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Review: Code of Ethics for Programmers?
Do computer professionals need a code of ethics? As the computing industry grows, argue two experts on the social aspects of computing, so do the many ethical dilemmas facing people who create, design and sell software and hardware. I'll second that idea: computing is getting some of the worst publicity around, and more and more of it is deserved. This is the second in a series of essays based on "Technology and the Future," edited by Albert Teich and published by Bedford/St.Martin's.
Computers may have ushered in a social and economic revolution, but they don't necessarily signify an advance in the world's ethical life.
Stealing other people's work is almost a hobby on the Net, where copying isn't seen as a crime, but as an inalienable right. Geeks and nerds routinely brag about their software snatches, purloined gaming and music libraries and free upgrades.
Programmers frequently come up with products that are buggy, excessive, unworkable, unsupportable or overpriced. The industry's consumers are exploited and abused.
Online, cruelty and hostility are points of pride, civility and respect rare virtues.
While people all over the world have been quick to embrace computing, they've been slower to consider its moral implications. The explosion of computer technology, its sudden rise, and its susceptibility to misuse and malfunction have raised a slew of unresolved ethical, social and legal issues.
The Net's builders - engineers, nerds, academics and geeks of the 60s and 70s - talked a lot about freedom, accessibility, and openness; they believed in information as a tool for improving the human condition. They would be flabbergasted, three decades later, to learn that entertainment has become the Net's primary draw. According to Cyber Dialogue, more than 43 million users -70 per cent of all Americans online - were using the Web for sports, movies, TV, music or gaming.
As is often typical in visionary social movements, the real world tends to set in brutally. The leaders of today's computing industry today talk a lot more about bandwidth, hardware, and IPO's than about changing the world.
As for other leaders, Congress is much too busy exploiting political concerns about dirty pictures to focus on real moral problems - and by now, nobody would really want Congressional input into the life of the Net and the Web, anyway, especially when it comes to ethics.
So although there are scads of ethical people in the computing business and online - many engaged in downright noble endeavors - computing is still raw, wild, and ethically unformed. Along with the honorable values found online - freedom, sharing, creating - there are plenty of dark ones.
"Computer Ethics," by Tom Forester and Perry Morrison, is one of the most provocative essays in Albert Teich's collection of writings about issues raised by the spread of new technology. There could hardly be a more timely subject. There is nothing approaching a consensus on computing ethics, even as the number of Americans using the Internet rockets past the 100 million mark.
The ease with which even minimally-skilled Net users can copy software, for instance, presents millions of people with ethical dilemmas weekly. Ethicists have argued that copying software is blatant theft, yet the easy transmission of software also challenges long-held ideas about who can and should own information.
Is copying software wrong? Are some kinds of copying more ethical than others?
Hacking and cracking are defined differently all over the Net and Web; some see hacking as harmless fun while cracking is criminal, but an increasing number of people view both activities as equivalent to fraud or theft.
What about the behavior of computer users online? People can act arrogantly, even viciously, ignorantly asserting opinions and spreading misinformation, attacking different views, ridiculing the helpless, driving newcomers away. Websites routinely tolerate behavior that would be prohibited or curtailed in almost any other other context.
Within the computer industry itself, there are by- now- entrenched patterns of unethical corporate behavior. Few companies involved in the creation or maintenance of computers or programs take any real responsibility for what they sell or how it works. Accordingly, few Net users are without horror stories to tell about squandered money or malfunctioning equipment.
Computers are often badly - even unethically -- sold, with pricey and unnecessary equipment foisted on unknowing consumers; technical support remains a nightmare of near-extortionate "incident" plans and delays, with often poorly-trained, overwhelmed staff. In most companies, some of the most important employees, especially in terms of public perception - Help Desk geeks - have the lowest status and salaries.
Computer software is constructed to invade privacy, record personal tastes and habits, share unauthorized information, and market personal information in ever-widening circles and ways.
It's hard to think of any other business with so horrid a record of abusing its customers. Public disgust and resentment over the way computers are sold, and the way the machines work (or don't) help create a climate in which government regulation and intervention becomes more politically appealing. As computers become more central, they tend to be blamed for more and more problems - pornography, isolation, addiction, hate-mongering. Computers get an even worse PR rap these days than politicians.
Although much of this publicity is false or overblown, computing reinforces the disturbing notion that technology often rushes ahead of our ability to deal coherently - or ethically - with it. That in turn breeds mistrust and suspicion.
Who, exactly, bears responsibility for bugs? For system crashes? For the equitable distribution of technology?
The truth is, we have no idea. And it's all only going to get more ethically complicated.
Computer- driven studies in artificial intelligence and genomes have raised staggering question marks - some having to do with the nature of life itself - though they receive far less political or media attention than the occasional media-sensationalized computer virus.
Because computing is a relatively new field, Forester and Morrison write, the profession has lacked the time or organizational capacity to establish a set of moral rules or ethics the way more entrenched professions like medicine or law have. Computing and its many subsets - such as programming and software engineering - haven't yet emerged as a full-fledged profession. They also plead that computer educators teach ethics; that they make students aware of the social problems caused by computers and the kinds of moral choices programmers and designers will face at work.
"Computer professionals face all sorts of ethical dilemmas in their everyday work life," write Forester and Morrison. "First, although they have obligations to their employers, to the customers, to their co-professionals, and to the general public, these obligations often come into conflict."
How should a systems analyst respond if her employer insists on selling overengineered, unnecessarily expensive or otherwise inadequate systems to unknowing customers? Should computer professionals care when they see intellectual or property rights being infringed upon? How should a computer professional deal with the daily barrage of issues involving intellectual property?
Do non-professionals online have any ethical responsibilities at all? Movements like free software and Open Source advocate the sharing, distribution, use and re-use of software, a moral position in conflict with traditional notions of ownership. Yet online, it's almost a moral imperative to thwart corporate efforts to curb information, as when the WB network foolishly postponed the season finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in the post-Columbine hysteria and fans downloaded it all over the Net.
Technically, the "Buffy" fans were stealing the WB's property. Can't a network programming exec air what he or she has bought any time he or she pleases, for any reason at all? Yet in this case, the theft seemed more ethical than the hypocritical decision to postpone the broadcast.
Similiarly, the music industry is in near-meltdown over unpaid MP3 downloads and other forms of piracy. Yet the record companies - one of the world's larger cartels outside Colombia - were due some comeuppance for their arrogance, greed and control over music. In the age of the market-driven mega-corporation, it sometimes does seem more ethical to steal than to pay.
For now, online ethics remain personal and individualistic. Certain values predominate in some quarters - information-sharing, a common interest in protecting freedom, an increasingly rationalist approach to political and informational issues. But how to implement those values in any particular situation is left up to the individual, a hit-or-miss proposition in a culture with tens of millions of people and tens of thousands of newcomers every day.
Professional organizations like the ACM (Associatiion of Computing Machinery), the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the British Computer Society (BCS) and IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) have all worked to create codes of ethics and professional conduct. Few of these codes are widely known and embraced.
But there are broad ethical principles that many computer users and builders can rally around. Here's a few starters:
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Opportunity. People who work in computers might work for the equitable distribution of technology, so that computer users don't become a powerful elite in control of a culture that excludes the technologically illiterate, a social nightmare already well underway.
- Responsibility. People who make technology need to consider its social implications, applications and consequences.
- Access. Unfettered access to the Internet, its information unrestricted and unregulated by corporations or government except in the most dire circumstances.
- Civics. Democracy and inclusion, using network computing to break down elites, to bring more people into the political process, provide them more information, and give them new ways to express their opinions and attitudes.
- Civility. Another ethical goal might be a civil society online - especially a new kind of media -- where information is gathered and shared openly, solutions are approached rationally rather than ideologically, facts replace confrontation and dogma, argument is encouraged but personal attacks viewed as the unethical assaults on the free movement of ideas that they are.
And where corporations, designers, programmers and engineers take responsibility for the things they make and the way they work and are used.
Next - Part Three: The Coming Of The Perfect Baby
There have been a few times I have wished there were a code of ethics that I was bound to. For example, I was once asked to set up a SPAM. I refused to do so. The discussion became somewhat 'animated' at that point. One saving factor was that our bandwidth provider had a no-spam paragraph in it's acceptable use policy. Otherwise, I would have been on my own. (Jobs are lost that way!)
A less reasonable employer would have fired me for insubordination.
All too often sysadmins get put in an uncomfortable position when companies ask them to rifle through people's email.
Things would be much better for professionals if they could honestly tell their employers that no ethical programmer/sysadmin/tech will do that for them, and they could point out a clause in a code of professional ethics to back their statement up.
There is Theft of Intellectual Property, Theft of authorship, etc.
There is an important difference. If I steal your car, you are stranded. You cannot make use of it at all. If I steal your idea, you can still think about it and use it. If I 'steal' a copy of your software, you can still license it to others. My action cost you nothing.
Note that I say it is not theft, not that it is ethical. It is also obviously not legal. Some would argue that it is unethical to charge $100 for a copy that cost $1.00 to make (once development costs and a reasonable profit have been paid for), but that is another debate.
The need for a prescription to buy medicine is a big contributor to the problem. It doesn't matter that you have had the same illness five times in five years, and each time the same thing was prescribed, or that the doctor will probably know exactly what he will prescribe this time as soon as you walk in the door, you still have to go so you can get a prescription. The proscription is probably for an antibiotic that will cost $10 to get filled.
The other side is that pharmaceutical companies charge way more than they should. (Even after considering the cost of R&D and testing). That's why herbal medicine is seeing a HUGE comeback in the US. Most people would prefer 'unproven' herbal medicine to nothing at all (which is the only other option they can afford). The pharmaceutical industry and the AMA are lobbying hard to take that option away. They prefer that your illness makes you their hostage. If you don't pay their randsom and die instead, you were of no use to them anyway.
Before the flamefest starts, I do believe that all (or even most) doctors feel the way the AMA seems to.
"
:)
"But I think it's reasonable to say that the degree I have makes me better at my job than someone who did not go through the motions and fundamentals of how it should be done in the first place."
The fact that you were intelligent, motivated, and disciplined enough to learn how it should be done is what makes you a better programmer, not the fact that you have a diploma.
"
That goes without saying. The diploma, in and of itself, is a piece of paper. Much like a driver's license. It's proof of having gone through the motions of attaining a level of competency... It's the level that's up for debate though, isn't it?
Try asking the average CS graduate what "multiple inheritance" means; you get a lot of blank stares.
You've got to be kidding...
there are advantages to having done advanced work in fields other than CS
Oh certainly. Here I agree whole-heartedly. I may not be a steadfast believer in memetics, but I do think that ideas tend to mutate, and our field of choice benefits greatly from our, seemingly unrelated, experience.
Many times, these discussions of 'value' of a CS education, take on the angle that the education in the field is useless... I strongly disagree. However, such education is all the more valuable is buttressed with humanities, arts, or other sciences.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
In the early days of computer programming, there was no such thing as a CS degree; all programmers were self-taught. This didn't stop them from writing brilliant programs, and solving many of the major problems in computer science
True, but a vast majority of them were also engineers or scientists by discipline. They were all educated as such, and followed that ethic.
The CS curricula of most schools are not as strict as the engineering and 'hard science' disciplines, and this allows the hacks (in the derogatory sense) to squeak through. Also, it's always possible for someone to get a Ph.D. without ever having an original thought. But there is, on average and IMHO, a benefit to the formalism of education in the CS field.
Even with my CS degree, I am probably not as talented/gifted/experienced/insightful as many non-CS educated programmers out there. But I think it's reasonable to say that the degree I have makes me better at my job than someone who did not go through the motions and fundamentals of how it should be done in the first place.
Much as someone with no artistic training can go on to be a great artist on talent, but the average someone who went to art school can paint better than the average someone who didn't.
Unless of course, you're claiming that programming is so trivially easy that anyone can do it, and do it well, through self-study alone.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
bloated software
One person's "bloat" is another's "feature." Yes Windows is bloated, and they're getting their asses handed to them in the server market, where bloat is not acceptable. But for most home users, Windows is still a better choice than any of the non-bloated OS's.
winmodems
This may be news to you, but not everyone has an unlimited supply of money. Winmodems are cheap. Yes they are also cheap hacks, but they get the job done.
two meg video cards
WTF? How is it unethical to sell this? Again, not everyone has unlimited money, and a 2 meg video card is better than a 1 meg video card.
14 inch monitors
So now it's a crime against humanity if you are forced to look at anything smaller than 17 inches? I'm looking at a 15-inch monitor right now, and I don't feel explointed.
If the question is "Should people require licensure to legally create / sell software, and should that licensure be predicated in part on a loyalty oath to a document we'll draft some academics to draft using all of today coolest buzzwords and moral posturing?" the answer is a big flat No.
By naming a few reasons why that No should stand, I do not mean to imply that this list is complete, but
As a note, when my mom went to med school, her school (Johns Hopkins) specifically did *not* feature the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors who wish to profess that oath are still free to, of course, but would you really think your doctor was more or less ethical based on whether they publically declared their allegience to a given code?
thoughts,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
We need good tools to do good work. It's a miracle that we have an abundance of stable free software despite not having access to these tools. That should speak volumes for the capability and skill of the current generation of programmers.
Now, on the issue of ethics - programmers, and geeks at large, already have them. They just don't match up what society wants us to have as ethics. We mistrust authority, promote decentralization, and only offer respect based on competence - not authority. As such... it's only natural that people on the other side of the fence would be clamoring for changes.
Be careful what you wish for - you may just get it. If we don't have programmers exploring all the details of programmable systems - both the good and the bad, we leave ourselves in a kind of technological dark age. Certain knowledge is forbidden, and those that pursue it are persecuted and jailed. One might argue we're getting close to that now...
--
Though he was starting get carried away with himself, he's right on this point. We know how to build reliable, balanced systems. That's what consumers want as well. But that's not what a PC is about; it's about crashing on a regular basis, having to run defragmenters and disk fixers, having to deal with video driver problems, not upgrading to the latest version of Word and having other people complain that they can't read the files you send them, and so on. For example, there's no reason the TNT drivers should be as unreliable as they are. When people pay $130 for a video card, it should be stable. And now before those problems have even been fixed, we're on to the TNT2, which also has unstable drivers. Racing to the cutting edge at the cost of reliability is not a good idea.
Only if the black is poorer than the white.
Is every Native a lazy drunk? Possibly not, although it is well known that Injuns have a higher incidence of lazy drunkenness than other races.
Not even remotely true. What is known is that most Native American people (along with many Asian groups) lack an enzyme that protects against the effects of alcohol. One effect of this is that they're more easily intoxicated by a given amount of alcohol than the average person of European descent.
Is every white a redneck? Possibly not, although since being white seems to be a prerequisite for redneck status, it stands to reason that a white is more likely to be a redneck than a member of any other race.
Since the term redneck has its basis in the sunburns suffered by white field workers, and in popular usage it has come to mean an ignorant white male, it would be difficult to find a redneck of another 'color'.
I don't think the sterotype says that jews will try to _steal_ your money, I think the sterotype say that jews will try to _cheat_ you out of your money, and that jews in general are more concerned about money than other races.
A stereotype that came about because Jews used to be forbidden from participation in most professions. However, due to the Christian prohibitions on loaning money, this was one of the areas Jews could get into - and they did. In short, the Jews were more concerned about money than other groups because it was one of the few things they were allowed to be concerned about.
And please refrain from asking me to ignore relevant information
And please refrain from ignoring it.
Katz draws grand conclusions from little evidence.
How come he's fixated on the warez-ification of that buffy episode, anyway?
You're right; it's hard to become a practicing physician, and this probably does raise the cost of care. On the other hand, would you really want it another way? As it is, there's some damn incompetent docs out there. If they got through, imagine what the ones who got screened out were like.
But this is why we need more competition in the field of medical certification. It may be that the standard set of requirements is testing and teaching the wrong things. Perhaps some of the things in the standard medical curriculum are better left to specialists. Perhaps there needs to be an ongoing rating system whereby doctors are rated for their performance every year. Perhaps there's no way to keep doctors from being incompetent, and the regulations are just driving up prices. I don't know, but that's the point: we need competition and freedom of choice so we can see what types of training works best. As soon as the government extablishes a set of standards, that process is short-circuited, and you're stuck with whatever they give you. That's a bad thing.
As for the amount of work necessary to become a medical student, that would likely continue to be true in a free market. A doctor who gets his patient killed isn't going to stay in business, and consumers will likely start demanding credentials up front. So you still won't be able to come right out of high school and make money as a physician. But the fact that becoming a competent doctor is difficult does not mean that it needs to be as difficult as the current requirements make it, nor that every doctor should go through the same course. The hardships you've endured to become a med student may not not have all been necessary to make you a good doctor. And if not, it's wrong to force you to go through them.
And in a free market, doctors would still get paid well, no doubt about that. And in fact, the really good doctors might even get paid more, as patients would be willing to pay a premium for their services.
So don't confuse government requirements with medical requirements. The fact that the government says that all doctors must do X, Y, and Z does not mean that that's what it requires to become a competent doctor. It may be that med school could be shortened and simplified without hurting the quality of care. If so, the medical profession should have the freedom to try it and find out.
Lots of good reading and some hot spots that caught my attention. Quote: "geeks and nerds routinely brag about their software snatches..." Sounds reasonable to the average consumer computer user who think geeks have greasy hair and live in a dark room in front of a b/w monitor, but hell, Big Evil Software Companies make stealing an art. No need to brag, they just do it!
Ethical programming might include giving credit where credit is due, reliablitity, and let me add security in operating systems. (Ah yes, encryption: they don't sell cars without locks, and would you go traveling around the net without? Got anything to hide?)
whitespace can be your friend :-)
If you want to make sure that your doctor is competent, go to one with a good reputation. There's no reason to force every doctor to go through the same cookie-cutter liscencing process. It's largely a means of restricting the supply of doctors so their pay is higher. There are a lot of tasks that could be handled by a doctor with less training than is currently given (like routine checkups.) Liscencing of doctors is bad, just like liscencing of software. If people want assurances that a doctor will do a good job, private firms can provide testing and certification. But having the government do it is a bad thing.
I do agree that ethical behaviour is important, it is what keeps society together; at least to some meassure. However, Katz has made broad asumptions about the profesionalism of the people that produce the sw that we use, without discriminating on wether the sw is open or shrinkwrap or industrial. There are big differences between them, as well as between the people that produce or sell them. It seems that Katz has not noticed this.
To me, it seems that the open community has done a great job of self regulating; of adhering to a high standard of respect to their fellow coders and to the users of their efforts - ethical behaviour. I have not seen evidence of the contrary. Lets also not forget that programers that work in a sw shop for shrinkwrap sw are seldom in control of the product. The control of the sw in these cases is the realm of the greasy marketer/bussiness person, undoubtedly, a lower life form. For these we do need some form of written code and accountability. (imho)
cheers,
Frank
Software Engineer.
P.S:
--
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in
words evidence of the fact.
-- George Eliot
A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent. -- William Blake
"Don't get caught" might work for some people, but it might be much easier to specialize in an area one enjoys to learn and become very proficient. Else, your specialty could become lying and cheating. Want to follow the path of warez and you will find much company, but the path to shared code leads to much greater rewards.
I remember a flamboyant cheater in college. He was excellent in math, but couldn't grasp the concept of electronics. So he cheated like hell. Goddamn, we were working for an electrical engineering degree and he had problems comprehending logic gates. So, cheated he did. He is now one of those managers at Walmart who initials checks and petty stuff like that.
First of all, the "!@#$! off JonKatz!" flames all over this thread certainly do reinforce the point about lack of civility online. Kind of nifty how that works, the more you criticize him in those terms the better sense his overall argument ends up making. And believe me, I've seen my share of incivility on the net lately -- anyone else around here read the Rialto, aka rec.org.sca?
Secondly, one of the BIG problems with new technology as it is currently being applied is the de-humanizing of critical social service industries. My mother has worked for the state Department of Labor for most of my life. When she started, folks who needed to collect UI were known as "claimants," and they needed to show up to the local offices in person, have someone walk them through the benefit claims process, and generally were shown respect as people who happened to be in a difficult situation, unemployed.
Nowadays, they've decided that "claimant" is degrading and these people should be called "customers." But you know what else they've done? They've closed down about half of the local offices. There is nobody to sit down with these people and walk through the process -- everything's on one of those damnable "press 1, press 2" phone menus at some 1-800 number. They don't generally see a human being unless something has gone wrong, and the number of misunderstandings of the whole process (either by people used to the old system who are back several years later and faced with the new, or by people who have never done it before and find it confusing) has gone up. This is NOT good.
And re: the copying issue. Abuses are occuring on BOTH sides. Software developers are charging asinine amounts of money for their products (in some cases), and some people are just copying everything they can get their hands on, whether they could have afforded to buy it legitimately or not. The situation as it stands is lose-lose, and both sides get to claim moral high ground because of the extremes. What fun.
Furthermore, Katz is absolutely right that the real issues and concerns are being ignored thanks to a bunch of hysteria about dirty pictures and bomb recipies. And the inappropriate responses to this hysteria are not well known outside of certain net-savvy, left-wing circles. (Must I bring up CyberSitter's blatant censorship of anything that disagrees with the company, rude responses to questions, harassment of peacefire.org, and censoring of feminist and pagan sites without telling anyone, not to mention occasional tendency to break source code that goes through TCP streams, yet AGAIN? It appears that I must. *sigh*)
There ARE issues. They need to be discussed and dealt with one way or another, not swept under the rug or covered up by The Great Porn Debate.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Actually, the single largest group of poor people in this country (US) are white. They're rural poor rather than urban poor, so they don't get much media attention, but there you go. Might be different where you're from.
Injuns get drunk more easily than whites. Thus a higher percentage of drunk Injuns.
I've been playing along with you so far because many people actually think the way you're talking, but this last is just too much of a stretch. Very few people are so ignorant that they will make that jump. Especially since statistically speaking (and this is where your fun lies, right?) most American Indians don't drink. In any case, it's been fun playing good cop bad cop with you. We should keep in mind, though, that satirizing the ignorant for their misconceptions probably isn't any more fair than the stereotypes they espouse.
Don't be too quick to dismiss ethics in any form. Sure, Jeremy Rifkin may be a gadfly, but consider the alternitive. You like your food pumped full of antibiotics and steroids so that steak can be bigger and your milk can be 10 cents cheaper and stay a day longer in the fridge?
Computer ethics are lacking and this is why this topic needs to be discussed. Unless, of course, you consider today's commercial software to be high quality and provide you a secure future. Ethics just are a way to make us more aware of issues. Its education and its good.
"Dear tech support,
I refuse to RTFM, I don't know what I'm doing, I can't use your software.
Therefore, I'm reporting you to the BBB!!!"
Yes, that's only one side of the coin, and the other is equally ugly. But...
The quality of something is defined by the perception held by the customer. People expect cars to have 'glitches'. Peeling trim, creaky doors and burning oil are all part and parcel of buying a used car. Malignant problems are not.
Many people, especially those who are not very knowledgable about the inner workings of computers or the process of programming, percieve computers as magical creatures, not far removed from unicorns. That, and their very own, household piece of rocket science. Folks who routinely do less-than-knowledgable things to their computers, and then wonder why the PC crashes without understanding the reason, walk away from the experience with the perception of poor quality.
Much like a brand new driver who slams a car into reverse while rolling forward (fast) because it works on TV... They learn that transmissions are expensive, and no complaining to the BBB will change that.
Software is much more forgiving. But one can still complain to the BBB about the computer that crashed and caused a loss of data - regardless of the fact that in all common-sense, the user could have prevented the event with informed usage.
Yes, we all know that many software developers, especially the cutting-edge, smaller than 'big' ones, cut corners severely. They need the money, so they sell the product before it's ready.
Many are more consciencious than this, but it is impossible to perform truly thorough testing. All user actions, and all software interactions, can not be anticipated. And making software bullet-proof results in either very limited use environments (embedded etc.) or piss-poor performance. So these folks, understandably, test for reasonable, average abuse. This is of course in the off-the-shelf arena.
I'm a relatively informed computer user. I use MS products as amatter of fact and need, and frankly, my computer has not crashed (blue-screened, frozen, lost data) in years. I do not beat the crap out of it, I scan over the manuals.
I change the oil and filters, I rotate the tires and do other routine maintenance, and my used car runs just fine.
Finally, yes, there are scheisters out there looking for a quick buck. They range from small time schemers, to concerted rip-off artists a'la Syncronys Softcorp. There are ignorant users out there who shout "rip-off" whenever the power goes out. If there were "lemon laws" on software, you'd have to have them on every little piece of consumer goods sold in the world. Consider the overhead.
The reason this is not necessary is the fact that consumers learn and adapt. Once burned, you're less likely to grab for the stove - and Linux is doing great because of this. This is where 'reputation' comes in, and regulation goes out. Reputation may be built on marketting at first, but it can not last without a company's inner ethic and quality control. Outside control hurts reputation.
Ow! I've now got blisters on my fingers!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Please read this Slashdot post by yours truly, and see if your opinion doesn't shift a bit.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It strikes me that people here are often, maybe even usually, rude. Your post is an excellent example. You even go so far as to blame it on OTHER people for being 'thin-skinned'. (!)
/.'ers. I have rarely seen such arrogance. Back when it was young, a couple years ago, the expertise you could find here was genuine, and the flaming generally was merited. Nowadays, it's just a bunch of angry teenagers who flame first, think second. The same expert people are here, but their voices are mostly drowned out in the clamor of the angry amateur wannabes. Lots of ego, not much to back it up.
Telling the truth is a good thing. Calling someone names, most of the time, is not. It amazes me how hostile people have become online, and yet how blind they seem to their own hostility.
And he's right about the industry abusing its customers. Microsoft is our favorite example. They write code to make money: security and stability be dammed. Many people even praise them for this... making money, to these people, is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing.
When does it become enough? Microsoft has on the order of 25 billion sitting in the bank. Why don't they take the time to really push the boundaries of what computing is a little bit? Do a little bit of what open source does -- improve computers for everyone, just because it's the right thing to do.
It strikes me that one of the fundamental points of computer ethics is to write software that is secure. Almost nobody I know of does this with their programs. OpenBSD is *the only* operating system I know that has stressed security and code correctness from the beginning. (Netware may be another; it is quite secure, but I do not know what Novell's internal practices are like. )
Respect and tolerance are two more points I think should be taken up by a great many more
The hate that is so often spewed here will break up the open source movement before it ever really gets started. Each time you post something that blasts another person, you do a bit more damage to the community as a whole. Sometimes it's necessary, but there is absolutely no reason to blast Katz. It does no good, and causes harm to the overall community.
Strikes me that most of the people doing it are falling prey to the exact same pettiness they almost universally loathe and despise in others, at school and in other RL places. 'Get out, you don't belong here, you're Not One Of Us'... implying that the person who is saying it IS.
It is so very sad that the people who are tormented and abused most -- the geeks -- do the same thing to people who aren't exactly like them.
"How can we be in, if there is no outside." -- Peter Gabriel
$200 is still way outside the budget of the vast proportion of the world's population, many of whom don't even have a telephone yet.
That's true, but it has little to do with the actions of the computer industry. Third World countries are poor for a number of reasons, I think most importantly that their governments have screwed up their economies with socialistic meddling. But whatever the reason, I don't see what we can do about it. Sure, we can send some of our 486's to other coutries, but many of them don't even have electricity.
Insisting on ethical manufacturing processes - e.g ensuring that 'Made in Taiwan' Reeboks have been produced by a factory that treats and pays it's workers fairly.
I disagree. You have to remember that (unless they are actual slaves, which of course is bad) people take these jobs because it is better than their alternatives. If we boycott Reebok for giving people in Taiwan jobs, they will decide it's not worth the hassle and move their manufacturing to richer countries. Part of the reason why wages are so low in those countries is that it is expensive for companies to go there. There is little infrastructure for manufacturing, governments occasionally nationalize factories, the workers are unskilled, etc. Demanding that these companies raise their wages might help some, but it will also lead to some companies just moving their factories to countries with more skilled workers, stabler governments, and better infrastructure.
Please guys - take a step back here.
I've been lurking on slashdot for many moons, and have seen the general tone of comment descending steadily over time. Does anyone else find it ironic that many of the comments on Jon's article are proving the point he was trying to make?
> Online, cruelty and hostility are points of
> pride, civility and respect rare virtues.
>> heh. shut up katz. you're a fucking idiot.
Nice one sunshine. Maybe Jon's got a point.
Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he's tapped out 10,000 words and obviously put a degree of thought into what he's written - (nice to see those question-marks have disappeared as well). If you don't like it, submit your own essay and show us how it's done.
Another benefit of Katz's work, and others like it, is that it gives a point of view from an essentially non-technical point of view.
Slashdot is read almost exclusively by white 20 year old males, who compile kernels just for the hell of it. But like it or not, the demographics of computer users are changing, and we are now in the minority.
Our job as experienced members of the IT industry is not to try and alienate the users, but to educate them. OK, so someone wants to use hotmail instead of learning how to connect to a POP server. Why? It's easier. Why should novice IT users need to know about POP3 just to read email?
There are 100 million people worldwide entering a domain that, up until a few years ago was entirely ours. We'd best adapt to that.
And to end my rant - someone commented that mechanics don't have a code of ethics either. My question for you is "would you trust a mechanic?"
Cheers... Mike
It strikes me that people here are often, maybe even usually, rude. Your post is an excellent example. You even go so far as to blame it on OTHER people for being 'thin-skinned'.
/.'ers
I reread my post, and for the most part it didn't strike me as rude. My apologies if it was out of line. But I *do* think that people are too sensitive about being offended on the 'net. Words are just words. They can't hurt you. Part of free speech is taking the good with the bad. So I don't think the occasional flame is that big of a deal. I don't like it, but it's not going to keep me up nights.
As for hostility towards Katz, his articles indicate that he is a gasbag with very little of value to say. That's not to say that he shouldn't be allowed to write his articles, but when what he writes is crap, I'm going to say so. I think this was crap.
And he's right about the industry abusing its customers. Microsoft is our favorite example. They write code to make money: security and stability be dammed.
This is a false alternative. In some markets, security and stability are very important, and Microsoft is getting their asses handed to them by Solaris, Linux, *BSD and others in those domains. In other areas, however, features are more important that stability and security, and so They are doing pretty well. A home PC is not the same as a production server. Engineering is about tradeoffs. Microsoft has written software that is buggy, bloated, but is also backwards compatible and has a lot of features. Is it what people want? The market will decide. Ultimately, writing good software and making money *do* go hand in hand. The market is changing so fast, however, that it is not yet clear what people really want.
It strikes me that one of the fundamental points of computer ethics is to write software that is secure. Almost nobody I know of does this with their programs. OpenBSD is *the only* operating system I know that has stressed security and code correctness from the beginning. (Netware may be another; it is quite secure, but I do not know what Novell's internal practices are like. )
There's a reason for this. Writing software as secure as OpenBSD takes time and money, and limits the things you can do with the OS. Home users running Mac OS or Windows simply don't have the same priorities as a sysadmin. Security is simply one tradeoff, and by no means does it automatically trump other considerations.
Respect and tolerance are two more points I think should be taken up by a great many more
Respect and tolerance for people is a good thing. I'm not sure that mindless tolerance for ideas is, however. Many of the things that Katz writes are wrong, and I see no reason to beat around the bush about it. If I met Katz in person I would not be rude to him. I am not attacking him personally, but only the ideas he espouses. I think those ideas are not just wrong, but if put into practice would be destructive of the enourmous benefits of technology.
The hate that is so often spewed here will break up the open source movement before it ever really gets started. Each time you post something that blasts another person, you do a bit more damage to the community as a whole. Sometimes it's necessary, but there is absolutely no reason to blast Katz. It does no good, and causes harm to the overall community.
I don't think so. I didn't "blast Katz." I blasted his nonsensical ideas and mediocre writing. A healthy community requires disagreement and debate. My objections were not ad hominum attacks or mindless flaming. I gave specific objections and reasons for those opinions. Perhaps I should have been more civil, but I did not "spew hate." I spewed disagreement.
Strikes me that most of the people doing it are falling prey to the exact same pettiness they almost universally loathe and despise in others, at school and in other RL places. 'Get out, you don't belong here, you're Not One Of Us'... implying that the person who is saying it IS.
Where do you get that? I don't think I ever said that or anything like it. My annoyance with Katz is not his non-geekness, but his long-winded leftist puff pieces. That has nothing to withhim personally or his status as a non-geek. It has to do with him writing bad essays. That's all I mean.
Doctors could get away with quite a bit, if driven to evil. (I think I saw a piece on one of those prime time news shows some months back.) Auto mechanics can make up repairs, or lie about maintenance schedules to take extra money from an unsuspecting customer. Even the telephone operator, who for some reason decides he doesn't want to look up my brother's number in Cleveland, and instead tells me there's no record and hangs up, has a potential to harm in some small way.
Does there need to be a code of ethics for auto mechanics? Does there need to be a code of ethics for telephone operators? I don't think so. We can get along quite nicely with one big code of ethics for everybody: ``Don't f*** anyone over.'' At least that's my code of ethics. It has worked for me no matter what field I am working in. The only thing it requires is a little bit of thought, that that is what is lacking.
Don't start thinking this is a new problem, either. People have been evil and opportunistic since the beginning of time. Just because we have a new advancement in technology, doesn't mean that today is any different than any other point in history. If you think you live in some kind of ``special time'' or ``golden age,'' you're just fooling yourself.
So come on, everybody. Just be nice.
Also, I have a hard time believing that you can teach ethics. That is something that can only be learned by example.
PS: Was this supposed to be some kind of review?
My Freakin Blog
You're the med student, so my apologies if some of the specifics here are wrong. But I think the basic ideas here apply to many fields that involve highly skilled and important work.
I don't think having consumers "require credentials" would really help.
The credentials wouldn't be simply a list of the subjects the doctor has studied. It would be a recommendation from a nationally trusted doctor certification firm. Firms would set up testing programs and/or collaborations with schools in order to insure that anyone who is certified by XYZ certification agency has a certain competency. Consumers would then ask to see *those* credentials, which would be simple enough that they could interpret them themselves.
Also, how exactly, then, is the current system unfree? The only real regulation on it (aside from the FDA, which is necessary --- doctors do not have time to evaluate drugs themselves) is the licensing standards, plus laws which prevent physicians from doing evil things.
There's no reason that the FDA has to do the certification of drugs. UL certifies electrical devices. The SAT and ACT certify students. There are lots of private organizations that do certifications, and in the absence of government regulation more would exist. Doctors wouldn't have to evaluate every drug. He'd only have to pick a couple of ceritification agencies he trusts and subscribe to their recommendation service.
The other area of medicine that is unfree is the restrictions on health insurance. There is a long and ever-growing list of things that health companies may not or must do. The result of this is that, combined with the tax credits I mentioned earlier, patients are forced to pay for services they may not want, and are subject to HMO bean-counters to boot. That's why I think we need fee-for-service medicine with insurance only in catastrophic cases. It gives control back to the patients, who can then find a doctor they trust and make their own decisions with his input.
I think it's important to realize that most people don't directly pay for their medical care. They do it via insurance, or Medicaid, or some other program. Such a program is generally not willing to pay anything more than it has to. Thus, premium care will be (as it is now) reserved for those who pay out-of-pocket. A free-market system will heavily favor the wealthy. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just pointing out the implications of your model.
That's a big part of the problem: no one pays for their own care. Scaling back medicare and extending the health care deductions to employees as well as employers would give you more people control over their own care. People *do* pay for their own care now, they just don't have much say in how that money is used.
Personally, I feel that the profession does have that option. The requirements for licensure mainly revolve around the standardized USMLE tests. The tests are designed by committees which consist almost exclusively of doctors. The licensing boards tend to also be composed almost exclusively of doctors. So, it's physicians who say what makes a good physician. Also, consider health-care laws. In general, the AMA tends to get what it wants when it lobbies, because even Congresspeople tend to trust physicians.
That not really the freedom to try new things. The fact that doctors are making the decision does not change the fact that the entire country (or at least each state) has a single solution imposed on it by those doctors. They might be making a good decision, but they also might screw up. And a competent doctor who disagrees with the conventional wisdom can be thrown in jail for practicing medicine differently from his peers.
The point being that *individual* doctors do not have the freedom to try different ways of doing business. They are forced to learn a specific body of medical knowledge, and practice medicine a specific way. For the most part, that probably is fine, but the majority can be wrong, and I don't want the majority stifling the new ideas of a new innovator.
The standards are at their current level because a whole bunch of doctors believe they ought to be there. I've never heard a physician argue that they should be lowered. Admittedly, they might just want to make me suffer the same way they did, but if your goal is to let the medical profession experiment with educational techniques, you're already there.
"The medical profession" is not a monolithic body, and a cartel of doctors is no more desireable than a cartel in any other industry. Individual doctors or medical institutions do not have the freedom to try new curricula or new procedures without the approval of the FDA and various other regulatory bodies.
Read the subject. Then read it again.
I've a long standing set of rules which I attepmt to live by, formulated over a course of years through analysis of as many various "codes of ethics" as I could find data on. I've read religious texts and secular philosophies (though these are not so different). The bottom line is that my studies of what people, both today and in the past, have deemed as ethical/right/appropriate/honorable/moral all comes down to respect. It's my holy grail and my concience. There is no situation I've yet found where the application of respect does not lead to the appropriate choice. Determine the context and then behave in the manner that is most respectful to all involved parties.
This theory, which is first and foremost of my Three Rules for Living Right aoolies just as readily to the issues raised by Katz as any other. If a particular action is disrespectful, it shouldn't be performed. For example, writing buggy, inefficient software and releasing it under pretense of stability is disrespectful to the user. Thus, developers ought to endeavor to write clean, efficient code or at least wait for stability before relaese. This is but one example. See if you can apply it more widely. I've come to live by this code and my experience tells me it works.
I hope this has provoked some thought. Feel free to reply below, or by personal email, though if you flame me I'll just delete it - keep it, well, respectful.
Cheers,
Kerry Benton
krb@rsnmail.com
p.s. Three Rules for Living Right isn't a book I wrote or anything, just how I refer to the rules I live by. Just so you don't think I'm plugging a product.
This has been discussed ad nauseum when we talked about the value and validity of CS degrees and the concept of Software Engineering as a degree and a work title.
We came to the conclusion, that in situations where the work done may, if not done properly, endanger others (the definition of endangerment varies), then a title, a certificate, or a professional membership, is a Good Thing. Such a condition, by definition, carries with it a code of ethics (i.e. Professional Engineer).
A landscaper doesn't need to have one, nor does a small-time plumber (though often they must be INSURED for the work they do). An architect, or large-scale engineer (think bridges, highways, municipal scale work) must be licensed by the state where they practice.
With small-time software, Caveat Emptor, and long live open source!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Coffee.html
- Do not do anything criminal
- Do not do anything irresponsible
- Do not assist anyone else in doing anything criminal or irresponsible
- Do not behave like apathy and laziness is equivalent to being criminal and irresponsible: it's better for uncaring people to learn to care without assuming 'original sin' and a burden of guilt for choices they made when they were not competent to decide rationally for themselves.
This basically covers most ethical problems, hopefully in a useful way. For instance, Microsoft are often irresponsible and sometimes illegal. Simply being a luser and using their stuff is not ethically wrong, but it begins to enter the picture as the consumer stops being an idiot. There is a level where 'I want MS to win and destroy everything else because that is the best thing for the world's innovation and progress!' can't be considered ethically wrong because it is simply insane- psychotic, because of the major areas of reality that this viewpoint flatly contradicts. Hence, such a person would need help rather than censure, and hopefully could learn a more sensible worldview, one that was grounded in reality. Finally, someone who was thinking, "I am aware that Microsoft behaves irresponsibly and sometimes in a criminal manner, but I want them to keep doing this because _I_ have invested in their stuff/their stock, so I would like them to commit crimes on behalf of my self-interest" would be ethically in the wrong, along the lines of sociopathy: it is normal to have a little more public interest than that. Maybe not a _lot_, but it is neither normal or healthy to be _that_ hostile to the needs and concerns of others.This is the primary value of ethics: it is a defense against sociopathy. It's usually possible for single individuals to gain greatly at the expense of others, but if this goes unchecked, the overall quality of society declines, even for the person trying to gain at the expense of society. There are healthy levels of gain that don't weaken society, and unhealthy levels that blight society. Ethics is the codification of guidelines that place society first and the individual second, so they are always likely to be relative.
You could easily make an argument that mp3s are ethical because what is really being dealt with is a means of mass communication: though mp3s are widely used to violate existing intellectual property laws, they themselves are a mechanism for communication which is under attack by other mechanisms with major ethical problems (i.e. particular companies owning the means of communication, planned obsolescence, the auto-destruction of means of conveying information), and so advocacy of mp3s is a substantially ethical thing to do for society, arguably even at the expense of the intellectual property being violated- something that might not be reasonable to protect forever, in the same sense that books ceased to be highly valuable items when substantially cheaper means arose to copy _them_.
You can't make a living as a scribe these days...
Information is changing in significance, and the most important thing to keep in mind is to protect the new freedoms from being legislated out of existence. Any code of ethics for the computer industry would have to place communication of information above all else- that is the single most revolutionary change the computer era has brought us. Productivity? Ha. Ease of use? *ROFL*. Adding to the wisdom of the common man? *AOL*. But! How many of you have a friend in a country you don't live in? How many people _ten_ _years_ ago had a friend in a country they didn't live in?
This is the new vision of society- it's McLuhan's wet dream of global locality, and it's immediately accessible, and for those with a willingness to expend effort, it is accessible at virtually _no_ cost. Almost anything will run 'telnet', and if you have that you are off and running, reading man pages and getting access to that information. Just because inner cities and third world countries do not _want_ 286es doesn't mean it's not a resource- anyone who's 'gotten by' with telnet knows how accessible the world's information is.
Hence, it is ethically imperative to do everything possible to keep this connectivity from being taken away by entities with a vested interest in limiting it.
While quoting Lisa Simpson does have its amusement factor, please tell me you know that she (the cartoonist? actor?) was quoting Abraham Lincoln.
There's crime and dishonesty on the Net? Has the president been notified? It's almost like the net created a virtual community, almost like a city. We all know that cities don't have ethics problems, so why does the net? It must be those evil hackers!
This sort of moralistic handwringging is a bit much for me. I posit that there are far more well behaved netizens than not. Bad business practices are not limited to the software industry. The net is a mirror of ourselves and if we don't like what we see maybe it's time to turn the computer off for a bit.
There are ways for the free market to handle these problems, however. One example would be that hospitals would have brand names and each brand would set certain standards for all their doctors. You could then specify that you want your medical care coming from XYZ hospital chain, and you'd be guarunteed a certain level of care.
There are other methods as well. One would be that groups like the AMA would doubtless still provide ceritification, and you could refuse to go to any doctor who wasn't AMA certified.
The "high price" of medicine is a function, quite honestly, of the free market in medical services. Doctors, given a monopoly on their profession, charge as much as they can.
But how is this different from any other profession? All industries want to chage as umuch as possible, yet most products' prices stay relatively flat. Why are doctors different? The major reason that medical costs have spiraled out of control is precisely that we *don'(* have a free market in health care. let me elaborate:
Doctors certification. As you said, doctors like to charge monopoly prices. This helps them do it. By setting very high standards, they exclude as many doctors as possible and thereby put themselves in demand.
Other regulations. The government also controls, bans, regulates, and generally screws up many other aspects of medicine. For example, the FDA causes years worth of delays before a medicine can be introduced, and adds billions of dollars in testing costs. True, some of these tests would need to be done anyway, but a lot of it is just beaurocracy
Medicare. This is probably the biggie. The government now pays more than a third of medical bills. This lead to doctors over-charging patients, since the bill was being paid by the government.
Health Care restrictions. The government has an ever-widening list of things that all health insurance plans must fund. Many of these are things that patients would choose to do without if they were paying for them directly, but instead they are forced to pay for them indirectly
Employer-financed health care. The tax code is structured so that employers get a tax break if they pay for their employees health care but the employees cannot get the same tax break if they buy it themselves. This is why so many employers are providing health care for their employees, which if you think about it doesn't make any sense. In a free market, most employees would simply get a paycheck, and they could purchase "fringe benefits" with the extra pay. This is also the cause of employees losing their health care coverage when they change jobs.
As for the "private" certification boards in the US, the fact remains that their certifications have the force of law, so they are de facto government agencies.
Katz is doing the exact same thing. His concern for "computer ethics" does not seem to be so much concern for specific problems but a simple desire to pontificate on the evils of computers in general. A few specific issues:
"hacking versus cracking:" I'm not sure what definition of "hacking" he's using, but the standard one on /. is simply clever and/or quick-and-dirty programming. I don't see how that's ever bad.
He mentions the piracy issue and then has nothing of value to say about it. Yes it's a problem. So what?
He trots out the "gap between the rich and poor" argument, which has been standard leftist fare with any new innovation for decades. But the simple fact is that computing for the masses is here. You can get a decent PC for under $1000. You can get a 486 for a couple hundred dollars. And those numbers will continue to drop.
He then proceeds to attack the industry for "abusing" its customers. This is also nonsense. The computer industry has been improving its product faster than any other industry in the history of the universe. So technologically, this is certainly not true. And yes, some companies have lousy tech support. So what? Other companies have pretty good tech support, and if people really want better tech support someone will figure that out and offer it. This is simply an inconvenience, not an industry-wide crisis.
The final "preoblem" he trots out is "incivility." This is just baloney. Apperantly some people have thin skins, and so therefore we need to tone down our discusions to avoid offending anyone. I say if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. There are a lots of moderated forums where you don't have to deal with any "incivil" people.