I have blamed the developers, but the greatest source of issues I've seen usually circles back to managers and users. These fundamental issues/problems are still going on
- Prototypes are taken directly into production. The prototypes intention was to actually flesh out the business rules. After initial testing does it do what the customer wants or can it do what the customer wants, customer is happy and wants it right now.
So how did the prototype get so poor -- after 4 or 5 iterations where the developer saw multiple weeks of work get dumped and trashed, the code got more turn and burn. Backend gets sloppy and just good enough so the shiny front end works.
It may not be business rules, insert any other complex issue here that is poorly described and spec'd.

- I have seen where developers get assigned to departments where they are reporting directly to a business manager or someone in sales. They churn out shiny code. Business Manager or Sales manager are all happy because they are getting new tools.
Actually saw a horror story of this. Developer went and asked and got a view created in a database. Application allowed for an unintentional SQL injection. Data was lost and nobody noticed a large chunk of data missing for 2 weeks. The DBA got blamed. They just didn't want to blame an out of control developer.
But basically it pointed back to a developer who was churning out non-peer reviewed code. Which is actually a management problem.
- Then there is the industry publishing problem. (This I think is one of the biggest problems)
I haven't read a beginners or intermediate programming book in awhile, but when I did, I never saw chapters that addressed these issues. Example after example never checking for buffer over flow or SQL injection. If it is such an easy problem to deal with , why aren't they addressed in beginning example code.

I think the Finance Minister greatly underestimated the resale value in the US. But we'll take them for free.

Please elaborate on this point. I think what you are saying is that if I have an email which needs to go to bob, mary and phil. That I can create a PGP key which utilizes bob, mary, and phil's public keys and that email can be opened by bob , mary and phil's private key. I have never seen this, can you show me an example of how you would accomplish this using a GPG or PGP interface.

Why are IT. computer workers singled out , period? I also agree that technical workers should unionize.

Then they need to get rid of it because it isn't working, but they are going to need to replace it with something else that does work.
Currently, part of the problem is that the financial world is hidden. Oh just trust us, we know what we are doing. Well after 2 bubble bursts, people are really wary of investing in anything, because there isn't any reliable information and there isn't any repercussion if someone lies about financial dealings.
So I don't think repealing Sarbanes-Oxley is the answer, unless something is put in its place that will help give investors confidence in their investments.
I for one have pulled completely out of the market and I know of others that have also. Now the big question is if and when do we get back in. Right now there is nothing happening in the financial market, that indicates to me that things are going to improve. So why should I put my money into something that is going to crash again in 2 or 5 or 7 years.

I don't think they are that worried, because they are the extremists.

the public questions the value of the dollar
It has more to do with when foreign countries question the value of the dollar. John Q public has very little say in this.

Those people endure huge amounts of stress and live on the financial edge constantly, and it's actually better for them in the long run to get rid of the house they can't afford and get to a more stable financial position. And if you think they aren't still living on the stressful edge after getting "help", consider this: the results are coming in from government programs in states and from banks that are rewriting mortgages, and 54% of people who have their mortgage terms changed STILL default on their loans. My concern is what happens to all these defaulted loans. You see from my understanding these loans are owned by banks, and insured by companies like AIG (which can't afford to pay for all the defaults). So basically it goes back to the financial institutions bought the loans and can't recoup the value, because the insurer can't pay.

So eventually this leads to companies and countries who bought the loans as bonds. So do we stiff China, Russia and Europe for the bonds they purchased. Does anybody have any idea what kind of havock that would create, if the US bond was relabeled double A or single A.

People need to realize that what finally started the house of cards to fall was that China and Russia started looking at our debt and refused to buy anymore or greatly reduced the amount they were buying.

All the US government is trying to do is stave off the next potential quantum spiral in this fiasco. US bonds getting rating lower and the US dollar no longer being used as a reserve currency in global markets. When that happens you can kiss your savings good-bye.

Basically the world is in a freeze waiting for the US to show it can make good on it's outstanding debt. Because if you trace the loans all the way, you'll find a good chunk of it is in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Venezuela (yeah Venezuela)...

So if these loans don't get repaid in some way, then the dollars I currently have are going to become worthless (well I'm pretty sure we won't be exchanging one to one with the peso).

So basically what the big three went and did was say that we control 300,000 jobs and untold amounts of loans and said give us the money or we are going to make all these people and businesses default on their loans (how patriotic of them, I'm with you on investing in the buggy industry, Wal-Mart will probably be next).

So now the question is, how long will the rest of the world wait. So will they move the reserve currency to another country, or will they accidentally sink a Carnival Cruise line vessel and start a war.

Basically they are waiting and we are trying to stave off any action that will cause an uncontrolled deflation of the dollar on the world market.

So right now I'm for finding a way to make as many of these loans good for as long as we can.
Nobody knows where the magic number is. Do we have to save 40% 60% or 80% of these loans, because nobody is really sure how much is involved and where it all goes.

So it appears to be a grand scale mess and that's why we need to find a way that these people can pay these loans, credit cards and what not. Because if they default we are going to have to pay one way or another. They aren't going to have to pay because they don't have any money to devalue.

So we either pay with inflation or pay with taxes or both. The main thing we have to worry about is uncontrolled inflation, which could lead to deflation/depression. Which everyone keeps talking about on the news, but nobody explains what that means in common day language. That means nobody has enough money to buy anything but the bare essentials if that.

Yes, because if he's wrong, you pay for the mistake. You are always responsible for determining what you can afford.

I'm glad you live in such an elegant world where you have no reliance on the decisions of financial advisers, doctors, .... or any other experts in their fields.

You appear to be determined to blame this in 'Joe Smith' from down the block. What we are talking about here is something that corrupted the financial world in which (the rest of us live in) live in.

Many of us can remember when, if you weren't capable of paying a loan house, credit card,.. whatever. You weren't given one.

What we are talking about is the fact the financial system got turned around and it became the responsibility almost entirely of people to be protect themselves from bad lenders.

You keep pointing at 'Joe Smith', I want to know who the hell was in charge of making the bad loans. Who allowed the loans to be made? They were the ones who were responsible for protecting my assets? They were the ones who were supposed to be educated on financial matters, they were the ones who were supposed to understand assets being traded and getting paid large salaries because it was their responsibility to understand what was being traded.

You want to know who charged up $50k on a CC or bought a 450K home. Yeah, it was bad for them to do it, but hey some people just aren't that smart. What I want to know is who is the asshole who had responsibility for million, billions, trillions of dollars of loans. Who are the ones that kept perpetuating this fraud until it encompassed 15 to 35 trillion dollars.
I don't think 'Joe Smith' down the street had the authority for a 100 million dollar trade.
If you read around here, you'll find some intelligent discussion about what was and is going on in the financial market.
You have money in a bank, do you have money in stocks, do you have US dollars period. The people who agreed to these multi- million/billion dollar trades are the ones that put these at risk. And guess what? This is a long way from over. Why? Because we don't know the extent of the problem. A simple solution would be an audit. But nobody wants to do that, because then we would know how bad this situation is. The closest answer I've heard is that "We can't really tell because some of this was traded as complicated derivatives".
So I'm not concerned about 'Joe Smith'. I'm concerned with the guy who controlled millions and billions of dollars of paper assets and never checked on the viability of those assets. If they had gone out and done an audit of these lenders then they would have seen that the paper wasn't worth what that were selling it for. They would have stopped buying the loans, then the housing market would have readjusted itself and the credit card companies/banks would have readjusted and this could have been stopped at something more manageable like 2 or 3 trillion.

Now a number of people are faced with the loss of their savings and people here are being told to start a civil war with their neighbors. Point fingers at them for buying a new car, a big TV, a big house. These are not the people that caused this crisis, unless of course they bought a third world nation on their Visa

And I know there are a lot of people who are out there blaming 'Barney Frank', what I want to know is who took financial advise from a US congressman. Give me a break.

And lets not forget the things that we spend money on that we didn't have in the past: broadband, cable/satellite TV, cell phones, videogame consoles, big-screen TVs ..

And lets not forget HDTV.

You may want to check the laws in your state. If they truly had you down for part time, then they may owe you overtime (1.5). There was a company in Texas that hit with a fat stiff bill from the DOL, when they found out they were working part timers over 35 hours. That was about 15 years ago, but there are a lot of laws like that which companies and employees don't know about.