The Internet Virus--A Commentary

[Hans Buurman]

In article <5365 at medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf at cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes:
>Funny you should mention that.  I'm on a taskforce of ACM & IEEE-CS
>members working to define "Curriculum 90" for CS & CS undergraduate
>programs.  The members of the netire committee have been in agreement
>for the last year that there will be a substantial, required amount of
>work in ethics and professionalism as part of the recommended undergrad
>major.  We have been worried that many schools would fight such
>a recommendation.  Thanks to the worm incident, I doubt we'll
>have quite so much resistance.
>
>Now if only we could get some Thorazine into Weemba and teach him
>about professionalism....

Come on, Mr. Spafford. You cannot believe that a course in ethics
will get each and every undergraduate to live by the rules. And remember,
it's the individual that we're afraid of, not the group.

I live in a country where they do such things. If somebody is nasty to
(put any minority from rec.humor here :-), they will have a rule forbidding
it and pressure groups and lessons in schools telling you why you shouldn't
do it, from a Catholic, Protestant, Humanist, or any other point of view.
And although this seems to work somewhat (I think we're kind of a nice
people, a bit boring perhaps), it doesn't mean that there are no excep-
tions.

There is also the fact that doing something bad has an extra appeal to
some people. See the "are you absolutely sure you want to do this"
message rn issues when you are posting for an example.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't teach ethics. It just isn't the
solution. What you're trying to teach Weemba is idealism, and I don't think
he'll buy that.


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Disclaimer: any opinions expressed above are my own.