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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."
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...
Anything that isn't prohibited is not only allowed, but also ethical.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Ethics on an MBA - do the marks from this module get subtracted from your overall score?
At the bottom of the
You clearly need to read the canonical guide to sysadmin ethics.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Disturbingly, that does not rule out performing random fellatio in the street.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/31fb/
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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....
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.
Serial Killers are selective about who they kill.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
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
Ahhhh.... the old one-kills-many Vs. many-want-to-kill-the-one comparison.
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.
sudo rm -rf /home/gandhi/
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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.
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!!!!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer