered as a subfield of promotion and/or if the primary intent of the packaging is to protect the product during shipping, as a subfield of placement.
Gonzo QA 