Professional Ethics and I.T.
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 1
Ethics in professions such as Law and Medicine (and professions that have a very direct impact on Joe Public) are usually goverened by their licensing bodies.
You cannot practise Law without a license, neither can you practise Medicine. An exam must be sat and passed for one to obtain a license from their professional body.
Finally, there are usually ethical codes that these licensees must follow to allow them to continue practising. If they violate these codes, they loose their license.
Some of the comments here on this thread state that I.T may be too diverse to define a code of ethics for, but I ask you - is it any more diverse than Medicine or Law?
Give it time. As I.T becomes more pervasive in Joe Public's life, I think it's advance will slow, due to the increasing rigors placed on it by regulatory bodies concerned with "public safety", read: lawsuits.
I took the liberty of copying and pasting the meat of the article here. WAY too many ads and click-thru's for my liking.
IMAX at Home ============= You thought LAN parties were fun? Get ready for the projector party. At HP Labs, Nelson Chang and Niranjan Damera-Venkata have spent the past few years developing a technology that reinvents the notion of a home theater. With Pluribus, you can build a cineplex-quality image using a handful of ordinary, $1,000 PC projectors--in less time than it takes to pop the popcorn.
The Midair Mouse ================ Your brand-new wireless mouse? That solves only half the problem. Sure, you're untethered, free to drive your PC from afar. But you still need a flat surface. You may be camped out on the couch or curled up in bed, but you're never more than half an arm's length from an end table or a lap desk.
Soap goes one step further: It works in midair. With this new-age pointing device, now under development at Microsoft Research, you can navigate your PC using nothing but a bare hand. You can lose the end table and the lap desk. You can even lose the couch and the bed, driving your machine while walking across the room. It's a bit like the Wii remote--only more accurate and far easier to use.
Extreme Peer-to-Peer ==================== In 1543, Nicolas Copernicus forever changed the way we view the cosmos. He put the Sun at the center of things--not the Earth. Today, at the famed Palo Alto Research Center, Van Jacobson hopes to lead a similar revolution, one that forever changes the way we view PC networking. He aims to put the data at the center of things--not the server.
With a project called Content-Centric Networking, or CCN, Jacobson and his team of PARC networking gurus are turning this model on its head. They're building a networking system that revolves around the data itself, a system in which a router can actually identify that Bode Miller video and act accordingly. Under the CCN model, you don't tell the network that you're interested in connecting to a server. You tell it that you want a particular piece of data. You broadcast a request to all the machines on the network, and if one of them has what you're looking for, it responds.
The Man-Made Brain ================== It could be the most ambitious computer science project of all time. At IBM's Almaden Research Center, just south of South Francisco, Dharmendra Modha and his team are chasing the holy grail of artificial intelligence. They aren't looking for ways of mimicking the human brain, they're looking to build one--neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse.
"We're trying to take the entire range of qualitative neuroscientific data and integrate it into a single unified computing platform," says Modha. "The idea is to re-create the 'wetware' brain using hardware and software."
Their first goal is to build a "massively parallel cortical simulator" that re-creates the brain of a mouse, an organ 3,500 times less complex than a human brain (if you count each individual neuron and synapse). But even this is an undertaking of epic proportions. A mouse brain houses over 16 million neurons, with more than 128 billion synapses running between them. Even a partial simulation stretches the boundaries of modern hardware. No, we don't mean desktop hardware. We're talkin' supercomputers.
So far, the team has been able to fashion a kind of digital mouse brain that needs about 6 seconds to simulate 1 second of real thinking time.
Only when the political will to do so is required, say population explosion is causing massive food/energy shortages will something like this possibly be considered.
It is a wonderful dream, but currently only a dream.
Unless, of course - private investment decides to leap on the bandwagon. How about corporate rights to an entire planet?
"Choose a job you like and you will never have to work a day of your life" - Confucius
That's one of the better quotes out there. I've been in the Unix Sysadmin/Programming areas for 10 years now and while I haven't found it all easy going and wonderful, I DO like what I do, which is a huge advantage to quality of life in a career.
Pick something from the areas you listed that you enjoyed and work at it. Don't be too concerned about "what's hot". If you have the fundamentals (such as a CS degree or equivalent experience) you will be fine.
Here are a few pointers from a Unix sysadmin and programmer for the past 10 years.
1) Motivate yourself. Get a Unix/Linux Sysadmin book and read it
from cover to cover. Stick Linux on your PC at home and
break it/fix it/mess with it.
2) Do more at your workplace (if you can). Start helping out in
the areas that interest you. You might be surprised, people
notice these things.
3) Sell yourself. This is very important. I don't mean telling
everyone you meet how great you are, but dropping hints when
chatting to sysadmins/programmers about what you can do.
People like me usually remember people like you, and have
a little influence in recommending people to the boss.
Thanks for highlighting my "mob mentality" point, if taken out of context it does look somewhat frightening.
Let me put it a better way:
If one person has a good idea, and wants to get it realised or acted upon, it is sometimes difficult to do. If a group of people agree with the first person's idea and campaign to have it listened to, it is usually much easier to get a politicians attention.
I think this is a good idea. It looks to have the potential to raise peoples awareness of the practise of politics and a central area where peoples opinions on political issues and agendas can be seen in near real time. Much different than the "write a letter to your congressman" or (in Ireland), "go meet with your local councillor", where you have to account for the time it takes for your opinion/issues to filter up and down the food chain.
There is also the "mob mentality", whereby if enough people have the same views on a certain issue, then it has the potential to sway political thought.
How about developing this further, into a Wiki for other nations and political regimes similar to (or dissimilar to) Republican Democracy. Note: Republican here means the method of democracy practised, not the party.
I've been studying and doing exams on and off, for the past eight years, studying for an Associates Degree and then a B.Sc (Hons) in I.T - this is my final year.
I'm good at my job (Unix Sysadmin) and enjoy my work, and I'm not usually stressed out during the work day.
Over the past eight years, I have trembled every year at exam time. I absolutely hate them.
But, I developed a system to revise and prepare for the exam, so that I would be ready when the time came. Note: My course is modular.
My system is simple, estimate the amount of work required for a course and aim to finish the material one month before exam time. For a full-time student, create enough time for one month's revision, if possible.
Then, revise by skimming the notes taken for each section for approximately one week to quickly complete the module.
Download/purchase/acquire past exam papers and study what questions appear over a set number of years, say 2000 - 20005. You will almost always notice a pattern. Then, do all of the questions listed on the exam papers (4 exam papers miminum, 5 preferred). Pick out the questions that appear most often throughout the years and do these again.
Then, on the day before exam day, quickly skim through the *entire* course notes/material and aim to finish around 5 or 6PM. Then, do something relaxing that takes your mind off the exam. Go to the gym, watch TV, go see a move, or play a game. Do *not* get drunk or go on a bender. Go to bed early and try to get a good night's sleep, without any chemicals.
Get up the morning of the exam and skim through all the material again.
This is as prepared as I could be. Maybe it'll work for you.
It may well emerge as a product to rival ASP and Microsoft's Windows Server 2003, but the big question is, who will place their trust in it?
The product may be excellent, but it needs to be tried, tested and verified in the field before [INSERT MAJOR CORPORATION] will even consider integrating it into their [INSERT ERP/MIS/Whatever] system.
In my opinion, this is an area that we may have to put our faith in science to develop fixes for society's mis-management of the environment.
Rather than wait for governments to agree on how much they should reduce energy consuption (and possible reduce economic output) - which could be a long wait...it may be better to invest more time/money/resources into think tanks on developing future technologies capabable of reversing the effects on our planet. IANAES (I Am Not An Environmental Scientist), but one possible theory is nanotech devices that target constituent molecules of GHG's and convert them to less harmful (or beneficial) elements?
My view as a European citizen (in Ireland) is that this is one step closer to a totalitarian super state.
Our vote on the Treaty of Nice was one aspect where people were concerned that we were giving central states in the EU too much power and thus allowing them, with the council of ministers, to pass on, or create some of the laws seen here.
Is this it - or is the tip of the iceberg? The council of ministers who pass these laws are NOT representative of Europe as a whole. If these laws are to be passed - why not ask the people first?
What about pop-up windows? Would they be considered as a an extra page?
If so, some less than moral sites may use this as a rip off scheme, i.e. when you go to the site, suddenly 50 pop-ups apprear and you are billed accordingly. Ouch.
I'm a European (well, Irish actually) and we do actually have computers over here. We also have running water, cars, and buildings.
But, if you'd like to send over some food and drink and a few other bits and pieces, here's a list:
15" TexMex pizza (dont put too much barbeque sauce on it - it ruins the taste)
6 pack of Budweiser
Sony HI-FI system with dolby digital plus a cable to connect to my DVD player. (We're getting electricity soon!!)
Yep, I'm fully in agreement with the wear and tear issues of power management.
The spin-up and spin-down of hard drives is the one area that causes most wear and tear. I personally would not like to power down any drives for any reason on one of our systems running in the field.
These machines (and the drives they contain) are DESIGNED to run 24x7 if configured properly. They are not designed (and in most cases, not desired) to spin down and spin up several times during a week, or a day.
Why, in the world of high end UNIX servers for example, would you want your backend database/web/application server to even THINK of powering down one of it drives even for a SECOND? Especially in the high volume hits of today's I.T industry.
Yes, I completely agree that the *kind* of stress in the high tech world of today is a lot different than it used to be - say 50 years ago.
But...I am currently working for a high tech company and I do not have anything like the stress levels that I used to experience in my previous job. Why? Well IMHO, the people around me, and mosre so - above me (in the metaphorical sense) were 90% to blame - including myself.
Think of a pyramid. Apply this pyramid to an organisation. At the top is one person, or a group of people. These person(s) make policy and give orders (to simplify things very much).
If these people are get to a certain stage where petty things like imposing a stationary request form for a *biro* that has to be signed by a member of upper management, then, it's only a matter of time before these people pass on their "apron strings" like management to the lower levels of the pyramid in the form of stress. Things are requested immediately, now, straight away - but the control that is imposed on all departments/offices is so tight that it makes it close to impossible for people to react to these demands. Resources are limited, cut-backs may be in operation - and the ever increasing circle of stress increases.
I've experienced it - and would not like to experience again.
Strangely enuf - the companies that I experienced this level of stress were American. Of the European companies I have worked for, I did not find this.
I am not fingering anyone, anything or any country here - this is just *my* findings.
If anyone has experienced this, it would be interesting to know.
Has enyone experienced these errors running Sun's
Netra servers? The Netra FT's for example have CPUsets based on the E450 hardware architecture.
I'm pretty much scared w1tl3ss that we may encounter these probs on our telco servers......
Anyone out there that has - please reply!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Ethics in professions such as Law and Medicine (and professions that have a very
direct impact on Joe Public) are usually goverened by their licensing bodies.
You cannot practise Law without a license, neither can you practise Medicine.
An exam must be sat and passed for one to obtain a license from their professional body.
Finally, there are usually ethical codes that these licensees must follow to allow
them to continue practising. If they violate these codes, they loose their license.
Some of the comments here on this thread state that I.T may be too diverse to
define a code of ethics for, but I ask you - is it any more diverse than Medicine
or Law?
Give it time. As I.T becomes more pervasive in Joe Public's life, I think
it's advance will slow, due to the increasing rigors placed on it by regulatory
bodies concerned with "public safety", read: lawsuits.
I took the liberty of copying and pasting the meat of the article here. WAY too many ads and click-thru's for my liking.
IMAX at Home
=============
You thought LAN parties were fun? Get ready for the projector party. At HP Labs, Nelson Chang and Niranjan Damera-Venkata have spent the past few years developing a technology that reinvents the notion of a home theater. With Pluribus, you can build a cineplex-quality image using a handful of ordinary, $1,000 PC projectors--in less time than it takes to pop the popcorn.
The Midair Mouse
================
Your brand-new wireless mouse? That solves only half the problem. Sure, you're untethered, free to drive your PC from afar. But you still need a flat surface. You may be camped out on the couch or curled up in bed, but you're never more than half an arm's length from an end table or a lap desk.
Soap goes one step further: It works in midair. With this new-age pointing device, now under development at Microsoft Research, you can navigate your PC using nothing but a bare hand. You can lose the end table and the lap desk. You can even lose the couch and the bed, driving your machine while walking across the room. It's a bit like the Wii remote--only more accurate and far easier to use.
Extreme Peer-to-Peer
====================
In 1543, Nicolas Copernicus forever changed the way we view the cosmos. He put the Sun at the center of things--not the Earth. Today, at the famed Palo Alto Research Center, Van Jacobson hopes to lead a similar revolution, one that forever changes the way we view PC networking. He aims to put the data at the center of things--not the server.
With a project called Content-Centric Networking, or CCN, Jacobson and his team of PARC networking gurus are turning this model on its head. They're building a networking system that revolves around the data itself, a system in which a router can actually identify that Bode Miller video and act accordingly. Under the CCN model, you don't tell the network that you're interested in connecting to a server. You tell it that you want a particular piece of data. You broadcast a request to all the machines on the network, and if one of them has what you're looking for, it responds.
The Man-Made Brain
==================
It could be the most ambitious computer science project of all time. At IBM's Almaden Research Center, just south of South Francisco, Dharmendra Modha and his team are chasing the holy grail of artificial intelligence. They aren't looking for ways of mimicking the human brain, they're looking to build one--neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse.
"We're trying to take the entire range of qualitative neuroscientific data and integrate it into a single unified computing platform," says Modha. "The idea is to re-create the 'wetware' brain using hardware and software."
Their first goal is to build a "massively parallel cortical simulator" that re-creates the brain of a mouse, an organ 3,500 times less complex than a human brain (if you count each individual neuron and synapse). But even this is an undertaking of epic proportions. A mouse brain houses over 16 million neurons, with more than 128 billion synapses running between them. Even a partial simulation stretches the boundaries of modern hardware. No, we don't mean desktop hardware. We're talkin' supercomputers.
So far, the team has been able to fashion a kind of digital mouse brain that needs about 6 seconds to simulate 1 second of real thinking time.
Only when the political will to do so is required, say population explosion
is causing massive food/energy shortages will something like this possibly
be considered.
It is a wonderful dream, but currently only a dream.
Unless, of course - private investment decides to leap on the bandwagon.
How about corporate rights to an entire planet?
This just goes to show how a well designed platform (in this case, a moderation system) can
stand the test of time, and the masses.
Kudos to slashdot.
You must be new here
"Choose a job you like and you will never have to work a day of your life" - Confucius
That's one of the better quotes out there. I've been in the Unix Sysadmin/Programming areas
for 10 years now and while I haven't found it all easy going and wonderful, I DO like what
I do, which is a huge advantage to quality of life in a career.
Pick something from the areas you listed that you enjoyed and work at it. Don't be too
concerned about "what's hot". If you have the fundamentals (such as a CS degree or equivalent experience) you will be fine.
Best of luck.
Here are a few pointers from a Unix sysadmin and programmer for the past 10 years.
1) Motivate yourself. Get a Unix/Linux Sysadmin book and read it
from cover to cover. Stick Linux on your PC at home and
break it/fix it/mess with it.
2) Do more at your workplace (if you can). Start helping out in
the areas that interest you. You might be surprised, people
notice these things.
3) Sell yourself. This is very important. I don't mean telling
everyone you meet how great you are, but dropping hints when
chatting to sysadmins/programmers about what you can do.
People like me usually remember people like you, and have
a little influence in recommending people to the boss.
Best of luck.
Hey! Maybe Paris can come over to my house and we can play games together.
I've got a great joystick.
I know, as a scientist I should be objective. But..
Lisa Randall is a babe!!
Ho hum, back to the numbers.
Thanks for highlighting my "mob mentality" point, if taken out of context it does look
somewhat frightening.
Let me put it a better way:
If one person has a good idea, and wants to get it realised or acted upon, it is
sometimes difficult to do. If a group of people agree with the first person's idea
and campaign to have it listened to, it is usually much easier to get a politicians attention.
I think this is a good idea. It looks to have the potential to raise peoples
awareness of the practise of politics and a central area where peoples opinions
on political issues and agendas can be seen in near real time. Much different
than the "write a letter to your congressman" or (in Ireland), "go meet with
your local councillor", where you have to account for the time it takes for
your opinion/issues to filter up and down the food chain.
There is also the "mob mentality", whereby if enough people have the same
views on a certain issue, then it has the potential to sway political thought.
How about developing this further, into a Wiki for other nations and political
regimes similar to (or dissimilar to) Republican Democracy.
Note: Republican here means the method of democracy practised, not the party.
I've been studying and doing exams on and off, for the past eight years,
studying for an Associates Degree and then a B.Sc (Hons) in I.T - this is my final year.
I'm good at my job (Unix Sysadmin) and enjoy my work, and I'm not
usually stressed out during the work day.
Over the past eight years, I have trembled every year at
exam time. I absolutely hate them.
But, I developed a system to revise and prepare for the exam,
so that I would be ready when the time came. Note: My course is modular.
My system is simple, estimate the amount of work required for a course
and aim to finish the material one month before exam time. For a full-time student, create enough time for one month's revision, if possible.
Then, revise by skimming the notes taken for each section for approximately one week to quickly complete the module.
Download/purchase/acquire past exam papers and study what questions
appear over a set number of years, say 2000 - 20005. You will almost
always notice a pattern. Then, do all of the questions listed on the
exam papers (4 exam papers miminum, 5 preferred).
Pick out the questions that appear most often throughout the years and
do these again.
Then, on the day before exam day, quickly skim through the *entire* course notes/material and aim to finish around 5 or 6PM. Then, do
something relaxing that takes your mind off the exam. Go to the gym, watch TV, go see a move, or play a game. Do *not* get drunk or go on a bender. Go to bed early and try to get a good night's sleep, without any chemicals.
Get up the morning of the exam and skim through all the material again.
This is as prepared as I could be. Maybe it'll work for you.
Good luck on the next attempt.
So this equipment is helping the cause of repressive regimes.
How difficult would it be to restrict the sale of this equipment, just like certain defense equipment?
Article 6.2 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (Council of Europe) states:
"Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law."
You can read the entire convention here
It may well emerge as a product to rival ASP and Microsoft's Windows Server 2003,
but the big question is, who will place their trust in it?
The product may be excellent, but it needs to be tried, tested and verified in the field before [INSERT MAJOR CORPORATION] will even consider integrating it into their [INSERT ERP/MIS/Whatever] system.
Attaching a small camera to the side of someone's glasses isn't
going to bode well for someone who is already socially challenged...
Nah, it's just the Flying Spaghetti Monster having a laugh....
If I was Bill Gates, I'd go home and have a money fight with wads of thousand dollar bills.
In my opinion, this is an area that we may have to put our faith in science to develop fixes for society's mis-management of the environment.
Rather than wait for governments to agree on how much they should
reduce energy consuption (and possible reduce economic output) - which
could be a long wait...it may be better to invest more time/money/resources
into think tanks on developing future technologies capabable of reversing
the effects on our planet. IANAES (I Am Not An Environmental Scientist), but one possible
theory is nanotech devices that target constituent molecules of GHG's and convert
them to less harmful (or beneficial) elements?
My view as a European citizen (in Ireland) is that this is one step closer to a totalitarian super state.
Our vote on the Treaty of Nice was one aspect where people were concerned that we were giving central states in the EU too much power and thus allowing them, with the council of ministers, to pass on, or create some of the laws seen here.
Is this it - or is the tip of the iceberg?
The council of ministers who pass these laws are NOT representative of Europe as a whole. If these laws are to be passed - why not ask the people first?
What about pop-up windows? Would they be considered as a an extra page?
If so, some less than moral sites may use this as a rip off scheme, i.e. when you go to the site, suddenly 50 pop-ups apprear and you are billed accordingly. Ouch.
I'm a European (well, Irish actually) and we do actually have computers over here. We also have running water, cars, and buildings.
But, if you'd like to send over some food and drink and a few other bits and pieces, here's a list:
15" TexMex pizza (dont put too much barbeque sauce on it - it ruins the taste)
6 pack of Budweiser
Sony HI-FI system with dolby digital plus a cable to connect to my DVD player. (We're getting electricity soon!!)
Try and get it fedexed ASAP as I'm kinda hungry.
Best regards,
Mick.
Yep, I'm fully in agreement with the wear and tear issues of power management. The spin-up and spin-down of hard drives is the one area that causes most wear and tear. I personally would not like to power down any drives for any reason on one of our systems running in the field. These machines (and the drives they contain) are DESIGNED to run 24x7 if configured properly. They are not designed (and in most cases, not desired) to spin down and spin up several times during a week, or a day. Why, in the world of high end UNIX servers for example, would you want your backend database/web/application server to even THINK of powering down one of it drives even for a SECOND? Especially in the high volume hits of today's I.T industry.
Yes, I completely agree that the *kind* of stress in the high tech world of today is a lot different than it used to be - say 50 years ago.
But...I am currently working for a high tech company and I do not have anything like the stress levels that I used to experience in my previous job. Why? Well IMHO, the people around me, and mosre so - above me (in the metaphorical sense) were 90% to blame - including myself.
Think of a pyramid. Apply this pyramid to an organisation. At the top is one person, or a group of people. These person(s) make policy and give orders (to simplify things very much).
If these people are get to a certain stage where petty things like imposing a stationary request form for a *biro* that has to be signed by a member of upper management, then, it's only a matter of time before these people pass on their "apron strings" like management to the lower levels of the pyramid in the form of stress. Things are requested immediately, now, straight away - but the control that is imposed on all departments/offices is so tight that it makes it close to impossible for people to react to these demands. Resources are limited, cut-backs may be in operation - and the ever increasing circle of stress increases.
I've experienced it - and would not like to experience again.
Strangely enuf - the companies that I experienced this level of stress were American. Of the European companies I have worked for, I did not find this.
I am not fingering anyone, anything or any country here - this is just *my* findings.
If anyone has experienced this, it would be interesting to know.
Has enyone experienced these errors running Sun's Netra servers? The Netra FT's for example have CPUsets based on the E450 hardware architecture. I'm pretty much scared w1tl3ss that we may encounter these probs on our telco servers...... Anyone out there that has - please reply!!!!