Oh the guy who was heading up the open document format requirement in Massachusetts got forced out, by the way. Just a couple of weeks ago. I'm suprised Slashdot didn't pick up on that one.
I'm kind of curious now. Did anyone ever try to run NeXT STEP x86 on non-NeXT hardware? I mean, we ARE looking at history repeating itself in a way here. . . .
As I said in my original argument, suppose that he is, in fact, guilty,
By a solely legalistic framework, he cannot, by definition, be "guilty" until after a trial. You have to stray outside the confines of legalism to declare him factually guilty.
So how can one objectively prove that one is, in fact, acting ethically? If under most of the common ethical frameworks used in, let's say the US, one is fine, but under some one is out of line, then what do you do? An array of independant evaluaters can't give each factor a numerical value and add them up to reach an conclusion consistently, even allowing for a margin of error.
You're supposed to use ALL frameworks. In practice this is never done. It's a theoretical method. But even if you use all frameworks, you can't possibly know all the facts in a given case. It's as objective as objective gets. But it's not 100% objective. Nothing is. There are frameworks that have the illusion of objectivity, or at least universality, because, frankly, they come bundled with a belief that the framework comes from the highest authority possible in the universe, and that there was no error in transmission of the moral code. A person under those assumptions believes he or she is 100% objective. The strength of the method of Ethical analysis is that it does not assume 100% perfect objectivity. The weakness is that there is doubt about the outcome. If someone believes in the moral code, then there's no doubt in their mind that their judgement (God's judgement) was perfect. If someone believes that the religious moral code may not be 100% error-free, and instead uses the Ethics method, then they know that they've taken every possible point of view into account, and tried their best to look at all the available factors in determining the outcome.
So the short answer is: you can not objectively prove that one is acting ethically. But you can prove that you've done everything humanly possible to get closer to the real answer than any other method - as long as one's not mired in an authoritarian moral/religious framework.
I'm getting the sense here that the RIAA and the online downloadable music companies which are going to be their major source of future revenue are running at cross-purposes here.
Notice the very for-public-consumption dust-up last year when the RIAA suggested that iTMS should charge more, and Steve Jobs told them to "go pound sand" (his favorite expression;).
Notice the antitrust suit against Apple for "monopolizing" online music.
This is going to get ugly - my prediction?: Best case scenario, RIAA eventually gets sued under RICO, forced to break up, and over a period of 5 or more years, re-consolidates as an actual corporate monopolistic entity (rather than what they currently are today, a trade-association). By that time, the music companies will have either purchased Apple, or finally succeeded in their own model, forcing iTMS out of business by withholding exclusive content. The day the music died.
Why do I think this will happen? Because our political system (not just in the US) is hopelessly broken, and those with money and power will get their way - period. I have no hope that there is any change that can happen that can fix what is broken with America's political system. It's the campaign finance system, and there's no way short of a constitutional amendment that RESTRICTS free speech, that will ever meaningfully reform it. Democracy is dead - it just doesn't realize it yet.
If the world's population is cut in half in the next 50 years, assuming it's going to be mostly third-world people without any way to ensure food production and distribution (as opposed to people who live in the first-world, who will no doubt have things tough, but will not likely see a great decline in population) - then demand for oil isn't likely to decline as a result of this population decline. At least not proportionately. I'd tend to think that this halving of population in the first 50 years would be the first step, just to take the pressure off of the first-world countries who are struggling to maintain their energy inputs just to stay functioning. Then the first world countries will likely try to take eachother out (ie. massive nuclear exchange) - in an attempt to reduce the amount of competing consumers of the remaining petroleum. When this starts to happen (and I'm not saying it will after 50 years, it could come much, much sooner - hell, Japan attacked the US in WWII over access to oil - so technically, it's already begun) - then we'll see massive declines in demand and consumption as the industrial infrastructure of first-world countries is burnt to cinders. This will have the effect, also, of destroying much of the production infrastructure for petroleum as well - refineries, transportation, storage, etc. That will probably be the final nail in the coffin of the petroleum age. That coffin will rest upon a mountain of skulls. That's why - as futile as it is, I think America's best bet is investment in missile-defense.:)
Why? Isn't sexual assault on a minor a bigger crime then say, violating police procedures?
Sure, I suppose if you're evaluating with only a legal framework, (which is tricky here, because the cop is violating the legal framework too), then you can say that the cop's misdemeanor is less unethical than the accused rapist's crime. But in fact, the child-rapist is not yet convicted - by that legal framework, the child-rapist is innocent until proven guilty. It's not up to the cop to decide - it's up to the jury and judge to decide. At the point in time where the cop is making this decision, we don't have the information to decide whether his action is relatively ethical or not. And the cop doesn't either; because the whole point of trials and procedures is that frequently, evidence is falsified, or looks bad when taken out of context, etc. The cop doesn't have the perspective that a jury will have. If, in our zeal, to put child rapists behind bars, we end up putting innocent people behind bars as well, is that ethical? Based on a solely legal framework it isn't.
But the point of ethics is, we don't evaulate things based on a single framework. The method is to evaluate the dilemma against many frameworks - ideally all known frameworks, including your "gut feeling". Where ethics seems to gain subjectivity, or fall apart, is that there's flexibility in which Moral framework an evaluator chooses, or how much weight the evaluator assigns to a given framework compared to others. (ie, a strongly religious person may find that his Moral conclusion is at odds with the consequence-based conclusion, and may decide that the Moral conclusion is more important to him, and therefore more valid, and therefore the consequence-based conclusion is discarded).
One might also say that a person who is an agent of the law, has a higher obligation to obey the legal framework, despite what other frameworks might have to say on the matter. Which frequently leads to situations where it's perceived that the legal system is "hopelessly broken" - because the outcome went against common sense.
The subjectivity is picking the ethical system to use, since there isn't one codified into law the same way that many Judeo-Chrisitan morals are.
While some laws may have arisen from Judeo-Christian morals, and have some commonality with them, other laws arise from other sources, such as Hammurabi's code, English Common Law, and simple will of the people who elect legislators. They have different origins, and different justifications and reasoning, and different consequences, and different people have different obligations in following these moral codes, (ie. I happily eat pork, wear blended fabrics, and I'm certain that my God doesn't give a crap) while everyone has an obligation to follow the law to some extent, within a given jurisdiction. That's why they're considered different frameworks for ethical analysis, and it's also precisely why one must consider multiple frameworks in ethical analysis. It's not just so that other points of view get a fair shake. Monoculture breeds weakness. It's not objective like doing a newtonian physics experiment is objective (and even then, sometimes quantum effects will yeild suprising results). But it's a lot less subjective than taking a single framework like Judeo-Christian morality, and using that to evaluate all ethical dilemmas.
Okay, what about the ethicality of prostitution? Isn't that subjective?
Ethics is a method at arriving at a conclusion, and a method can't be subjective, but the conclusion can be subjective.
Or how about a cop bending the rules to get the evidence he needs?
It depends on which framework you use to evaulate it.
If you use ONLY a legal framework, then the cop is dead wrong, period, end of story.
If you use a rights-based framework, then you need to consider the alleged serial child-rapists' rights against those of the children (both past and possible future victims), and those of the cop, and those of the society at large who have to live in a society where their rights are violated. Could go either way depending on the details, and the specifics of the Rights for a given culture. And an evaluation doesn't always have the benefit of having all the details. A strict Kantian interpretation says that a right is only worthwhile if it applies universally (ie. the child-rapist can also violate evidence rules).
If you use a consequence-based framework, what are the consequences of the cop bending the rules versus the consequences of the guy going free? (or could the guy still go to jail if the cop followed the rules? - could they guy possibly go free *because* the cop broke the rules?) And to whom do these consequences apply?
The framework of Morality is the closest to "rights-based" - and is not so much a method of ethical analysis as much as it's simply asking whether the rules of a "higher authority" (often God) are being violated. Which set of rules one consults from which God is not a method, it's a purely subjective act. So that's what I mean when I say Ethics is not subjective, but Morality IS - because the Ethical method is the same no matter who does it (Jew, Christian, Scientologist), as long as it's done consistently. The thing here is, it's not so much a rigorous, strict, method, as I understand it. More of a set of guidelines. And the frameworks are, indeed, somewhat vague. So in that way, it can be very subjective. But it can also be objective, as in two or more evaluators, given the same data and using the same method should arrive at the same conclusion. The problem is, it doesn't seem to lend itself to enough rigor and discipline that an expert can decisively and authoritatively rule a particular dilemma as "ethical" or "unethical" or some quantitative degree of grey inbetween. So it's not objective in that way.
People are simply tired of a relatively small subset of society going "we're smarter than you, better than you, and we know what's best for you"
. . . only that's not what's going on. Now it's a different small subset of society telling them "don't listen to those arrogant intellectuals, listen to US arrogant intellectuals at the Cato Institute/Heritage Foundation/Federalist Society/Focus on the Family instead, cuz those other intellectuals think they're better than you, and they don't hunt or have genuine southern accents or own ranches in Texas"
Now, as for saying that killing in self defense is moral murder? That's not actually true. Murder is a specific form of killing, that implies premeditation, and a dishonorable exchange (ie, killing an unarmed man, etc).
The reason why politicians do unethical things, is usually because they believe that a different system of ethics supercedes in this case. For example - perhaps stealing is wrong, but what about misappropriating public funds to fund the electoral campaign of a politician who's committed to reducing government spending (and therefore, in theory, reducing the possibility of future misappropriations of public funds)? Such an act might be thought of as heroism, or even selfless patriotism. Often, such people have fooled themselves into thinking they're committing a moral act, when in fact, their motivation is selfish greed or hate.
The key to Ethics (and should be the first thing everyone learns even in a minimal required ethics class) is that there are several ethical frameworks, based on philosophical notions of right and wrong, and that analyzing an ethical dilemma using only one framework is the surest way to be led astray.
Entitled "Ethics in the Information Age" at University of Maryland (UMUC)
The text books for this class were Case Studies in Information Technology Ethics (second edition) by Richard A Spinello, published by Prentice Hall. Ethics in Information Technology by George Reynolds published by Thompson.
This class was anything but a "anti download" brainwashing session. Most of it focussed on the kinds of issues we developers and engineers have to contend with in terms of protecting the privacy of customer data, product liability, international/cross-cultural issues, and things like that.
The course started with an overview of how to do an Ethical Analysis of a situation, then we discussed case studies for the rest of the term, and wrote opinions, etc. I think it was a very valuable experience, and I think that all IT professionals should, indeed, take this class.
Yes, we did talk about software piracy, and other forms of copyright/patent violation. By and large, the mood of the class in analyzing these issues was that yes, illegal copying is wrong, but not as wrong relative to say, stealing a car or killing someone. Mainly, I think we learned that making unauthorized copies of software in a professional capacity is especially bad (even if it's for charity) mainly because you're exposing a broader group of stakeholders (ie. your employers, their stockholders, etc) to the liability. It was really an interesting and enlightening class, and it make me think about some things I never thought about before.
For a contract, we provided computers with solitaire as a mousing training aid - with the intention of removing it.
Well, the bright guy who did the removing just used the add/remove windows components control panel - so the game was no longer in the Start menu. But you could still get to it with Start->Run sol.exe. So, these users, who were originally dumb enough to need Solitaire to train them how to use a mouse, were smart enough to manually find and run the executable. Either that, or someone actually READ their Windows for Dummies book . . .
Corporations are instruments of Executives and Boards of Directors.
More accurately put: Corporations are being treated as disposible instruments of short-term gain by nearsighted and greedy Executives and Boards of Directors - enabled by ignorant or impotent minority shareholders, and workers, who will be fleeced in the process.
Q: If you take the pawns off the board, (represented here, by the massive divestment in tech-stocks from mid-1999, continuing through to today) do you still have a chess game? A: Yes.
What is your philosophy when it comes to this? Once someone is given a job, does that mean they have it for life regardless of performance of the person or the company that person has chosen to align themself with?
My philosophy on this is:
The American Economy is 2/3 driven by consumer spending. When good jobs are lost, it hurts the entire American Economy.
And when a worker loses his or her job, it may be because that worker was not a good performer, and did not deserve the job. But more often than not, a worker loses his or her job, because of a failure of management to adequately plan or execute the company's business.
So why are good workers punished for a manager or executive's failures? Because the manager or executive is better connected? This removes the concept of MERIT from our economy; that capitalism rewards merit.
So yeah, I'd say that's a sad thing. It's a sad thing for the person who lost their job. It's a sad thing for the companies who used to sell that person stuff. It's a sad thing for the workers creditors who are now screwed because that worker has to file for bankruptcy protection. It's a sad thing for the customers of the company that laid off the worker, because the fuckup executive who made the bad decisions that led to the layoff, walks home with a fat bonus, and the worker who executed a flawed plan with skill and professionalism got laid off. It's a sad thing for the investors of that company, who may see short-term financial benefit, as a reduction in payroll expenses translates to a short-term gain in profit, but who will ultimately lose money long-term, because a layoff represents a contraction of that company's capacity to produce goods and services, and a loss of the original investment made when the worker was hired, equipped, and trained. It's a sad thing for the rest of the workforce who, while they were lucky enough to retain their jobs, now must take up the tax burden of supporting the laid-off worker, or at least his or her portion of financing government operations. It's a sad thing for the laid-off workers' kids, who stand less of a chance at being able to go to college, and have lost their future potential to be anything but a fry chef at McDonalds. It's a sad thing for our nation, because everyone's standard of living declines when another family is forced into poverty.
But the saddest thing of all, is that so many people buy into the fallacious reasoning that if companies lay off their workers, that it's somehow good for the company, and good for America.
I've used Windows Find function maybe 3 times in the 14 or so years I've been a computer professional. Each time failed to find files that I *knew* were there.
I've seen colleagues struggle with this as well. I don't really know what's wrong with it - I never bothered to try to figure out why it sucks so bad, why it always fails to find files I know are there.
So I opened a DOS window, and did a: dir *.*/s from the root. Always successful, unless the file's +H.
It's even worse on Unix; due to my perpetual inability to figure out the "find" syntax (and I'd really like to slap the guy who wrote that MAN page) - so I usually just ls -alrtR | grep . It works. Is it wrong? Am I perverse?
If Danish cartoonists aren't free to express their thoughts, then Muslim hackers shouldn't be free to deface web sites.
Religious Fundamentalist ideological intolerance is incompatible with post-enlightenment western civilization. Whether it's Christian Fundamentalists, or Muslim Fundamentalists, of Scientology Fundamentalists, or Free Market Fundamentalists. All are a threat. What do we do with such threats? We let them speak. Because the power of their freedom lets them dig their own graves.
Considering that the Bush campaign won in 2004 with all sorts of problems. I'd say anyone working on that campaign is qualified for any PR positions in any company or government agency.
And their Diebold guys should be in charge of Computer Security.
I will enact a worldwide ban (punishable by death) on the use of the following buzzwords: "Intelligent" (particularly in relation to "Artificial" or "Business") "Paradigm" "Leverage" "Synergistic" and also "Agendar".
Slashdot Mirror
Oh the guy who was heading up the open document format requirement in Massachusetts got forced out, by the way. Just a couple of weeks ago. I'm suprised Slashdot didn't pick up on that one.
I'm kind of curious now. Did anyone ever try to run NeXT STEP x86 on non-NeXT hardware? I mean, we ARE looking at history repeating itself in a way here. . . .
*sigh* if you say so.
As I said in my original argument, suppose that he is, in fact, guilty,
By a solely legalistic framework, he cannot, by definition, be "guilty" until after a trial. You have to stray outside the confines of legalism to declare him factually guilty.
So how can one objectively prove that one is, in fact, acting ethically? If under most of the common ethical frameworks used in, let's say the US, one is fine, but under some one is out of line, then what do you do? An array of independant evaluaters can't give each factor a numerical value and add them up to reach an conclusion consistently, even allowing for a margin of error.
You're supposed to use ALL frameworks. In practice this is never done. It's a theoretical method. But even if you use all frameworks, you can't possibly know all the facts in a given case. It's as objective as objective gets. But it's not 100% objective. Nothing is. There are frameworks that have the illusion of objectivity, or at least universality, because, frankly, they come bundled with a belief that the framework comes from the highest authority possible in the universe, and that there was no error in transmission of the moral code. A person under those assumptions believes he or she is 100% objective. The strength of the method of Ethical analysis is that it does not assume 100% perfect objectivity. The weakness is that there is doubt about the outcome. If someone believes in the moral code, then there's no doubt in their mind that their judgement (God's judgement) was perfect. If someone believes that the religious moral code may not be 100% error-free, and instead uses the Ethics method, then they know that they've taken every possible point of view into account, and tried their best to look at all the available factors in determining the outcome.
So the short answer is: you can not objectively prove that one is acting ethically. But you can prove that you've done everything humanly possible to get closer to the real answer than any other method - as long as one's not mired in an authoritarian moral/religious framework.
I'm getting the sense here that the RIAA and the online downloadable music companies which are going to be their major source of future revenue are running at cross-purposes here.
;).
Notice the very for-public-consumption dust-up last year when the RIAA suggested that iTMS should charge more, and Steve Jobs told them to "go pound sand" (his favorite expression
Notice the antitrust suit against Apple for "monopolizing" online music.
This is going to get ugly - my prediction?:
Best case scenario, RIAA eventually gets sued under RICO, forced to break up, and over a period of 5 or more years, re-consolidates as an actual corporate monopolistic entity (rather than what they currently are today, a trade-association). By that time, the music companies will have either purchased Apple, or finally succeeded in their own model, forcing iTMS out of business by withholding exclusive content. The day the music died.
Why do I think this will happen? Because our political system (not just in the US) is hopelessly broken, and those with money and power will get their way - period. I have no hope that there is any change that can happen that can fix what is broken with America's political system. It's the campaign finance system, and there's no way short of a constitutional amendment that RESTRICTS free speech, that will ever meaningfully reform it. Democracy is dead - it just doesn't realize it yet.
If the world's population is cut in half in the next 50 years, assuming it's going to be mostly third-world people without any way to ensure food production and distribution (as opposed to people who live in the first-world, who will no doubt have things tough, but will not likely see a great decline in population) - then demand for oil isn't likely to decline as a result of this population decline. At least not proportionately. I'd tend to think that this halving of population in the first 50 years would be the first step, just to take the pressure off of the first-world countries who are struggling to maintain their energy inputs just to stay functioning. Then the first world countries will likely try to take eachother out (ie. massive nuclear exchange) - in an attempt to reduce the amount of competing consumers of the remaining petroleum. When this starts to happen (and I'm not saying it will after 50 years, it could come much, much sooner - hell, Japan attacked the US in WWII over access to oil - so technically, it's already begun) - then we'll see massive declines in demand and consumption as the industrial infrastructure of first-world countries is burnt to cinders. This will have the effect, also, of destroying much of the production infrastructure for petroleum as well - refineries, transportation, storage, etc. That will probably be the final nail in the coffin of the petroleum age. That coffin will rest upon a mountain of skulls. That's why - as futile as it is, I think America's best bet is investment in missile-defense. :)
Why? Isn't sexual assault on a minor a bigger crime then say, violating police procedures?
Sure, I suppose if you're evaluating with only a legal framework, (which is tricky here, because the cop is violating the legal framework too), then you can say that the cop's misdemeanor is less unethical than the accused rapist's crime. But in fact, the child-rapist is not yet convicted - by that legal framework, the child-rapist is innocent until proven guilty. It's not up to the cop to decide - it's up to the jury and judge to decide. At the point in time where the cop is making this decision, we don't have the information to decide whether his action is relatively ethical or not. And the cop doesn't either; because the whole point of trials and procedures is that frequently, evidence is falsified, or looks bad when taken out of context, etc. The cop doesn't have the perspective that a jury will have. If, in our zeal, to put child rapists behind bars, we end up putting innocent people behind bars as well, is that ethical? Based on a solely legal framework it isn't.
But the point of ethics is, we don't evaulate things based on a single framework. The method is to evaluate the dilemma against many frameworks - ideally all known frameworks, including your "gut feeling". Where ethics seems to gain subjectivity, or fall apart, is that there's flexibility in which Moral framework an evaluator chooses, or how much weight the evaluator assigns to a given framework compared to others. (ie, a strongly religious person may find that his Moral conclusion is at odds with the consequence-based conclusion, and may decide that the Moral conclusion is more important to him, and therefore more valid, and therefore the consequence-based conclusion is discarded).
One might also say that a person who is an agent of the law, has a higher obligation to obey the legal framework, despite what other frameworks might have to say on the matter. Which frequently leads to situations where it's perceived that the legal system is "hopelessly broken" - because the outcome went against common sense.
The subjectivity is picking the ethical system to use, since there isn't one codified into law the same way that many Judeo-Chrisitan morals are.
While some laws may have arisen from Judeo-Christian morals, and have some commonality with them, other laws arise from other sources, such as Hammurabi's code, English Common Law, and simple will of the people who elect legislators. They have different origins, and different justifications and reasoning, and different consequences, and different people have different obligations in following these moral codes, (ie. I happily eat pork, wear blended fabrics, and I'm certain that my God doesn't give a crap) while everyone has an obligation to follow the law to some extent, within a given jurisdiction. That's why they're considered different frameworks for ethical analysis, and it's also precisely why one must consider multiple frameworks in ethical analysis. It's not just so that other points of view get a fair shake. Monoculture breeds weakness. It's not objective like doing a newtonian physics experiment is objective (and even then, sometimes quantum effects will yeild suprising results). But it's a lot less subjective than taking a single framework like Judeo-Christian morality, and using that to evaluate all ethical dilemmas.
Okay, what about the ethicality of prostitution? Isn't that subjective?
Ethics is a method at arriving at a conclusion, and a method can't be subjective, but the conclusion can be subjective.
Or how about a cop bending the rules to get the evidence he needs?
It depends on which framework you use to evaulate it.
If you use ONLY a legal framework, then the cop is dead wrong, period, end of story.
If you use a rights-based framework, then you need to consider the alleged serial child-rapists' rights against those of the children (both past and possible future victims), and those of the cop, and those of the society at large who have to live in a society where their rights are violated. Could go either way depending on the details, and the specifics of the Rights for a given culture. And an evaluation doesn't always have the benefit of having all the details. A strict Kantian interpretation says that a right is only worthwhile if it applies universally (ie. the child-rapist can also violate evidence rules).
If you use a consequence-based framework, what are the consequences of the cop bending the rules versus the consequences of the guy going free? (or could the guy still go to jail if the cop followed the rules? - could they guy possibly go free *because* the cop broke the rules?) And to whom do these consequences apply?
The framework of Morality is the closest to "rights-based" - and is not so much a method of ethical analysis as much as it's simply asking whether the rules of a "higher authority" (often God) are being violated. Which set of rules one consults from which God is not a method, it's a purely subjective act. So that's what I mean when I say Ethics is not subjective, but Morality IS - because the Ethical method is the same no matter who does it (Jew, Christian, Scientologist), as long as it's done consistently. The thing here is, it's not so much a rigorous, strict, method, as I understand it. More of a set of guidelines. And the frameworks are, indeed, somewhat vague. So in that way, it can be very subjective. But it can also be objective, as in two or more evaluators, given the same data and using the same method should arrive at the same conclusion. The problem is, it doesn't seem to lend itself to enough rigor and discipline that an expert can decisively and authoritatively rule a particular dilemma as "ethical" or "unethical" or some quantitative degree of grey inbetween. So it's not objective in that way.
People are simply tired of a relatively small subset of society going "we're smarter than you, better than you, and we know what's best for you"
. . . only that's not what's going on. Now it's a different small subset of society telling them "don't listen to those arrogant intellectuals, listen to US arrogant intellectuals at the Cato Institute/Heritage Foundation/Federalist Society/Focus on the Family instead, cuz those other intellectuals think they're better than you, and they don't hunt or have genuine southern accents or own ranches in Texas"
Actually, Ethics is not subjective.
Morality is.
Now, as for saying that killing in self defense is moral murder? That's not actually true. Murder is a specific form of killing, that implies premeditation, and a dishonorable exchange (ie, killing an unarmed man, etc).
The reason why politicians do unethical things, is usually because they believe that a different system of ethics supercedes in this case. For example - perhaps stealing is wrong, but what about misappropriating public funds to fund the electoral campaign of a politician who's committed to reducing government spending (and therefore, in theory, reducing the possibility of future misappropriations of public funds)? Such an act might be thought of as heroism, or even selfless patriotism. Often, such people have fooled themselves into thinking they're committing a moral act, when in fact, their motivation is selfish greed or hate.
The key to Ethics (and should be the first thing everyone learns even in a minimal required ethics class) is that there are several ethical frameworks, based on philosophical notions of right and wrong, and that analyzing an ethical dilemma using only one framework is the surest way to be led astray.
Entitled "Ethics in the Information Age" at University of Maryland (UMUC)
The text books for this class were
Case Studies in Information Technology Ethics (second edition) by Richard A Spinello, published by Prentice Hall.
Ethics in Information Technology by George Reynolds published by Thompson.
This class was anything but a "anti download" brainwashing session.
Most of it focussed on the kinds of issues we developers and engineers have to contend with in terms of protecting the privacy of customer data, product liability, international/cross-cultural issues, and things like that.
The course started with an overview of how to do an Ethical Analysis of a situation, then we discussed case studies for the rest of the term, and wrote opinions, etc. I think it was a very valuable experience, and I think that all IT professionals should, indeed, take this class.
Yes, we did talk about software piracy, and other forms of copyright/patent violation. By and large, the mood of the class in analyzing these issues was that yes, illegal copying is wrong, but not as wrong relative to say, stealing a car or killing someone. Mainly, I think we learned that making unauthorized copies of software in a professional capacity is especially bad (even if it's for charity) mainly because you're exposing a broader group of stakeholders (ie. your employers, their stockholders, etc) to the liability. It was really an interesting and enlightening class, and it make me think about some things I never thought about before.
Moon dust?
Well, then you just reverse the polarity of the neutron stream then. . .
For a contract, we provided computers with solitaire as a mousing training aid - with the intention of removing it.
Well, the bright guy who did the removing just used the add/remove windows components control panel - so the game was no longer in the Start menu. But you could still get to it with Start->Run sol.exe. So, these users, who were originally dumb enough to need Solitaire to train them how to use a mouse, were smart enough to manually find and run the executable. Either that, or someone actually READ their Windows for Dummies book . . .
Corporations aren't choking themsleves.
Corporations are instruments of Executives and Boards of Directors.
More accurately put:
Corporations are being treated as disposible instruments of short-term gain by nearsighted and greedy Executives and Boards of Directors - enabled by ignorant or impotent minority shareholders, and workers, who will be fleeced in the process.
Q: If you take the pawns off the board, (represented here, by the massive divestment in tech-stocks from mid-1999, continuing through to today) do you still have a chess game?
A: Yes.
What is your philosophy when it comes to this? Once someone is given a job, does that mean they have it for life regardless of performance of the person or the company that person has chosen to align themself with?
My philosophy on this is:
The American Economy is 2/3 driven by consumer spending. When good jobs are lost, it hurts the entire American Economy.
And when a worker loses his or her job, it may be because that worker was not a good performer, and did not deserve the job. But more often than not, a worker loses his or her job, because of a failure of management to adequately plan or execute the company's business.
So why are good workers punished for a manager or executive's failures? Because the manager or executive is better connected? This removes the concept of MERIT from our economy; that capitalism rewards merit.
So yeah, I'd say that's a sad thing.
It's a sad thing for the person who lost their job.
It's a sad thing for the companies who used to sell that person stuff.
It's a sad thing for the workers creditors who are now screwed because that worker has to file for bankruptcy protection.
It's a sad thing for the customers of the company that laid off the worker, because the fuckup executive who made the bad decisions that led to the layoff, walks home with a fat bonus, and the worker who executed a flawed plan with skill and professionalism got laid off.
It's a sad thing for the investors of that company, who may see short-term financial benefit, as a reduction in payroll expenses translates to a short-term gain in profit, but who will ultimately lose money long-term, because a layoff represents a contraction of that company's capacity to produce goods and services, and a loss of the original investment made when the worker was hired, equipped, and trained.
It's a sad thing for the rest of the workforce who, while they were lucky enough to retain their jobs, now must take up the tax burden of supporting the laid-off worker, or at least his or her portion of financing government operations.
It's a sad thing for the laid-off workers' kids, who stand less of a chance at being able to go to college, and have lost their future potential to be anything but a fry chef at McDonalds.
It's a sad thing for our nation, because everyone's standard of living declines when another family is forced into poverty.
But the saddest thing of all, is that so many people buy into the fallacious reasoning that if companies lay off their workers, that it's somehow good for the company, and good for America.
. . . and my angle brackets were blown away. . . duh.
/s and ls -alrtR | grep [filename]
my examples were dir [filename]*.*
I've used Windows Find function maybe 3 times in the 14 or so years I've been a computer professional. Each time failed to find files that I *knew* were there.
/s from the root. Always successful, unless the file's +H.
I've seen colleagues struggle with this as well. I don't really know what's wrong with it - I never bothered to try to figure out why it sucks so bad, why it always fails to find files I know are there.
So I opened a DOS window, and did a: dir *.*
It's even worse on Unix; due to my perpetual inability to figure out the "find" syntax (and I'd really like to slap the guy who wrote that MAN page) - so I usually just ls -alrtR | grep . It works. Is it wrong? Am I perverse?
I like your version too, but the way I learned it was:
Politicians. Can't live with them. Can't grind them into sausage meat.
If Danish cartoonists aren't free to express their thoughts, then Muslim hackers shouldn't be free to deface web sites.
Religious Fundamentalist ideological intolerance is incompatible with post-enlightenment western civilization. Whether it's Christian Fundamentalists, or Muslim Fundamentalists, of Scientology Fundamentalists, or Free Market Fundamentalists. All are a threat. What do we do with such threats? We let them speak. Because the power of their freedom lets them dig their own graves.
They've created the very thing they claimed they hated.
. . . and what a brilliant way for them to bolster their argument that "all government is evil".
Considering that the Bush campaign won in 2004 with all sorts of problems. I'd say anyone working on that campaign is qualified for any PR positions in any company or government agency.
And their Diebold guys should be in charge of Computer Security.
I will enact a worldwide ban (punishable by death) on the use of the following buzzwords: "Intelligent" (particularly in relation to "Artificial" or "Business") "Paradigm" "Leverage" "Synergistic" and also "Agendar".
Can I count on your vote?
Why do you think video game manuals have been recommending exactly that for the last ten years?
As an entirely selfish prophylactic for product liability lawsuits.
Certainly not as an experiment in halting myopia.
Fire it into a retrograde solar orbit (ie. backwards).
Solar gravity will do the rest.