> most of us have been in a position where we have
    > been forced to use a product that is inferior
    > or even completely broken

I might have used equipment that was inferior, or been made to perform a procedure of which I thought it will add very little, or maybe almost none value. I definitely haven't been in a position where I have been forced to use something equivalent of a dead brick, and pretend as if it would do something very technically sophisticated (bomb detection).

    > I have no doubt that many of the people who were
    > forced to use this product were aware that something
    > was not right

For some almost-untrained security guard, I'd say this is probably right. Add to this the context of living in a very hierarchical system where you "just do what you're told" and I certainly can imagine someone wielding a stick around a car claiming to examine it, "as long as I get paid..."...

But then, this person isn't the one being deceived about the effectiveness "bomb detector" but rather it was the leadership of the whole army/police/security-service who obviously didn't care the least to invest even 1 second of thought into what's being bought (for thousands of $, no less...). So how much thought was put into the effectiveness of the weapons being bought? The procedures of checking cars? The method by which locations of checkpoints around sensitive areas were determined?

The death of people being killed by bombs was the result of the complete ineffectiveness of these "bomb detectors" only to a very little extent, but likely mainly because the whole organization responsible for safety was unable of rational thought and planning.

> I might have used equipment that was inferior, or been made to perform a procedure of which I thought it will add very little, or maybe almost none value. I definitely haven't been in a position where I have been forced to use something equivalent of a dead brick, and pretend as if it would do something very technically sophisticated (bomb detection).

I've had to use a very expensive product from a big-name tech company that was, as far as I or anyone technical could tell, a JVM that took even longer to start than usual.

Indeed. Here in Thailand we also have brilliant generals who spent millions on these things, sold as model "GT200" here. Even after it was exposed as a fraud and the fraudsters jailed the Thai generals insisted they worked, and kept getting young army men killed using them in the south where there has been a insurgency for decades.

Emperors new clothes comes to mind...

I remember when travelling to Thailand reading in the tour guides that you have to be careful because the Thai are very keen on "saving face". If you ask a local for directions, they will give you wrong directions if they don't know the way rather than admitting that they just don't know.

Reminds me of why i don't like sitcoms. Because the joke all too often is about one or more people that can't admit fault and so end up dragging a issue along while the excuses etc snowballs.

But then i have the social graces of granite...