Ethics In IT

chiefloko writes "I am presently taking a Business Ethics class while earning my MBA. For my final paper topic I have chosen 'Ethics within the Information Technology realm.' Over the past 13 years I have worked for three corporations and have seen everything from the typical BOFH to ungodly pirated software use. I also bore witness to a remote user logging in to a poorly administrated Sun station, finding out s/he was root, and then reading co-workers' emails. I am interested in what the norm is for ethics in the IT world and some of the stories and outcomes."

Comments

You need to clarify your question

[arivanov]

Whose ehics are you talking about?

The Ethics of an MBA giving IT orders, the ethics of a BOFH doing his job, the ethics of a developer?

Let's not speak of Joe Average consumer of IT as he actually has no IT Ethics, he applies his Ethical viewpoint to IT so his inclusion will only muddle up the concepts.

Each of these communities (PHB, BOFH, Developers) has their own ethical codes (or lack of). While there is a great difference between them, there are not that many differences between members of a particular caste.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[MindKata]

You also have to add in the ethics of other departments within a company. I've found often to my surprise, the ethics of sales people & marketing people are at times very different from that of programmers and other workers in a company.

Many sales people are not scientifically minded people. I'm a programmer and I worked in one company where the programmers were on one side of a desk divider and the other side had the sales people. We were killing ourselves laughing at then kinds of statements sale people were making about the products we were creating!. Often it wasn't based on fact at all. Ignorance or ethics? ... call it what you will, but to a sales person, its also part of the game they play.

They talk with complete conviction on a subject and it sounds like they know what they are saying (to anyone who doesn't know the subject), but with programmers I've found we often add disclaimers, because we see there are gaps in our knowledge and gaps in areas where we want to carry out more tests etc... Sales people's eyes often glaze over and they loose interest after telling them details for more than a few seconds. They don't what to know the details. They want to push a certain version of the truth (to me that's not truth at all and its ethically wrong, yet to sales people, its part of their way of communicating).

Also the ethics of high up bosses are often even worse than sales people. But they often do have one personality trait that helps them deal with sales people, as bosses I have found are often very distrustful people, even though on the surface they give a good image of confidence, deep down they show their insecurity and distrust of others. (Many even have recognisable personality disorders like NPD). They approach dealing with others, in a very different way to e.g. how programmers would work together.

The whole subject of ethics especially in big business like IT is very subjective depending on what people you ask.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[clickclickdrone]

I read a study recently that indicated a very high % of senior execs are actually psychopathic (as in total lack of empathy) noting that it is actually a desirable trait to get to the very top. Being able to make hard decisions by looking at the bigger picture despite the decision hurting some people along the way is something most people have trouble with so someone with said trait is likely to do well and often does. Psychopaths also tend to have charisma in spades which helps.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[pdwalker]

That's sociopaths, not psychopaths.

Think of it as the difference between a politician and a serial killer.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[clickclickdrone]

Thank you for the correction - an important difference it would seem although I'll wager there's a few of both in senior positions!

Re:You need to clarify your question

[lorenzino]

Think of it as the difference between a politician and a serial killer. Sorry, what difference again ?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[smittyoneeach]

Nah, you just need to paraphrase Gandhi:
"I think ethics in IT would be a wonderful idea."

Re:You need to clarify your question

[mux2000]

You didn't read your own links, did you? From your Wikipedia link:

Psychopathy is a psychological construct describing immoral and antisocial behavior.[1] The term is often used interchangeably with sociopathy[2].

Actually, the difference between a politician and a serial killer is the amplitude of the mental disorder, not its type. Politicians obviously have it much harder.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[GDI Lord]

Caste or Knightly Order of BOFH and Knightly Order of Programmers?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[frodo from middle ea]

Serial Killers are selective about who they kill.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[MindKata]

Yes unfortunately there are many high up bosses who go beyond even NPD. (Its an interesting sliding scale, as even NPD's lack a great deal of empathy. The higher up in this form of disorder, the more they lack empathy ... but often the more they perfect their image of being a good confident even moral person ... this suppression of empathy towards others is ironically why we have a world with such extreme behaviours ... even terrorists fit high up on this scale, as their self-righteousness blinds them from the horror of their actions. Scary world we live in thanks to these kinds of people. Thankfully most people in the world are not like them).

The whole subject of ethics in IT needs to be considered in a wider context with the ethics/morality of the other staff that make up the companies. Also even the whole of society and even at a given time in history affect interpretations of ethics. Each aspect of the context, can vary the interpretation.

The irony is most employees are far more trusting people than bosses or sales people. If we were more distrusting, we would seek out and learn to spot more examples of the gaps in what the bosses say, compared with what they do, and therefore be less easy to be exploited by some bosses. Its why some people are not called "business minded". What some bosses are actually describing as business minded, is a behaviour that is at times so twisted and lacking empathy, that I don't want to be like them. But I want to be successful in business, so it helps to learn to understand their behaviours, because once you learn to see these personality types, it gives a way of predicting their behaviours. Once you learn to see these personality types, its actually far easier to deal with them.

Ethics in big business like IT is a fascinating subject, as even their way of interpreting the law is at times different from most people. To most people (I hope!) the law is an uncrossable line. A solid boundary of ethical and moral behaviour. But to big business, I have been shocked at times at how the law is treated at times more like for example, the rules in Formula 1 racing cars, where they can twist and exploit the definitions of the law to suit themselves and how the government plays the same games back at them. For example government will say something like, "if you big company A do that now, to get around this law, then next time around, when we alter the wording of the laws, we will make it tighter still on you and all companies like you, so don't get around this law now". Its all political power biasing. The law at that level, isn't an absolute line, the way most of us interpret it. That kind of thinking in big business, I find, really puts the ethical worries of programmers into perspective.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhhh.... the old one-kills-many Vs. many-want-to-kill-the-one comparison.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[arivanov]

Actually not true. They are being less effective at whom they kill.

As the ancient saying goes: If you steal a penny they will hang you at the dawn, if you steel a million you will become a banker.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[WhyteRabbyt]

Actually, no; 'psychopath' is correct

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3579402.stm

Google for 'corporate psychopath'

Re:You need to clarify your question

[clickclickdrone]

Interesting stuff. What doesn't help is that by and large, we, as a society, reward the kind of errant behaviour you describe whilst wringing our hands and muttering about how unpalatable it is. As a species we're our own worst enemy in many respects.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also an ancient saying that goes like this:

Man, when you get home tonight, beat your wife. You may not know why you're doing it, but she does.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[jcnnghm]

For a company to survive it is sometimes necessary to make decisions that aren't beneficial to some people in the company. Being able to make these decisions rationally without being unnecessarily swayed by emotion is the trait that is favored.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[apt142]

. But to big business, I have been shocked at times at how the law is treated at times more like for example, the rules in Formula 1 racing cars, where they can twist and exploit the definitions of the law to suit themselves and how the government plays the same games back at them.

I think the reason that big business tends to view laws as more flexible than the average person does is because of the penalty of those laws on big business in relation to the rewards.

For example:

If I as an individual, go out and set fire to somebody's car, I'm likely to spend a good deal of time in jail. I would possibly lose years off of my life and get a criminal record that would hurt the ability to provide for myself in the future. Knowing that trade off would deter me.

If a big businesses made a car that burst into flames then their likely punishment will all be in dollars and cents. So, any deterrent to them would be to not lose money. But sometimes, it's more profitable to make an unsafe car than it is to make a safe one. If that causes a violation of the law for them, then so be it. Even after the punishment is dealt out, they can come out better than before. As long as they can avoid the public action and boycotting that happened to Firestone, then there really isn't any punishment.

I think there needs to be a better punishment system for big business. Perhaps prosecution of CEO's, or forced closing (short term or permanent), maybe a fine to the shareholders.... I don't know.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[knarf]

One little thing I'd like to comment on:

To most people (I hope!) the law is an uncrossable line. A solid boundary of ethical and moral behaviour.

Really? I'd wager that this is a serious exaggeration. The law in itself is not more than the codification of morals and ethics. It is those morals and ethics which most people abide by, not the letter of the law. There are many laws which stray from common morals and ethics. This being slashdot it should be sufficient to point out the DMCA or the current implementation of patent law to show examples of law which often are not seen as moral or ethical.

So assuming that people in general try to stay on the right side of morals and ethics they tend to be law-abiding as a consequence of that. In business (big or small, does not matter) morals and ethics often seem to take a back seat to the pursuit of financial gain. As success in business is often defined by the amount of money made it should not be surprising that those who are emotionally capable to push morals and ethics aside for financial gain tend to rise above those who are less inclined to do so.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Hal_Porter]

sudo rm -rf /home/gandhi/

Re:You need to clarify your question

[MindKata]

"For a company to survive it is sometimes necessary to make decisions that aren't beneficial to some people in the company"

That's what some bosses tell us. While there are times a company can be in trouble, in reality some bosses are sometimes more concerned with their share price. We have got into a world where some companies want to return a greater profit each year and this idea becomes more important to them, than providing a steady living for people. Its not just about company survival, as some bosses say. Some bosses would sooner loose staff that take a pay cut and some would even laugh at having the power to do so. You need to recognise the kinds of personality that can dominate in business. Its not always as clear cut as they say.

Not all bosses are like this just as not all companies are like this, but some are. The subject of ethics isn't as absolute as it would at first appear, but to work with these kinds of people, you need to see what some people are capable of doing and in big business such as IT, there are a lot of these kinds of people.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[jcnnghm]

The purpose of a company isn't to provide a steady living for people, but to maximize profits.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[paiute]

Why are the same people who rant and foam when companies apply for silly patents for some known thing with "on a computer" appended perfectly happy to consider ethics with "on a computer" appended? Ethical behavior is ethical behavior.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[syousef]

Think of it as the difference between a politician and a serial killer.

What if the politician IS a serial killer. Like Hitler. Oh shit wait. I just invoked Godwin! I'm meeelllltttinngggg!!!!!!

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Tony Hoyle]

That's where we go wrong (it appears to be a very US centric view also - I've never heard that from a european company & I've spoken to more than a few over the years).

A company is part of the social fabric.. it doesn't stand alone. It provides employment, which gives its employees a certain standard of living. It also generates wealth that improves the economy. The employees use their pay to give money to other companies, thus helping them also.

If a company mistreats its employees it breaks part of that. It may make more profit, but at a cost to the rest of society. That's why most countries have strict employment laws.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Bombula]

One of the key distinctions between so-called sociopaths and psychopaths is that sociopathic individuals often exhibit brain compartmentalization. This is the same sort of separation of brain function that, say, a fundamentalist muslim geophysicist exhibits: the ability to split conscious thought into two entirely different realms. So while the fundamentalist geophysicist can genuinely believe in his religion's claim that the Earth is only 4,000 yers old on the one hand, he can apply his rational mind to finding oil in rock strata tens of millions of years old.

Same deal with sociopaths: they can apply empathy and appropriate emotional responses to some people and situations while at other times those functions seem to be entirely absent. In many cultures through history, including some today, this has been a norm. Take slavery, for instance: a slave-owner can exhibit perfectly 'normal' compassion and empathy toward his family and still behave diabiolically toward a slave. And I'm not talking about race-based slavery. Throughout much of history slavery has had only a moderate corelation to race.

To bring it closer to home, every time you walk past a bum in the street and switch off your empathy only to switch it back home when you walk into your house with your family you are doing exactly what these sociopathic executives are doing: compartmentalizing your brain function and applying different standards to different people and situations. Where we set the limits on this behavior - where it becomes simply unacceptable to throw the switch - is entirely a function of cultural norms.

Rest assured, at some point in the future a society will look back and consider walking past a bum without a glance just as sociopathic as slavery and homophobia.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[morgan_greywolf]

If I as an individual, go out and set fire to somebody's car, I'm likely to spend a good deal of time in jail. I would possibly lose years off of my life and get a criminal record that would hurt the ability to provide for myself in the future. Knowing that trade off would deter me.

If a big businesses made a car that burst into flames then their likely punishment will all be in dollars and cents. Bad analogy. Your first example is a matter of criminal law and your second example is a matter of civil law (product liability). Here's a better example:

The mechanic down the street fixes your car and due to a short cut he takes (say, not replacing a gasket or a seal that should have been replaced), your car bursts into flames, what happens? Well, first the mechanic is subject to civil liability law, where his repair work was the direct cause of the flamage. Secondly, the mechanic may be subject to to criminal law, since the injuries you sustained may be proven to be an act of gross negligence or possibly reckless endangerment.

The CEO that makes the decision to make a car that has a risk of bursting into flame carries almost no personal liability whatsoever. He's protected by the corporate veil. Now, even the mechanic down the street might be protected by a corporate veil (anyone can incorporate), except that to be a mechanic in most states you must be personally licensed and insured, so you assume some personal liability risk for sure.

But in reality, the big difference is that the corporate CEO has enough money to buy the best lawyers to ensure that the corporate veil isn't pierced, while the mechanic down the street probably does not.

So in the end, it's all about the Golden Rule: Those with the gold get to make the rules.

I think there needs to be a better punishment system for big business. Perhaps prosecution of CEO's, or forced closing (short term or permanent), maybe a fine to the shareholders.... I don't know. In the end, the market does decide. A company that becomes known for repeatedly making bad products will eventually find that they will lose customers. What's happened to Mattel's stock price since they announced the lead paint recall last August? Down, down, down. Maybe if Mattel gets their act together, things will improve for the company. But if they continue to have product liability issues, I guarantee you their stock price will probably never recover.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales people's eyes often glaze over and they loose interest after telling them details for more than a few seconds. They don't what to know the details. They want to push a certain version of the truth (to me that's not truth at all and its ethically wrong, yet to sales people, its part of their way of communicating). Mod this bitch down. If you can't tell the difference between "LOSE" and "LOOSE" by the time you're a college-educated computer programmer, you need to take your ass back to kindergarten.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[canuck57]

Yes, sociopath/psychopaths does describe the top 3 in power in my I/T department. In fact, many of these traits exist in many senior management I have encountered over the years. They are not pleasant to work for and often rely on a layer of middle management to make it work.

In my current job I suspect they are trying to transfer me to under one of these types of managers and what they don't know is I am polishing my resume. So the day he and I have an ethical dilemma, I am gone. I have also learned the hard way not to wait until management cleans it up either, the usual way it gets addressed is when the company needs resources and the managers reputation precedes them once too often. Can be a long time. Longer than I am willing wait. An undocumented cause of I/T turnover for sure.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

To most people (I hope!) the law is an uncrossable line. A solid boundary of ethical and moral behaviour.

Confusing ethics and the law is a dangerous thing in itself.

To put things very simplistically, ethics is theory and the law is practice. Ideally, someone living a good, honest life according to fair, ethical principles would always find their behaviour falls within the law, but sometimes a bad law comes into conflict with those ethics. Whether someone chooses to obey the letter of the law or to follow their own ethics at that point says a lot about them.

To give a concrete, IT-related example that is relevant in my country today: the UK government is currently planning to introduce identity cards and the National Identity Register database. I know that some surveys in the past have found a majority of the sample population in favour of these measures. I also believe that introducing these measures is not in the interests of the people, and that the government policy would not be so widely supported if people understood the implications for access to personal information, security, reliability, and the like. I know that I am far from alone in these beliefs, because there are campaign groups with many thousands of people supporting them who express the same concerns. However, the law has already been passed to make these measures possible, though it was passed by a government for which only a small minority of the people actually voted; substantially more people voted for parties that oppose the scheme. So, when the government attempts to roll the ID cards and database out to the population, should I be a good little citizen and accept my fate, or should I join the radical law-breakers promising civil disobedience by refusing to participate? Are those who choose to follow their beliefs to the point of breaking a law they believe to be unjust really unethical, or are those who accept without challenge a dangerous law passed by an unrepresentative government the unethical ones?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Blakey Rat]

I bet something like 50% of all product features are the result of someone in sales selling the feature before it was completed, or even thought of. Not necessarily a bad thing, when you think about it.

You have to remember that their "ethics" are typically the result of how they are paid... salesmen are usually paid on commission, meaning that the more they sell the more money they make. Programmers don't have a similar pay scheme.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Pig Hogger]

maybe a fine to the shareholders.... This would go against the very rock-bottom idea of business. Business incorporation introduces the croporate veil which effectively shields the shareholders from liability for whatever the business does (all it does is limit the shareholder's liability to his stake in the company, and nothing else).

Re:You need to clarify your question

[chiefloko]

It was meant to be a open ended question...as Ethic's itself is itself is a hard pill to swallow.
Would the ethics of an executive on Xanax react differently to the ethics of an executive alcoholic?
What about the "C" level honcho with root passwords for the H.R. group?

How are things handled in the "real" world.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

Ith that county in england, UK jutht nectht to Kent. Ethics.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[sckeener]

Think of it as the difference between a politician and a serial killer.

yeah, that Dexter is charming....I'd vote for him.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the key distinctions between so-called sociopaths and psychopaths is that sociopathic individuals often exhibit brain compartmentalization. "Doublethink".

Re:You need to clarify your question

[DuckDodgers]

Sales positions are paid partly or entirely through sales commissions.

It creates a conflict between being ethical and paying your mortgage. It's the reason most people can't stand car salesman or real estate brokers: telling you the truth costs them money. The job becomes a drive to the lowest ethical standards, because anyone with too much integrity either quits or gets fired for missing their quota.

Any company that doesn't motivate its sales staff by hinging their mortgage on sales has a tough time competing with the other players that do.

Welcome to capitalism.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[dedalus2000]

Is there a difference other than one of scale and preferred methodology? The results are often the same.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

However, the law has already been passed to make these measures possible,...

The law to enable the introduction of id cards has been passed, but a further vote in both houses of parliament is required to make them compulsory.
In my view, the likelyhood of this vote even occuring has fallen to less than 20%, and even so it would probably be lost. There are clear signs that the government has lost enthusiasm for the project; it will probably end up just as a 'foreign resident's card'.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[MrJSuppish]

No, he meant psychopaths.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

>Sales people's eyes often glaze over and they loose interest

The word you were looking for there was "lose".

HTH. HAND.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Alpha830RulZ]

To most people the law is a pretty fuzzy boundary. You need only drive on a freeway and observe people's speed to understand this.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[zehaeva]

While your response is quasi-sarcastic there may very well be people who would vote for him, I personally would. atleast he only murders those who have done real wrong and not those who just smoked a doobie.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[EnglishSteve]

This is why I now refuse to do work for public companies (I am self-employed). Once a company becomes a public entity, all motives except the profit motive go by the wayside. Employees and suppliers become numbers on a balance sheet.

Private companies, on the other hand, are free to have other motives in addition to profit such as providing employment etc. In my experience, private companies are much more likely to actually give a shit about their employees and suppliers. Of course there are private companies out there that are purely profit motivated, but it's not all of them.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[dedalus2000]

I thought the purpose of a company was to provide an organizational structure around which people can act and an entrepreneur is one who undertakes or manages. sorry not seeing "maximize profits" anywhere here. my thought is that an entrepreneur is one that dedicates him or herself to a task whether that's building a affordable automobile(henry ford) or or dominating the software world(gates) and that the maximize profit hacks are not up to that job. it's only after companies are mature that the "maximize profit" vultures swoop in and shift all of the productive capacity into CEO salary and try to squeeze the last bit of blood from the stock price before the company begins to collapse. I use vulture as an analogy because the only virtue it possesses is that of a strong stomach.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[celle]

What was it I heard in college? Oh yes, "Engineers know a lot about a little, salespeople know a lot about nothing, and technicians know a little about everything."

Kind of sums up your post.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[celle]

Think of it as the difference between a politician and a serial killer.

Given our current governments behavior, history, and its standing in the world what's the difference again?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[cabazorro]

I equate ethics with moral character. You do what you consider to be right. Furthermore, you must support your actions by displaying great expertise and knowledge and overall, good will. At the core of the divergent paths between business ethics and technology ethics, lies the concept of what we consider to be good and bad.
To make myself clear let us recall a Simpsons Tree of Horrors episode where Homer is buying a "Crusty the Clown Toy at a strange shop in China Town"

Owner: We sell forbidden objects from places men fear to tread.
              We also sell frozen yogurt, which I call ``Frogurt''!

Homer tells the owner that he is looking for a present for his son's
birthday. The owner hands to him a talking Krusty doll.

Owner: Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse!
Homer: [worried] Ooooh, that's bad.
Owner: But it comes with a free Frogurt!
Homer: [relieved] That's good.
Owner: The Frogurt is also cursed.
Homer: [worried] That's bad.
Owner: But you get your choice of topping!
Homer: [relieved] That's good.
Owner: The toppings contains Potassium Benzoate.
Homer: [stares]
Owner: That's bad.
Homer: Can I go now?

Here we see knowledge, expertise and how they determine what is considered good or bad, hence ethics.
And this exactly why Lawmakers, Artists and Business people in general are unqualified to
exercise good ethics in IT. Due to their lack of expertise and knowledge.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[coolGuyZak]

That depends upon the circumstances of the company. While many companies, particularly publicly traded ones, no company is under no obligation to maximize profit, unless:

• Such action is demanded by a majority of its shareholders, or
• It otherwise enters an agreement enumerating such demands.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[NetSerf2000]

Is there a difference between a politician and a serial killer?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[apt142]

Bad analogy. Your first example is a matter of criminal law and your second example is a matter of civil law (product liability).

I know my analogy is bad. It's bad because there is no apples to apples law comparisons for individual crimes and corporate crimes even if the outcomes of both crimes are the same. Which was my point.

The other point I was trying to make is that the punishment rarely makes any lasting impression to the company. Sure Mattel took a dive, but check out the stock today. It's on the incline. Though to be fair, lousy Barbie sales in 2006 sent the stock much lower in January 2006 than the lead paint did in January 2008. Last I checked, making Barbies isn't a crime.

But according to the systems of currency we have for good and bad behaviors, lousy Barbie sales and lead paint in the toys are about the same level of badness for the company. With Barbies FTW. So, the next time the company is presented with the choice, sell more barbies or not poison children, which do they have the most incentive for?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[dpilot]

Once upon a time, the CEO of a very successful company had a simple 3-step recipe:

1: Take care of your customers.
2: Take care of your employees.
3: PROFIT!!

Actually, Step 3 was really, "The profits will take care of themselves." But it's worth noting that this was Step 3, not Step 4 with some sort of "???" for Step 3. It was also a long-term attitude, in that you were building the foundations of long-term success, and perhaps sacrificing higher short-term profits in exchange for that long term.

This too, has passed.
But then again, that company isn't now considered as successful as it was when it was run by those 3 steps.

IMHO, the "maximize profits" attitude in US corporations is a fundamental problem. Let's phrase it this way... You want to buy a car, and you have to choose between Car Company A and Car Company B.

Car Company A's guiding principles are to "maximize profits" and "maximize shareholder return", and they happen to make cars.

Car Company B's guiding principles are to make the best cars that they can, and so far by selling those cars at a competitive price they have remained profitable and in business.

Who would you want to buy your car from?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That's true, and any remaining support for the whole mess surely evaporated when the high profile leak referenced by my sig occurred. Suddenly, both the general public and probably a few politicians suddenly realised what the rest of us have known all along: security in IT is an imperfect thing, and mistakes will inevitably be made.

My point was more that should the cards and database be rolled out according to the (current, official) plan, there would be a choice to be made, and those who have an informed view might very well object to the current laws because those laws conflict with the informed group's ethics.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

"often used interchangably" != "is the same as". "IT" is often used interchangably with "computer engineering". That doesn't mean it's accurate.

Furthermore, there's an entire heading in the same article about the difference between the two.

Relationship to sociopathy
The difference between sociopathy and psychopathy, according to Hare, may "reflect the user's views on the origins and determinates of the disorder."[59]

David T. Lykken proposes that psychopathy and sociopathy are two distinct kinds of antisocial personality disorder. He holds that psychopaths are born with temperamental differences such as impulsivity, cortical underarousal, and fearlessness that lead them to risk-seeking behavior and an inability to internalize social norms. Sociopaths, on the other hand, he believes to have relatively normal temperaments; their personality disorder being more an effect of negative sociological factors like parental neglect, delinquent peers, poverty, and extremely low or extremely high intelligence. Both personality disorders are, of course, the result of an interaction between genetic predispositions and environmental factors, but psychopathy leans towards the hereditary whereas sociopathy tends towards the environmental.[39]

Re:You need to clarify your question

[shentino]

Why fine the shareholders?

The whole point of having a corporation is to INSULATE the shareholders from the shenanigans of the bigwigs and other trivia of corporate life.

Now, if I had personally hired someone who sold a bad car that blew up, I *might* be more culpable.

But a piddly old shareholder? What the hell do I know about financing? Or mechanics? Or auto shop? Or any number of other concepts that I'd rather hire a professional to worry about?

That's why I'm just an *investor*. Investors are not neccessarily enterpreneurs.

As a mere shareholder, I do not have the power to make day to day decisions at a corporation. That's the job of the board of directors, the CEO, and the line and staff of the whole company, which I'm not part of unless I also happen to be an employee.

What about Enron? Heck, in that case, shareholders wound up as victims, not offenders.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm a programmer and I worked in one company where the programmers were on one side of a desk divider and the other side had the sales people. We were killing ourselves laughing at then kinds of statements sale people were making about the products we were creating!. Often it wasn't based on fact at all.

You start by killing yourself laughing, but later you are going to be killing yourself trying to add the "factor really large primes while plotting the absolute optimal route for your sales force" feature that the sales guys slipped into the specs. Before they are able to sell many units of vapourware, make sure you have slid out of the way of supporting it.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Qzukk]

The purpose of a company isn't to provide a steady living for people, but to maximize profits.

If your company isn't there next year, is it still maximizing profits?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[jcnnghm]

If a company goes bankrupt because it doesn't let people go when it is necessary so that it can provide them a "steady income", is their income still steady when the doors close?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

The law in itself is not more than the codification of morals and ethics

Because I go to sunday school to learn how tying horses to grocery stores is the first step down the path to hell.

Laws and "morals and ethics" never belong in the same sentence, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Viv]

But to big business, I have been shocked at times at how the law is treated at times more like for example, the rules in Formula 1 racing cars, where they can twist and exploit the definitions of the law to suit themselves and how the government plays the same games back at them. In a business, compliance and non-compliance can generally be reduced to a cost. Clearly, the business has a profit motive to behave in whichever fashion is more profitable.

This is where ethics should come in, but obviously, ethics are often wanting.

The law at that level, isn't an absolute line, the way most of us interpret it. The law should never be viewed as an absolute line. Laws are written by politicians, and as such, sometimes require disobedience. Never confuse ethics and morality with the law. They are separate entities.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Tanktalus]

Think of it as the difference between a politician and a serial killer.

So ... which one is the bad one again?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

Some bosses would sooner loose staff

The word is lose. That's twice in one thread that you've misspelled it.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[ILongForDarkness]

IT ethics = if I can I will. How does someone "find out" they are root on a Sun workstation? You either logged in as root or you didn't. If root did a chmod/chown on the mail directory well they explicitly granted rights to the directory.

I have several gripes about the requirement all the IT guys have to learn and enforce security.

1) I subscribe to the theory that I'm smarter than some people and some are smarter than me. So I think it is secure = I think people dumber than or equal to me can't break it.

2) Hackers have a lot more time to sit around and try to find a hole than I do (I have to keep the system running, go to meetings buy new equipment, and have a life).

3) IT security is analogous to office security, you have a guy walking the parameter, you put locks on the door but someone still can get in or be let in and read the mail sitting on your desk. Why if it is a technical breach the IT guy gets crucified but if the much simpler to implement physical security gets breached management is happy to call the cops and be done with it?

IT ethics: do a good job, try to stop security problems,think of the "customers" needs(whether internal, or external) first. But know the difference between spending all day reading firewall logs and getting your job done (unless of course your job is security then well happy reading ;)). Advise your management of the risks and costs of the various approaches to the best of your ability and let them decide how to spend your time/there resources.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[realthing02]

While i understand your point, you can't interchangeably use the law and a law- or are you saying most people think it's ok to kill a little bit?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Maxo-Texas]

Furthermore,
in the long time, destroying the social fabric has a cost to the executives. Some american cities went way downhill and any executives based their would lose employment and have to uproot their families.

It's difficult to balance the creative destruction against society. There is clear evidence (higher growth rate) that there are real world benefits for society to being hard nosed. Unfortunately things in the US have gotten out of hand lately (a single person is just not worth over a million bucks a year).

Re:You need to clarify your question

[cyb97]

You should read a book called "pathological pursuit of power" which deals with just these things. However a fine in dollars and cents is exactly a fine to the shareholders as it takes away from the potential profit. However if actually producing a car that doesn't burst into flames is more expensive than the fine (and often the cost of the negative publicity) it is in the interest of the shareholders to chose the flaming car, because the corporation is a legal entity (or person if you like) and the corporation takes the fall not the individual shareholder.

This is often regarded as the perverse state of the corporation to day. Where care for human life and other tangible things are not in a part of business unless it is more expensive to not care.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Shajenko42]

Yes. What the politician does is legal (because he sets the rules).

Re:You need to clarify your question

[NetSerf2000]

Your point is well made...

It might be immoral, but not illegal

Re:You need to clarify your question

[snowraver1]

And if that (and every other) company stops paying a decent living wage? People stop paying thier mortgage and the so called "Credit crunch" puts the entire country into a recession.

Now how much are they making when the average person has no money to spend?

There is seriously something wrong with the way that a small perportion of people have such a large portion of the wealth. There needs to be some sort of insentive to not hold on to that much money. Something like every year, all personal assets over 50 million will be taxed at 20% every year. Offshore accounts must be claimed or face deportation and seisure of domestic assets. Business must prove that all pruchases have a business need (so that the buisness doesn't buy a 50 million home for the CEO). I don't know, but I feel there needs to be a cap on the amount of wealth that one person can have.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Rob Bos]

http://www.queenofwands.net/d/20050909.html

Re:You need to clarify your question

[orclevegam]

Depends on how you look at it. Initially companies, and even corporations are about producing something. The problem is that once a company goes public the board of directors, effectively the one's in charge of the company, are the ones most invested in the stock of the company. To them, the value of the company is the value of its stock, which in turn is evaluated based on profit reports. It becomes a destructive cycle in which the stock holders pressure the directors to raise stock prices, which in turn leads the directors to try to raise profits. The simplest ways to raise profits in the short term, are often the most self destructive in the long term, where as a more moderated approach would yield better long term profits.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[nanoflower]

The issue isn't that companies want to create a profit. I think everyone understands this. What has happened over the past few decades is that companies have begun to focus on the short term profits. So they will cut costs/workers in order to make the numbers for this quarter look good. Even if they know that the money they are saving is going to hurt profits next year.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[AiToyonsNostril]

Psychopathy is a blanket term for any and all mental disorders used by people who don't know the difference between the types of disorder. "[I]s used" doesn't mean much, especially when coming from a pop-sci article. It just means that not everyone has a copy of the DSM-IV in hir library.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[orclevegam]

What has happened over the past few decades is that companies have begun to focus on the short term profits. So they will cut costs/workers in order to make the numbers for this quarter look good. Even if they know that the money they are saving is going to hurt profits next year. Interesting the way that correlates to a previous post about a lot of CEOs and upper management being sociopaths or psychopaths. One of the key traits listed for sociopaths and psychopaths is an inability to plan for the long term and a need for immediate gratification. Maybe the corporate focus on short term profits at the cost of long term is a reflection of this?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[OldSoldier]

I used to believe like you do, until I got involved with small start-up companies. Now, to be clear, I agree with your point of view when it comes to large established firms selling established products. In that case there is absolutely no reason why the sales people need to... let's call it "embellish" ... the product when trying to sell it.

However, your case appears different because you mentioned that you're sitting across the desk from the sales people. That implies a small company. You also stated that the sales people were making comments about the products you were creating, so it does appear that your example is for products not yet completely developed.

Why the difference? Practicality. Starting a small biz on a thin budget is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Sure, it'd be great to be able to completely make a product, have it in hand and then hire a sales force to go out and sell that product. A then B. But in reality you want to be able to sell your product on the very day that it's completed. That requires sales people going out and trying to pre-sell the product. A and B simultaneously. To make matters "worse", practicality also dictates that it's a much easier sell if your customers have some confidence that you'll be around and your product will be around. You need to be truthful about the planned delivery dates, but in reality the sales force needs to show more confidence in the product than just the delivery date. Now, I'm not advocating doing anything illegal. It'd clearly be wrong to go and collect dollars from "pre-sales" and then be unable to refund said dollars if the product never materializes, but frequently in a start-up you gotta push it right up to the limit of what's legal.

Additionally... pre-sales activities such as promising features that you currently aren't working on, could be a form of "market research". If enough people demand such a feature, the sales force should pass that info on to you, the product development people, so that you can add it. I'm not saying that's what they are doing, and believe me... I've seen a few where the sales force does what you describe and keeps all those promises to themselves, so it's not unusual for sales people to be as slimy as you imply. But ... have you wondered why your boss put the developers across the table from the sales force? It could very well be to facilitate this sort of communication. You should listen to what new features they're promising. You should maybe call a meeting with them to see which new features appear to be in high demand and then huddle up with the developers to see what it takes to add those features.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[ATMAvatar]

A better example might be as follows:

• Case 1: I create a mix CD for someone, and install a rootkit on the CD.
• Case 2: An executive at Sony oks the installation of rootkits in their CDs.

In the first case, I could be put in jail under one or more computer crime laws, and would likely be held liable for all expenses to remove the rootkit and any losses incurred.

In the second case, the worst that might happen is that the executive loses his job (and collects a nice golden parachute award). In the best case, the executive doesn't even take a pay cut. Sony as a company might get sued, but there's no guarantee that the responsibility for the criminal act ever makes its way to the individual who gave the ok to do it.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Z34107]

We have got into a world where some companies want to return a greater profit each year and this idea becomes more important to them, than providing a steady living for people.

Businesses aren't welfare programs. Nobody started Microsoft or Proctor & Gamble or big evil entity name here thinking "Hmm, maybe I could employ 400,000 people if only I worked 80 hour weeks for the next ten years or so on the off-chance I might be successful?"

Businesses are supposed to make money. Period. We have laws to keep them from drinking the blood of kittens. Barring unions and closed shops, you are always free to look for another job that will give you a steadier living.

Which is why most places (in my limited experience) try their hardest to make sure their best employees have a "steady living." In any place outside of fast food, turnover is hard on a business. There are financial and opportunity costs involved with training new employees, and a boss that screws over the company for the sake of his paycheck won't be employed long. (Even the most profitable companies will die with enough people bleeding them dry.)

Businesses are here to make money. That's not bad - where do you think your paycheck comes from?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[The One and Only]

See, what that view misses is that if you overestimate the number of employees you need, or if you end up needing fewer employees over time, or if some of your employees turn out to be poorly suited to any task within your company, then both the company loses and society loses--the company loses because it can't fire these people (and as a result, has to be more cautious about hiring, so the net effect on unemployment can be even worse) and society loses because not only does the company waste wealth, but it also loses out on the potential for that employee to generate wealth elsewhere in the economy where he's more qualified. Plus, if it's too hard to fire someone, they're going to treat their paycheck as an entitlement instead of as compensation for their hard work, which means they won't be as motivated.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: How can you tell is someone in sales or marketing is lying?
A: Their lips are moving.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[SpleenVenter]

The purpose of a company isn't to provide a steady living for people, but to maximize profits.

This declaration is far too simplistic. There are MANY non-public companies (both privately-held and not-for-profit) whose purposes are decidedly NOT to "maximize profits."

If you'd said "the purpose of publicly-traded companies is to maximize shareholder wealth" you'd be closer to the truth, but this still doesn't account for the fact that the definition of "wealth" is (very) slowly changing to incorporate more than just money.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[The Spoonman]

Spoken like a true 'pub.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[nahdude812]

The purpose of a company isn't to provide a steady living for people, but to maximize profits.

This is true for many or most companies. It is not true for all companies.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[jollyreaper]

Think of it as the difference between a politician and a serial killer. Sorry, what difference again ? Same as the difference between a corporate executive and a mugger: the guy wearing the tie has figured out how to get away with crime legally.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[jollyreaper]

That's where we go wrong (it appears to be a very US centric view also - I've never heard that from a european company & I've spoken to more than a few over the years).

A company is part of the social fabric.. it doesn't stand alone. It provides employment, which gives its employees a certain standard of living. It also generates wealth that improves the economy. The employees use their pay to give money to other companies, thus helping them also.

If a company mistreats its employees it breaks part of that. It may make more profit, but at a cost to the rest of society. That's why most countries have strict employment laws. Here's the part that's so sick: I agree with you completely. But if you repeated these same words to an American businessman, he'd laugh in your face and call you a pussy commie faggot. "Social fabric? You pathetic cocksucker. You weak, liberal, mewling cumbucket. This isn't charity, this is business! You want to stand on the line with men? Grow a pair, Shirley, or I'll take the undescended pair you do have and kick them so far up inside you'll be wearing them for earrings. Helping people? I'm going to lock you in a fucking room with nothing but Baldwin's Always-Be-Closing speech and Douglas' greed monologue on continuous loop. Suck my fucking dick, you pansy-ass faggot." Throw a pile of invective like that out on the floor and half the ancestor-worshiping Reagan idolaters will be dancing around with a half-stalk in their pants screaming about how this is the truth.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[cayenne8]

"We have got into a world where some companies want to return a greater profit each year and this idea becomes more important to them, than providing a steady living for people."

That all sounds nice, and would be nice if that were the way business worked, but, in reality, companies are NOT there to provide a steady living for people, they are there to make $$, and that's the bottom line. Always has been, always will be.....providing a living for people is just a by-product of doing business, but, it is not the primary reason a company is there.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[bnenning]

a single person is just not worth over a million bucks a year

As an Apple shareholder, I disagree.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Some_Llama]

"The purpose of a company isn't to provide a steady living for people, but to maximize profits."

maybe the best way to maximize profits is to provide a steady living for people.

a company whose workforce loves and does what's best for the company will strive to make that company profitable, this has a MUCH better chance at sustainability and profits over the long term.

A company that makes a ton of money for a few quarters but ultimately put it's workers in the poor house is just bad for overall business.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Some_Llama]

"Business incorporation introduces the croporate(sp) veil which effectively shields the shareholders from liability for whatever the business does"

why is this a good thing?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[aquila.solo]

while the fundamentalist geophysicist can genuinely believe in his religion's claim that the Earth is only 4,000 yers old on the one hand...

How absurd can someone be?!! Everyone knows the earth is a good 6000 years old...

Re:You need to clarify your question

[FreakWent]

company != corporation.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[curunir]

There's been some movement toward expanding the balance sheet to include factors other than profit, namely Triple Bottom Line. Somewhat related is the trend towards Corporate Social Responsibility with many companies devoting significant resources towards volunteer programs, grants and other means of giving back.

In many cases, this is just an attempt to get good PR or an attempt to attract employees and customers, but it's still an indication that there's been some movement away from the notion that profit is the sole motive for a corporation.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[jcnnghm]

I would agree, they definitely aren't mutually exclusive. Happy, well paid workers are almost always better for a company's bottom line than the alternative.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

To most people (I hope!) the law is an uncrossable line. A solid boundary of ethical and moral behaviour.

I hope you're kidding, but you're probably not. I'm not sure why anyone would think of the law as an uncrossable line instead of something that says if you do X then you may be punished with Y.

If I'm willing to accept the punishment, then why should I feel bad about breaking the law?

Believing that something is moral and good simply because it's legal is pretty frightening. That sort of thinking leads me to believe that the individual has not developed a moral or ethical code of their own. This is the type of person that supports things like slavery and the oppression or murder of others because the law says it's okay. This is the type of person that will "go Nazi" if only given the chance.

Who Goes Nazi?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Pig Hogger]

"Business incorporation introduces the croporate(sp) veil which effectively shields the shareholders from liability for whatever the business does"
why is this a good thing? Because otherwise virtually no one would invest in any business at all, for fear of lawsuits.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[NevermindPhreak]

In the end, the market does decide. A company that becomes known for repeatedly making bad products will eventually find that they will lose customers. Ah, but this is debatable. A company can hire a good enough Public Relations firm (or have a PR department themselves) that can essentially make the problem go unknown. I don't think the market can always be trusted decide correctly, epically if there are factors working against it. ;)

Re:You need to clarify your question

[sjames]

noting that it is actually a desirable trait to get to the very top.

Those traits may well get someone to the top, but it is rarely desirable to the company in the end. Ultimately, these people are loyal only to themselves. They'll help the company only so long as it suits them, then they'll bleed it dry.

The primary difference between a psychopathic CxO and a psychopathic repeat felon is the CxO realizes early enough that violence and 'direct' crimes like robbery are very blunt tools and that a more subtle approach pays better with less personal risk.

Some argue that a sociopath is the result of a dysfunctional environment while a psychopath is innate. Others maintain that the distinction is not clinically useful (and so shouldn't be made at all) or that it is at best unproven (and so is unjustified). Others use the terms interchangably.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[qzulla]

If a company mistreats its employees it breaks part of that. It may make more profit, but at a cost to the rest of society. That's why most countries have strict employment laws.

Please explain this. Most countries?

I doubt most of these have strict employment laws.

http://geography.about.com/od/countryinformation/a/capitals.htm

qz

Re:You need to clarify your question

[sjames]

Actually, corporate charters are SUPPOSED to be strictly in the public interest. They are also supposed to be revoked should they cease to act for the public interest.

Of course, maximum profits at the price of lost survivability is a big problem. Most businesses can run after laying off half their employees FOR A WHILE. Then they crash and burn. Sunbeam maximized it's profits for a while by stuffing it's channels, but then sales naturally tanked.

At one time, the primary mission was seen to be ensuring long term survival and growth, followed by maximising profit. Loyalty to employees (in hopes they would reciprocate) was seen as part of that. Layoffs could (and did) still happen if the company's survival was at stake, but not just to get a quick boost on the stock market. The solution to overstaffing was growth or attrition.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[sjames]

I think there needs to be a better punishment system for big business. Perhaps prosecution of CEO's, or forced closing (short term or permanent), maybe a fine to the shareholders.... I don't know.

I suggest the punishment for corporations should be years of manditory operation as a non-profit.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the company axes its R&D this year to keep their doors open while the CEO takes a raise and a bonus and retires with a package worth 8 figures, is it still maximizing its profits when it closes its doors the year after that?

There's a difference between "oh hey, the company needs you all to quit working so it stays afloat", and "oh hey, the company needs you all to quit working so that I can have a giant bonus", and the entire point of this thread is that the latter happens on a regular basis, and stockholders bend over for the failure of their company and say "thank you sir, may I have another", largely because the vast, vast, vast majority of the stockholders out there are the boards of the companies, who are getting the exact same deal they're giving this CEO that they get when this particular CEO votes as a member of their board, so their golden parachutes will more than make up for the loss of a few million dollars in stock value (that they can write off at tax time). The remainder of the stockholders who actually have a say during voting are large institutional groups like pension funds who can't be bothered to exhibit anything approaching outrage because any given instance is merely a fraction of their holdings, and they had the money to establish hedges anyway. The remaining tiny percentage of stockholders are the individual people who got suckered into thinking that playing the stock popularity game was a better idea than putting their money under the matress or at least betting it at the casino.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Repton]

The free-market economist would say: you buy your car from the company that makes the best cars that you can afford.

The companies, realising that they need to sell cars in order to achieve their goal (making money), set about making their cars better or cheaper.

A better example might be: You are choosing between Car Company A and Car Company B. Both companies make good cars -- you can't choose between them on technical grounds. Car Company A's cars are about 10% cheaper than Car Company B's. Car Company B pays its employees 10% more than Car Company A. Which car do you buy?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[sjames]

What if the politician IS a serial killer.

They're even worse, they're parallel killers. When a polititian starts an unjust war, it's like.....

A beowulf cluster of serial killers!

Re:You need to clarify your question

[jonaskoelker]

Many even have recognisable personality disorders like NPD.

Yeah, don't you just hate people with Neurotypical Personality Disorder?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[rvJJax]

Whose chics are you talking about? what ?

Re:You need to clarify your question

[BeanThere]

It doesn't matter whether it's a "US view" or "European view", it's a *universal* fact that a company that keeps deadwood around "for the good of the social fabric" is never, but never going to be able to make products as well or as cheap as companies that cut the deadwood, and as long as (NB NB) competition exists (*), those companies WILL die in the long run. Then you'll see how good a dead company is for the "social fabric". But believe it or not, having efficient companies is actually a GOOD thing for the economy, overall, because it frees human capital to create new wealth and open up new possibilities that did not exist before.

(*) Now socialists might use this to argue for government protection against competition, but it's a myth, there WILL ALWAYS be competition, in virtually any market --- it's a global economy, and if you want to be nice to unnecessary employees and keep paying them, it will be a frighteningly short amount of time before all your customers are buying the cheaper Asian equivalent products. (Hint, this is one reason why unemployment in Europe has been creeping up over the past few decades.)

Socialism works OK in Europe because by and large people have a work ethic and will likely be productive no matter where you put them, but it works ONLY in Europe, and even now amongst younger Europeans the culture has shifted from one of a work ethic to one of demanding handouts for doing nothing.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[dpilot]

I would argue that "Company A" is represented by GM and Ford, and "Company B" is represented by the likes of Toyota and Honda.

Read things like Consumer Reports, and for the long term they recommend cars from Company B.

These days, Company A just ain't doing so hot, and Company B is moving up. I would argue that Company A has lost its roots, and needs to remember that it's a Car Company. Of course a while back, I heard that Company A actually made more money from playing financial games than it did from cars. In the short term, that says to de-emphasize the cars and play more financial games. In the long term, it means that either there may not be a long term, or that they're on their way to becoming a bank, which appears to be the direction of far too many American businesses, in which case the banking sector will become overcrowded.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Maxo-Texas]

If you own less than 1000 shares, then you probably lost a lot more money to the executive over you than you made.

If you own more than 1000 shares, then you are probably part of the class of society which is now looting the rest of us.

Re:You need to clarify your question

[Some_Llama]

"Because otherwise virtually no one would invest in any business at all, for fear of lawsuits."

and businesses would have to generate their own profits, eventually leading to people in vesting in companies who could show they do not cause grevious harm to communities and persons.

So of course the market will self correct.. free market free market!! (this is the part where you join in)

When you frag a co-worker

[antifoidulus]

while using your companies machines to play Halo, don't hump him or her....it will only cause inter-office strife.

Re:When you frag a co-worker

[khallow]

No, it's ok as long as you hump their corpse respectfully.

Re:When you frag a co-worker

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps he has two part-time jobs?

Re:When you frag a co-worker

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's try again:
Also, don't make the word "company" possessive by pluralizing it. That's just plain wrong. Instead, use "company's." :P

Re:When you frag a co-worker

[AiToyonsNostril]

In that case, it would be companies'.

Also, I don't see why the parent was modded "Offtopic". Ethics are all-encompassing.

CYA

[Hognoxious]

Cover Your Ass. That's it, that's all.

Re:CYA

[maczealot]

To expand this thought a bit (because it is pretty accurate imho) there is a direct link between an IT worker's behavior and the culture from which they come. I have worked in everything from infrastructure to development (solo and team) as well as security. From my observation IT workers have tremendous amounts of access to information and normally do not violate this "trust" if they think they will get caught.

This, as I said, is probably more to do with what kind of culture they are from (I am American) and the social norms they were taught (or not taught) than any commonality of ethic due to corporate department (just because you are classified as IT). The email example will show the classic "Yes, I CAN read all your emails, but I don't. Not because I think it would be wrong for ME to do so necessarily, but because I am too busy to care what you wrote." This is the only unique Ethical constraint I see in IT, where those of us who manage the information and the resources to access it choose an "ethical" path on a daily basis by choosing to solve OTHER PEOPLE's info problems rather than our own with a given block of time. Most IT workers will "feel" ethical if they are doing something useful for those in power over them (i.e. paycheck signers) rather than bending the resources at their disposal to their own amusement/education (i.e. displaying ten different will-it-blend's on different LCD's to see how cool it is).

Ultimately, this behavior is altruistic because upper management, given enough time from which to sample, can tell if an IT worker is "useful" or not and thus reward or punish them. America has a very minimalistic ethic of "if it isn't hurting anyone else.." so unless there are other cultural factors they can lose out to those from other cultures (see: Indians).

Re:CYA

[nr1]

Reminds me of something a friend said:

"Management is like using toilet paper. In the end, the only thing that matters is that your ass is clean."
http://www.conspirito.de/2007/09/management-weiheit-der-woche.html

Re:CYA

[Anonymous Coward]

Cover Your Ass.

Not only that...but if can show them as being the asses these psychos really are...you can make them sad. Unfortunately...psychos tend to love company of their own kind...so they end up surrounding themselves with worse idiots than themselves. It's too bad they don't get their just reward at the hands of someone they screwed or someone with them in a jail cell.

Re:CYA

[Psmylie]

I used to work HR Tech support back in the day. We had access to all kinds of extrememly sensitive information, including what everyone got paid. The best advice I got on how to deal with that was: "Before you do anything, think of what you'll say if someone asks why you were doing it". I never did look up my co-worker's data, tempting though it was to see where I fit in the pay scale.

We had an in-house developed application for HR folks to be able to look up sensitive information. Thing is, we had to rely on non-HR tech people in other parts of the country to help support it. We had to explain to them that they were not, under any circumstanses, to attempt to look at any of the data. Many of them tried once, got warned about it, and gave up. A few people actually kept trying after a warning (we logged any attempt to access data) and ended up getting fired. It kinda drove the point home for me.

Re:CYA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Please. I just ate.

Re:CYA

[tuomoks]

Excuse me - "extrememly sensitive information, including what everyone got paid" ?? What is the relation to ethics? Looking data ? What you would do with information can be ethical or not but what's the difference of CxO pay and an user e-mail, address, even name - it's just data to be processed? Maybe I don't get it? Or maybe I do - it is against corporate rules and they are the ultimate ethical code. Just don't ask me to build / test / fix any of those systems in such company, I only work on real data if you need correct results, fakes are cheaper. Sorry, just have had two systems built to imaginary data and assumptions and failing! And did I say, fixing those is more expensive, much!

ethics require education

[rucs_hack]

Someone who has no understanding of ethical implications regrading IT will do things they wouldn't dream of if they understood what it meant in terms of invasion of privacy..

Alas many people who use computers regularly are in this category.

I have access to the email of almost everyone I know presonally. Do I read it? Nope.

However, the reason I have access to one persons email is because they needed help stopping another person who knew their password reading every email they sent and received. In spite of my urging they have yet to change their password anew to also lock me out.

You can lead a horse to water, and if you Duct Tape a hose to its mouth, you can make it drink too.

Oh wait...

Re:ethics require education

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I read it? Nope. ...

they have yet to change their password anew to also lock me out. And how do you know they haven't changed their password yet? :)

Re:ethics require education

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know that the password has not been changed, to lock you out. Hve you logged into their account lately?

Re:ethics require education

[lukas84]

Many systems have a timestamp on when the password was last changed, e.G. to implement a forced password change every x days.

Re:ethics require education

[Gazzonyx]

When I first create a user account at work, the password is the username. I have told at the very least 5 people "your password is the username I just gave you, as soon as you login, hit ctrl+alt+del and click on change password. Don't tell me what it is, and don't share it, we have public usernames if anyone without an account needs to jump online or something." Not a single person has changed their default password.

Re:ethics require education

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Is there a reason you can't require a password change on first login?

Re:ethics require education

[Tony Hoyle]

You can force that with a group policy. Put a password history on there too.

Of course most people will just stick a '1' after their name or change it to their wife's name or something.. but at least you tried.

Re:ethics require education

[sumdumass]

You can solve this issue of not changing passwords by simply issuing outrageously hard passwords to begin with. If the new user is presented with the login "Jill-accounting" and the password " #294&WhY!=ChanG3%$paSSw04ds$% " they will change it really soon for reasons other then the mythical rogue user getting access. Disable using account logins as passwords (which I think most OSes allow now) and your done.

However, I like to know user passwords, there are times I need to get on their workstations under their accounts and it is much easier to do so without changing everything in the process. We have an assortment of software in use that it more akin to aphla or beta releases but being presented as accomplished and stable user ready software by the vendors. I find problems ranging from malformed or corrupt temp files in account or machine specific locations stopping programs from opening and so on. The only way to fix these is to see the problems they are complaining about which generally is so removed from the actual issue that there is little connection outside the program's name and the memory of two or three hours of google searching, and then take appropriate actions.

Re:ethics require education

[Jellybob]

Maybe you should think about using a slightly more intelligent method of assigning passwords - a randomly generated one maybe.

Or you could just tick the box that forces them to change their password on first login. Remember - your users will always take the easiest possible route you give them.

Re:ethics require education

[Tony Hoyle]

People just use incrementing numbers.

If you do it every month half your passwords will be the month name. And they'll leave their machines logged in overnight anyway.

Basically you can be BOFHish as you like and you still won't get around the fact that non-IT people see passwords as a roadblock.
SecurID is about the closest you can get to enforcement.. and you can bet even then you'd get a steady stream of people who'd lost their keys...

Re:ethics require education

[lukas84]

Education, Education, Education. Plus administrative reprimands if your password fails an audit using bruteforce.

This is not a technology problem, it is a people problem.

Re:ethics require education

[Gazzonyx]

To be honest, I always figured that everyone would just do it (I'm in college - this is my "intern" position and my first glimpse of the business world) without me having to be an enforcer - I'm a software development major, not a network administration, IT, or straight CS major. I don't have a very strong liking for administrators who use technical means to enforce something where "...hey could do this for me..." would suffice. If someone told me that I was given an insecure password, that would be motivation enough to change it ASAP.

Also, I usually have to do a bit of prep work to an account depending on what the person will be doing (the default profile just doesn't cover all my use cases), so it usually gets a good 3 or 4 logins before being handed to the user. I spoke with my boss about 30 day max length on passwords, but that went over like a lead zeppelin.

Re:ethics require education

[jacksonj04]

Check in your group policy - there are a comprehensive set of options including change password on next login, maximum password age, minimum password complexity, don't allow same password within ..., don't allow passwords with x characters the same and so on.

Re:ethics require education

[19thNervousBreakdown]

30 length on passwords is definitely not the way to go. You'll encourage people to pick horrible passwords that can be defeated by automated means. If you use password complexity requirements, they'll just write them down and stick them all over the place. Best is to make password expiration fairly long, like 180 days or more, and require strong passwords.

As for creating new passwords, at the very least use a scheme that isn't predictable, at least by automated means. I usually go with "^changeme^" or "(change#this)" or something like that. If for some reason I couldn't make people change it on first login, I'd make it horrible to type. Like "Y0u%HQu!|)C|-|4nG37H1%" (that's youshouldchangethis horribly mangled) Yes, I would really go that far. Unless they're stupid assholes, they only have to type it once.

You can, and should be nice, but it is your job to keep them secure, and they don't know any better. IF they give you crap about it, shrug and look embarrassed, then blame it on your boss. "Sorry man, company policy you know..." Not quite a lie, I mean, it's your policy, so technically it's company policy.

Also, make sure you do this job well. It will teach you a lot of things about how to write software when you see the horrible things that other non-sysadmin programmers have written. INFORMATIVE ERROR MESSAGES FUCK OHGOD PLEEEASE

Re:ethics require education

[dfetter]

Why didn't you give a rationale along with the instruction? A lot of people will do stuff when they know why.

Re:ethics require education

[rucs_hack]

And how do you know they haven't changed their password yet? :)

A rare form of social engineering was applied, I asked them. Then muttered darkly to them about security, there need for it, and also kittens..

Re:ethics require education

[coolGuyZak]

Alas, most people don't understand the logic behind security. I recommend making an account maintenance checklist. After the log-in activities are complete, activate the password switching box.

Re:ethics require education

[Culture20]

I don't have a very strong liking for administrators who use technical means to enforce something where "...hey could do this for me..." would suffice.
Asking politely is _never_ sufficient, but it is a good social lubricant to add on top of the abrasive necessity of technical measures. Even if everyone in your company is nice, cordial, and willing to do what you ask, there will be some people that don't know how but don't want to look stupid by asking, some people who just plain forget because important things always pop up, and the few who actually follow through.

Re:ethics require education

[oldhack]

You can lead a horse to water, and if you Duct Tape a hose to its mouth, you can make it drink too.

Yes, but where does the other end of the hose go?

Re:ethics require education

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I would consider reading any of the email I have access to worse then having to sit through multiple seasons of Survivor.
 
(The thought of being forced to watch 10 minutes of that show has me reaching for the suicide switch to make the pain stop)

Reading users email?

[MichaelSmith]

Anyone who has time to read peoples email obviously isn't busy enough (and is easily amused).

Re:Reading users email?

[ozmanjusri]

Anyone who has time to read peoples email obviously isn't busy enough (and is easily amused).

You clearly need to read the canonical guide to sysadmin ethics.

Re:Reading users email?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you just script your searches so that only the interesting email is flagged for your attention. (We should all look at this BOFH image as a good example.)

Ethics is eithics

[clickclickdrone]

Irrespective of if it's IT related. You shouldn't do anything you wouldn't want done to yourself or is likely to hurt people. Just be a decent honest person.

Re:Ethics is eithics

[HBI]

Disturbingly, that does not rule out performing random fellatio in the street.

Re:Ethics is eithics

[pegdhcp]

While agreeing with the basic fact that "ethics is ethics" whatever the environment is, I guess it should be noted that, IT gives more power to people than it was expected during the time when ethic codes are developed in thousands of years. Before IT, you would need to have some guts to come into my house and try to look mt financial records, or love letters, or my childhood pictures, now it is very very easy to do so. You can automate any activity, either productive, or un-productive (such as unethical ones) with IT means, that would lead mass unethical activities by individuals. This should cause us to ha a different ethics in IT environment than a regular environment. The very same argument can be applied to privacy and availability of encryption to ordinary people. When government had no means to mass monitor its population, encryption issue can be trivial, but now the situation is different, as there are industrial scale monitoring facilities.

Re:Ethics is eithics

[jbrohan]

The ethical issues in a domain where unethical behavior is unlikely to be discovered directly is a very interesting problem. In Quebec we had some bridges collapse because the work was poorly executed. We can pry into others business and write programs without bothering to test them, we should do these things better. Neville Shute in Round the Bend discusses this problem in the setting of the expanding airlines just after world war 2, expanding into the Far East. He describes a form or religion of aircraft engineers. The suggestion is that the solution to this ethical problem cannot be solved in the domain in which it is presented, cannot be solved as a business or technological problem, but at a deeper human, spiritual level.

Re:Ethics is eithics

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should it?

Re:Ethics is eithics

[chiefloko]

I am not sure if the "Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil" mantra works ever, though it seems that "Do no Evil" never happens in the long run.

Re:Ethics is eithics

[JayClements]

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." - Abraham Lincoln

Re:Ethics is eithics

[bondjamesbond]

True, but still, I was required to take an ethics class (Computer Ethics) before graduating. It's sometimes just a good idea to remind people to be good.

Re:Ethics is eithics

[Anonymous Coward]

>Ethics is eithics

Which, of course, gives rise to the question: WTF is "eithics"?

Unix syndrome

[QuantumG]

Anything that isn't prohibited is not only allowed, but also ethical.

Re:Unix syndrome

[value_added]

Anything that isn't prohibited is not only allowed, but also ethical.

There may be some truth in that, but I don't see how that applies to interpersonal behaviour. My own preference is to defer to what my grandmother taught me: ethics is insisting on doing what's right even when no one is looking.

She also taught me to the principle of keeping things simple, both from a moral perspective and practical one. I never asked, but I'm sure she preferred vi to emacs.

Re:Unix syndrome

[QuantumG]

When you spend your life in a perfectly enforced world you rarely have to make ethical decisions. You don't have to think "gee, should I take a look at Bob's files or not?" Because the system stops you from doing it - unlike the real world, where you have the choice of obeying the law or not, and are better off for thinking about what is right what is wrong. So when you are presented with an ethical choice.. usually as a result of some temporary granting of power.. you don't know what to do.. and it's easiest to just not think about it.

Re:Unix syndrome

[nilbud]

You may be insane. You seriously allow your behaviour to be dictated by external "prohibitions", wow.

Re:Unix syndrome

[cthulu_mt]

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

I think that's what you mean.

Re:Unix syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

"My friend here is trying to convince me that any independent contractors who were working on the uncompleted Death Star, were innocent victims when they were destroyed by the Rebels." -- Clerks

What I'm concerned about is all those programmers implementing East-German-like-spyware for control-freaked governments. Here in Germany, ISPs are required to log all your Email, Internet and Telephone communications. In case of mobile phones, they are even required to log your geographical location. There also a government-approved project to write a trojan to break into suspects' desktops. This is legal, since it has been voted by the parliament. Suits tend to see this as business as usual, but I don't feel programmers should lend their precious talent to such bluntly unethical purposes.

Re:Unix syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

"[T]he principle of keeping things simple" is something my grandfather taught me, while something along the lines of "ethics is insisting on doing what's right even when no one is looking..." is what my mother taught me.

My grandmother mostly taught me how to cook for an army, and also had me genuinely convinced that there was something wrong with black people. Took me years to figure out she's just incredibly racist.

Re:Unix syndrome

[mark-t]

I'm just curious here... what did she say was wrong with black people, exactly?

Re:Unix syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

what did she say was wrong with black people, exactly?

She probably got them confused with niggers.

Re:Unix syndrome

[mapkinase]

Ethical prohibitions are different from legal prohibition. If the prohibition is both ethical and legal, your statement is a truism, if not, then it is trivially not true.

It is true though that ethics is mostly a set of taboo: things that you SHOULD NOT do. In this sense you are right. But there are situations when you have to act (moral obligation). When there is a mortal danger to another human being and you can easily help, for example.

Re:Unix syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that isn't prohibited is not only allowed, but also ethical.

That's the US Republican Party way of thinking actually.

Re:Unix syndrome

[manlydan]

politicians in general tend to become unethical, but that is a completely different topic altogether.

Re:Unix syndrome

[geminidomino]

You do realize that there is a qualifying clause to that (For those that do not know, that is the second half of what is popularly called "The Wiccan Rede") statement, don't you?

"An (if) it harm thee none, do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"

Re:Unix syndrome

[sumdumass]

Lol.. You shouldn't have posted this as AC.

I think too many people dwell on the word nigger which in and of itself has no power outside what people give it. Also, according to the definitions I was raised with, nigger doesn't really mean black, but a type of person who does certain things.

Few people realize that the word nigger is more or less a bastardization of the word Niger which is a territory/country in Africa that exists to this day. When the slave trade was coming to the US, the tribes had chased all the other tribe back past the Nigerian and Niger rivers into a french territory called Niger before capturing them. When you ship property, there is a point of origin and destination on the bill of lading and some dumbfuck hooked on phonics southerner pronounced niger as nigger and because most communications were oral, it stuck.

but regardless of it's origin, the fact that people let words define who they are is amazing when it comes to this. The racists use the word because they know it pisses people off. It is really no different then juveniles taking up swear words in an effort to piss their elders off. Unfortunately, instead of dealing with it as a word with many meaning, we have concentrated on the negatives associated with it and placed it off limits because of how we have reinforced the negetive meaning. To a racist, it has no meaning other then pissing blacks off, we gave that to them and let them define it's value by teaching the youths to react in a certain way to it. Racist on the other side have tried to do the same with creating words like Cracker and honky but unlike nigger, it only holds a specific meaning in their circle so it doesn't have the impact that nigger does.

Anyways, the point of chiming in, is to mention that the AC is right in that nigger doesn't mean black people, the modern definition doesn't even seem to mention them. And the only reason it has any power is because we let it have it. Either as a society who has tagged it as the "ultimate offense" or as a people who will let it trigger emotions and actions and in effect playing into the users motives. Hate often is designed to hurt others, when they can do it arbitrarily with words, those that hate become very effective. That's why "hate crimes" is a joke. It empowers those that hate.

Re:Unix syndrome

[przemekklosowski]

She also taught me to the principle of keeping things simple, both from a moral perspective and practical one. I never asked, but I'm sure she preferred vi to emacs. Your grandmother was a fine woman, but I think you forgot the second part: "Keep things as simple as possible, but not simpler". I bet she preferred Emacs :)

Re:Unix syndrome

[iceph03nix]

Anything that isn't prohibited is not only allowed, but also ethical.

There IS a grain of truth to this, at least in a way. The way I see it, you should always approach people with the idea that this is their motto. If you don't expect them to do something stupid or immoral then your in for a surprise. Everyone has their own ideas on what is ethical and moral (I've taken two ethics in IT style courses & a business ethics course) and there as varied as the shades of skin on this planet, and sometimes just as related.

Keeping your view of ethics simple is the best way to deal with other peoples views. Depending on where you are in the chain of command you will have to temper your dealings with people to accompany your relation with them.

Re:Unix syndrome

[fulldecent]

I had sex with your grandmom. Looks like his grandmom prefers nano.

Re:Unix syndrome

[cthulu_mt]

I am quoting Crowley's The Book of the Law which contains no namby-pamby injunction against harming others.

Really, "harming none" is just an invitation to be exterminated.

Re:Unix syndrome

[Furtailloins]

I agree...except my definition of ethics is insisting on doing what's right "especially" when no one is lookng. Peace with the man in the mirror. Wouldn't work for a lot of people, but I like to think it would work for "most" people.

Re:Unix syndrome

[jvkjvk]

You do realize that there is a qualifying clause to that (For those that do not know, that is the second half of what is popularly called "The Wiccan Rede") statement, don't you?

"An (if) it harm thee none, do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" And, yet, still that is not the whole of it. To be more clear a broader realization of what harm is and what the "thee" talked about is, is called for.

The milieu of An (if) it harm thee none does not just mean personal harm to self. As a very crude example, hitting someone with a bat does harm to that person, yet also harms the hitter even if the ways it does so are not physically noticeable. So by hitting someone with a bat, you are also hurting yourself.

This is because the belief is that we are all one, in some respects. The "thee" in this case is the Consciousness inherent within and without. That is, they are the same thing in essence and linked in fact and the Higher Self encompasses both.

Another fun fact is Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law. is also valid as it is historically correct (without the "an it harm none") and is generally preferred by some schools of thought over the Wiccan Rede (see for example, Golden Dawn). It can be viewed as an antithesis to the Rede (which is how many Wiccans seem to view it) and indeed seems to be so in many ways with the emphasis on breaking out of traditional mores ("harming" of Society, which as it is a mere construct, cannot actually be harmed!).

Yet on another level, as soon as one realizes that the "Thou" in this shorter statement is the same Higher Self referenced in the Rede one can see that the first part becomes superfluous except for its additional expository nature.

Ok, so totally off topic. Sue me :)

Re:Unix syndrome

[pnuema]

I think too many people dwell on the word nigger which in and of itself has no power outside what people give it. Also, according to the definitions I was raised with, nigger doesn't really mean black, but a type of person who does certain things.

I'm sure you're not a racist, and your have a lot of friends that are black, too.

*rolls eyes*

If I had a nickel for every time a heard some white privileged racist prick...

"Redefine the word" my ass. I'm sure the majority of the country has a very good idea what that word means, and it does not agree with your definition. There are other, better words out there to describe what you mean. Refusal to use them is at best lazy, and at worst offensive and juvenile, if only because you know it is offensive to others. Defending its use makes you offensive and juvenile. You are like a child who won't give up a toy, even though there are dozens of others at hand that are just as good. Those of us with intellects that progressed passed junior high realize that the word only has the power we give it. All words only have the power we give them, idiot. The power we have given that word is substantial and hateful, and your defense of its use makes you a dick.

By the way, where I was raised "dick" means "amusing person who refuses to give up bad habits", so you see, you shouldn't be offended. We've redefined the word. Didn't you hear?

Re:Unix syndrome

[jvkjvk]

I am quoting Crowley's The Book of the Law which contains no namby-pamby injunction against harming others. Which is probably where Crowley went wrong. If you don't enjoin yourself against harming others, you cannot enjoin yourself against self harm. On the level of the Higher Self it's like pissing in your own drinking water. Crowley was certainly a powerful and influential figure but it is clear that as some point something went wrong - he took it that he couldn't make change without harming society or morals and appears to conflate this with harming beings of consciousness and since he needed one the other came along for the ride.

And, really now, Liber al vel Legis does indeed contain injunctions against harming others -- to my reading that is the point of "Love is the law, love under will." Thelema requires both of these statements and is unbalanced one without the other. While this verse does have other convoluted meanings, one that can certainly be derived is an injunction against "harm". "Do as thou wilt" == "Love", in the base term.

Really, "harming none" is just an invitation to be exterminated. No, not really. If someone attempts to cause you harm, the simplest defense is to redirect their corrupted will back to them so they may attempt to correct the problem. Even if this results in the destruction of their physical being you are helping them, not harming them. Does it get more messy IRL? Quite right, since no one appears currently to be in absolute harmony with their HGA or Higher Self, additional mis-applied energies are loosed which may continue the cycle of harm.

To play with these Laws properly requires more than a simplistic reading and approach.

93/93

Re:Unix syndrome

[tompaulco]

I think too many people dwell on the word nigger which in and of itself has no power outside what people give it.
Yes, and despite the fact that we change the "acceptable" word to refer to a race of people every 10 years, the fact is that it is not the word but the attitude of the people who use the word that lends it power. No amount of attempting to legislate attitudes or force political correctness on people will change what people think. You can only hopefully prevent them from acting on it.

Re:Unix syndrome

[sumdumass]

I don't think it is the attitude of the people using it as much as the people reacting to it. These people are racists, they are attempting to hurt people when saying it, yet we seem to give them that satisfaction of succeeding by our reactions. If we didn't react to them any more then we would reacted to someone calling your stupid or yellow or a clock for instance, it would quickly lose it's power and they would have to search for another way to hurt you.

Now, I'm not saying let them be, I'm just saying that we need to rethink this. We make it entirely to easy to achieve their goals and we shouldn't.

Re:Unix syndrome

[sumdumass]

I'm sure you're not a racist, and your have a lot of friends that are black, too.

*rolls eyes*

You caught me. I was attempting to get ever black person to not care that the N word was being used so other people could say it without repudiation as if it was something evil and damaging to all black people. The question is, if it doesn't effect them any more then saying "what" in front of them, how much of this racist cause have I furthered?

oh wait, *roll eyes*

"Redefine the word" my ass. I'm sure the majority of the country has a very good idea what that word means, and it does not agree with your definition. There are other, better words out there to describe what you mean.

I think your sorely confused to the terms of redefining I mentioned. I said it defines you, the black guy and ignites a stereotypical reaction that gets racists off when they use it. You can let nigger mean anything you damn well please it to mean. It is the reaction that is bread into you that forces a definition of who you are that need changed. Ask you self something, If I called you a nigger, what is my intention? If you guessed anything other then to piss you off or hurt you, you would most likely be wrong. Now ask yourself, If you replied with a "so what?", without any evidence of anger or hurt, what does that do to my intentions? It makes them worthless. And If I said other things, and you replied with, that may be true, but I'm still better then you so what can you say about yourself" who is going to react and be the fool? Me or you? Most likely me because you already kept you cool and now I am sitting here looking like a dork trying to damage you with words and being totally unsuccessful at it. Then you can commence with the ass whoopin or you can take the higher road once again and tell him he isn't worth you sweat and time and walk away. Or you can wait until he says something about your dog and use that as an excuse to let your anger go.

Refusal to use them is at best lazy, and at worst offensive and juvenile, if only because you know it is offensive to others.

Yep, and that is why racists use it. However, it doesn't seem to be racist when another black man uses it towards another black man. All I am saying is treat it that way, take the ammunition away from them. They may not be your friend but when you can define who you are by one word, you will always be controlled by someone else, and in this case, it will always be the white boy calling you a nigger.

Defending its use makes you offensive and juvenile. You are like a child who won't give up a toy, even though there are dozens of others at hand that are just as good.

Your forgetting two things, one, you don't know me. Your basing your entire understanding of me off of the use of one word and you are getting it all wrong but proving my point at the same time. Two, I'm not suggesting that everyone goes around saying nigger, nigger, nigger, I'm suggesting that blacks stop letting it control them so they can get out from under control of the racists. Now granted, not all blacks can be manipulated like that, it seems to be mostly the ones claiming to be liberated and fighting the man. It is sort of like bringing a gun to a knife fight but showing up at the wrong address. You know, good intentions but not productive.

Those of us with intellects that progressed passed junior high realize that the word only has the power we give it. All words only have the power we give them, idiot. The power we have given that word is substantial and hateful, and your defense of its use makes you a dick.

Yes, and my point is that power should be removed from it. I've seen best friends get pissed at each other and call each other bitches, whores, bastards, son of a bitches, and all sorts of derogatory terms. They do this because they want to hurt them. If they were

Re:Unix syndrome

[seralick]

I think the internet is the main test of the "when no one is looking" principle, simply due to its innate anonymity. If you know that no one is ever going to look, will this feeling of security override your ethics?

Personally I have no real interest in reading others emails and the like, but in an era of big brother and outed voyeurism... well I have no doubt that this form of ethics will be put to the test. After all, ethics is normally defined by what is socially acceptable.

Re:Unix syndrome

[cthulu_mt]

I feel that I should clarify. I don't have any interest in Thelema and haven't devoted any serious scholarship to the subject. That quote is useful as a justification, to others, for whatever I happen to be doing at the time.

Re:Unix syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that isn't prohibited is not only allowed, but also ethical.

Kinda the idea behind the US Constitution.

Re:Unix syndrome

[jvkjvk]

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

Re:Unix syndrome

[redmid17]

Well, if you fail, you should at least do it spectacularly. Rarely have I seen someone crash and burn when trying to explain the origins of fairly well known word. Looks for a pattern here. English: Nigger --> pejorative for black people Spanish: Negro --> black French: nègre --> black German: Negger --> negro Dutch: Neger --> negro Hungarian: néger --> black Russian: (negr) --> black All of these words are derived, well the romance languages at the very, very least, from the Latin word for black, niger. The etymology of the Niger river and Niger are still up in there air. Another point beside, almost none of those foreign words were considered racist or offensive until America started exporting its culture hardcore after WW II. The more you know...

Re:Unix syndrome

[sumdumass]

Try looking up the first recorded use of the word. Then take a history class in the region. OR just look it up and read it. It isn't hard to say they came from Niger and have that pronounced as nigger when the south of the time wasn't particularly known for their french literacy.

BTW, niger means black also. And your even mentioned the specific part that turns the word nigger into a racial slur. You said

beside, almost none of those foreign words were considered racist or offensive until America started exporting its culture hardcore after WW II.

So ask yourself what makes them offensive and _RACIST_? The key here is a race, people who come from england, are English, people who come from Holland are dutch, people who come from Germany or france are German and french, people who come from NIGER, are Nigers. So how does a word come to describe a race and culture of people as a whole in the same ways that French, German, English, and so on has for the longest of time? Most of Europe had stopped importing slaves buy the time the word surfaces in America which is also about the time they where brought in from NIGER. IS this pure coincidence and completely inconsequential compared to your theory of one fraction of a continent of people bastardizing a bunch or foreign words for no other purpose then to degrade people because of the color of their skin? I mean ozcams razor or whatever would show the easiest meshing is mispronunciation of the origin point of cargo or property being shipped across the ocean(which slaves were at the time, cargo and property).

I can see how it is worth something to some to keep the idea of a word being invented on purpose specifically for the purpose of racism. I didn't come up with that theory all in my own, it was told to me years ago. I looked it up and found it to be true in events like Nigger was never recorded until after slave were being brought out of NIGER. Maybe you should check on it too.

Re:Unix syndrome

[palion]

Nigger? Way simpler. Nigger comes from negro which simply means black in spanish. Niger means black in latin.

Don't go looking so far...

Re:Unix syndrome

[sumdumass]

Lol.. You should have read the responses to other comments which attempt to say the exact same thing as you have. Let me ask you something, If nigger which is first recorded as being used at the same time the slaves were being brought out of Niger, was an adaptation of the Spanish word Negro, then why wasn't it in use earlier considering the Spanish and the Portuguese were the ones controlling the slave trade for the most part? And seeing how Blacks, or Africans have been slaves in other areas and such, why hasn't it become a racial slur in those areas until after WW2 when the Americans exported their hatred. It is true that the Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese called them negre and other forms of Black, but the term Nigger was never employed until after they were captured and shipped from Niger.

Sure, the association with Negro, which was used as the non-defamatory reference to blacks for a while alongside nigger seems simple enough. But it fails to follow and sane test and wouldn't explain why it is a racial slur only in a small part of one continent and originally in use by only those with a connection to slavery? Niger, on the other hand, reads very similar to Nigger, and the phonetic reading style of the time could lead people to pronouncing it as nigger which would have then been recorded by more educated people as such. It is also a reason why the two names co-existed and Nigger primarily mean dark skinned people from "Africa" and not south america or any other place. You should really check into the blight of benin, Goree and how that bulk of the slaves offered in the slave trade was sold there mostly by African kings raiding other kingdoms and enslaving their people by war.

Ethics on an MBA?

[edittard]

Ethics on an MBA - do the marks from this module get subtracted from your overall score?

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[mwvdlee]

"Business Ethics"

Does this joke need explaining?

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[clickclickdrone]

Oh man, just had a choking fit caused by laughing whilst eating an sandwich. Don't breath in crumbs - it's a bitch.

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a Harvard MBA.

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

"Business Ethics" Does this joke need explaining?

None of my colleagues here in military intelligence got it...

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[besalope]

After the whole Enron/World Com scandals and the advent of the SOX laws, the universities started cramming ethics down business major's throats. Although, whether there is any uptake is still yet to be determined.

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[chiefloko]

hopefully they get subtracted from my tuition!

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in an MBA program now and the ethic training states the following:

1) turn yourself in

2) rat out the MBA from harvard you work with/for

3) ...and post anonymously so as not to get caught

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[doombringerltx]

Its not just business guys. Last semester I had "Ethics for computer science and electrical engineers." It was a new class they had just started offering and requiring for a CS degree. The number of Star Trek analogies coming from the crowd was painful.

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[SecurityGuy]

Funny, but you'd be surprised at the degree ethics is emphasized in MBA programs. We are quite often reminded of the honor code, and the results of breaches are publicized. The most common punishment (by far) is expulsion from the program, and believe you me, after spending a ridiculous sum on the program and two years of your life, getting expelled and a permanent professional black eye is a serious big deal. Your friends know you're going. Your company knows you're going. Good luck explaining why you're not going anymore, to say nothing of the permanent note in your transcript that you were suspended, expelled, or otherwise disciplined for a breach of ethics. It could easily be a career killer. Everyone wants to work with people they can trust.

In short, they understand yours is the popular perception and they're using the tools they have not just to change the perception, but to mold tomorrow's reality. Some of us are even attracted to the path because we've tired of seeing business run badly or unethically, and we're determined to dive in and do it better. By all means, hold us accountable, but help us out, too. Some of us are just techies like you who have decided to try a different way to make life better for all of us.

Re:Ethics on an MBA?

[Hognoxious]

I've just started one part-time and a note's just gone round that someone in the final year got booted out for plagiarism. I did find the joke funny though and like you said it's the common perception - and it's been there since way before Enron.

I'm a bit surprised nnobody's cracked the "it's near Thuthex" one yet.

Ethics?

[muftak]

Do what you like, just don't get caught.

Ethics in IT

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule #1: Try not to leave blood on the carpet. There are no other rules.

Re: Ethics in IT

[rmdstudio]

When the IT works with the MBA, that's ethical, but when either one works for the other, that is unethical!

Re:Ethics in IT

[chiefloko]

Rule #2 Do not leave urine in open containers stored in the rafters/ceiling. Witnessed that before.

Let he who is without sin...

[Anonymous Coward]

So is it ethical to let Slashdot readers do your homework for you?

Re:Let he who is without sin...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

1.Ask Slashdot, [insert Topic in here..].
2.Slashdotters comment on [insert Topic in here]
3. ??????
4. Profit!
5. Write down ramblings of slashdotters for grade
6. Get a C, knowing that you totally half-assed the whole thing.

Do something useful or something popular

[JohnnyKlunk]

While it's not strictly related to IT, I can spend a whole week doing any number of things that are really useful in the long-term to the business from an IT perspective. Or I can do something that will make the boss happy. Like a flashy widget on the intranet or a set of graphs that prove nothing. One gets me a better bonus and the favour of all those above me. One makes me a good tech. What's the norm here? Balance I guess, depends on the job. This year I'm going to spend a lot more time on the latter. Hopefully get the bonus and pay off the mortgage - most people trade ethics for a mortgage eventually.

Re:Do something useful or something popular

[Roberticus]

Your scenario does not actually involve ethics. Ethics deals with the question of whether an action is morally right or wrong. There's nothing *inherently* morally wrong about making a flashy widget if your boss asks you to. Nor is it morally wrong that your boss asks you to do something he/she considers a better use of your time than long-term IT fixes. It would be unethical if he/she asked you to falsify data in your graphs or create a widget that stole users' credit card numbers. You're confusing "misguided" with "unethical".

Ethics on MBA?

[nagora]

This is window-dressing. Ethics are irrelevant to business and if you try to be ethical you'll be screwed in no time.

TWW

Re:Ethics on MBA?

[mwvdlee]

"Ethics" is relevant to business in that is is a great marketing word that makes your business look like it actually gives a crap. Ethics in business only exist unless more money can be made by not having ethics.

Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[Frater 219]

The point of authorization systems (like user permissions on a Unix system) is to simulate and thereby enforce the trust relationships that people have with regards to data. You aren't allowed to read my email, so you don't have read access. You're allowed to use a certain amount of disk space, so there's a quota.

But here's a problem: Technology is purpose-blind. It doesn't know for what purpose you're trying to do a particular thing -- only whether you've got access to do it. However, in the real world, we frequently want to trust someone with a particular resource, but only for certain purposes.

You're allowed to drive Daddy's T-bird to the library, but not to the hamburger stand. But the ignition system doesn't know that; it just knows you put the right key in. Your sysadmin is allowed to read your email files if she thinks something's wrong with the mail server, but not just because she thinks you're cute and wants to stalk you. But the permissions bits don't know that.

You're allowed to access Scientology's Web page to read it, but not to repeatedly reload it just to put load on their server and run up their bandwidth bill. But neither your browser (or wget) nor their server necessarily understand that.

So there's an ethical problem: you frequently have access to things for only certain purposes. How are those purposes defined and agreed on? Is it possible to make authorization systems more purpose-aware? Would that even be desirable, or would it just cause problems with unexpected situations?

Suppose Daddy's T-bird only allows you to drive to the library, by shutting off the engine if you try to go somewhere else ... and Daddy has a heart attack and you need to get him to the hospital. Down that road lie DRM and other systems that decrease the value of technology by getting in the way of legitimate uses.

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great idea!

...access Scientology's Web page to read it, but not to repeatedly reload it just to put load on their server and run up their bandwidth bill.

(just kidding :-p)

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[finnw]

Is it possible to make authorization systems more purpose-aware? Would that even be desirable, or would it just cause problems with unexpected situations? What you are describing sounds like DRM, so we know the answer already: no, it won't work, but people will try to and will waste a lot of money in the process.

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[QuantumG]

Access control systems just take away the need for ethical consideration. People don't think "should I read my friend's email", they think "do I have access to read my friend's email". If they can, they assume they should.

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[Chrononium]

I think that you've hit upon the great crux with any technology: it doesn't enforce a purpose (or ethical behavior), it just performs a certain function given certain input and initial conditions. In my view, technology merely allows the sphere of the user to extend. If that person wants to do bad, then the technology will be used for bad purposes. If that person wants to do good, then the technology will be used for good purposes. While this sounds like an undesirable trait, I claim it is a very desirable trait.

Technology should not try to replace our sense of ethics, for if it is possible to create something that only does good, then it is equally possible to create something that only does bad. And of course, there are cases where bad is just a few steps away from good, so many humans might fail at discerning their difference initially. A "bad" technology in these cases could be ruinous, since a good person would be *forced* to do bad without knowing it, initially. DRM, I believe, lives in the realm of authorization systems (Draconian ones, but still, authorization), while "moral" technology is hopefully without implementation.

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[jamesh]

You're allowed to access Scientology's Web page to read it, but not to repeatedly reload it just to put load on their server and run up their bandwidth bill. But neither your browser (or wget) nor their server necessarily understand that.

URL?

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[geminidomino]

Your sysadmin is allowed to read your email files if she thinks something's wrong with the mail server, but not just because she thinks you're cute and wants to stalk you.

A she-geek who thinks I am cute?

Yeah, I'm thinking I would have NO problem with that at all...

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't seen some of the female geeks I'VE seen :-S

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sysadmin is allowed to read your email files if she thinks something's wrong with the mail server, but not just because she thinks you're cute and wants to stalk you. Damn... where do you work, and are you taking applications??

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[ZERO1ZERO]

Nice post. That is all I have to say.

Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness

[geminidomino]

You haven't seen me. If she thinks I'm cute, odds are there's some psychological damage.

At this point, I'll take it.

Snooping

[Spad]

Reading through someone's emails or documents without permission is job suicide - nobody is going to hire someone who was fired for snooping through other peoples' stuff. Of course, this relies on there being some degree of auditing in place to catch you, but you shouldn't do it anyway, on principle.

Re:Snooping

[robo_mojo]

nobody is going to hire someone who was fired for snooping through other peoples' stuff.
But you can get hired as a Private Investigator.

Re:Snooping

[gbobeck]

...nobody is going to hire someone who was fired for snooping through other peoples' stuff.

Tell that to the NSA or CIA.

Re:Snooping

[Cro Magnon]

Tell that to the NSA or CIA

Actually, I don't they will hire anyone who got caught snooping through other people's stuff either.

Re:Snooping

[chiefloko]

The user in question unfortunately passed away last year.

do unto others?

[wall0159]

I think a better approach is do unto others as you think they would want done to them

That helps avoid the "well, I'd want to be killed if I was gay" rationale...

Re:do unto others?

[aug24]

Unfortunately leaving open the "well, he'd want to be blown as he is gay" rationale...

Re:do unto others?

[ricegf]

I think a better approach is do unto others as you think they would want done to them

Ah, so as long as I think women really want to be slapped around, dominated, and treated as second class citizens, then you think that's the better approach? No thanks. (Hint: The original was not "Do unto others as you think you'd want done unto you if you were them...")

Re:do unto others?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a better approach is do unto others as you think they would want done to them

That helps avoid the "well, I'd want to be killed if I was gay" rationale... My cube opponents are all masochists.

One, deep down inside, even wanted to be Dr. Kevorkian's patient.

Re:do unto others?

[consonant]

I think a better approach is do unto others as you think they would want done to them

Meh. If the ladies followed this line of reasoning, I'd have more dates :(

Re:do unto others?

[rhakka]

implicit in the statement is the idea that you are at least making a good faith effort to understand the other and their needs/motivations/desires.

Saying "do unto others as you'd have done unto you" absolves you of any attempt to understand others or what they want. You act like everyone is like you. That's better than nothing, sure, and if you're trying to make a memorable sound bite that illiterate people and other people who are unlikely to really consider their impact on the world then perhaps it's good enough. but it's a long shot short of putting a little effort into understanding and connecting to other human beings.. respecting them, even.. and attempting to find a course of action that satisfies all parties. THAT is the moral high ground; THAT is the action that best serves YOU, in the long term.

The golden rule is kindergarten of ethics, not the be all end all of it.

Re:do unto others?

[The One and Only]

I think a better approach is do unto others as you think they would want done to them

By that approach, all of you owe me your eternal servitude. What I want done to me is my floor vacuumed and my laundry cleaned. Oh yes, and the dishes in the sink. Once that is done you may all buy me groceries.

Re:do unto others?

[James McGuigan]

The masochist says the sadist, "Hit me"

The sadist says "No"

Re:do unto others?

[ricegf]

You're judging the two statements by completely different standards. You interpret the rule you like in light of a "good faith effort", but the time-tested rule I prefer by a brain-dead "if I were gay I'd want to be dead" savagely warped perspective. I certainly wouldn't want to treat your guideline as you are treating mine - but I guess you think I want mine to be (mis)treated that way. :-)

See how easy yours is to game? The time-tested original is much harder to game IMHO, though certainly neither is "the be all end all" of anything. I'll stick with what's worked so well for me for so long.

Re:do unto others?

[rhakka]

If ethical life is your goal, then "gaming" is irrelevant. This isn't a court of law; you're only cheating yourself "gaming" this.

The real problem is in thinking you are taking the high ground, when you're not, that is, which is most "self delusional". With the "golden rule", there is no impetus to understand any viewpoint but yours. So when you treat others as you would be treated, and they act "badly" in return.. that's a pretty maddening state of affairs! That promotes some serious miscommunication; I would go so far as to say that it creates "righteous" anger, when you're doing your best to be fair and being met with this inexplicable response! Why, when you treated them as you would want to be treated!?

When you think you're trying to be fair and met with inappropriate response, one gives up most easily.. you hit that bar of "you're just not worth it" much faster.

To take a personal example, my wife likes a lot of nurturing. I feel like behavior she sees as "nurturing" is condescending as hell and I hate it. If I treat her the way I genuinely prefer to be treated (like a strong, capable person in my eyes), she feels like I'm being a jerk. If she treats me in her preferred mode, I just get super annoyed, if not angry at the insinuation that I can't handle it on my own. And we love each other!!

What is required for effective behaviour as well as more ethical behaviour is at least an attempt to understand the person you are interacting with. The first and most important thing this does is remove the "righteous" anger when your behaviour is not met with the proper politeness you might expect; instead being more likely to get angry, you're already in a mode of thinking that is seeking understanding and is more mindful of possible miscommunication, so you're more apt to try again.

That alone is enough in most cases. If not, the practice you get over time helps further. And if you look at me and my writing and doubt that.. well, I'm not perfect at it either, but you should have seen me before I got some practice in ;) Seriously, it only helps if you're mindful and none of us are of either the golden rule or this all the time.

Where it really falls apart is that is says nothing about the boundary between safeguarding yourself and seeking understanding.. you can't always treat others as they would prefer. Perhaps the most accurate would be "Treat others as they wish to be treated as much as possible; failing that, treat others as you would wish to be treated". the golden rule should, IMHO, be no more than a fallback position.

work in progress though, who knows?

Re:do unto others?

[ricegf]

Ah, that clarifies your thinking quite a bit, thanks. I would have interpreted "treat your wife as you want to be treated" as "understand what your wife wants and try to provide it" because you'd want to be understood and accommodated, too, rather than "ignore your wife's desires and just treat her like she's a mini-me". So perhaps we arrive at the same position from different perspectives.

But thanks for giving me more grist for the mind mill. :-)

Depends on Company Policy

[gsslay]

Most of what defines IT 'Ethics' (or at least those that relate to purely IT issues) are defined by company policy. Some company policies state that users have no right to any privacy on email. Some companies practice complete lock-down of computers and teach users that the IT Administers really are god.

So the first point of reference is company policy. The only place "ethics" come it to it is the ask if these policies are written down (rather than made up as you go along to suit the situation) and do the staff know them? Cos if they don't know them you're involved in a form of deceit where they might think their email is private.

Of course, a company that is happy to deceive their staff and without written policies can find that a lack of ethics cuts both ways. The company itself can be done over by the IT staff who have been led to believe that anything goes.

The difference between IT and other professions

[Yvanhoe]

One of the key difference between IT-related ethics and other fields like medicine or law is that there is no official body emitting guidelines and no rights and duties recognized by the law.

When a doctor is asked by an employer to give him medical informations about his employees, he can point out that this would be illegal.
When a sysadmin is asked by his company to monitor users' web access, there are a lot of privacy issues that are raised but never addressed in the law. I mean, it can be part of the sysadmin job to prevent company computers from accessing porn sites but knowing which users access gay websites and which are ordering viagra online is something that should never be forwarded to upper management. He cannont prevent knowing this, but there should be something akin to medical secret regarding these data.

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. the closest that I know of is that developers/programmers can join IEEE and/or ACM, and those organisations do have codes of ethics they expect their members to adhere to.

(It's helpful if you're ever asked to do something you consider unethical, and you can state your professional organisation membership's code of ethics forbids such behaviour. It helps you stick to your ethics because it backs you up.)

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[bcg]

I've always found that knowing the correct grammar when discussing data, as the parent does, is one of the hallmarks of our profession.

So is pedantry - so include them in your practise whenever possible!

(Practise is the verb in commonwealth countries - 8 years at university very well spent)

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Anonymous Coward]

When a doctor is asked by an employer to give him medical informations about his employees, he can point out that this would be illegal.

Is it? Employer drug tests are legal in many states. The employer can probably get all the info they want from the insurance company anyway, like which employees cost a lot.

When a sysadmin is asked by his company to monitor users' web access, there are a lot of privacy issues that are raised but never addressed in the law. I mean, it can be part of the sysadmin job to prevent company computers from accessing porn sites but knowing which users access gay websites and which are ordering viagra online is something that should never be forwarded to upper management.

Why not? Many companies have a policy that internet use is for company business only.

Now, if upper management is browsing gay websites and ordering viagra online, that's something you might want to file away for future use during the next round of IT outsourcing. Just in case :)

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[bcg]

I should practise my usage of practice/practise in my practice more often before posting under my username.

Need another year at uni...

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[freddled]

Ditto the British Computer Society in the UK which issues professional qualifications backed by a code of ethics, code of conduct etc. The BCS and the IEEE are affiliated and there are various links to the ACM too. The BCS operates under a royal charter which is how professional qualifications are managed in the UK. You also get a nice badge which allows you to order the burning of unethical persons unless they are 'fellows' of the aforementioned institutions in which case they may opt for beheading instead. Or a career in politics.

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Lafeek]

Well, IANAL, and I don't know the US system, but in France a sysadmin have the right to read personal data as long as it's a part of his work, but he do not have the right to tell its knowledge to someone else (like his boss) since it's an intrusion of privacy. In case of a detection of an illegal activity (child-porn...) it's duty is to tell it to his boss (then call the cops) but he can't tell him who's the suspect (because it could harm the suspect, and until he is judged, he's innocent).

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Yvanhoe]

Is it? Employer drug tests are legal in many states. The employer can probably get all the info they want from the insurance company anyway, like which employees cost a lot. I have reserves about this, but why not, taking drugs is a voluntary and illegal act. Having terminal cancer is something you not necessarily want to share with your employer. And I doubt that it is legal for a doctor to transmit this information without explicit consent. I am almost sure it is forbidden here in France.

Now, if upper management is browsing gay websites and ordering viagra online, that's something you might want to file away for future use during the next round of IT outsourcing. Just in case :) Well, that is another example. In this case it is blackmail so I believe in most country it is criminal. It has however been recognized in some countries that corporate internet access can be used for personal uses. Companies are free to forbid the practice and take measures to prevent this but they should not breach the privacy of users while doing this.

Ethics in IT is a gray zone : some things are allowed, other are forbidden, other are mandatory and differs from country to country. Retention of IP logs for instance is mandatory in some cases and some countries but requires authorization in some (EU) countries. A guideline would really help.

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Yvanhoe]

I'll have to fall back on my unfair excuse : I am not a native speaker :-)
I'm eager to learn anyway, can you point out my mistake ?

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[apt142]

I think an ethical IT standard might be difficult. The field of IT when looked at by the layman seems to be one lump of knowledge collectively referred to as just "computer stuff." And it's obviously not. You have everything from system maintenance, security, to programmers, program analysts to researchers, academics. Each group with different goals and areas of work.

The most difficult part, I seem to find is the nature of the job. I do a good bit of programming. So, when it comes to manipulating data, I tend to have an outlook that all files on the computer are groupings of 1's and 0's and should be handled accordingly. I don't get passionate about not copying certain files because they have the .mp3 extension. Nor do I make rules in my programs that would limit this functionality in the cases that I'm copying files. To me, it's ethically wrong to try to enforce that limitation on the end user through software. To the RIAA, it's ethically wrong for me not to.

Additionally, In my profession I'm often forced to think outside the box. I tend to think that the term "thinking outside the box" means un-limiting oneself, ie. ignoring rules and/or standard conventions. As a programmer, what I can get the computer to do is only limited by my knowledge of the programming language and whether it's mathematically possible. So, where do I set my boundaries? If I set my boundaries to be too restrictive, I make myself a bad programmer. But, I don't think it's personally healthy to set my boundaries too loose.

Incidentally, I recently took a career test. The test ranked a number of things. My lowest scoring area however was my Morality. One of my highest was Understanding and Empathy.

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Anonymous Coward]

Always reply with: "Sure boss, your boss requested a overview of your web behavior too." (if no higher rank available replace with either s/o or the tax collectors)

Ethics is really simple, don't do anything to others what you would mind if done to yourself.

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Anonymous Coward]

>> no rights and duties recognized by the law

What planet do you live on?

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[MrMunkey]

"there is no official body emitting guidelines"

I know I took this a bit out of context, but SANS does publish a code of ethics... SANS just has no authority, so it ends up being more of a suggestion. http://www.sans.org/resources/ethics.php

Re:The difference between IT and other professions

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an attempt to form an "official body" to develop guidelines and a professional approach to IT Security: It's the ISC^2 which certifies CISSPs. They have a code of ethics as follows:

Code of Ethics Preamble:

        * Safety of the commonwealth, duty to our principals, and to each other requires that we adhere, and be seen to adhere, to the highest ethical standards of behavior.
        * Therefore, strict adherence to this Code is a condition of certification.

Code of Ethics Canons:

        * Protect society, the commonwealth, and the infrastructure.
        * Act honorably, honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally.
        * Provide diligent and competent service to principals.
        * Advance and protect the profession.

https://www.isc2.org/cgi-bin/content.cgi?category=12

I think this is a good basic set of ethical rules to apply to IT Security work. IMHO, it's a step forwards to try and move the perception and reality of IT Security towards a "profession" rather than a "job".

We have a choice:

1) IT people, security or otherwise, can get together and form an "official body" (whether it is the ISC^2 or something else) that will provide guidelines and standards for qualification, ethical behaviour and self-governance. That can raise IT to the level of a "profession" in the eyes of laymen and business.

2) IT people can remain without a governing body, and we can each deal with the world from our own point of view. Our ethics, capabilities and reputations will be our own to develop and maintain.

I suspect that option 1) will result in a loss of personal freedom, as we will need to "conform" to the standards of the guild. However, it will result in IT people being treated as "professionals" by business and government, and we will be self-governing. Option 2) results in more individual freedom as we can all define our own careers, goals and ethics, but we will probably always be treated by business and laymen as "skilled craftsmen" at best. We may be more likely to be subject to government regulation when the people decide that "something must be done" about those "scary hackers".

It's a tradeoff, of course.

Just my .02$

Just obey the eleventh commandment!

[Anonymous Coward]

11. Thou shalt not get caught

Everyone will speak of your wonderful ethics. If it works for most of the rest of senior management, why not IT?

After all, we can edit the logfiles!

i read your e-mail

[Tribbin]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/31fb/

ACM Code of Ethics

[floki]

The Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) has a Code of Ethics. Have a look at it. It gives quite a lot of guidance converning professional conduct in IT.

Re:ACM Code of Ethics

[chribo]

Just wanted to say the same. Furthermore the ACM code of ethics fulfills high standards.

Even the predecessor of the code of ethics, the ACM code of conduct dating from 1966 (!) is more concise than what you see to today in business ethics or in science ethics (cf. Parker D.B., Rules in Information Processing, Comm. ACM 11 (March 1968), 198).

And just to remember, IT-Ethics is older than IT. As far as I know the first "code of ethics" Asimov's three laws of robots date from 1942.

- chribo

Re:ACM Code of Ethics

[chiefloko]

Awesome! Thank you.

Re:ACM Code of Ethics

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's nice to have a guiding set of ethics, and is probably a good reference for people looking for guidance, in this case it is completely optional. In this case it is completely up to the individual to choose how they act relative to the code of ethics (provided their actions don't infringe on laws).

Contrast that with a legislated self-governing Profession (Lawyers, Medical Doctors, Architects, Accountants, Veterinarians, Engineers, Geophysicists, etc.) where contravening the code of ethics results in censure of some form, from being written up, to being forbidden from practicing the profession for a period of time or permanently.

Re:ACM Code of Ethics

[Anonymous Coward]

Other professional organizations also exist. For example, the IEEE Code of Ethics.

There are other organizations that also take a moral stand, such as the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer or the Order of the Engineer. Those particular organizations are geared more toward the kind of engineering where life is at risk.

I like the fact that IEEE actually has realistic and practical articles about Ethics as they apply to the modern day workplace. For example, they clearly describe the problem with being a whistleblower, despite various laws to protect the individual. A whistleblower will often become disadvantaged forever in the company and possibly in the whole industry. But it is still the "right" thing to do. Likewise, intellectual property rights are a difficult thing to balance. An engineer who invents something wants protection from patents or copyright. On the other hand these protections should not be weapons that stifle advancement in the trade. Perhaps the IEEE archives may help while offering a scholarly reference at the same time.

Confessions of an IT Drone...

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a small/medium sized startup as an IT drone. Once upon a time... We came into possession of end user data from a customer for a migration project. The data was stored on a server that was stolen from an employee's car. Data included tens of thousands of unencrypted customer account access credentials. The ceo who has since left the company decided it was best to ignore the right thing to do and just fore go telling them about the loss of data.

A base level for sysadmins

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.sage.org/ethics/

ethics require getting caught.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Someone who has no understanding of ethical implications regrading IT will do things they wouldn't dream of if they understood what it meant in terms of invasion"

How about ethics in terms of consequences?

SAGE: System Administrators' Code of Ethics

[ukh]

And so does SAGE (for system administrators), more to the point: http://www.sage.org/ethics/ethics.html

No songs, videos & games

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the new security "pledge" that just came via internal mail to all the 55K+ employees in my organization, coincidentally, a few minutes back.

So, no mp3, flv or minesweeper.

Or not even OGG/Vorbis, OGG/Theora, Wesnoth!!!

Don't know how can a audio/video file free knowledge organization stay competitive!!! And our CSO (Chief Security Officer) was put on the cover page of a top networking & security magazine over here in this part of the world!

Re:No songs, videos & games

[base3]

Yours is a case in point: "eye-tee security people" don't see using vague unspecified threats to accumulate power and build an empire within their organization as unethical. Unfortunately, business for these people who've sold their souls (if indeed they ever had any) will only continue to increase as we continue along the post-9/11, post-Virginia Tech road to Big Brother.

Ethics? Sure...

[JoshDM]

...the minute I log in to my station at work, I instantly pop open the browser to peruse and respond to Slashdot articles all day with snide remarks.

IT Ethics is Different from Business Ethics

[Starky]

The fundamental focus of ethics is different between general business and IT issues.

In many business programs, students are exhorted to compete from day one. Many students take away the message that they should maximize profits (or market share or whatever they use as a metric of success) by any means necessary.

(I have worked on a number of antitrust regulatory issues, and you would be astonished at the number of e-mails that have been unearthed in which executives send each other messages to the effect, "Let's use unfair competitive practices to squash the little guy!" I'm paraphrasing, of course, but not by much.)

In IT, on the other hand, the issues pertain more to privacy and intellectual property rights. If a system administrator reads someone's e-mail, it may be for personal gain or just out of curiosity, but it's not due to any sort of overriding business objective. Competition in IT is to build the best product, not to "get" the other guy. And the ethics reflect that.

By the way, I've also worked at a company where an admin, who reported to a manager I worked beside, was reading e-mails. The manager let him know that he knew, and that if anything came of it, it would come back to bite him, but also let it slide because (1) someone has to have access, and whoever it is will probably take a peek from time to time, and (2) he was relatively discrete about it, and others may not be. Was he unethical in letting the behavior persist?

Re:IT Ethics is Different from Business Ethics

[pdwalker]

Was he unethical in letting the behavior persist? Nope. Both of them should have been fired for it.

What ethics?

[sr8outtalotech]

Maximizing shareholder value > anything else. Seriously, ethics? I'm in the SMB consulting industry. I sign NDA's on a regular basis with consulting companies so when the consulting company violates an ethical obligation to a client I'm contractually bound not to say anything. 13 passwords all the same for 13 company's but they (not me) billed their managed services as following best practices. PPTP VPN instead of LT2P/IPSEC (a stand alone certificate server = $), no account auditing(disk space = $), no logon failure limits(disrupted users = lost $), no port security at the switch (network admin = $), etc... I've yet to run across a salesperson that didn't upsell/oversell. I think most techs realize what's ethical behavior and what's not but they get pressured into not saying anything by management and sales.

Here's a scenario that happened to me in 2006. I had a contract terminated with no reason given. 4 days before the contract was terminated I sent a memo to the CEO (I reported to him) about sending bulk email without an opt-out option and without the companies physical address. I included relevant state and federal laws regarding the issue, mainly the Can Spam Act. 3 days before the contract was terminated the CEO confronts me in front of the whole office about how they were the following the law. I flatly told him I wouldn't send them or train anyone to send them until they added physical contact information and a way to opt-out. This was in front of his entire office staff. I wanted to discuss it in private and he wanted to discuss it in front of everyone. Friday, my contract got terminated, no reason given. Take a guess as to why it was terminated?

Re:What ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the SMB consulting industry. Is there really much demand for consultants in the busy world of the Super Mario Brothers? I'd be great at that job.

This is actually untrue

[Kupfernigk]

The posts here suggesting the "business ethics" is an oxymoron are from people who obviously have no real experience of business. Real world businesses know that they have to keep both customers and suppliers happy, and the best way to do this is still to be ethical where it counts. If I treat my suppliers honestly and you try to diddle them, you may save a percent or so now, but what will happen when there is a shortage? Who will get priority?

When I was a general manager, one of my policies was always to pay the small suppliers promptly, because they need it most. That's not only ethics, it is simple common sense.

It is interesting that one of the most developed business environments in the world -that little region that includes Northern Italy, Switzerland, parts of South Germany and South-East France - relies heavily on networks of trust. I have sealed the deal there more than once with no paperwork and a handshake. I suspect that the reason that "Business ethics" needs to be taught in an MBA class is because many new graduates have fantasies of the ruthless corporate world based on Hollywood and computer games, and they need to be made a little safer before they can get out and cause their companies serious damage.

The fact that some CEOs are psychopaths should not blind us to the fact that most are not.

Re:This is actually untrue

[nbert]

Mod parent up - this is the most insightful post so far.

On a related note I'm wondering since a few years if a more down-to-earth terminology in this field could help to gain more acceptance in the non-business world. Why do we have to call it "business ethics", if it's mostly about sound business practices? In similar vein terms like "corporate culture" sound pretty bold if you think about their actual meaning. It's not about managers performing a ritual dance before every meeting.

Re:This is actually untrue

[nbert]

No... mistaking blockquote for br is almost as stupid as not using the preview button :/

Re:This is actually untrue

[nagora]

Real world businesses know that they have to keep both customers and suppliers happy

In chess terms, you are not looking enough plys ahead. In the real world all businesses are striving to eliminate all competition so that they can then treat suppliers and customers as cash-cows to be milked dry. Before you reach that blessed state, of course, you may need to pay lip-service to ethics and customer-relations but ethics that are forced on you are not really ethics, they're either regulation or market-forces. A real business attempts to subvert the former and eliminate the latter.

TWW

Re:This is actually untrue

[mwvdlee]

As soon as a company is tradable on a stock exchange, it's essentially a money-making machine where all ethics, core business and other terminology are of lower priority than making money.
The only reason any ethics exist in tradable companies is because they'd probably make less profit in the long term if they didn't.

Re:This is actually untrue

[Lally Singh]

Thank you for saying it.

Trustworthiness is a real business asset. I'm amazed at how opaque /.-ers are over this, considering that so much of the culture here is based on trust, 'doing no evil' (for real), etc.

Actually, when you screw up, it's an opportunity to show your customer how far you'll go to fix it. A great way to build trust. You know, as long as you're not doing them any actual damage in the process.

Re:This is actually untrue

[Angostura]

In the real world all businesses are striving to eliminate all competition so that they can then treat suppliers and customers as cash-cows to be milked dry.

No. In the theoretical "real world" maybe. In the actual real world most real people - even businessmen do not think that way. They are too busy thinking about how to create an improved product with large margins that customers would love to buy and will keep buying. Some might think of business as a zero sum game, but I've hardly ever met any of them.

Re:This is actually untrue

[Kjella]

The posts here suggesting the "business ethics" is an oxymoron are from people who obviously have no real experience of business. Real world businesses know that they have to keep both customers and suppliers happy, and the best way to do this is still to be ethical where it counts. If by "where it counts" you mean "with those who can screw you back", that's hardly ethics it's just basic self-preservation that even psychopaths engage in. The first rule of anyone unethical starting with the schoolyard bully up to the boardroom is to always pick on those that can't or won't fight back.

Re:This is actually untrue

[Pig Hogger]

Real world businesses know that they have to keep both customers and suppliers happy, and the best way to do this is still to be ethical where it counts. Yeah, where it counts. At the bottom line.

Re:This is actually untrue

[sumdumass]

Your surprised that in a place where the meme of Business is bad, evil and greedy is passed around as carelessly as a five year old chasing butterflies in a wild flower filled field?

There is an underlying agenda that people have been exposed to that basically says they are the enemy. I actually more surprised that you have mentioned something about public image and trust being just as important to bringing in the dollars as the money itself and haven't been modded down in some way or blasted in comment about how your delusional.

BTW, I agree with you and the parent your responding to.

Re:This is actually untrue

[Lally Singh]

The sad part is that most of those who subscribe to that meme just put a glass ceiling on their career.

Re:This is actually untrue

[schnikies79]

That is bullshit, end of story.

I don't know how gigantic companies work, because I've never worked for one, but I know in the actual real-world, that people don't think like that. I know the owners or higher-ups of most of the businesses I've worked for and none think like that. I know it's fun to have the everyone is out to screw you mentality, but it's not the case. Not every business owner is a deviant psuedo-criminal looking to screw you and every other business first chance they get.

Quick example. There are two fairly large (for a completely local company that does worldwide business) competing companies in my area. One of them caught fire the other day and it burned around $12 million worth of stock and equipment. While the competing company could have jumped on the opportunity to take over the market, they helped out their competitor by letting them use their spare facilities (warehouse and equipment) for nothing more than the usage and maintenance cost until they can get back on their feet. With the knowledge that the company isn't going to go under now because of the fire, they are going to rebuild.

In the real-world, even business owners and managers are people too.

Re:This is actually untrue

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because the sky's the limit when you're the office junior tea monkey at NASA.. allegedly.

Re:This is actually untrue

[coolGuyZak]

The bottom line--i.e. where it covers your ass--is only one place where it counts. Businesses may also apply ethics at "the top line"--i.e. where it can help the most. Think of it as competing on quality.

Re:This is actually untrue

[fbriere]

When I was a general manager, one of my policies was always to pay the small suppliers promptly, because they need it most. That's not only ethics, it is simple common sense. Sadly, Jack Tramiel showed that the opposite could be quite profitable.

(For those who don't know, Tramiel had a policy of starving his small suppliers for cash, pushing them into debt/brankruptcy, and then buying them on the cheap. It was this vertical integration that allowed Commodore to do its magic in the 1980s.)

Audit is more important than access

[Kjella]

Access are for the things that you never should be able to touch. Audit seems to be working quite well for the rest. This doesn't work quite well in the sysadmin example where he can go in and read the files directly, but it's very effective in most systems where you have to go through a regular interface. I know for example banks have used that for operators that like to peek at famous people's bank accounts. Another example that I know personally is passing through project gates - the access controls are quite loose, but of course you're supposed to go up to a review meeting and actually pass the gate. There's an audit log to tell who said they had passed the gate and when, and it's not going to be pretty if they find you're bluffing.

People don't handle temptation all that well. If you put a normally honest person in a position where he could very easily and with little risk where he could do something wrong, he might do it. If it looks hard, he'll think long and hard before doing anything. If it requires a conspiracy, he almost certainly won't do it. So I'd say the solution isn't to try to limit everything up front, just make them fear that someone will peek them in the cards later.

Cultural & Legal

[Aceticon]

Ethics in IT is just a reflection of ethics in the world at large - what people tend to do or not to do is usually a reflection of what they believe that others expect them to do or not to do.

Often this is for cultural or even legal reasons: for example, in Holland it's forbidden by law in a company to check the web access logs for an employee unless there is reason to believe that employee is misusing the company resources or doing something illegal, while in the UK an employee can expect that anything done via the company network will be watched.

The main differences that affect the actions of people in a position of power in an IT environment and in an equivalent non-IT environment are:

• Anonymity: the belief that "nobody will know who i really am" means that some will do online certain actions that are shunned by society at large. While acting behind an alias which cannot be traced back to the real world persona many, free of social pressures and/or direct repercussions for their actions, will act online in ways that they would not act offline (I suggest you study MMORPGs for this).
• Decoupling from reality: often one's actions do not have a visible component in the "real" world. At it's most basically, it's easier to be unpleasant when the target is somebody you've never met personally.
• The lower likelihood of being caught: the risk of being caught is a strong factor when considering whether or not to act in a way which might be perceived as unethical, illegal or socially unacceptable. In the "virtual" world it's easier to do some actions without being caught. For example, consider the workers in the mail room in a company vs the e-mail server administrators in that company: for whom would it be easier to read somebody else's messages without leaving a trace ...

Re:Cultural & Legal

[kudokatz]

I have to agree with this. I worked in IT for a few years as just a helpdesk person and because people trusted me they gave me passwords for tons of things -- even if I didn't use them, I think there was a horrible breach of security in giving me the information and that it may be tempting for some to abuse it for exactly the three bullets above. I actually had a discussion about this with another helpdesk employee, and the "anonymity" argument came out of him pretty frequently as being a tempting reason to poke around. While it wasn't horribly malicious, it's still enough to cause some trouble. So I would add that in some cases a lack of tight physical security makes it possible for these influences to come into play more than otherwise because the opportunities arise more easily.

Re:Cultural & Legal

[syousef]

Ethics in IT is just a reflection of ethics in the world at large

Oh shit! We're fucked! There is no ethics in IT.

Re:Cultural & Legal

[bitrunner]

Well isn't anonymous a good thing to prevent 'crime' or at least not so desired behavior too ? If I post in a newsgroup, my e-mail address will be used for spam. (Resulting in hundreds of unsolicited messages. Drive around in an expensive car, you probably have expensive stuff at home which makes you prone to some individuals breaking in. etc etc etc. Besides that, not being anonymous and people following you around is always used in a negative manner. I yet have to hear something like: "Well, dear John Doe... We have been watching your online activities for a year now and we must say we are impressed and want to give you a raise/promotion." People have always been obsessed with wanting to know what it is that others do. 'Office gossip' with all it's nasty consequences has been around for as long as there are offices. The only difference now is that the political status quo and public perception is that it is ok to do even if there is no 'probable cause' to do such thing.

Re:Cultural & Legal

[Aceticon]

I'm neither defending nor attacking anonymity: I'm just pointing out that being anonymous reduces the risk of social exclusion or other repercussions for those that want to do things which society frowns upon or which are bad for others.

This affects as much somebody that's interested in porn and don't want their church group to know about it as somebody which is stalking and harassing somebody else via the Internet.

Anonymity is just as good at liberating someone from the claws of moralists as it is at protecting the aggressor from the consequences of his/her acts. Anonymity is neither inherently good or bad - it's just another factor affecting the actions of people in a social context.

Re:Cultural & Legal

[bitrunner]

What you are saying is that anonymity might be a good thing so that you can 'hide' your unethical behavior. What I meant to say is, it is also used to hide from other's unethical behavior... while you yourself are not behaving unethical at all. (Although one might think something is unethical.. while someone else thinks it is not) I don't think anonymity has much to do with ethics really. I think it is more a tool to protect yourself. You can protect yourself from getting caught because you did something bad or on the other hand you can protect yourself from getting caught by someone bad. (for example people in the resistance in WWII fighting against the Germans) Anonymity is more the result of unethical behavior, whatever the source of that behavior is, than anything else.

Re:Cultural & Legal

[Aceticon]

My example of somebody that enjoys porn but doesn't want his church group to know about it is meant to be and example of "hide from other's unethical behavior".

The "others unethical behavior" in that example is the part where some members of his church group, upon discovering something he does in the privacy of his home without harming anybody, would treat him badly because they find his behavior immoral.

One time, I had to write a paper on Ethics in IT

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I posed a question to Slashdot and uses those answers.

"ungodly" and "pirated" on Slashdot?

[mi]

Sorry, we do not believe in Imaginary Property here. There is nothing "ungodly" about "pirated", because pirating is not exactly the same as stealing.

Re:"ungodly" and "pirated" on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's plenty of "ungodliness" in "pirating". The exact same amount (100%) as there is in anything else.

Re:"ungodly" and "pirated" on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theft is to 'deprive someone the use thereof'

Piracy is 'armed robbery in a maritime setting'

Replicating ones & zeroes is neither.

Re:"ungodly" and "pirated" on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Sorry, we do not believe in Imaginary Property here
What's this "we" shit? You got a frog in your pocket? Or do you suffer from multiple personality disorder?

You should have enough strength of conviction to speak only for yourself, rather than seek affirmation by claiming participation by all and sundry.

I don't share your position on IP, and there are many others here that don't as well.

Re:"ungodly" and "pirated" on Slashdot?

[vertinox]

Truth be told, I don't think God really cares if your a pirate something or not... Otherwise, Jesus would have mentioned to everyone to pay a royalty to winemakers every time he turned water into wine and to pay the fishermen and bakers every time you copied food through godly miracles.

Re:"ungodly" and "pirated" on Slashdot?

[mi]

Truth be told, I don't think God really cares if your a pirate something or not... Otherwise, Jesus would have mentioned to everyone to pay a royalty to winemakers every time he turned water into wine and to pay the fishermen and bakers every time you copied food through godly miracles.

The "thou shall not steal" comes from 10 Commandments — a document, that predates Jesus by many hundreds of years.

And if it were a living document — as US Constitution is, according to some people — it would've been found to contain the "though shall not infringe on copyright", no doubt. After all, piracy is much closer to stealing, than the selling of pornography is to petitioning the government.

But, to address your point, Jesus knew, that no one else will be able to turn water into wine, so he did not bother...

Re:"ungodly" and "pirated" on Slashdot?

[vuffi_raa]

After all, piracy is much closer to stealing, than the selling of pornography is to petitioning the government. no, piracy is much closer to thinking about stealing as you do not actually deprive the manufacturer of the software of their product, and if it something you couldn't afford or would not have paid for then even more so it is a zero loss. It is the copyright holder that is actually in poor ethics as they are the ones who are granting privilege to only those that can afford it
here is what he bible says about it:

"There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores." "The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.'" "But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.'" I am not religious, I am in fact an atheist, but I just wanted to get the facts right on this, "thou shalt not steal" is far more vague than the parables of those who disregard the poor

I am *for* ethics while not being a BOFH

[Anonymous Coward]

Face it, it's bound to happen sooner or later.. curiosity.. and freedom.. and the enormous amount of power available sitting in your cubicle connected to the *network*. Sure, an experienced sysadmin would say ' been there done that ' , but 1)recognizing it happening with your peers again and again and then 2) deciding what the heck to do about it? keep quiet? report it? be a BOFH? I guess we all have to just face it.. these things happen.

-Nostradumbass77

"or is likely to hurt others"

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if you stop incompletely reading/quoting others, that would be a start for you.

Re:"or is likely to hurt others"

[Aladrin]

Or perhaps he was right. There are some people that would actually think that dying is better than being gay. In that case, you aren't hurting them to kill them, you're giving them a gift. NOT killing them would be hurting them.

It's a truly fsck'd up way of thinking, but there -are- those who think that way. It is indeed much better to think in terms of the other person instead of terms of yourself, for this situation and others.

Re:Ethically speaking

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I never read slshdot.

...or at least its title.

They are not there

[houghi]

In all the companies I have worked, there was no ethical code as such. In no department I have seen such a thing. There are the general things, like not stealing and such, but those are coverd by law.

I have signed papers from the IT department that I would not do certain things on the network. Never was anything in there enforced, so it was basicaly a farce.

I have read other peoples mailboxes (after 3, I stopped, because it is utterly boring)

Basicaly it comes down to; will it harm the company or not? If it does, then you can not do it and when caught you can get fired. If not, then nobody seriously cares.

Re:Ethics?

[gbobeck]

Do what you like, just don't get caught.

...And remember kids, if the Cop didn't see it, you didn't do it.

Ethics

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the interesting ethics issues I have seen at most of the places I have worked is how the typical person is treated versus how the executive is treated.

The typical person calls the Help Desk, gets a level 1 person who reads scripts and then if they can't help it gets escalated. If the problem is severe they might try to remote control the computer, etc. It is also, in most places I have worked, expressly forbidden to work on home machines due to liability factors (if you destroy their data for instance, catch porn on a personal computer, etc).

However, with executives they generally have a special number or person to call, they frequently have non-standard hardware/software, have people going to their house for support, etc.

In general they can get away with abusing the system and its resources. The interesting thing here is that if you talk to a lot of people in IT they have split views on whether this is ok or not. Some think that it is an executive perk. Others think it is an abuse of system resources. Others, like myself, think it gives executives a flawed view of IT (even if the typical user is getting horrid service, the executives don't see it and do not correct the issue - because it is working perfectly for them).

I think an issue like this is not as clear cut, but I'm curious to see what other people think of the same sort of thing in their company.

Re:Ethics

[Kryptic Knight]

One process to rule them all, One lockdown to mind them, One email system to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

In other words, what applies to the filing clerk, also applies to the Director/CEO.

Admittedly you sometimes have to visit home locations of directors to setup company equipment, this cannot be avoided, but you don't work on their home computer equipment.

If you're going to lockdown then lockdown. If you're going to make any exceptions then you may as well not bother in the first place.

Hacker Ethics

[gbobeck]

Steven Levy wrote a basic set of rules commonly called the hacker ethic.

In case you don't feel like clicking on the link, the Hacker Ethic is the following:

        * Access to computers -- and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works -- should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative!
        * All information should be free.
        * Mistrust authority -- promote decentralization.
        * Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
        * You can create art and beauty on a computer.
        * Computers can change your life for the better.

sudo

[k2r]

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these two things:

                #1) Respect the privacy of others.
                #2) Think before you type.
                #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

---
That's about the ethics my teachers had when I started to learning system administration 15 years ago and this is what I'm still educating people new to this about. I never met a good admin who wouldn't passionately subscribe to this.

k2r

Re:sudo

[ideonode]

It usually boils down to these two things:
                                #1) Respect the privacy of others.
                                #2) Think before you type.
                                #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Re:sudo

[k2r]

I felt I should have looked into a real sudo and not look up the text on the nets.
But I chose the easy and embarassing way, because OSX-Leopard has a boooring message now that does not educate you about ethics :-)

"
WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.
To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.
"

Talking of reading other people's emails...

[adrianmsmith]

A friend of a friend was working in IT as a Windows administrator. He was called to fix someone's computer, who then went out to lunch leaving the friend alone with the computer. He saw a mail on the computer that he found interesting, so he forwarded it to himself.

This is surely a bad thing to do, and the end of the story is that he got fired, but he probably would have got away with it apart from the mistake he made....

He managed to spell his own name wrong in his email address. So when the guy got back from lunch, there was a bounce mail waiting for him in his inbox....

Re:Talking of reading other people's emails...

[ContractualObligatio]

As Heinlein said, "stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."

Professional Ethics and I.T.

[ma11achy]

Ethics in professions such as Law and Medicine (and professions that have a very
direct impact on Joe Public) are usually goverened by their licensing bodies.

You cannot practise Law without a license, neither can you practise Medicine.
An exam must be sat and passed for one to obtain a license from their professional body.

Finally, there are usually ethical codes that these licensees must follow to allow
them to continue practising. If they violate these codes, they loose their license.

Some of the comments here on this thread state that I.T may be too diverse to
define a code of ethics for, but I ask you - is it any more diverse than Medicine
or Law?

Give it time. As I.T becomes more pervasive in Joe Public's life, I think
it's advance will slow, due to the increasing rigors placed on it by regulatory
bodies concerned with "public safety", read: lawsuits.

late payment

[pbhj]

Kupfernigk >>> "When I was a general manager, one of my policies was always to pay the small suppliers promptly, because they need it most."

Well, most companies don't hold to that.

Oft repeated rhetoric here is that a companies only purpose is to make money. You're actually depriving your shareholders of a small amount of capital by paying on time if it's possible to avoid.

I find that (as a director in a small business) we get paid late by big businesses and government organisations. They can pay late, we can't afford to sue and we need them more than they need us. We've been paid over a month late by a local council (!) for an amount equal to about 50% of our wages bill ... that doesn't help cash flow much!

Inspired by Google's early ethical policy of "do no evil" ours is "be nice". We've many times checked our behaviour, and adapted it (sometimes to our financial detriment), by following this code.

Re:late payment

[sumdumass]

Oft repeated rhetoric here is that a companies only purpose is to make money. You're actually depriving your shareholders of a small amount of capital by paying on time if it's possible to avoid.

This meme is often presented by idiots that have no understanding between the differences of wealth and rich or the understanding of how you can have one without the other. They usually think one is a measurement of the other. None of them run a successful business and the few who might have, are probably responsible for running themselves out of a job. Share holder however, understand the differences and know that getting $7 extra one month at the expense of getting $4 a month the remaining 11 months of the year is bad business. This is often the reality of pushing for every last dime on profit and by doing something like not paying on time for what ever reasons.

I have noticed late payments by governments and large businesses too. The thing it with these, there are a lot more measures in place to validate the money hasn't already been paid, that they aren't getting screwed, and the expenses are accountable. All of my government accounts specified a longer then 30 day billing cycle because of this which makes it look late on our books but not with the contracts. The few large business accounts I have do so too even though they attempt to payout before the full time. Usually it is a 60-90 day billing cycle which means it could take up to three months to get your money after you submit the bill, not completing the work. I'm willing to bet whoever setup those accounts that your talking about are fully aware of this even if they haven't passed it on to you. Rarely have I had either be later then the 90 days or whatever the account contract specified and the longest times on payments are the emergency work that gets done without a PO being made and prior approval fist. It seems that those go through even more sets of controls and validations.

You might want to look at the details of the contracts with them. Your probably going to be surprised that what you call late is on time or early according to them. Then again, you might have something totally different then what I have seen. It is easier for smaller companies to pay on time because less people are in between you, the person who ordered the service, and the person who is responsible for cutting the check and so on.

It might sound stupid or manipulative, but I send the billing and accounts payable department of one company with a record of "slow pay" a cheese tray every Christmas holiday just so our company's name is fresh in their minds and they remember us instead of going through all the normal validation steps. We saw increase in timely payouts the first year and have continued to do it ever since. I don't think it is a bribe and I doubt our working relationship that was there prior to this hinges on it. These people only sort the bills, check to see if they should be paid, look for irregularities and then cut the check. They do nothing in selecting us, or ordering out services. But it does wonders to getting checks cut in a timely manner. But they all know we do business with them and it seems to matter when getting a check cut.

Re:late payment

[Asic Eng]

Oft repeated rhetoric here is that a companies only purpose is to make money.

Yes, the point is though - making money in which timescale? That's important because if you spend money for a project which takes three years to complete, you may not get any money until that time - still that could seem to be a fairly sensible way to invest money and make money in the long term. Alternatively you could just stop buying raw materials - as this reduces costs for your factory, and suddenly you make more money. Until the raw materials run out that is - usually a fairly stupid strategy (not considering exceptional circumstances).

Being ethical can be an investment - you are building a brand name, customer and supplier relationships etc. You could well argue that this is the best strategy for long-term growth - seems to have worked pretty well for google, after all.

Re:late payment

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 conglomerate. If a supplier's terms were 2% 10 / net 30, for example, they would always take the 2% discount . . . and wait *90* days to pay. We learned to warn them upfront: "Sorry, the bean counters insist on doing that. Factor that payment schedule into the pricing of your bid." The supplier didn't get surprised at being burned, and the bean counters probably didn't save a thing. Even so, we sometimes had a project get stuck because a supplier had put us on credit hold and refused to ship an important part. So maybe their aggressive capital management cost them more in the end.

Re:late payment

[pbhj]

Never even heard of a "cheese tray" ... thanks for your insight though.

Re:late payment

[dbIII]

At one point I worked for an electricity utility that for some reason would not pay accounts until 60 days after the invoice was received. It made it very hard to purchase items from a supplier the second time around and almost impossible the third time. Co-workers did things like ask suppliers to backdate invoices. The many contractors were 60 days behind with very little they could do about it since their employment dates were tied into this system.

Re:late payment

[sumdumass]

Here are some images of them

I searched and couldn't find a good one of the kind I use. I like to have fruits mixes in with them. You can get meat trays too but the cheeses won't need refrigeration and you won't have to worry about making someone sick for the holidays if something goes bad before the end of the day.

I got the idea of greasing the wheels from an old neighbor when I was growing up. He was a shipping clerk for a beer distributer and often got bottles whiskey or expensive whine as gifts on the holidays. He could remember who sent what and at what holiday and when we would get together, he would offer my dad a drink and tell him this information. I guess it used to be real common. I'm not sure if sending alcohol is still a good idea though.

Ethics is a personal attribute, not a rule set..

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen in 25 years, the difference is simple personal committment. I have been put under pressure to charge clients for hours I didn't work, for being 'creative' with the truth so the real facts wouldn't show (i.e. readers would be mislead), for 'accidentally' overlooking problems because it would be politically convenient and for coming to a pre-determined conclusion by a biased look at the facts.

You have in each case two options: do what's right or do what is convenient. I prefered to do what is right, but you have to accept that in many cases this will be held against you by those that are more of the morally lazy persuasion (or who need their numbers to stack up).

The good news is that such a reputation also works in a positive way: you can become regarded as utterly unbiased, and as long as you don't have personality defects to go with it (I get on with almost anyone) you sometimes end up becoming an example.

In many cases the requested behaviour was contradicting ethics policies. Ethics policies are treated by most organisations as a marketing exercise, not as a code of behaviour. Given the examples of thos who make a real profit I can't see this change overnight..

Why are they asking that?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think "can I read someone else's stuff" so why would I bother to look?

Maybe technology SHOULD be replacing our sense of ethics if we#ve got people asking questions like that...

There is no norm for ethics in IT I think

[oldbamboo]

I've had to familiarise myself with Sarbanes Oxley (which applies only to US listed companies anyway) and that is the only piece of legislation which I am aware of which requires regular sign off of ethical conduct, and that only applies to the board I belive. Elsewhere, for IT workers, both the CISSP and CISA certifications require that a standard of ethical conduct is maintained, and a declaration of such is made by the applicant. I think ethics are only defined in this way, as a requirement for membership of specific professional organisations or for the holding of certain credentials, but these are the only ones I'm aware of. Beyond that, and this is the point, having conducted audits and reviews of a number of companies and the governance of their IT, I think this topic is universally ignored for IT staff specifically. I can not recall once seeing the discreet topic of "Ethics" enshrined within the IT policies and standards of any major company I have inspected. The best thing you can do is collect and review a number of general "End User" policies from different places and see to what degree promises to not view porn, sell secrets, access stuff you shouldn't, etc, etc, are reflected, and quantify them against the ethical requirements being taught on your MBA. IT User policies can be dredged up from the Internet ten a penny, and they should allow you to gather sufficient of them to launch an academic argument as to the provisions for ethical conduct they establish within companies or public bodies in general. The degree to which they are obeyed is impossible to measure, but you can certainly speculate on the need for regular training on ethics.

Re:There is no norm for ethics in IT I think

[chribo]

1. Ethics is not legislation. Some laws are derived from moral, but by no means ethics and legislation are the same.
2. IT is one of the technical fields with a long history in ethical consideration. The current code of ethics of the ACM (http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics) has been preceded a early as 1966 by a concise 'modern' code of conduct.

- chribo

It's a people thing, not an IT thing

[petes_PoV]

It's the people who are either ethical (do you really mean honest?) or not. There's no attribute of working in an IT environment that would change people's ethics.

Now,a more interesting question might be:

Does IT attract more or fewer honest people? The answer I'd say os that IT people are generally more honest. We are often presented with opportunities to do unethical or dishonest things and not get caught but I think the proportion of IT staff who would go down this route is lower than in the general population.

If IT people were more willing to exploit situations for their own gain, there'd be a lot more of us on yachts in tax havens.

Re:It's a people thing, not an IT thing

[base3]

Particularly with the advent of outsourcing, those who work in IT are selling trust more than skill. That's why abuse of power by IT folks should be dealt with harshly and swiftly when detected.

Yeah, business ethics..

[Serhei]

Far too often, companies consider business ethics to == "not doing things that will get the company into trouble."

This is actually untrue-Pookas.

[Anonymous Coward]

A rather large white rabbit would agree with you.*

*A rather fun read actually.

"Business Ethics"

[base3]

is a euphemism for "don't get caught doing what we all know everyone does, or you'll be the sacrificial lamb."

Obligatory Response

[Anonymous Coward]

IT has no ethics!

Programmer Ethics

[sticks_us]

There are at least a few different angles here, and I suggest that management (bad management, at least) is largely to blame for a special, invisible, type of ethics violation in the IT world.

Let me begin by reviewing three modalities of ethical behavior:

1) How the IT worker functions vis-a-vis their co-workers: the usual stuff--office politics, gossip, backstabbing, etc. and has been well-covered elsewhere.

2) How the "visible" IT worker functions in relation to his/her job: Email snoops, BOFHs, yeah, yeah, we get it.

3) Invisible work: Poor management doesn't understand the value of patching, refactoring, debugging, commenting--and because of this forces the worker to compromise their ethics. These operations are often invisible to the unwashed masses.

The third category is hard for management to grasp. They don't understand what it means to cross the line from "useful hack" to "pure garbage."

Code like this:

try (something) {
// hey, it works, let's get busy!
} catch (exception) {
// do nothing, rotsa ruck, suckers!
}

...should be considered a special type of ethics violation (there are probably better examples--but this one should suffice).

Lots of programmers make evil shortcuts or write halfass algorithms, not (always) because they're lazy or incompetent, but because they're implicitly asked to, by managers and product teams who don't understand. Where is the ethical violation in an empty 'catch' block? Could it be the result of:

A) Management who lied about the man-hours required to complete a project,
B) Product teams who didn't take the time to gather requirements properly, or
C) Decision-makers who don't consider programmer input or advice.

The programmer is often forced to make an ethical decision: what is the right thing to do when the boss says "STFU about revising your code and push it into production?" Usually the programmer will just throw whatever they have ready, knowing that they're not putting their best work forward.

Who suffers? The programmer who feels they're forced to make an evil choice, the enduser who pays for shoddy product, the next person who looks at your code, etc.

Sometimes this choice is validated based on expediency, sometimes, it does nothing but let the manager check a milestone off in their excel spreadsheet.

Thou shalt chant...

[grimmfarmer]

...no fewer than one thousand times per day: "Must use powers for good, not for evil."

Think of the bystanders!

[Anonymous Coward]

It does if one believes that it might hurt bystanders witnessing it.

It still doesn't rule out doing it in an environment where that wouldn't hold, like a wild gay bar.

Any deeper discussion about the ethics of that behavior is getting way too deep for Slashdot.

Yes, but it's not always simple

[langelgjm]

Sure, ethical behavior is ethical irrespective of whether it has to do with IT or not; but there are many realms in which it's very difficult to figure out exactly what is ethical, and what isn't. Why do you think we have endless discussions surrounding IP here on /.?

Sometimes just being a "decent honest person" isn't enough to clarify what decision you should make. I may get torn apart for bringing this up, but I'm currently taking a class in religious ethics, and this week we're talking about the ethics surrounding stem cell research. When you actually read various position statements, you come to realize that the issue is not that one side is ill-informed of science, or ignorant in general; rather, people simply have different fundamental principles and attitudes towards human life, as well as what contributes respect, etc. It's not always as simple as just learning the facts and weighing them.

Re:Yes, but it's not always simple

[Miseph]

As another student of ethics (although my my course in religious ethics was extremely one-sided, I've taken intro to ethics and am currently taking an environmental ethics course), I agree completely. One of our biggest problems as a society is that we overwhelmingly tend toward dogmatism, and dogmatism is a Bad Thing no matter what side you're on because it prevents everyone involved from actually thinking or coming to rational decisions; stem cells are a great example of everybody involved simply failing to listen at all, choosing instead to call each other baby-killers or idiots respectively (and not respectfully), and both sides have done a great disservice to their cause by letting it come to that.

The key is (as parent I'm sure already knows) is to ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT IT. On virtually every issue, two moral, ethical individuals can come to well reasoned and ethically defensible positions which are completely opposed to one another, and neither of them actually has to be wrong; but if they are both honest, then they could have a serious and possibly even productive discussion about what can be done to make both of them happy. A symptom of our culture of dogmatism is that the word "compromise" has become a synonym for "selling out" or "giving up", and that politicians and activists receive criticism if they actually do it.

Re:Yes, but it's not always simple

[Tony Hoyle]

I've always seen dogmatism as a teenagers response.. the "I know everything therefore you must be wrong" gambit.

As you mature you realize you *don't* know everything (or even very much at all) and dogmatism tends to fade into the background.

The problem is it's unrelated to age.. there are 60 year olds out there still behaving like teenagers (and equally I've had some great discussions with teenagers who've already got over that stage) - something is wrong with a society that breeds people like that.

The worse problem is it seems to be the majority of the population (if the tabloid press are anything to measure by).

As a fellow MBA Student Ill give some insight.

[jellomizer]

What ethics in is NOT: Choosing Open Source or Closed Source Software, Choosing one Hardware/Software over the other, wether you code you produce is open sourced or closed source, open Spec or Closed Spec ( Although I think they should put more effort in Open Spec vs Open Source) Those are Business decisions and have no real morality issues.

What are Ethical issues:
Finding loop holes in software to avoid paying extra license fee (lets make sure that everyone loges onto this server as this name)
Knowing there has been a security breach and possible data has gotten lost wether to tell the company or not
Change the ways hours for projects are recorded to put more hours in one project and less in an other.
Contracting consultants to replace your current work force just because they are billed from a different source and makes you look good.
Not contracting consultants when your project really needs more people or skills. or a new set of skills for the job for a project.
Changing a project from Fixed Priced to Time and material or vice versa because it just suits your needs.
Expecting Free Quotes or Specs for a new project then going to a different group to do the work.
Work with a third party reseller to get the design you need then go to to the source just because they can give you a better deal.
If you have third party resellers choosing to undercut them after they have done all the relationship building and advertising for your projects.

Ethis is an issue of trust. If your actions shows that you cannot be trusted then things really backfire. Any one ethic violation may not hurt anyone but a combination will generally get the company of employees and venders shit lists and you will get less quality and service and value over time.

Re:As a fellow MBA Student Ill give some insight.

[Asic Eng]

I think there are a lot more interesting ethical questions in IT: building software which allows Burma to restrict information access for their people, building software which allow China to evesdrop on dissidents, bullying people to get insane amounts of free overtime etc.

Re:As a fellow MBA Student Ill give some insight.

[jellomizer]

What is with the impression that most company are big and huge. Most companies and the US economy is made up of small under 100 employee companies. They rarely need to worry about ethical issues like that. If they did the most of the software wasn't designed to do such the way that the people who use the software is more at fault then the developers of it. Google Blocking Information is an issue of this what is better giving a little bit of the truth or no truth at all. Google in China has helped the chinese tremendously even though much information is blocked they are better off with it.

http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

[cmaxx]

And other IT professional associations and bodies around the world have them too.

Ethnics in IT

[jez9999]

Quite frankly, I object to the question. This is another typical example of Slashdot catering to the lowest common denominator, with racism that would never be accepted in polite...

Oh, you said ethics? My mistake.

Ethics (n)

[itsdapead]

Ethics (n): A system of arbitrary and simplistic rules and practices designed to protect professionals from having to exercise any sort of human judgement when faced with difficult decisions. Usually founded on the bizzarre assumption that someone intent on doing something self-evidently immoral, dishonest and possibly illegal will be stopped in their tracks simply because it violates some "code of ethics".

Definition Ethics

[mickep76]

Rule of thumb is basically: What you don't like people to do to you, don't do it to others. Regards Michael

Re:Definition Ethics

[tompaulco]

Rule of thumb is basically: What you don't like people to do to you, don't do it to others. Regards Michael
What if I'm a masochist?

MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patch

[sethawoolley]

That's my standard reply to Christian Ethicists -- they got it wrong and it should be how they want to be treated that is important, not how you would want to be treated if you were them. I applaud you on your perfect use of this retort while enlightening the hordes of slashdot.

Re: .Sig

[Morosoph]

What Arabs mean by "occupation".

This is tricky. When both sides want the whole thing, it makes resolution nigh-impossible.

I find the whole Palastinian/Israeli conflict, or rather the typical Westerner's view on it as an exercise in selective blindness, regardless of perspective. The cartoon on that page is instructive as a case in point. Of the Palestinian side, you have individual acts of senseless killing (and suicide); on the Israeli side, you have centrally organised counterstrikes when there is little effort to minimise collateral damage. The cartoon is seeking to justify a practice that is borderline indefensible by saying that the other side is worse. Yet only one side is acting on the basis of centrally premeditated policy.

The side that you come down upon mostly comes down to one's attitude to authority together with some personal factors.

Homer Simpson said it best ...

[ThirdPrize]

I want to share something with you - the three sentences that will get you through life.

Number one, 'cover for me.'
Number two, 'oh, good idea, boss. '
Number three, 'it was like that when I got here.

Islamic angle

[mapkinase]

"ungodly pirated software": From this blog entry::

A group of contemporary scholars does not approve the concept of "intellectual property"....

and

On the other hand, some contemporary scholars take the concept of "intellectual property" as acceptable in Shariah....

First group arguments:

* concept of ownership in Shariah is confined to the tangible objects only
* no precedent in religious practice where an intangible object has been subjected to private ownership or to sale and purchase
* concept of "intellectual property" leads to monopoly of some individuals over knowledge, which can never be accepted by Islam

Second group arguments:
* there is no express provision in the Holy Qur'an or in the Sunnah which restricts the ownership to the tangible objects only
* there are several instances in Shariah where such intangible rights have been transferred to others for some monetary considerations
* concept of "intellectual property" does in no way restrict the scope of knowledge

Read more of it through the reference. I know there are tons of Muslims from subcontinent in IT industry and (inevitably) on /., so this should be interesting at least to them.

"reading co-workers' emails":
1. Sahih Bukhari is book number 2 for Muslims:

Hadith - Sahih Bukhari 9:38.2, Narrated Sahl bin Sa'd As-Sa'idi
A man peeped through a hole in the door of Allah's Apostle's house , and at that time, Allah's Apostle had a Midri (an iron comb or bar) with which he was rubbing his head. So when Allah's Apostle saw him, he said (to him), "If I had been sure that you were looking at me (through the door), I would have poked your eye with this (sharp iron bar)." Allah's Apostle added, "The asking for permission to enter has been enjoined so that one may not look unlawfully (at what there is in the house without the permission of its people)."

2. Less solid hadeeth (has somewhat flawed chain of narrators)

Hadith - Mishkat, Narrated AbuDharr , Tirmidhi transmitted it, saying this is a gharib tradition

Allah's Messenger said, "If anyone removes a curtain and looks into a house before receiving permission and sees anything in these which should not be seen, he has committed an offence which it is not lawful for him to commit. If a man confronted him when he looked in and put out his eye, I should not blame him. But if a man passes a door which has no curtain and is not shut and looks in, he has committed no sin, for the sin pertains only to the people inside."

I guess second part of the second hadeeth does not apply to BOFH.

There are complete goits everywhere you look...

[flibble]

This'll be no news to anyone here but still...

A (former) friend of mine used to work in a local computer shop (repairs, parts the usual stuff). After a little while there he started bragging about all the stuff they kept finding on peoples computers. He and everyone else there used to wander over computers brought in looking for passwords, account details, music, films, videos and anything else they considered interesting... Utterly reprehensible!

When I called him on it, his attitude could be best summed up as "well they should learn to fix their computers themselves then".

Fortunately said shop went out of business. Unfortunately it did so as the owner was a financial idiot not because they got caught or anything similar.

(admittedly I've always worked under the suspicion/assumption this went on, just nice to get it confirmed once in a while)

So you're saying...

[Nimey]

that deep-throating is unacceptable on Slashdot?

the worst thing I ever did as a sysadmin

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst thing I ever did as a sysadmin: a coworker of mine attempted to apply for a job somewhere else, and accidentally sent the cover letter & resume to our boss. At her request, I deleted that message from his inbox before he'd had the chance to read it.

I know that this is pretty small potatoes, but it still bugs me.

Background on Ethics

[grizdog]

I agree with the postings that say you have to elaborate on your question. If you haven't already read it, I recommend "A Gift of Fire". It will give you a lot of ideas and open up many possible lines of inquiry. You can refer to specific cases from that book, and may get more useful feedback here.

Your experience is worse than mine

[Uzik2]

What you've seen seems only to be typical of small shops. Larger shops where they have something to loose tend to be careful
of litigation. I've had none of those experiences. I do however recommend you never work for a rich or powerful individual.
Wealth/power tends to make them think they're allowed to do anything they want no matter how evil. Look at most of the celeb
news for a perfect example.

SOx replaced Ethics & Common Sense

[billybob_jcv]

Sarbanes-Oxley replaced ethics (and common sense) with mindless process and auditor drones whose sole purpose in life is to stop all work from getting done.

Information Ethics

[chribo]

Information Ethics has to be considered as a serious branch in ethics. A good foundation is given by Luciano Floridi: Information Ethics: On the Philosophical Foundation of Computer Ethics. The text might be difficult to understand a first attempt, when without some knowledge in moral philosophy (or without computer science background). Nevertheless it is worth reading since it really gives the fundamentals of a consistent information ethics. - chribo

meanwhile...

[qwerty shrdlu]

You'll have fun,fun,fun 'till the software takes the car keys away.

Re Meaning

[secondhand_Buddah]

Psychopath (Noun)
Someone with a sociopathic personality; a person with an antisocial personality disorder ('psychopath' was once widely used but has now been superseded by 'sociopath')
Dictionary Quote.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sumdumass]

The way I read that, it is still flawed because it lest the perpetrator decide that they think in both cases. As you would have them do to you and as you think they want to be treated is the same thing because it still allows your imagination to play games except this time, your own feelings are removed.

And lets, be frank, how they want to be treated could be completely worse then how you think they would or how you yourself would want to be treated. I mean a women forced into sexual prostitution from early on in life who thinks speaking back will result in cruel and painful beatings might want you to just force your way on her and get it over with. Where you or I might think that she wouldn't want that or we wouldn't want that happening to us. So there are serious flaws either way we go with this. I won't advocate that we stop interacting and treating other people, but I will say one way isn't inherently better then another in this line of reasoning. Although checking what they want could avoid cultural differences but it could be in our best interest to ignore them too.

Joseph Weizenbaum

[Anonymous Coward]

A must read in the domain is the pioneering work of J. Weizenbaum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum

See also:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html

Excerpt:

Why is there so much poverty in our world, in the United States, especially in the large cities?
Why is it that classes are so large? Why is it that fully half the science and math teachers in the United States are underqualified and are operating on emergency certificates?
[...]
It is much nicer, it is much more comfortable, to have some device, say the computer, with which to flood the schools, and then to sit back and say, "You see, we are doing something about it, we are helping," than to confront ugly social realities.
[...]
It is also safe to say, it is simply a matter of fact, that to date weapons which threaten to wipe out the human species altogether could not be made and could certainly not be delivered with any sort of precision were it not for the computers which guide these weapons.
[...]
Instead of saying the computer is involved with the military, say the computer is involved with killing people. It is only when you come to that vocabulary, I think, that the euphemism begins to disappear


And especially:

People have a series of rationalizations.
People say for example that science and technology have their own logic, that they are in fact autonomous.

This particular rationalization is profoundly false. It is not true that science marches on in defiance of human will, independent of human will, that just is not the case.

But it is comfortable, as I said: it leads to the position that "if I don't do it, someone else will."

Of course if one takes that as an ethical principle then obviously it can serve as a license to do anything at all. "People will be murdered; if I don't do it, someone else will." "Women will be raped; if I don't do it, someone else will." That is just a license for violence.

Then call me a sociopath.

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Rest assured, at some point in the future a society will look back and consider walking past a bum without a glance just as sociopathic as slavery and homophobia. If ignoring the poor makes me a sociopath, then I'll be a sociopath. I shouldn't have to concern myself with the poor when the government takes at least a third of my salary and claims (as part of its justification for taxing me) that it is using tax dollars to help the poor.

Re:Then call me a sociopath.

[Anonymous Coward]

"A least a third"??? Boohoo, they take more than half of mine, but to be fair, they do seem to help the poor quite well.

Re:Then call me a sociopath.

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Boohoo, they take more than half of mine, but to be fair, they do seem to help the poor quite well. I never bothered figuring the exact percentage. As far as I'm concerned, even a dollar is too much if it's the US government that's taxing me.

Re:Then call me a sociopath.

[Bombula]

I shouldn't have to concern myself with the poor

The prevalance of this sort of brazen attitude of entitlement to privilege, disavowment of responsibility, and calous disregard of fellow beings less fortunate than oneself is the reason why human civilization is little better or different now than when we were cavemen.

Well done. I'm sure you mother would be proud of you.

Re:Then call me a sociopath.

[maxume]

So what does an enlightened person do? Presumably, they spend all of their time trying to help these people, because if ignoring the one right in front of you is bad, ignoring the ones that you know are out there even though they aren't right in front of you would be even worse.

As a pragmatic cynic, I would suggest that one of the best ways to spend time helping other people is to leave them alone and make sure you take care of yourself, and to be productive and fair in your dealings with others, because it has been shown that both of those things lead to prosperity. Productivity means that you have something to offer to others, and fairness means that they can trust you to deliver it. A rising tide floats all boats and all that tripe.

Usenet is dead

[ari_j]

Back in my day, if you wanted the internet to do your homework for you, you would post it to Usenet. I guess that this proves that Usenet is finally dying. :(

Solution: Let everyone read anyone's email

[Orestesx]

At my employer anybody can read anybody else's email. It logs who reads whose but otherwise imposes no restrictions. With no assumption of privacy, it also cuts down on gossip and generally increases the level of professionalism in the emails. I think it's a great solution.

MBA

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it true that they teach how to manipulate and use people in MBA?

Another dimension, stress/repercussions

[kohai_ut]

I think a key dimension to ethics in IT is that a person's ethics, or choice to follow their ethics, can change depending on the stress, importance, severity of the situation, or possible repercussions from a situation.

There are the regular ethical situations for IT like reading the boss's email. If you add stress, influence, etc, to the mix a person will do things they won't normally do.

What if...
...you heard that the company may outsource the IT department.
...you heard they may fire you.
...they may sell the company.
...they may close your division.
...you made a mistake that may cost you your job, but that you can cover up.
...somebody offered you money for employee salary information and you're house is about to be foreclosed on.

Raise the stakes and people will do things they won't normally do. It seems that many people live by two sets of ethics; those for every day life, and those for when they are at risk of something.

For some, open v. closed source IS ethics

[langelgjm]

What ethics in is NOT: Choosing Open Source or Closed Source Software... Those are Business decisions and have no real morality issues.

Just because they are business decisions does not therefore imply that they have no moral aspect. You don't have to agree with Stallman, but you should recognize that for some people, open source v. closed source is definitely about ethics:

"Proprietary software is evil because it attacks freedom and social solidarity. When a program is proprietary, that means that the social system of its distribution and use is unethical."

Free software is not about the price of software or even about the quality or practicality of it, according to Stallman. It is much more important than that. "This is about ethics," he said. "That is, good and evil."

Granted, these issues may not qualify as "business ethics," since they are about very fundamental beliefs, but it's imprecise to say that ethics isn't about closed v. open source. For some, that is exactly what it is about.

Re:For some, open v. closed source IS ethics

[jellomizer]

But this is not business ethics. What is Open Source really fighting for, it is fighting for software to be free, it has little focus on people well beings. Just because the Man was to lazy to go up a flight of stares to see if his printer was jammed or not, doesn't make it a huge challenge on ethics. If all software was open source or all software is closed source very little will effect on business especially if you exclude business that sell and distribute software. The point of IT is to use Technology to share Information, Not Technology for the sake of technology. If there was a better way of sharing the information without Technology business will drop it in a second.

professional organizations

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to look at several professional organizations, and see what ethical codes they state. For example, the IETF, IAB, SANS, etc.

IT Ethics Handbook

[Abattoir]

This is a fantastic book on the subject, and required reading for anyone working in IT. Or with IT. It covers a lot of issues faced on daily basis.

IT Ethics Handbook by Stephen Northcutt

Re:IT Ethics Handbook

[Legion303]

Download link plz.

ACM code of ethics

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

The slimy factor

[griffinme]

Here is an example from my dad. He was an engineer at a manufacturing plant in the 70's that decided they needed to go to CAD. He was given the project. He started working with DEC and they quoted XXX,XXX.00 as the price for a great system. He took that back to his bosses and they agreed. He goes back to DEC and the salesman starts mentioning things like, "Would you like an OS with that? It will cost XX,XXX.00 more." and "Would you like the special power cord? It will cost an extra XXX.00" They kept this up until the price was now one and a half times the original quote. Dad was getting embarrassed at going back to his bosses over and over asking for more money and finally got mad and started threatening to kill the deal. At this point the salesman mentions that it includes a Rainbow computer (their version of a PC and rather pricey at that) that wouldn't show up on the invoice and could be shipped to any address. That was about the point were Dad exploded.

Crazy thing is he loved DEC computers and still does. He wistfully talks about their ability to multi-task and better file system.

Years later I was caught in an ethical bind and asked him what to do. "You can do the easy thing or you can do the right thing. Doing the right thing might be bad for you in the short term, but you will be able to look back later and feel good about yourself instead of feeling slimy every time your reminded about it."

I took a business ethics class taught by a retired corporate head of human resources. He gave a good explanation of why this is taught in some business schools. "If you think about this now when you have no pressure on you, you stand a much better chance of making the best decision when under pressure and you have to make a snap decision. Don't kid yourself and think these things won't happen to you. They will, and most of the time you will have no time to do any soul searching."

Re:The slimy factor

[King_TJ]

Your dad sounds like a logical man. I wouldn't say it's "crazy" at all, to be able to separate the technical aspects of a system (DEC's products in this case) from bad sales tactics, from the people trying to sell one to him.

I've done enough corporate purchasing (and known others doing the same) to know that it's a popular tactic to throw in some freebies, in an attempt to sway you towards accepting a given quote (or even to simply sway you towards remembering to give a specific vendor a chance, every time you need to do a new purchase).

I've worked for places that have a corporate policy telling you that you simply can't accept ANY of these gifts, but I think that's too simplistic a rule.

The fact is, when you're the one doing all the research, collecting bids and finally going through with an order, you deserve whatever free "bonus item(s)" might come your way in that process, AS LONG AS you don't let it sway you from finding the best deal for your employer. I've been in situations where I attempted to get the "lowest bid" for software licensing, only to have 2 or 3 vendors quote me equal prices at the end. If one gave me a free pen and pencil set or whatever, then sure - they got the bid. Why not? Everything else was truly equal.

On the other hand, I absolutely despise getting what I'm led to believe is the "final price" for something, only to have the vendor modify it in some way after I get approval. That's guaranteed to make me look at alternatives. (IMHO, if I have to face my boss and say "Guess what? I screwed up, and it will actually cost $Y instead of $X for this item. Is that still ok?", I'd just as soon start over with a different vendor. Getting approval twice is really no more difficult on a different item/different vendor than on the same one twice.)

a wise man once said...

[t35t0r]

"There's no such thing as business ethics. There are only ethics, you either have them or you don't."

I'm not impressed.

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

The prevalance of this sort of brazen attitude of entitlement to privilege, disavowment of responsibility, and calous disregard of fellow beings less fortunate than oneself is the reason why human civilization is little better or different now than when we were cavemen.

Oh, please. Is this self-righteous twaddle supposed to convince me that I should waste my time on bums? My cat isn't impressed with your sad attempt at a guilt trip, and neither am I. I pay taxes so that the government will deal with the problem. If you want me to give a shit about the poor, stop taxing me in the name of helping the poor.

Let me give you a little knowledge from experience: give money to bums, and you'll only encourage them to continue panhandling. If you even talk to them, your time will be wasted. And if you listen to them, and decide not to give them money, they will probably resort to aggression. It is better to ignore them and keep your distance.

Re:I'm not impressed.

[Bombula]

If you honestly think all poor people are bums and that all of your taxpayer dollars are being spent on pointless handouts to people who are hungry and not, say, on a pointless 2-trillion-dollar war and tax breaks for billion-dollar corporations, you need to wake up and join the rest of us here on Planet Earth.

And as someone who has lived and worked in developing countries for over 20 years and seen real poverty and desperation, I can tell you that your 'knowledge from experience' is worth precisely dick.

To Original Ethics in IT Post

[txgh0st]

I have worked in every aspect of IT from phone support to network security for some of the biggest companies in central texas and have to say there is a fine line between ethics and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. I have witnessed business managers who tell you to load software with no license to get people productive now then worry about the paperwork later often not at all. I have also seen IT managers that use the IT department as their own little playhouse for personal gain. I recently had the opportunity to see an ethical explosion first hand when a disgruntled employee tried to bring "piracy and missuse of company assets for personal gain to the attention of management who then burried it they don't care they don't want to know they just want things to work. I guess ultimately as in any other profession you have the good with the bad. I do miss the good ol days though!!

Re:To Original Ethics in IT Post

[tuomoks]

"I do miss the good ol days though!!" - me too. I started in a big company where the old fashioned CEO pushed the code of ethics, inside and to the customers. Some of the competition did grow faster but also did go down down sooner or later, we just kept growing based on reputation. What happened later is sad, a new CEO, fortunately I had changed the company when I did see where it was going.
Ethics is personal, either a person or a community. It is also always based on truth - it may sometimes hurt (or at least not get you a job or security clearance) but on long run it pays back. I think people are getting more aware of that. You are not any more asked if you support this or that in politics, whatever but do you believe same ethics as the group asking. A supple difference but it is there, one is blind faith, one is believing to same basic rules.
Unfortunately in IT there still is this "good corporate citizen" mentality, close your eyes and you are told what and how to behave, forget anything else. You follow that and your job is secure, you can go up in ladders until you are the one telling the same. No problem as long as.. But be careful, sometimes corporate "ethics" don't match with current laws and regulations and if you are not yet on CxO level it may cost you a lot.

Law, schmaw.

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

The government disregards the law. Why shouldn't I do the same?

Equating the sides? (Re: .Sig)

[mi]

When both sides want the whole thing, it makes resolution nigh-impossible.

The Israeli side wants the whole thing, yes, but it is willing to accept half of the thing. The Arabs don't.

regardless of perspective.

So, you are accusing Israel of not being sufficiently careful in avoiding collateral damage, and equate that with the Arabs, who seek to maximize it (but can't)... Wow...

[...] by saying that the other side is worse.

Yes, in any conflict the behavior of one side can not be examined without that of another.

But my page does not seek to convince anyone of the justice of the Israel's struggle, no. It only tries to "raise awareness" of what militant Arabs mean, when they say "occupation".

Re:Equating the sides? (Re: .Sig)

[Morosoph]

When both sides want the whole thing, it makes resolution nigh-impossible.

The Israeli side wants the whole thing, yes, but it is willing to accept half of the thing. The Arabs don't.

I'm not sure that politicians attempting to impress one another speak for the people; most people on both sides would, most likely settle for half. People are not an amorphous mass.

regardless of perspective.

So, you are accusing Israel of not being sufficiently careful in avoiding collateral damage, and equate that with the Arabs, who seek to maximize it (but can't)... Wow...

No, I'm saying that you've missed out a component: centralised premeditation. For some people this will make the Israelis worse, the others, the Palestinians.

Like I said, it depends upon your attitude to authority.

[...] by saying that the other side is worse.

Yes, in any conflict the behavior of one side can not be examined without that of another.

To see if the response is justified, yes, but not as a point of reference.

But my page does not seek to convince anyone of the justice of the Israel's struggle, no. It only tries to "raise awareness" of what militant Arabs mean, when they say "occupation".

This is a reasonable point, if you could prove that this was what the average Palestinian meant by the term. Putting one's justification in another's mouth is worthy of Chomsky.

Re:Equating the sides? (Re: .Sig)

[mi]

No, I'm saying that you've missed out a component: centralized premeditation. For some people this will make the Israelis worse, the others, the Palestinians.

Oh, please, Israel's enemies — Hamas, Hezbollah on the frontlines — are very well organized and centralized. In fact, they are, likely, even more centralized than Israel's command — with its cabinet reshuffles, elections, etc.

This is a reasonable point, if you could prove that this was what the average Palestinian meant by the term.

No, I don't have to prove this at all — because I'm not quoting "average Palestinians".

But, if you insist... The Palestinians had their free democratic elections very recently — and Hamas has won an overwhelming victory. This shows, the organization enjoys wide support among the populace, who agree with their views.

[...] is worthy of Chomsky.

Khmm, I have a feeling, I know you in "real life"...

Socio/Psycho - the true path

[kcdoodle]

I always thought the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, was that a psychopath DOES NOT know the difference between right and wrong, and the sociopath DOES know the difference between right and wrong, but, just does not care about it.

Re:Ethics?

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

I prefer, "If it's not yours, don't fuck with it." You can apply that principle everywhere.

practical IT ethics examples

[CodeJudge]

0) Read Cliff Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil" about the decline in professionalism ubiquitous desktop computing has enabled. IT Ethics is really about setting and enforcing professional standards for behavior at work. For those too lazy to read, in 1980 you could get fired for making a personal call, but in 2008 it's OK to exchange non-work email with your friends all day. Why? Answer: the office lets you get away with this in return for expecting you to answer email on weekends. Blurring the boundaries makes the rules hard to write.

1) Example: A friend called for advice, LAN manager at a 20-person company. "Everyone says the network is down, but it's actually just overloaded because the president is streaming live porn from Amsterdam." Solution: block the port, see if he has the stones to complain. Corporate ethics issues are complicated by rank and the playbook won't cover everything.

2) In 1982 at age 10 we spent a couple hours in school on telephone manners. I would hope that my own children will get the same talk, now to include cell phone, email, and web manners. Learn how to mute the ringer without answering a call. Expect that any email you send, or any web page you browse, might be printed and taped to your office door tomorrow morning.

3) Adult/offensive content makes the rules hard to write.. If I'm presenting on the big screen and get a mail notification popup for spam with a racist subject, do I get fired? Can sysadmins sue for "inhospitable work environment" because the spam was x-rated? The standards for handling these issues are related to the standards for how to behave when you're root. As I say to my dog when he's licking in the living room, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." The standard for behavior needs to be something like "You're going to have access to a bunch of stuff, but that's no excuse for needless nosing."

"Whose ethics..."

[Anonymous Coward]

This post demonstrates how you are a part of the problem, but you will never, ever figure out why.

meta-ethics

[modustollens]

'Ethics' and discussions around it are pretty much useless unless the concept is precisely defined. This latter activity is called meta-ethics. Ethics, then, is simply applied meta-ethics. Once the meta-ethical definitions are articulated it is often simply a matter deduction from the definition to spit out a decision of action. Generally in business the meta-ethical orientation is deontology, a non-consequentialist, duty based orientation. The specific duty is the fudiciary duty to shareholders in the small instance and stakeholders in the larger. Your duty is to maximize the shareholder revenue. Any action conducive to this passes the test. The challenge to the individual in business is to know when to change the meta-ethical orientation - employees wear many hats, so to speak; and what is good for maximizing shareholder revenue may not be good for the community at large. For example, pollution: those old PCs could be expensively recycled or money could be saved by throwing them into the creek; but the consequences would be pollution of the local community, that is, bad consequences come from pollution. Obviously if only considering one meta-ethical orientation what would be 'ethical' in this case is the cheaper route; but if the meta-ethical orientation included consequences to non-shareholders polluting would not be ethical. The point here is that ethics is not as important as how you go about picking your meta-ethical orientation. But that can't be 'ethics,' for the term and its cognates 'good,' 'right' and so on lack any meaning at this point. Choosing a meta-ethic is a philosophical task, not an ethical one...

What is this ethics of which you speak?

[plopez]

Really, seriously, the way software vendors treat their customers is a nightmare. If you sold used cars the way software is sold, you would be in prison. If you sold real estate the way software is sold, you would be in prison.

And within IT departments you are confronted with lying and backstabbing, not just from management. I am retraining to get out of IT and I say good riddance.

Now only if I could be modded as 'Cynical' as opposed to 'troll'....

Observations

[Anonymous Coward]

From a management perspective, it seems like when you are meeting the needs of your employees they will behave more ethically than when you put them under stress.

Threaten their job and they are more likely to lie to you.

That said, people do very odd things under stress. I had a manager who told the software testers working under him to stop looking for bugs, to stop reporting bugs, at points in the schedule where upper management expected to see a reduced rate of bugs being reported to indicate that quality was improving and that we could ship soon. In telling us to stop filing bugs, this manager was lying to his superiors and telling them what he thought they wanted to see. He was also avoiding the painful scrutiny that would result when they realized that our pieces of the product were horribly flawed.

Sometimes ethics is described in terms of picking your battles. Something too unpopular, but horribly wrong, like a major security flaw that would require so much re-design and delay to fix that it would force the company to lay off some employees to stay afloat, might be tacidly mentioned but not pushed because the individual isn't prepared to put their job on the line for the customer that they don't see. It is an ethical dilemma, but we re-define it so we can feel better about the decision that exposes others to unknown risk.

Corporate Empathy

[Ohio Calvinist]

While the parent is speaking regarding upper level execs (and maybe even the rank-and-file PHB), there is an interesting documentary called "The Corporation" that deals with a lot of this kind of thing. It argues that the "legal person" that a corporation is, is fundametally sociopathic. There is a good synopsis of their argument on their webpage. Granted, it is certainly not without bias, but was the turning point in my understanding of corporate ethos. Definately worth a DVD rent or a viewing at your local independent cinema.

It makes sense to me that the management of the company would recruit those lacking empathy (or other ethical constructs) to boost profits. It also makes sense that management influenced by this corp. ethos would not hold IT to any standards, other than to protect the corporate interests (e.g. don't do anything that would get us in trouble that you can't cover up), and to cover their own asses (IT can't open Exchange mailboxes without approval from management even at the request of users (for support purposes) to make sure upper management's inside-men don't get pinched.).

Survival of the fittest

[phorm]

And in the business world, the "fittest" is often whomever is most willing to do whatever it takes, and stop over whomever they can, to achieve the goal.

I've been on both sides

[ISoldat53]

I was ethical once and lost my job. I was unethical the next time and retired at 47.

Corporate welfare?

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

on a pointless 2-trillion-dollar war and tax breaks for billion-dollar corporations Don't get me started on that fucking shit. I'm not drunk enough to saying anything about corporate welfare other than "scrap it all right fucking now, and damn the consequences".

Don't forget other areas to explore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to cover the ethics of "forcing" people to work in "Death March" projects where expectations are set that you must be working 80+ hours so that a ridiculous deadline can be met.

Re:Don't forget other areas to explore...

[Foodie]

Yeah, and then report that you only worked 40 hours instead.

MBA... Ethics... course?

[Greyfox]

Is there a lot of giggling in that class?

Hello class! Today we're going to discuss taking candy from a baby. Now here's a baby. And we'll give him some candy. Now one might think it would then be unethical to take it from him but... *yoink* hee hee hee...

Ethics of asking slashdot to write your paper

[CokeBear]

Perhaps you should examine in your paper the ethics of asking a group to collaboratively write your paper for you.

Re:Ethics of asking slashdot to write your paper

[chiefloko]

Half of "slashdotter's" could write my paper, the other half would do what I am doing now.
Procrastination is the mother of invention.
The professor still has to approve my topic, so this may all be wasted.

The replies are phenomenal, and everyone knows Business School is called "B School" for a reason.

They only want your money, especially in NYC.

Re:Ethics of asking slashdot to write your paper

[chiefloko]

I will cite all responses and handles. That should take up most of my bibliography.

resarch help from philosophers

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest you check into more than mere opinion on slashdot. Check to see if your school has access to the philosopher's index. This is *the* database for philosophical papers. You will probably have to narrow your paper's focus as well. Start with a simple search and see if anything catches your eye. If you don't have access to the philosopher's index try for these journals: Journal of Information Ethics, Ethics, Journal of Business Ethics, and Ethics and Information Technology.

As I have written on this extensively for my Masters in Philosophy you need to decide what part is more important--this is largely based on your prof, are they more based in phil or business? I would suggest maybe going with something such as "IT ethics from x perspective" and provide a few simple examples and what you think one following x ethical theory would do. Not only is this probably the easiest type of paper to write but also can be fairly ground breaking if you argue well. This would fall into an applied ethics which I would also suggest you look into. Good luck!

Took Ethics last semester

[Anonymous Coward]

I just finished a paper for the ethics class I took last semester. The paper focused on globalization and multinational companies. I tried to keep the paper as unbiased (even though I have very strong opinions on this subject) and based entirely on tangible facts. In a nutshell, my thesis was that globalization is nothing new and has been documented as far back as the mid-15th century. But, since the mid-18th century globalization has seen 4 different phases. The last phase, from about 1975 on, has been very different from the first 3. Globalization is now used by large multinational companies to control and stifle wages in hire paid countries, while exploiting workers in lower wage countries. I have been in meetings where large fortune 100 companies have openly admitted to sourcing work to countries where employment and environmental laws are less stringent than the U.S. or Western European nations. I have gone so far as to even claim that this practice is nothing more than institutionalized racism. In the age of diversity (which is what most multinationals claim) why should it be assumed that peoples of one nation are entitled to better ecologial environment and better labor laws than the next. I personally think it's a little hypocritical of Western multinationals to pawn their dirty work off on developing nations because they simply do not want to pay the cost of compliance (labor, environment, etc) in their home countries. I have also cited documentation that has illustrated that multinational conglomerates have even gone so far as to control governmental policy because they are one of the only major employers in a given country. So much for the spread of democracy and a nation's autonomy. The more I researched, the more I realized that some of the perceived "crack pots" like Chavez actually have a very good point; however, I think they are pointing in the wrong direction. Rather than Western governmental imperialism, similar to what the U.S. saw a growth of after the post Civil War reconciliation, we are seeing imperialistic behavior from large multinationals that are serving to make a very small number of people very rich. How can one in good conscience say it is OK for a CEO to make 400% more than the average employee when wages are being pushed down, retirement plans phased out, and medical benefits going to the skids? Perhaps some of those MBA's should have taken your Ethics class. :) There is a pile of information out there on this subject matter in many University Libraries if you are thinking about taking this angle.

Re:Took Ethics last semester

[chiefloko]

How about you send me a copy? :-)

An MBA inquiring about ETHICS?

[Moe1975]

That's like a nun inquiring about ass dildos . . .

An example or two ...

[Bob-taro]

I once had a job as a programmer for the company's marketing department. There were layoffs going on and most people were in full CYA mode most of the time. I knew that several people who interfaced with our customers would routinely lie to them. One time I found a bug in the software that I had created and I was told I'd have to be on the call to explain to our customers what happened. My coworkers were waiting to see how I'd "spin" this and how the customers would react. In response to "how did this happen?", I said something like "Well, It was my code and my fault for missing a test scenario. All I can say is, I apologize, and I'm doing my best to correct it as soon as possible. The fix should be released in time for the next run." After a short (stunned) silence, the customers actually thanked me for my honesty and consoled me saying, "well, everyone makes mistakes" and that sort of thing. I think they were just so surprised at getting an honest answer that they forgot to be angry! In my experience, honesty really is the best policy.

Doing this job well? Always!

[Gazzonyx]

Actually, I've been at the place for 3 years (1 year full time while I took 2 semesters off from school to get my head straight), and I can easily say that it was worth it.

I spent a year of straight "heads down" time, doing network administration, database administration (we use Access 2000, but it's exposure nonetheless), writing a backup tool (and porting it 3 times "...it's only temporary, you know." - yeah, right), and learning RHEL during the day. At night I was writing a win32 application, bash scripts, C/C++ code, Java, playing with advanced routing, samba, and kernels in Slackware Linux, and constantly digging in to technical documentation and CS theory. The time has paid off ten fold. The difference between myself and my peers without 'hand-on' experience is simply astounding!

I didn't realize until I took graduate level administration and programming classes last semester and this semester and I breezed through them without cracking a book. My code is cleaner, better documented, and formatted better than when I was taking AP C++ in high school. I look at applications (regardless of platform - I'm running 3 flavors of Linux, a Mac and a Windows box at home, a RHEL box at work, and work on a Solaris box at school) in a completely different way than ever before. I don't see an application any more, but rather layers of abstraction connected via interfaces.

Once I realized that everything is a connecting interface from the backend to the frontend (protocols, devices, GUIs, etc., everything), I found I could do incredibly complex things in both programming and administration - it's just about getting the right interfaces on the right layers. It was a moment of revelation that compares to when I found out in *nix, everything is a file. The light went on! I also found out that C/C++ is almost a completely different language on each platform. GNU, win32, xcode might as well be 3 separate languages. Good documentation is worth its weight in gold. Version control is How It Should Be. And, every bit of knowledge is a tool in your toolbox; the more tools at your disposal, the more elegant your solution and the less forehead dents in your desk. Finally, if your interface layers are concise all the way up, everything falls in to place all the way up to the GUI and troubleshooting and bug fixing become single line fixes instead of full function kludges. That being said, I still write a lot of crap code... but at least I know when I'm doing it now.

Sorry for that rant, but I really had to comment on what the job has taught me.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

[PaulusMagnus]

Ethics in IT, is the same was ethics in any other walk of life, in my opinion. When you place anybody is a position of power and authority, they inevitably abuse that position. We see this with prison officers, police officers or specific financial traders such as Nick Leeson and Jerome Kerviel.

Without the necessary checks and balances in place, human beings will always find a way to exploit their situation to their own advantage. We can't really be blamed for it, as it's how we're programmed to survive.

Ethics in business is an artificial problem that we're just not genetically pre-disposed to deal with but we're slowly improving. The only practical way of ensuring ethical practice is to impose policy, procedure and monitoring. If we are going to continue to employ human beings we have to make sure we have procedures in place to deal with their imperfections.

I've seen countless numbers of technical support staff that read the CEO's email, or they read the email that gets blocked at the inbound filter. They also trawl through the file system, checking people's personal files, collecting their MP3s and JPGs. I've also seen people that take old laptops, writing them off and then selling them to their friends on the cheap. There was also one instance with somebody inflating the price of network cabling jobs and splitting the difference with the networking guy. Eventually, all of these things are discovered and policies are changed to stop them happening again.

In my experience, it's far easier to assume that all human beings are skimming in some way and to some degree. You have to know what the big stuff is, detect it and stop it but let the little stuff go. Does it really matter if one guy steals a pack of post-it notes once a month? Does it matter if somebody spends their own time copying user's MP3 files? Ultimately, what is the impact to the business of some of these actions?

Clarity

[not_hylas( )]

Once you understand that corporations are (as legal persons) immortal - you can just begin to understand the dilemma.
A powerful immortal with bloodlust and lack of empathy has become - er, how'd you say?, business as usual.
Our Country (USA) is now, only representing a constituency of Corporations, which by proxy of consumerism "looking out" for "our" interests.

The willful disobedience of enforcement of the rule of law by the Congress allows for the further degradation of "the people" as the represented body of the law of the land (Constitution), further perverting the intent of the basic purpose of this country - escaping a dominance of those who'd exploit us for power, (also religious) and monetary gain.

Ethics are a quaint idea relegated for underlings for dealings with each other within these bastions of ivory.

Corporations got the upper hand once before, quite a while back and were quelled to some extent - they're BACK and they are running the show, once again.

See Part 2 and further for relevance:

ZEITGEIST

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331&q=zeitgeist&total=3730&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Take it from someone who has had this discussion

[madsenj37]

I said this last year during ethics week in my MBA Strategy class, "Ethics are simply a matter of time and place." Having said that, you simply have to describe the current schools of thought on ethics and how they developed.

Be more specific

[Leon da Costa]

Hello,

Speaking from experience (I work in IT, I did an MBA, I chose the elective Business Ethics, I had to write an essay), my first guess is that your prof will tell you to be MORE SPECIFIC.

Do a google for, for instance, the Journal of Business Ethics ( http://www.springer.com/philosophy/ethics/journal/10551 ), and be surprised by the wealth of articles you'll already find about a really wide range of Ethics & IT topics. At the same time, once you have read the first few, you'll notice how immensely full of holes this area of research actually is. There's academic articles, for instance, about the morality of P2P File Sharing in Asia or the limitations that virtual personae should have with regards to knowing what they should remember about a given system. There's professors specialising in the combination of Business Ethics & IT; Jeroen van den Hoven (University of Delft) is the first one that jumps to mind for me.

So, if you wish to add something to this body of existing knowledge, you'd either go with something very specific (i.e. the behavior or a normal user when suddenly granted god access, on a tuesday afternoon, if he's exactly 42 years and two days old) and search what else has been written about your specific topic, OR you could do what your initial suggestion is, and give a high-level overview of a given topic. If you prefer the latter, the least that will probably be required is a quick overview of which topics are covered in research and which are currently barren. Summing up best practices or drawing up a directory of "hey, this is what slashdot users think" may be valuable, but only if you put it into a good context.

Hope this helps :-)

Consider Justice and Happiness

[Ekdar]

Two questions to ask: 1. Is my action fair and just? 2. Is my action maximizing happiness? Consider non-IT analogies. The law can be a guide, but the law does not dictate morality and, hence, should not necessarily dictate your actions. Example: Perhaps reading someone else's emails without his or her permission really does maximize happiness in some cases. You (the IT professional) derive great joy from it, and the recipient of the emails remains ignorant. However, reading someone else's emails for enjoyment is unjust because it is violating the trust that the sender and receiver have placed in your email system. You ought to refrain from reading someone else's emails for the same reasons you would refrain from reading his or her "snail mail" or diary/journal.

Re:Consider Justice and Happiness

[Ekdar]

Crap, here's my post properly formatted (learn2preview)...

Two questions to ask:
1. Is my action fair and just?
2. Is my action maximizing happiness?

Consider non-IT analogies.

The law can be a guide, but the law does not dictate morality and, hence, should not necessarily dictate your actions.

Example:

Perhaps reading someone else's emails without his or her permission really does maximize happiness in some cases. You (the IT professional) derive great joy from it, and the recipient of the emails remains ignorant. However, reading someone else's emails for enjoyment is unjust because it is violating the trust that the sender and receiver have placed in your email system.

You ought to refrain from reading someone else's emails for the same reasons you would refrain from reading his or her "snail mail" or diary/journal.

Re:Something to also remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Something to also remember is that there are no laws protecting IT and programmers for "doing the right thing".

In engineering you have PE licensing programs and laws that go with it. Under these laws you can't fire an engineer for refusing to do something that goes against a code of conduct. So far there is nothing similar to the PE in IT or programming (well except in Texas where they do have a software engineering PE).

Since I would bet that 80%-90% of the unethical activities carried out by IT staff are because management has asked them to do it that until IT workers are given legal protection and legally binding professional responsibility nothing will change.

T.H. White said it best

[blueZ3]

"Anything not prohibited is compulsory and anything that is not compulsory is prohibited."

I do so love that mamy mamy mamy song

Dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

You made my sarcasm meter explode! You'd owe me a new one if it weren't imaginary. :-(

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Still has problems

[SparkleMotion88]

The problem with that is that people tend to be very different and it is difficult for us to figure out what other people want. For example, by your logic it was super nice of the U.S. to give freedom to Iraq.

I feel pretty confident that I practice the only fair and consistent ethical system and it only has one axiom: "Do whatever you want." Of course, I also believe that everyone else follows the same system that I do. After all, you only follow your ethical rules because they give you some sort of satisfaction (being a good person, going to Heaven, etc).

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sethawoolley]

Your contrived example doesn't really make sense, at least to me. Do you mean to say it would be wrong if both of us had consensual sex, even if the reason for her consent are somehow "ethically" wrong? Seems like a judgment call on somebody's part, other than the two of us.

Maybe you can enlighten me with some better examples. :)

Seth

"Business ethics" is an oxymoron

[jhylkema]

How does one "ethically" rob customers out of their money, pray tell?

While we "abide by laws" they "play shrewd games"

[Anonymous Coward]

They love gaming the system and escaping unhurt gives them a kick which forms most of their inspiration to continue working in that field at that level. "I fooled the stupid law" is a primary goal, not a side effect.

They're social black hats. *Crackers* of social code (of conduct).
The only way to stop their crooked acts is to *punish* them instantly, not later, when the damage is done and the time has passed.

That is where the big game and system fail unpardonably and repeatedly.
Maybe over millenia.

Instant delivery of punishment is the single solution to social crackers.
Sadly, I type this and you read it now, and nobody remembers it tomorrow morning, least of all, the System and the Game and the MotU.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[nahdude812]

I want others to treat me such that they give me thousands of dollars.

The problem with both systems is that it does not allow for balancing the needs and wants of both parties.

The Christian-based "Do unto others as you'd have done to yourself" rule is closer, and people mis-interpret it by attaching conditionals. For example the original example, "I'd want him to kill me if I were gay." The rule does not say, "As you'd have done to yourself if you were in their shoes." The rule says that if you want to receive that treatment, then so should you persist that treatment, and doesn't mention circumstance at all.

However, it's meant as a general guide, sort of a litmus test of how to behave toward others. It attempts to put behavior into personal perspective. The Golden Rule also fails for people who are suicidal or otherwise self-destructive (just because you cut yourself doesn't mean you should take a knife to strangers). It's not meant to be hard and fast.

Pirating Software

[robertjw]

I used to work for a software development company. My boss, who's living was made by selling software, was understandably adamant about following software licensing both for our customers, and for us internally. As IT manager, I followed company policy. I did not allow any unlicensed software in the office - and caught heat about it from the other managers. Problem was, even though the boss didn't want any unlicensed software in the office, he was also to cheap to purchase the licenses we needed. This resulted in some creative manouevering on my my part. Uninstalling and re-installing. (mis)Interpreting licensing requirements in ways that were advantageous to the company. Finding Open Source alternatives (which wasn't really a bad thing). It's interesting what a fine ethical line we had to walk. The company was all about being ethical, but at the same time wouldn't spend the appropriate money so the staff had to find creative ways to get our work done.

Ethics

[Anonymous Coward]

No such thing as business ethics.

You are either ethical or you are not. You can't have character in one area of your life and not in another area or you don't truly have character.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sumdumass]

Suppose she is 10 and you are 30. Yes, I am saying it is wrong. The fact that he or she consented to it means little.

Or lets put it another way, a little closer to what you took me to say, suppose she came from an abusive family, was 18, and thought that getting raped in order to have dinner and beaten afterwards was the norm. So she consented to laying there for you to have your way. Legally, there wouldn't be anything wrong (with your part) but ethically, there would. If she has been tricked into consent, is it really consent? Even when the tricking came from someone else?

Or lets put it yet another way, would having sex with a girl knowing you could exploit injustices done to her in the past and passably done by someone else in order to get her consent be ethical? You and someone else having sex isn't really the ethical part. Her being tricked into by either learning behavior in the wrong way or me holding a gun to her sisters throat and claiming to blow her head off if she doesn't screw you would create some problems. Especially if you knew about them before consenting yourself.

Seeing how we are talking of ethics here, She wanted it or was asking for it used to be a valid defense to rape in the past. Now there is much more taken into consideration. I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer to the questions I posed. I hope there is and I hope that I'm on the right side of it.

Yes He Was Completely Unethical

[Anonymous Coward]

I've also worked at a company where an admin, who reported to a manager I worked beside, was reading e-mails. The manager let him know that he knew, and that if anything came of it, it would come back to bite him, but also let it slide because (1) someone has to have access, and whoever it is will probably take a peek from time to time, and (2) he was relatively discrete about it, and others may not be. Was he unethical in letting the behavior persist?

Yes, he was unethical for letting the behavior persist. First off, the admin was being unethical for an action that unnecessarily invaded people's privacy. It was not the intent of his employment to read people's emails. Even if his job description of "fix the mail system" required occasional and inadvertent reading of emails, it was not his job to read any other messages for any other purpose. It was unethical for the admin to read the messages in this case.

It was also unethical for the manager to have permitted this act to continue. The manager knowingly permitted an act that he himself knew was unethical. This makes his action, or inaction in this case, completely unethical. The manager should have put a stop to the activity. The manager should have, at the very least, ordered the admin to cease and given the admin a warning and given clear guidelines for future activities as well as notification of the penalties for infractions.

Were I the VP over this department, I would fire them both as they were both unethical and I won't tolerate it. I would also institute a written policy and education program for the entire remaining department.

It is the fact that this stupidity goes on and that people such as yourself actually have to ask if it is inappropriate or not that creates the need for an ethics class and ethics training. These are things that your mother and father should have taught you at an early age! As an adult, there should be no question in your mind as to whether it is ethical or not.

Here's a clue for you in the future. If you have to ask if it is ethical or not, IT IS NOT!

Sage Code of Ethics

[Tracy Reed]

Sage has one also:

http://www.sage.org/ethics/

Do you let employers destroy themselves?

[Ilan Volow]

When an employer forces you to do something that's tantamount to them hanging themselves with their own rope, do you let them do it and reap the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" and increased credibility in future avoiding-stupid-stuff discussions, or do you go out of your way to go under the radar and try to save them from themselves when no one is looking?

For what it's worth...

[bwcbwc]

The two main professional organizations for Engineers and scientists in IT both have codes of ethics: IEEE and ACM

This doesn't have much practical effect, since membership or certification by these organizations is rarely a job requirement in IT, but they do serve as a baseline for evaluating behavior in the industry. It's a sad state of affairs.

Common Ground

[jaloway]

One obvious conclusion to draw is that we need a common agreement on what the ethical principles are which we should all be held to regardless of profession.

That depends...

[bwcbwc]

Given the slashdot demographic, it's about 99% probable that I wouldn't want you performing that act on me in any venue, let alone in the street, HBI. (Sorry, have to keep my post SFW).

Look at ethics, not behaviour

[dropbearsrus]

Maybe you shouldn't be looking for anecdotes etc or trying to handle 'IT' ethics as somehow separate from ethics in the more general sense. The study of ethics is more about how to arrive at valid decisions on complex ethical issues - in IT there is much new or unexplored territory in this regard but the underlying dilemmas, and the way they're approached remains the same as for any other field.
You should be trying to clear up these new or murky problems with well-reasoned arguments. Don't spend too much time on cut and dry issues where people have just decided to do the wrong thing anyway. Instead focus on issues where people may genuinely want to do the right thing but have difficulty deciding just what that is.

I note...

[bwcbwc]

...that you say nothing about keeping their employees happy. Or do you consider employees to be suppliers?

Ditto the IEEE...

[bwcbwc]

Which would apply to the Computer Society: http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/ethics/code_ethics.html

Grep keeps you honest and proves it

[dbIII]

If a system administrator reads someone's e-mail

If you read someone's mail for a specific purpose (ie. are they still getting mail) you can just read the bits of the headers that let you know what you need and not the content or subject. Remember that IT typically gets the blame for the idiocy of others and anybody with the authority to have the root password can see what you have done in history files and take it out of context.

BCS

[violetlight]

The British Computer Society have an Ethics Forum to look at the wider moral issues raised by IT. For example it is currently working on the carbon footprint of IT

Re:Ethically speaking

[Architect_sasyr]

...or at least its article There you go. Fixed that for you.

Ethics?

[amrobot]

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

Switzerland et les environs

[Anonymous Coward]

Rictig, et bien sure.

Hier erwarten wir Sie, in den businnes ehrlich zu sein

Regards, Brian

discrete vs. discreet

[Anonymous Coward]

he was relatively discrete about it So he read single emails as opposed to the entire continuum? I think the word you meant to use is "discreet".

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sethawoolley]

Well, in a completely ethical society, people who are ten would still have freedoms to consent to things regarding their own body, for without the social stigma associated with underage sexual relations, the psychological problems wouldn't exist. That being said, I find it hard to believe a ten year old girl would consent to having sex with any man, since most of them think of old men as gross. So I find it quite contrived. If some random ten year old girl asked for a sexual favor from me, that would be violating the rule itself, too, since I don't want them to do that to me. When an act involves two people like that, the act has to meet the rule for both of them to be ethical.

Your next contrived example doesn't make much sense, either. Should I question somebody's desires because I think how they were developed happened in immorality? I'm not so sure as you. That's who they are, and if they desire it, who am I to judge their desires? Would it be exploiting them? If I were trying to change her mind to change her consent based on those injustices, is that really doing what they would want? That seems more like manipulating what they want is what you don't like. Maybe they don't want manipulation -- that would violate the rule. Perhaps they enjoy both manipulation and the later consensual sex? If they do enjoy those, then I don't see any problem with it.

The next example, again contrived, implies a relationship between consensual sex again and holding a gun to her sister's head, which isn't actually consent, either. Doing an unconsensual act to get later consent isn't ethical under the proposed rule, either.

For your information, "she wanted it" IS a valid defense for rape, unless it's "statutory", which I think is a load of morality legislation, and not ethical in itself. Rape is by definition unwanted sexual contact. Some people would extend that to mean "unwanted by society". I wouldn't.

It seems you are on the wrong side of the questions you have posed.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sethawoolley]

If your needs and wants infringe on my needs and wants, then it's not under the rule, obviously. Discussion, mutual understanding, and fair-dealing are not thrown out by the modified rule, but are additional fallback behaviors in case the rule is unable to inform due to a contradiction in desires.

Your excuse that the rule doesn't mean "if I were them" merely makes the golden rule worse. Now I'm whipped just because that person likes to be whipped by me? That just doesn't make any sense. There's truly no consideration for what I would want, in that case. None, whatsoever. At least in the "if I were them", then at least they are considering what I want!

Wrong!!

[Eskarel]

Enlightened Self Interest and Ethics are not the same thing. Being ethical is about doing the right thing because it's the right thing, not because it's the most profitable thing to do.

Excluding issues regarding long term vs short term profitability and Executive bonuses, public companies can always be expected to maximize profits, and while having managers that are smart enough to realize that at times doing the right thing is the most profitable thing to do is an indication of a much better class of managers than seems to be the norm it's not the same thing as being ethical.

To give an example. Protecting my employees from harmful radiation because if I don't I'll get sued for a lot more than it costs to put in appropriate safety precautions and I'm pretty likely to get caught is good business. Protecting my employees in a third world country where I can buy off the government for less than it'll cost me to make their jobs safer simply because it's the right thing to do is ethics.

Very few publicly traded companies are ethical. This is partially due to legal obligations to maximize stockholder value and in the US to the current culture of "If you make money off it and don't get caught then it's ok", but it's mostly because of the fundamental nature of public companies. The metric used to determine the value of a publicly traded company is its share price. Share price is determined largely by profits. There is no metric built into share price which measures whether a company is ethical or not, only if it's profitable.

This is why the idea of Business Ethics is generally considered an oxy moron. Not because businesses don't on occasion get a result that is identical to the one which would have resulted from ethical behaviour, but because ethics are rarely the deciding factor and in cases where the ethical solution is not at least neutral to share holder value, and ideally directly beneficial, Business Ethics are in fact often legally prohibited.

That said, many private companies, non profits, not for profits, etc are allowed to make decisions based on ethics and occasionally do, but the idea of Ethics in a publicly traded company is a joke.

It's just like business ethics...

[Pig Hogger]

It's just like business ethics, really.

Like, here what happenned at the local bagel shop:

-- Pappa, asked the son, what is "business ethics"???

-- Ah, son! you are breaching a very important subject. Business ethics. Hmmm, what is it? Ah! Here's an analogy:
Suppose that a customer leaves the shop, and you notice that he forgot a $20 bill on the counter.

This is where business ethics comes in.

You see, my son, when you notice the $20, you ask yourself: " should I tell my partner? "...

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sumdumass]

Well, in a completely ethical society, people who are ten would still have freedoms to consent to things regarding their own body, for without the social stigma associated with underage sexual relations, the psychological problems wouldn't exist. That being said, I find it hard to believe a ten year old girl would consent to having sex with any man, since most of them think of old men as gross. So I find it quite contrived. If some random ten year old girl asked for a sexual favor from me, that would be violating the rule itself, too, since I don't want them to do that to me. When an act involves two people like that, the act has to meet the rule for both of them to be ethical.

I brought this up only because a 10 year old's mind isn't developed in a way to give a true consent. They have little to no concept of sexuality or anything involved with it. Besides the fact that they haven't yet formed the independent thought processes as for the consent to be actual consent and not just following the directions of an adult which to this point, their existance has depended on. It would be unethical to take advantage of a ten year old's mental state to get consent for sex with or without societal stigmas attached to it or not. And more specifically, the social stigmas are because of this ethics situation specifically.

Your next contrived example doesn't make much sense, either. Should I question somebody's desires because I think how they were developed happened in immorality? I'm not so sure as you. That's who they are, and if they desire it, who am I to judge their desires? Would it be exploiting them? If I were trying to change her mind to change her consent based on those injustices, is that really doing what they would want? That seems more like manipulating what they want is what you don't like. Maybe they don't want manipulation -- that would violate the rule. Perhaps they enjoy both manipulation and the later consensual sex? If they do enjoy those, then I don't see any problem with it.

If you knew about the development and immorality in the process of getting consent, yes, you should question it. And no, you can't determine what they want when they are tricked into wanting something specific because of other actions. And if you are aware of those actions, it is unethical. Just as it would be unethical for a lawyer to have sex with every widows because he knows how to exploit their loss in the process of settling the decease's estate or affairs. Sure, after you exploit their emotions they may want it just like they may want to donate all their money to the charity that benefit's you the most. But in either case, it is unethical to abuse that trust in that way.

The next example, again contrived, implies a relationship between consensual sex again and holding a gun to her sister's head, which isn't actually consent, either. Doing an unconsensual act to get later consent isn't ethical under the proposed rule, either.

Well, the point is that there are so many situations in existence that are akin to placing a gun to her head. The consent isn't really consent. And if you know about it or have reason to suspect it, it is unethical. And as for exploiting emotional states, or mental deficiencies due to age, extraordinary circumstances, natural or artificial influences or whatever, fi you suspect it, it is unethical. But we seem to be focusing on sex when this goes to so many other places when you treat people how they want to be treated. It isn't that they can't be right, it is that it can be just as wrong just as many times.

For your information, "she wanted it" IS a valid defense for rape, unless it's "statutory", which I think is a load of morality legislation, and not ethical in itself. Rape is by definition unwanted sexual contact. Some people would extend that to mean "unwanted by society". I wouldn't.

Umm no means no and all that. She wan

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sethawoolley]

Well, in a completely ethical society, people who are ten would still have freedoms to consent to things regarding their own body, for without the social stigma associated with underage sexual relations, the psychological problems wouldn't exist. That being said, I find it hard to believe a ten year old girl would consent to having sex with any man, since most of them think of old men as gross. So I find it quite contrived. If some random ten year old girl asked for a sexual favor from me, that would be violating the rule itself, too, since I don't want them to do that to me. When an act involves two people like that, the act has to meet the rule for both of them to be ethical.

I brought this up only because a 10 year old's mind isn't developed in a way to give a true consent. They have little to no concept of sexuality or anything involved with it. Besides the fact that they haven't yet formed the independent thought processes as for the consent to be actual consent and not just following the directions of an adult which to this point, their existance has depended on. It would be unethical to take advantage of a ten year old's mental state to get consent for sex with or without societal stigmas attached to it or not. And more specifically, the social stigmas are because of this ethics situation specifically.

The stigma is because people assume that a ten year old doesn't want sex, so when somebody has sex with one, chances are there was something unethical. It's a heuristic.

Can you bring up any case where a ten year old has consented to sex like this?

You're talking around the fact that the stigma is just an error of reasoning for a shorthand for identifying unethical behavior. It doesn't mean it's accurate in _all_ cases and should thus be made illegal.

Only religious and illogical people attack a behavior through outlawing ancillary behaviors that they consider related behaviors.

Your next contrived example doesn't make much sense, either. Should I question somebody's desires because I think how they were developed happened in immorality? I'm not so sure as you. That's who they are, and if they desire it, who am I to judge their desires? Would it be exploiting them? If I were trying to change her mind to change her consent based on those injustices, is that really doing what they would want? That seems more like manipulating what they want is what you don't like. Maybe they don't want manipulation -- that would violate the rule. Perhaps they enjoy both manipulation and the later consensual sex? If they do enjoy those, then I don't see any problem with it.

If you knew about the development and immorality in the process of getting consent, yes, you should question it.

This is an assertion that you haven't supported.

And no, you can't determine what they want when they are tricked into wanting something specific because of other actions.

They want it. That's a premise. You're saying they don't really want it. That's just delusional and leads me to question your grasp of basic logic.

Penalize the trickery, not the ethical behavior.

And if you are aware of those actions, it is unethical.

That's completely arbitrary. Just because I'm aware of how something developed doesn't make me responsible for it, nor does it make me guilty for their own decisions. I'm not aware of any moral system outside of Christianity that tries to transfer guilt like this and (think they can) get away with it.

Just as it would be unethical for a lawyer to have sex with every widows because he knows how to exploit their loss in the process of settling the decease's estate or affairs.

So, a widow has to abstain from sex after their husband dies because otherwise it might look like they are being exploited? You're fucking nuts!

You again confuse non-consensual manipul

Computing Ethics Links

[techuciztecatl]

Here is a bunch of links about Computer Ethics from when I was researching about it. The google video link (last one on this list) is particularly interesting. Computer ethics is actually a university research topic! http://www.brook.edu/its/cei/cei_hp.htm http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/ http://www.southernct.edu/organizations/rccs/resources/teaching/teaching_mono/moor/moor_definition.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/ http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/ProfessionalEthics.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hackers.html http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4279094 http://cyberethics.cbi.msstate.edu/ http://www.oekonux.org/texts/copykillsmusic.html http://www.progilibre.com/Open-Source-Alternative-ou-fausse-route-_a350.html http://www.osalt.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License http://creativecommons.org/ http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html http://www.itc.virginia.edu/policy/ethics.html http://www.brook.edu/its/cei/overview/Ten_Commanments_of_Computer_Ethics.htm http://www.acm.org/serving/se/code.htm http://www.ieee.org/portal/site http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-3088012854941915784&q=computer+ethics

Re: Standard ethics

[AndyCanfield]

Never forget that ethics arises from an individual's experience. I for one have virtually no sense of privacy. So I tend not to "respect" other people's privacy. I have strict respect for personal property, but no respect for intellectual property.

As a consequence, you may feel my actions are unethical, but that is only because they don't match your standards. I may feel your actions are unethical also. We can not even agree on what is illegal (for example, Laos has no copyright law).

All being equal? The cheapest one.

[jotaeleemeese]

That is why we need heavy government regulation, specially against those CEOs, traders and other types that are rewarded regardless if they are successful or not.

Economic factors are mindless and follow pretty predictable rules. Governments should step in to ensure that the mindless mechanisms of the market are controlled so the markets work in benefit of the majority and not only in the benefit of a privileged few, who are rewarded for being reckless even if they are a miserable failure.

In the example you are trying to put forward the government should step in, perhaps by rewarding consumer satisfaction in some way that would make more profitable to follow the client-oriented attitude of company B.

Governments, by their inactions, are promoting the growth of companies of kind A above. They are getting out of hand, and we are all paying the price (look at Iraq if in any doubt: which companies have benefited the most of all that sorry mess?).

Re:All being equal? The cheapest one.

[dpilot]

Government regulation is a difficult thing, in that the types of people you lament usually manage to twist things around to make those regulations do the exact opposite of what you intend. I have no doubt that that would be the case, if we tried as you propose. So what would I propose instead?

For instance, there now appear to be regulations on the books that actually favor sending American jobs offshore, and give companies benefits for doing so. I would repeal stuff like that, leaving nothing in its place. If touching things seems to do the wrong thing, then don't touch them.

Beyond that, I would shoot for information disclosure. The basis of a free market is the informed customer, so make sure the information is flowing. Perhaps in this case, the information that needs to flow is something relating executive compensation compared to company performance, and that information needs to flow to stockholders and prospective stockholders. Another piece of information that should become apparent is whether company profits are growing through revenue growth or cost-cutting, and whether that company growth is through market growth, or "selling the company" or selling the company's crown jewels. Those pieces of information would help stockholders make long-term decisions. Another area that may need some work is gag orders on court settlements. I can accept that some of this information needs to be kept secret, but other information may well be impairing the ability of customers to make informed product decisions, for instance based on safety.

Finally, we have some societal problems. The real problem is that our rapacious CEOs need scorn, not envy. It needs to become socially unacceptable to earn a bonus by axing American jobs.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[nahdude812]

So your rule is allowed caveats but caveats on the traditional one makes it worse?

I think it's fair to say that it's not possible to deterministically solve ethics in a single sentence. That doesn't make sanity checks like the Golden Rule worthless.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sethawoolley]

So your rule is allowed caveats but caveats on the traditional one makes it worse? It's not a caveat -- it's simply a function of the rule, for if the rule isn't satisfied completely there's a violation.

I think it's fair to say that it's not possible to deterministically solve ethics in a single sentence. That doesn't make sanity checks like the Golden Rule worthless. Nobody said it solves it in a single sentence. Merely that if we're going to use guidelines, the conversed variation is much more accurate.

Where do people like you work?

[jotaeleemeese]

I can guarantee you that in Fortune 500 companies there are codes of ethics. Written. In many of them you get in-house training to make sure you don't calim ignorance later. Most likely a disciplinary action will follow if you don't read it. And your ass will be out of the door if you don't follow it.

What a way to embarras yourself in public.

[jotaeleemeese]

There are so many ethical issues regarding the choice of software licensing (either as developer or user) that I will not even try to talk about it.

How somebody with an MBA fails to see this baffles me completely.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc

[sumdumass]

The stigma is because people assume that a ten year old doesn't want sex, so when somebody has sex with one, chances are there was something unethical. It's a heuristic.

The stigma is because a 10 year old is considered too young to know what it wants when making adult decisions. That is why the age of consent of often 17 or 18. It isn't a perfect match but it is a medium that works somewhat well.

Can you bring up any case where a ten year old has consented to sex like this?

No, but my failure to follow the sexual desires of preteens doesn't bring or take anything away from this. I do know that adults convince them to having sex and are arrested and prosecuted when they are caught.

Only religious and illogical people attack a behavior through outlawing ancillary behaviors that they consider related behaviors.

So your saying that I'm either illogical or religious because I think that behavior is exploitive and wrong? I guess I'm glad to be one or the other.

This is an assertion that you haven't supported.

We are talking about hypothetical here. I don't have to support anything because they are all made up scenarios that could or could not happen. I'm saying if X, Y, and Z are true it is unethical, you are saying I don't understand but I disagree with you. I explain X, Y, and Z differently, attach it to another situation and you still disagree.

They want it. That's a premise. You're saying they don't really want it. That's just delusional and leads me to question your grasp of basic logic.,/blockquote> It isn't delusional at all. People are forced to do what they don't want to all the time. Kids for instance, are forced to goto school and sometimes church or other activities that they don't want to participate in. Their submition to your power isn't a sign of what they want all the time. And yes, it does present unethical situations when sex could be involved. And I fail to see how you could think that was ethical in the slightest.

That's completely arbitrary. Just because I'm aware of how something developed doesn't make me responsible for it, nor does it make me guilty for their own decisions. I'm not aware of any moral system outside of Christianity that tries to transfer guilt like this and (think they can) get away with it.

But it does. If you are aware of a machine being broke and giving back incorrect amounts of change in your favor, you are guilty of theft. And the courts have backed that up on the people who notice it and go back repeatedly to collect the extra money that they aren't entitled to. If you know of a situation like that and then act for your own benefit when you aren't otherwise entitled, you have committed theft, fraud, and a number of other legal violations let along the ethics behind it.

So maybe you should look at the courts and trade ethics comities for examples outside Christianity for this.

So, a widow has to abstain from sex after their husband dies because otherwise it might look like they are being exploited? You're fucking nuts!

Lol.. You know damn well what I mean. I can see what your doing here, you are purposely twisting everything so you can get your rant on about Christian like you have brought up before. Well, I'm not what you would consider a Christian so it won't really mean anything with me. I suggest you troll elsewhere. And as the answer to the question that you have, it has nothing to do with the widow abstaining, it has everything to do with the person in a position of trust exploiting that to have sex with the widow. If you seriously don't know what that means, I suggest you ask mommy and daddy for moral guidance there. And then take their answer and compare it to what the ABA, AMA, and many other trade organizations who also administrate ethics have to say. Here'

Interesting Book

[IRGlover]

"IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black is an interesting read when considering the Ethics of Big Business and IT in particular. I made use of it for a similar assignment for a B.Sc.
There is a website for the book that might be useful if you can't get a copy (or read it) in time. http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/