RE: Negative Policies

[Hal Lockhart <hal.lockhart@entegrity.com>]

> > My orginal point (at the F2F meeting) was that this sort of 
> thing seems to
> > happen all the time as a scan of something like bugtraq will reveal.

> and i believe the response to that was that misuse is an 
> implementation
> issue, not a fault in the model. cars and liquor don't mix, but it is
> not a design flaw in the automobile (frivolous lawsuits aside :o)

While all technologies can be misused, I believe engineers have a
responsibility to design systems to avoid unnecessary risks to the extent
possible. When the same sort of accident occurs over and over again it
behooves us to see if there are ways to make reasonable tradeoffs to avoid
them in future. Since you mention cars, I will point to the redesign of the
Corvair and more recently efforts to reduce the tendancy of SUVs to flip
over.

The law makes a distinction between inherently dangerous objects, which a
reasonable person will realize are dangerous and ordinary objects which bear
no such presumption. If you pick up a chainsaw by the blade and are injured,
you are a fool. If you pick up a toaster and are injured, there is something
wrong with the design.

Hal