That's a rant, good for letting off steam but doesn't really do much to move debate forward.
The questions I'm looking to address are:
* Is it morally acceptable to do the type of monitoring I described in my hypothetical employment scenario
* Is so, is there a difference in the ethical situation when a large corporate does the same things.
I think the answers are yes and no respectively. I suspect lots of people here will think yes and yes - specifically because or a belief that being a large corporations means it is right to have more restrictive rules applied to you than individuals. I take my opinion because I think any intrusions the Govenment makes on the liberty of companies will tend to be applied to individuals too over time.
My preferred method of limiting this type of spying would be to have it so people considered it unacceptable and a reason to leave and get a job with another company. I recognise that won't always be possible for everyone but if should be the case that if a company treats it's employees 'like shit' then their reaction will put the company at a disadvantage.
If I contracted out a translator to retype a French document in English, and I gave them my laptop to do it on I'd damn sure want to make sure I know everything he does on it.
I'd want to do the decent thing by making sure he knows that anything he does with the machine will be logged.
I think this is pretty reasonable, and I see a large corporation doing this as the same ethical situation - what is the problem here?
It wasn't completely useless, you could still the the address of the page you were interested in. Easy enough to copy and paste if you know what you're doing.
True, but IE7 less so than IE6 and IE8 less so than IE7. As time goes on the more rigorously you adhere to standards the more likely your pages will render identically on different browsers.
I just wish people would ditch IE6. It still has about a 10% hit rate on our corporate site getting ~3k visits a month.
By 'religious rhetoric' I'm talking about the type of seductive prose sometimes used by religious folks.
Evangelical Christians tricking naive into giving them money? Religious rhetoric.
Muslims espousing political ideologies mandated by the divine? Religious rhetoric.
Medieval Catholics explaining the Earth is the centre of the universe? Religious rhetoric.
Modern Americans explaining how the theory of evolution and the idea of intelligent design are competing scientific theories? See above.
To be clear: I am not suggesting that because a point of view stems from religious beliefs it is invalid. I argue that the virtues I listed as being valuable outcomes of a high school education are an effective shield against becoming intellectually crippled by ideas which are irrational (yet appealing to the untrained mind). Further, I believe that not developing these virtues leaves a child at significant risk of being swayed by what I would call 'religious rhetoric'.
I try to use non-technical analogies to explore my thoughts about acting in one country to cause damage in another. Consider someone in country 'A' mails a bomb to country 'B' where it detonates and causes damage whilst killing several people. Should country 'A' allow the citizen to be extradited to country 'B'.
I think usually yes, and that most people would agree particularly if A and B are both western nations as in the McKinnon case.
But what about if the crime is 'virtual' and causes comprable damage? I argue there is no distinction and that the same extradition rules should apply. In both cases a person has acted in one country, purposefully sending something to another in order to create an effect there which causes serious damage.
Of course, the analogy breaks down with the McKinnon case. However they like to spin it he did not to much damage, didn't hurt anyone and doesn't appear to have done it for financial gain or to specifically cause damage. It is bizzarre that the US is even pushing for extradition. They should certainly take an interest in his case, perhaps even testifying in his trial which should absolutely without any room for negotiation be taking place in THE UK.
Maybe try to talk to your teacher about it. I don't think the police would care to much anyway, and bringing in the law at this point probably won't do anyone any good.
If the guy really cares that much, spend a couple hours researching IP law, write a paper explaining why you think that the teacher has no legal basis for doing this and why you think it's not ethical anyway. It seems the teacher is trying to avoid plagiarism by taking away source material. I'd go to pains to make the point that there will always be opportunities to plagiarise and that is is much more effective to educate students on the academic risks involved.
Then, let your teacher know how you feel about it and ask them to read through your paper. Make it clear that you see this as a serious problem and try to negotiate with your teacher to get them to see things from your perspective. Hopefully you'll be able to get assurances that this won't happen again. If that doesn't happen, then it's reasonable to ask for more opinions by sending your paper to more people.
At all times give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and assume (unless they give good reasons to the contrary) that they were acting in good faith. "Try not to be a dick" is a idea to live by. Would you really think it's appropriate to set the the police on this person?
Certainly not! If I take notes in my own words they're just as much my own words as if I were to read through Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and write a guide explaining it for elementary school children.
Grr, I hope you're a troll - surely people aren't this naive about IP law.
I'm surprised that post hasn't been modded insightful. Newton is 'incorrect' in the sense that using general relativity can make more accurate predictions. It's a wonderful example of how an imperfect model can be a useful.
At the end of the day I don't care if high school students graduate without knowing their fermions from their bosons. The most valuable thing kids can take from it is that they develop rationality, critical thinking skills and the ability to understand how to reason objectively.
If someone can do those three things well it won't matter if people try to poison them with religious rhetoric.
Hmm, apologies - this post turned into something of a rant.
Did you have to move to Office 2007 if you didn't move to OpenOffice? I can't see where the savings come from if you already had MS Licenses.
We're in a reasonably small company (c. 50 seats) and still on Office 2003. Any pointers for writing a business plan for migrating to Open Source software?
AD has lots of proprietary extensions not found in open source alternatives. I doubt you'd be able to use Exchange with an open alternative, and any other software which relies on Active Directory may not behave correctly.
Do you use group policy? I've never found a way to get that working in any straightforward way that a new sysadmin could use without retraining.
I've said this before, but I think the bottom line is because of MS's poor documentation and proprietary protocols, it is difficult to build clones. This means that despite any inferiority to Free alternatives, MS software is often the best alternative when it comes to working well with other MS software.
If you want to use a Free directory server, make sure you are using a Free OS on all your machines.
Well OK, but these companies receiving Government funds are publicly traded and now have a hefty number of shares owned by the government. They socialize future profits also.
And why not? If we perceive the demise of certain industry giants to be so utterly catastrophic, I think it's right and for the best that they become partly government owned.
I guess it's meant as a compliment. He probably meant 'A description Microsoft's glory, magnificence and riches beyond imagination transcends letters and can only be truly represented using non-alphanumeric characters.'
They want to educate the public to pay them more money, not educate them on these litigious travesties. Would love to see them file that in their appeal.
If a resident on your street died violently each time a particular car drove down it, you'd be best to suspect it is not coincidence and investigate the car.
In that case, the correlation is worth investigating. I believe there is also a good case for investigating the reasons for a perceived correlation between young violent offenders and violent videogame usage. At the very least it may give some insights into the mindset of young offenders.
Also, when reading this study, consider that it does nothing to innvestigate if violence in videogames *causes* players to become more aggressive, only that players do not (or at least do not admit) to finf violence an important factor in making a videogame enjoyable.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a rant, good for letting off steam but doesn't really do much to move debate forward.
The questions I'm looking to address are:
* Is it morally acceptable to do the type of monitoring I described in my hypothetical employment scenario
* Is so, is there a difference in the ethical situation when a large corporate does the same things.
I think the answers are yes and no respectively. I suspect lots of people here will think yes and yes - specifically because or a belief that being a large corporations means it is right to have more restrictive rules applied to you than individuals. I take my opinion because I think any intrusions the Govenment makes on the liberty of companies will tend to be applied to individuals too over time.
My preferred method of limiting this type of spying would be to have it so people considered it unacceptable and a reason to leave and get a job with another company. I recognise that won't always be possible for everyone but if should be the case that if a company treats it's employees 'like shit' then their reaction will put the company at a disadvantage.
I'm not too familiar with an Ibex, but have you ever left a single pair of Rabbits alone with enough food and water to keep them going?
They breed like, well, you know.
If I contracted out a translator to retype a French document in English, and I gave them my laptop to do it on I'd damn sure want to make sure I know everything he does on it.
I'd want to do the decent thing by making sure he knows that anything he does with the machine will be logged.
I think this is pretty reasonable, and I see a large corporation doing this as the same ethical situation - what is the problem here?
It wasn't completely useless, you could still the the address of the page you were interested in. Easy enough to copy and paste if you know what you're doing.
True, but IE7 less so than IE6 and IE8 less so than IE7. As time goes on the more rigorously you adhere to standards the more likely your pages will render identically on different browsers.
I just wish people would ditch IE6. It still has about a 10% hit rate on our corporate site getting ~3k visits a month.
No (shit)!
Come now, non-trivial or remotely controversial edits already require 'fighting bureaucracy, patience and the right contacts'.
Hopefully not that accurate.
By 'religious rhetoric' I'm talking about the type of seductive prose sometimes used by religious folks.
Evangelical Christians tricking naive into giving them money? Religious rhetoric.
Muslims espousing political ideologies mandated by the divine? Religious rhetoric.
Medieval Catholics explaining the Earth is the centre of the universe? Religious rhetoric.
Modern Americans explaining how the theory of evolution and the idea of intelligent design are competing scientific theories? See above.
To be clear: I am not suggesting that because a point of view stems from religious beliefs it is invalid. I argue that the virtues I listed as being valuable outcomes of a high school education are an effective shield against becoming intellectually crippled by ideas which are irrational (yet appealing to the untrained mind). Further, I believe that not developing these virtues leaves a child at significant risk of being swayed by what I would call 'religious rhetoric'.
I try to use non-technical analogies to explore my thoughts about acting in one country to cause damage in another. Consider someone in country 'A' mails a bomb to country 'B' where it detonates and causes damage whilst killing several people. Should country 'A' allow the citizen to be extradited to country 'B'.
I think usually yes, and that most people would agree particularly if A and B are both western nations as in the McKinnon case.
But what about if the crime is 'virtual' and causes comprable damage? I argue there is no distinction and that the same extradition rules should apply. In both cases a person has acted in one country, purposefully sending something to another in order to create an effect there which causes serious damage.
Of course, the analogy breaks down with the McKinnon case. However they like to spin it he did not to much damage, didn't hurt anyone and doesn't appear to have done it for financial gain or to specifically cause damage. It is bizzarre that the US is even pushing for extradition. They should certainly take an interest in his case, perhaps even testifying in his trial which should absolutely without any room for negotiation be taking place in THE UK.
Maybe try to talk to your teacher about it. I don't think the police would care to much anyway, and bringing in the law at this point probably won't do anyone any good.
If the guy really cares that much, spend a couple hours researching IP law, write a paper explaining why you think that the teacher has no legal basis for doing this and why you think it's not ethical anyway. It seems the teacher is trying to avoid plagiarism by taking away source material. I'd go to pains to make the point that there will always be opportunities to plagiarise and that is is much more effective to educate students on the academic risks involved.
Then, let your teacher know how you feel about it and ask them to read through your paper. Make it clear that you see this as a serious problem and try to negotiate with your teacher to get them to see things from your perspective. Hopefully you'll be able to get assurances that this won't happen again. If that doesn't happen, then it's reasonable to ask for more opinions by sending your paper to more people.
At all times give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and assume (unless they give good reasons to the contrary) that they were acting in good faith. "Try not to be a dick" is a idea to live by. Would you really think it's appropriate to set the the police on this person?
Certainly not! If I take notes in my own words they're just as much my own words as if I were to read through Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and write a guide explaining it for elementary school children.
Grr, I hope you're a troll - surely people aren't this naive about IP law.
I'm surprised that post hasn't been modded insightful. Newton is 'incorrect' in the sense that using general relativity can make more accurate predictions. It's a wonderful example of how an imperfect model can be a useful.
At the end of the day I don't care if high school students graduate without knowing their fermions from their bosons. The most valuable thing kids can take from it is that they develop rationality, critical thinking skills and the ability to understand how to reason objectively.
If someone can do those three things well it won't matter if people try to poison them with religious rhetoric.
Hmm, apologies - this post turned into something of a rant.
decaptcha.com is just a middle man for a mechanical turk style service, right?
No it didn't, they jad to do lots and lots of nuclear tests. Tests which would be detected today.
Did you have to move to Office 2007 if you didn't move to OpenOffice? I can't see where the savings come from if you already had MS Licenses.
We're in a reasonably small company (c. 50 seats) and still on Office 2003. Any pointers for writing a business plan for migrating to Open Source software?
...and of course any VBA in the document is going to be a problem.
True, but that would be true regardless ;)
Tell me about it.
Most exciting headline which turned out to be me misreading it EVER.
AD has lots of proprietary extensions not found in open source alternatives. I doubt you'd be able to use Exchange with an open alternative, and any other software which relies on Active Directory may not behave correctly.
Do you use group policy? I've never found a way to get that working in any straightforward way that a new sysadmin could use without retraining.
I've said this before, but I think the bottom line is because of MS's poor documentation and proprietary protocols, it is difficult to build clones. This means that despite any inferiority to Free alternatives, MS software is often the best alternative when it comes to working well with other MS software.
If you want to use a Free directory server, make sure you are using a Free OS on all your machines.
Well OK, but these companies receiving Government funds are publicly traded and now have a hefty number of shares owned by the government. They socialize future profits also.
And why not? If we perceive the demise of certain industry giants to be so utterly catastrophic, I think it's right and for the best that they become partly government owned.
Why use visible light rather than IR? Or UV to which glass is opaque.
I guess it's meant as a compliment. He probably meant 'A description Microsoft's glory, magnificence and riches beyond imagination transcends letters and can only be truly represented using non-alphanumeric characters.'
Or something.
They want to educate the public to pay them more money, not educate them on these litigious travesties. Would love to see them file that in their appeal.
Yes, but this study shows that violence has no impact on the enjoyment of a game so (if verified) puts your idea to bed.
I suspect there is significant marketing value in violent content in games, which is why they are produced.
If a resident on your street died violently each time a particular car drove down it, you'd be best to suspect it is not coincidence and investigate the car.
In that case, the correlation is worth investigating. I believe there is also a good case for investigating the reasons for a perceived correlation between young violent offenders and violent videogame usage. At the very least it may give some insights into the mindset of young offenders.
Also, when reading this study, consider that it does nothing to innvestigate if violence in videogames *causes* players to become more aggressive, only that players do not (or at least do not admit) to finf violence an important factor in making a videogame enjoyable.