practical IT ethics examples
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
0) Read Cliff Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil" about the decline in professionalism ubiquitous desktop computing has enabled. IT Ethics is really about setting and enforcing professional standards for behavior at work. For those too lazy to read, in 1980 you could get fired for making a personal call, but in 2008 it's OK to exchange non-work email with your friends all day. Why? Answer: the office lets you get away with this in return for expecting you to answer email on weekends. Blurring the boundaries makes the rules hard to write.
1) Example: A friend called for advice, LAN manager at a 20-person company. "Everyone says the network is down, but it's actually just overloaded because the president is streaming live porn from Amsterdam." Solution: block the port, see if he has the stones to complain. Corporate ethics issues are complicated by rank and the playbook won't cover everything.
2) In 1982 at age 10 we spent a couple hours in school on telephone manners. I would hope that my own children will get the same talk, now to include cell phone, email, and web manners. Learn how to mute the ringer without answering a call. Expect that any email you send, or any web page you browse, might be printed and taped to your office door tomorrow morning.
3) Adult/offensive content makes the rules hard to write.. If I'm presenting on the big screen and get a mail notification popup for spam with a racist subject, do I get fired? Can sysadmins sue for "inhospitable work environment" because the spam was x-rated? The standards for handling these issues are related to the standards for how to behave when you're root. As I say to my dog when he's licking in the living room, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." The standard for behavior needs to be something like "You're going to have access to a bunch of stuff, but that's no excuse for needless nosing."
> It will be interesting to hear these people come up with a definition...
The proposed law is quite short: it basically #includes the definition of breach of copyright that applies to individual acts and says anyone who makes a product that enables it "shall be liable as an infringer". It's a direct attack on the "substantial non-infringing use" shield for manufacturers set up in the Betamax case years ago.
EFF has good analysis of this on their web site: it's unlikely to result in more guilty verdicts, but is going to result in many more completely specious lawsuits.
Basically, it allows media companies to "sue to death" the manufacturer of any technology that threatens to reduce their margins. They'll lose at trial, but at a million dollars a month for lawyers, what little company is going to get that far?
It's mostly because of the primary system, to prevent one party mucking with the other's primaries. In the situation where there is an uncontested candidate in party A's primary and a strong and weak candidate in party B's, voters from party A need to be prevented from showing up and voting in the B primary to make sure the weak candidate wins.
This could be fixed better by having the parties administer their own primaries, but that would be expensive.
1) make a distraction-proof workspace: NOTHING but your work materials on your physical and virtual desktops; everything else at least in neat folders or binders, and preferably shelved behind you out of sight.
2) GET A DOOR THAT LOCKS YOU IN. Some doors, when locked, can still be opened from the inside. just by turning the knob. Get a door that you have to "unlock" before you can leave. When you're trying to concentrate, lock the door. The first week, you'll be surprised how many times you "wake up" about to stroll out of the door to do something else.
3) Strong Routine States of mind can be conditioned; if you ritualize "starting work" you can eventually use the ritual to create the state of mind for good concentration.
4) Strong Routine, part II: don't get into the thing where when you're "at work" you're thinking about laundry and when you're "at home" you're thinking about work. That's a dodge, don't let your mind get away with it. Pick work time and home time, and stop mixing them.
Good luck. This sucks, it's frustrating, and the "dude, you just need discipline" folks just don't get it and never well.
As for reading, I'd recommend "Out of the Fog" over "Driven To Distraction".
As a final warning, this gets WAY harder when you get older, have kids, and can't do huge unproductive hours to get the few productive ones.
We played with these a lot as kids. Aqua-Net + potato + sober people, no problem. Firing them with ether is bad [weakens the PVC cement after a few firings and gun explodes], other non-squishy projectiles are bad [jam in the barrel and gun explodes], and impaired people of course don't mix well with firearms.
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0) Read Cliff Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil" about the decline in professionalism ubiquitous desktop computing has enabled. IT Ethics is really about setting and enforcing professional standards for behavior at work. For those too lazy to read, in 1980 you could get fired for making a personal call, but in 2008 it's OK to exchange non-work email with your friends all day. Why? Answer: the office lets you get away with this in return for expecting you to answer email on weekends. Blurring the boundaries makes the rules hard to write.
1) Example: A friend called for advice, LAN manager at a 20-person company. "Everyone says the network is down, but it's actually just overloaded because the president is streaming live porn from Amsterdam." Solution: block the port, see if he has the stones to complain. Corporate ethics issues are complicated by rank and the playbook won't cover everything.
2) In 1982 at age 10 we spent a couple hours in school on telephone manners. I would hope that my own children will get the same talk, now to include cell phone, email, and web manners. Learn how to mute the ringer without answering a call. Expect that any email you send, or any web page you browse, might be printed and taped to your office door tomorrow morning.
3) Adult/offensive content makes the rules hard to write.. If I'm presenting on the big screen and get a mail notification popup for spam with a racist subject, do I get fired? Can sysadmins sue for "inhospitable work environment" because the spam was x-rated? The standards for handling these issues are related to the standards for how to behave when you're root. As I say to my dog when he's licking in the living room, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." The standard for behavior needs to be something like "You're going to have access to a bunch of stuff, but that's no excuse for needless nosing."
"Whom Will Google Buy Next?"
Really. "Whom". It's not so hard.
> It will be interesting to hear these people come up with a definition ...
The proposed law is quite short: it basically #includes the definition of breach of copyright that applies to individual acts and says anyone who makes a product that enables it "shall be liable as an infringer". It's a direct attack on the "substantial non-infringing use" shield for manufacturers set up in the Betamax case years ago.
EFF has good analysis of this on their web site: it's unlikely to result in more guilty verdicts, but is going to result in many more completely specious lawsuits.
Basically, it allows media companies to "sue to death" the manufacturer of any technology that threatens to reduce their margins. They'll lose at trial, but at a million dollars a month for lawyers, what little company is going to get that far?
It's mostly because of the primary system, to prevent one party mucking with the other's primaries. In the situation where there is an uncontested candidate in party A's primary and a strong and weak candidate in party B's, voters from party A need to be prevented from showing up and voting in the B primary to make sure the weak candidate wins.
This could be fixed better by having the parties administer their own primaries, but that would be expensive.
Been there, had these issues in college.
What got me through:
1) make a distraction-proof workspace:
NOTHING but your work materials on your physical and virtual desktops; everything else at least in neat folders or binders, and preferably shelved behind you out of sight.
2) GET A DOOR THAT LOCKS YOU IN. Some doors, when locked, can still be opened from the inside. just by turning the knob. Get a door that you have to "unlock" before you can leave. When you're trying to concentrate, lock the door. The first week, you'll be surprised how many times you "wake up" about to stroll out of the door to do something else.
3) Strong Routine
States of mind can be conditioned; if you ritualize "starting work" you can eventually use the ritual to create the state of mind for good concentration.
4) Strong Routine, part II: don't get into the thing where when you're "at work" you're thinking about laundry and when you're "at home" you're thinking about work. That's a dodge, don't let your mind get away with it. Pick work time and home time, and stop mixing them.
Good luck. This sucks, it's frustrating, and the "dude, you just need discipline" folks just don't get it and never well.
As for reading, I'd recommend "Out of the Fog" over "Driven To Distraction".
As a final warning, this gets WAY harder when you get older, have kids, and can't do huge unproductive hours to get the few productive ones.
> Why, you guys are right next to Vermont,
Um, no, New Hampshire is in the middle, at least geographically. Now, politically...
We played with these a lot as kids. Aqua-Net + potato + sober people, no problem. Firing them with ether is bad [weakens the PVC cement after a few firings and gun explodes], other non-squishy projectiles are bad [jam in the barrel and gun explodes], and impaired people of course don't mix well with firearms.
Heh, or as political satirist Mark Russell said last week:
"The notion of inspection looking for WMDs is ludicrous. The United States knows *exactly* what WMDs Iraq has: we still have the receipts!"
bah-dum bum
It's suitably pustulent looking that he really should have died the foam black and green to have an H. R. Giger machine. Hey, he's Swiss too, right?
Maybe this crash is a bug: there *were* 255 people on the plane...
// something horrible
const unsigned char NOT_A_PLANE = 0xff;
...
if (pcount == NOT_A_PLANE) {
}
Yeah, right. Glad I don't write avionic software.