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No, it tends to be looking at a building that has collapsed because it was artful, but structurally unsound, when people go all, "wow, that was really pretty, but didn't have a lot of structural integrity."

That being said, for a job that has only around 100k jobs in the US, out of a total of 150 million, doesn't seem like it warrants being a core subject:

http://www.aia.org/press/AIAS0...

"The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) estimates the number of architects licensed in the United States at 105,847."

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/e...

"There were 139,004,000 jobs in the US in July 2014 according to the CES survey of employers. The CPS survey of households showed 146,352,000 employed persons for the month. "

Around 7/100ths of 1% - sounds like a hobby market to me.

Yeah, a market of 80,000 in the US is a great market.

http://www.aia.org/press/AIAS077761

At that that run rate, I'm sure the tablets won't cost more than about $50k a piece.
At which point, the market goes down to 8,000 and the price goes up to $100k.

See how this works? Or doesn't?

Ethics is an interesting concept - first thing that may come a person's mind :

"good and bad"
"wrong or right"
"black and white"

Personally, when one finds themselves in IT related predicaments, I'm guessing it's not that usual to land in a black or white situation, but one of a million shades of gray.

A few more:

"the way one lives"
"actions that land you on the right (good?) side of the fence"
"oath"
"creed"
etc . . .

What is a creed? One definition in an online dictionary defines it as ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creed ) : " . . .any system or codification of belief or of opinion. . ."

eek . . . the entertainment industry (I'm guessing a person can come up with centuries or more worth of examples there) would have us believe in "good" creeds or "bad" creeds - religions, knights, assassins and more.

One might also ask - will your ethics lead you to copy chunks of the comments to the slashdot article above? Ethics in research and writing papers - that's a fought over issue as well. (people often hate to look in this mirror :)

Several professional groups have published "ethics" . . .

American Chemical Society ( http://pubs.acs.org/meetingpreprints/ethics.html )
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ( http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=198 )
American Institute of Architects ( http://www.aia.org/about_ethics )
American Institute of Chemical Engineers ( http://www.aiche.org/About/Code.aspx )
American Society of Landscape Architects ( http://www.asla.org/about/codepro.htm )
Instutute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers ( http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/iportals/aboutus/ethics/code.html )

To pick a few. Look kind of like science/fantasy fans might see as guild rules :)

IT is no different.

People who strive for SANS/GIAC certification agree to their ethics as part of completing the certification process. ( http://www.giac.org/overview/ethics.php )

SAGE, LOPSA & USNIX share the same code of ethics - http://lopsa.org/CodeOfEthics

ACM - http://www.acm.org/about/se-code

CISA, CISM, CGEIT - ( http://www.isaca.org/Template.cfm?Section=Code_of_Professional_Ethics&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=20454
)

SSCP, CAP & CISSP (certification) ethics - ( https://www.isc2.org/cgi-bin/content.cgi?category=12 )

I'm sure there are plenty more.

I'm guessing there are very few if any CS or IT related courses that don't include some kind of ethics class or section.

Personally - when I was growing up - with a lot of computer enthusiasts in the neighborhood - some slided one way or the other (ethics wise) and some stood fairly firmly on one side or the other (usually the "old guys").

I've been in the professional IT industry for several years - and doing semi-professional IT stuff on and off years before that. Seeing I'm still there - I hope I'm on the an acceptable side of the fence :)

I've been involved in a few ethics dust-ups over the years . . . never got a horrible

Good point.

I'd say the majority of people in most offices need very few things:

Email/Groupware (Outlook/Notes etc)
Web Browser
Terminal program to access AS/400 or other legacy device
Word processor and spreadsheet

Mozilla is great except for the sites that 'require IE'
Terminal emulationo under Linux is great.
Word and Excel clones are bountiful for Linux.

This would also cut down on the number of viruses/spyware/adware, and you could even run thin clients. Computer acting up? Reboot it and start clean. Plus, your users can't install every WeatherBug/WebShots/Smileys program they find.

We can't do this where I work, however. Well, at least not for everyone. Our accounting software is Windows-only, and just moved over to .NET for no reason that I can see. Now it's a 250MB install that takes nearly an hour. Also, our Contract Document Software is tightly integrated to Microsoft Word in it's new version, and although it appears to be a Java application of some sort, it's Windows-only. They had their own PDF-related format, I'm not sure why they switched.

Also, our marketing department uses Quark and Adobe products. These people can't manage to understand why you can't scan a logo off a business card and use it on a t-shirt, so I'm thinking teaching them Gimp is going to be a lost cause.

Screw it, we'll just stick with Windows.

Actually I think /. is a great place to get advice on how. The real problem is getting advice on what.
Might I suggest two general approaches?
First of all, talk to actual customers in fields where they spend money on this sort of thing. Use a group like the American Institute of Architects or the American Society of Mechanical Engineers to reach the people who actually *do* flythroughs and renderings and see what they want from such a product. You may also find that talking to folk at a second-string engineering school (Stevens or RPI rather than MIT or CMU) you'll be able to get plenty of eager beta testers as unlike the more famous places, they don't get as many offers but they've got plenty of brains.
A variation on that would be to check out reviews of products in magazines like Architectural Record, and further, write to the relevant editors (not phone, you want to make it clear that you weren't just bored and calling on a lazy whim) and see what they've got to say.
This page will give you a solid start on relevant organizations and variables.
Secondly, the current situation of having to use five different programs to finish the job is a little silly. I continue to be amazed by the frequency with which I hear somebody say that they do the sketching on paper or with something like Illustrator, then do the technical work in something like AutoCAD, drop in some people from Poser, then export to something like Maya, fix the resulting problems and render there, and then do final changes in Photoshop. Meanwhile stereolithography outputting is moved to something like Lightyear or Buildstation.
Might I suggest a rigorous NURBS implementation with an intuitive basic functionality such that an item can be rough generated with a PowerGlove/Glasstron UI and make it all the way through the process right to render, animation, and outputting of models. I know that it's a lot to ask but, hey, you *said* that you were ambitious. In fact, I suspect that if you can do a system such that you sell a $50 crippleware version through places like Download.com and the serious version elsewhere, you'ld be able to build your user set quickly and also get to market faster.
A side note is that the ability to generate objects for systems like Adobe Atmospherewould finalize the build once-use many times paradigm that I'm talking about. After all, how much overlap is there between these communities? I'ld say considerable, and if gamers can then use the objects they created for one part of their lives in another, they'll be happy campers.
Best of luck to you,
Rustin (former techie for Sweets, Arch. Record, Design-Build, This Old House, Index, Woodworker, etc.)