All posts tagged legal and policy

Senators Abandon National Priorities for Personal Ones

From TechCruch:

Today, Senators Charles Schumer and Bob Casey are expected to announce a plan they have to re-impose the taxes on Saverin, part of a bigger scheme to go after expatriates who give up citizenship in order to avoid taxes. On top of that, they want to make it official that people who do avoid paying their taxes by renouncing citizenship are unable from ever re-entering the country again.

So, let me make sure I’m getting this straight.  Eduardo Severin was born in Brazil and lived there for the first 16 years of his life. He has lived in Singapore for the past few years.  He created Facebook with Zukerberg, and with the impending IPO, is about to owe about $67 million in taxes.  So he renounced his US citizenship to avoid paying the taxes. And now he needs his own law.

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by Jim Caccamo on May 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in justice, moral theory, temperance
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 17, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/17/senators-abandon-national-priorities-for-personal-ones/

So, Ethics Isn’t The Only Thing Lacking

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a bit about the lack of structures to establish professional ethics within the programming industry.  In a great post about everyone learning to code Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, I tracked back to a post from a couple of years ago where he bemoaned the poor skill sets of man people who apply for coding jobs.

Three years later, I’m still wondering: why do people who can’t write a simple program even entertain the idea they can get jobs as working programmers? Clearly, some of them must be succeeding. Which means our industry-wide interviewing standards for programmers are woefully inadequate, and that’s a disgrace. It’s degrading to every working programmer.

Yikes.  If the software engineering profession can’t even ensure basic technical competency in members of the in the field, is there any hope for getting some sort of basic ethical practices in there?

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by Jim Caccamo on May 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in moral theory, prudence
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 16, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/16/so-ethics-isnt-the-only-thing-lacking/

Vogue’s Human Move

The New York Times’ Eric Wilson recently reported that Vogue magazine will institute a new policy in which it agrees to stop using models under 16 years of age and models “who, from the viewpoint of the editors, appear to have an eating disorder.”  The change, which will apply to all of its 19 international editions, is being done, according to Jonathan Newhouse (Chairman of parent company Condé Nast International) to “reflect their commitment to the health of the models who appear on the pages and the well-being of their readers.”

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by Jim Caccamo on May 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in charity, love, temperance
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 16, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/16/vogue-bans-anorexic-models/

Users Aren’t Always the Best Judges of Risk

As is the case with lots of categories of news, little in the mainstream tech journalism follows the really important stories. More often, coverage focuses on new product announcements and sensationalism. One important topic, however, does appear frequently in mainstream tech news, namely privacy. There is broad awareness that our new digital lifestyle brings with it a host of potential problems in keeping ourselves at our information secure. Poor management of privacy and information use by some of the industry’s biggest players (like Google), recent congressional debates on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and Facebook’s impending IPO have kept these issues in the limelight.

But, of course, there will always be people who push back against prevailing winds.  Reflecting on some Talks that he recently attended, Steve Wildstrom suggests that the over-arching angle in the effort to deal (updated) with privacy is misplaced.

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by Jim Caccamo on May 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in common good, moral theory
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 16, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/16/users-arent-always-the-best-judges-of-risk/

Innovation and Failing the Customer

One of the key problems with innovating is that you frequently run into problems that were totally unforeseen. That’s why engineering practice—driven my robust professional ethics commitments—require that systems be tested and reevaluated both during the creation phase and after deployment in order to catch problems as they arise. This process drives companies to do physical product recalls and software updates. Innovation requires thoughtful consideration of possibilities, good and bad. It also requires a boatload of humility, because you will make mistakes.

Failing to account adequately for unforeseen consequences is one thing. Failing to account for known negative consequences is something altogether different.

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by Jim Caccamo on May 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in charity, common good, trust
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 13, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/13/innovation-and-failing-the-customer/

Seriously? Transparency Isn’t Our Strong Suit

From Canadian copyright expert Michael Geist:

[United States Trade Representative] Ambassador Ron Kirk has responded to a letter signed by dozens of legal academics (I signed on) expressing concern with the lack of transparency associated with the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations. Kirk says he is “strongly offended by the assertion that our process has been non-transparent and lacked public participation.”

Ah, you have to love the rhetoric. A couple of years ago, President Obama refused to make public the ACTA antipiracy legislation that he was working out with European countries, citing national security interests. People found out about it only through leaks. The SOPA/PIPA legislation made it to the floors of the House and Senate without the public knowing about it. When people found out, the only possible way to do “public commment” was a massive online campaign, including taking sites like Wikipedia dark in protest. The CISPA legislation was passed by the house last month in a rush before anyone had a chance to contact their representatives. On the face of it, these seem to support the plain sense meanings of both “non-transparent” and “lacking in public participation”.

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by Jim Caccamo on May 12, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in common good, trust
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 12, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/12/seriously-transparency-isnt-our-strong-suit/

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