Ethics [351]

We had an interesting discussion on ethics in software development today.

We touched on the ethics of data mining. I.e., when making puruches with your credit card. Would it be reasonable for the health authorities know that despite you being on an expensive treatment program for you health problems, which are brought on probably because you your diet lifestyle , that you are buying unhealthy food? I think the general consensus was no. Because we have rights to privacy.

We discussed the case of Jake Baker. With his newsgroup posts violent sexual fantasy's of which he used a name of one of his fellow collage classmates.The world is changing what you day on the inter net is much easier to publish than if you were publishing someting in say a news paper. We discussed the importance of free speech, the need to be aware of what you say on the internet that it can come and bite you. Employers will often google your name, you need to be careful what you say on say you drunken photos on face book etc. We also discussed when when does free speech become more than that. Such as free speech could also be abuse or assault.

We discussed the ethics of what to do if you find that you software may not be following the best morals. We specifically discussed how an overall 'good' game portray characters extra musclebound men and extra curvaceous women. What are the implications of that. Does it mean that boys have a lead on to IT because of the games are aimed at the general male psyche
and that is possibly a large factor in why there are not many women in IT. Do we need more women in IT. Yes but why? If nothing else because we need more developers. Jo Chapman puts forward a good case for this here http://notethat.blogspot.com/2007/07/in-need-of-people.html
Our culture is also a reason why women who are quite capable do not enter into the IT field. Who are the stake holders in such a game how much influence do and should they have. If muscled men make the game sell what are the chances of being alowd to remove or tone down that aspect of the game? Where are the publics place in all this.

Patients died from overdoses with therapeutic radiation from a Therac-25 radiation therapy machine. Which poor software design was one of the primary causes. Who is accountable can you blame one engineer when the rest of the team and systems didn't safe guard against that.
There will always be bugs in code it is mathematically impossible to remove all bugs from a complex piece of code. is that a valid excuse?