Word: defectiveness
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...software companies have been releasing revisions to their Internet browsers at a hellish pace, leapfrogging each other with new features so quickly that the things aren't adequately debugged. And now we learn that for the past year, their free e-mail programs have contained a dangerous defect that allows any bad guy to send e-mail that can crash your computer. (It's so easy, even...
...more sophisticated--and malicious--hands, the defect can be used to insert a "Trojan horse," a program that can stealthily take over your PC and, for instance, grab your passwords. More than 17 million PCs have the affected versions of Microsoft's Outlook 98 and Outlook Express and Netscape's Communicator...
...When AnnMarie Fischer, 39, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., gave birth to her daughter Cassie four years ago, doctors discovered the baby had a hole in her heart. Chances were good that Cassie would eventually need surgery to fix the defect if it didn't close on its own. But Fischer, who thought her previous insurance was inadequate, had trouble finding a managed-care plan that would treat her daughter's "pre-existing condition." So she was pleased to discover a local HMO that would, her insurance agent assured her, cover all her child's pre-existing conditions, including the heart...
...courts have largely sided with the gun companies. Victims of guns that misfire because of a mechanical defect have won some cases, and stores have been held liable for selling guns under wildly unreasonable circumstances. But suits blaming the gun industry when its products are used in crimes or by careless third parties almost always fail. Just this spring a jury cleared a Tennessee company that sold a mail-order MAC-11 assault-pistol kit, the so-called MAC in a sack, used in a sniper killing on the Brooklyn Bridge...
Some 20% of folks may have a genetic flaw that protects them from getting hooked on cigarettes, suggests a new report, and if they start, they smoke less. People with the defect metabolize nicotine more slowly, so it lingers in the body longer. The result: first-time smokers can barely tolerate a cigarette, and habitual smokers need less to satisfy cravings...