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Have you ever done any work for a local government or defense contractors?

They'll spend millions of dollars on something that's hardly better than a college project, mostly written by interns and barely cobbled together to get a working demo.

The justification for sloppy code is the fact that there's no oversight on projects like these. They just get it done even if it sucks. Working in defense was some of the worst code and poorest management I've seen in my life.

One of my friends works as an engineer for the state DMV. He tells me about similar issues. Some people he work with should never have even gotten the job, they barely know how to code.

Cost and price are not directly tied. As long as price is greater than cost, the product will exist, and the incentives exist to drive cost down to make more money (since raising prices may cost sales, it's a less reliable way of increasing profit).

The article mentions that police precincts are in charge of keeping the machines calibrated, which they often fail to do.

But it looks like programming errors abound as well... Yeesh!

User error.

Greed