[IGSTK-Developers] Testing & The Cost of Bugs

[Luis Ibanez]

A reminder of why we must not lower
the guard on good Testing practices:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/06/2010-bug-millions-germans

* Kate Connolly in Berlin
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 January 2010 18.00 GMT
* Article history

A 2010 software bug has left millions of German debit and credit card
holders unable to withdraw money or make payments in shops, and
thousands stranded on holiday with no access to cash.

A French card manufacturer, Gemalto, admitted today it was to blame
for the failure, which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to
rectify. Gemalto, whose shares dropped by 2.6%, said it was attempting
a software update, but might have to replace the cards.
Gemalto-manufactured cards in other countries were not affected.

The fault has led to comparisons with the millennium bug, when experts
predicted the transition from 1999 to 2000 might cause computers to be
fooled into thinking it was 1900. As it was, the changeover happened
without much incident.

Although some cash machines were quickly reconfigured to override the
2010 problem, many bank customers were forced to queue to withdraw
cash over the counter. Germany's economics minister, Rainer Brüderle,
urged banks to "ensure that credit and bank cards function without
problem as soon as possible, or to replace them immediately".


http://developers.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=10/01/07/1327232


"I was running a Y2K lab at my company from 1999 to 2000, and we found
a TON of serious problems. Nearly all of our internal stuff had major
issues, as well as email, phone systems, backup systems, and several
operating systems.

The tests I ran went from 1998->2012 in one year increments (with full
tests by all teams at each year step) and most of those problems were
nailed down.

I'm guessing not all shops tested much further out than 2001 or 2002 -
probably due to poor planning and lack of funds. As it was we had to
cut ours back to 2012 because of budget constraints, so I can only
imagine other shops did likewise."