User: uhhhhhhhhhhDuh

Re:What I would like to know more than anything

On: Ask the Designers of D&D Fourth Edition

WotC is doing the same thing to DnD that they did to Magic the Gathering. Make a new set of stuff every few months that everyone has to buy to keep the money rolling in steadily.

Re:Is this really needed?

On: Dell's World of Warcraft Laptop

Is this really needed? well, will it make them any money?

Re:Uhhhhh

On: How to Deal With Stolen Code?

To me, this sounds like the OP is a quite young programmer who is looking for a chance to lead a moral crusade rather than get the job done. In my experience I avoid taking on employees like that because they seem more focused on making sure everyone else follows their ethics than in doing a good job on the task at hand.

Or he's a young programmer who is afraid he's the scapegoat.

I'm betting it's the second option, too. I work at IBM and with as much money is involved with the stuff that happens here, all the departments I see are more concerned with liability and CYA rather than just getting the job done. Small mistakes around here quickly turn into multi-million dollar lawsuits, and no one ever wants to be responsible for something like that.

Hell, a few months ago I saw a situation where a customer was asking one of our operators to turn a machine off and on. The operator had been told that we as a policy never do that, so declined. The customer got irate and started threatening the operator. Later when the entire episode was escalated, I heard our department manager say "Fuck the customer."

I haven't been in the working world for long, but it just seems that in big business, Liability > Customer Service.