CISC280 project 9

docx

School

Northampton County Area Community College *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

280

Subject

Computer Science

Date

Dec 6, 2023

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by UltraTurtle1405

CISC280 – Project 9 Answers to these questions should be full and complete arguments or explanations. In other words, a simple yes or no is not an answer! Reference your reading materials, view the issue from both sides, talk to classmates, friends, or family members to get their perspectives. 1. In what ways is a computer-related career, such as programming or system administration, similar to a fully developed profession such as medicine? In what ways is a computer-related career unlike a fully developed profession? They are similar in that people in both computer related careers and fully developed professions have the ability to harm members of the public. They differ in that you do not need to be certified or have a license to be able to write computer programs and maintain computer systems. A person does not have to complete college or serve an apprenticeship in order to gain employment as a programmer, system administrator, or systems analyst. No professional organization has the authority to forbid someone from managing computer networks or writing computer programs. Most people with careers in fully developed professions work directly with individual clients; most computer programmers work inside of a company as part of a team that includes many other programmers as well as managers. The ability to cause harm to members of the public is a powerful reason why those in computer-related careers must act according to ethical principles. Without formal certification and licensing and other components of a well- developed profession to rely upon, those in computer-related careers must take more personal responsibility for developing their ethical decision-making skills. Hence the need for this class! 2. What is whistle-blowing? What harms does it cause? What benefits may it provide? Whistle-blowing is when someone breaks rank with an organization in order to make an unauthorized disclosure of information about a harmful situation to the public after attempts to report the concerns through authorized organizational channels have been ignored or rebuffed. Whistleblowers are usually punished for disclosing information that organizations have tried to keep under wraps. If they don't lose their jobs outright, they've probably lost all chances for future advancement within the organization. Whistleblowers and their families typically suffer emotional distress and economic hardship. A benefit of whistle-blowing is that it has the potential to save many lives, as was the case in 1944 when the Treasury exposed the State Department’s actively preventing Jews from escaping to the United States. On January 16, 1944, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. met with President Roosevelt and presented him with a detailed report of the Treasury’s findings, and less than a week later, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9417, establishing the War Refugee Board and thereby saving approximately 200,000 potential victims of the Nazis. 3. The Challenger disaster led to the deaths of seven astronauts and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. What were the main reasons for the failure? How much moral responsibility should each of the following groups hold for this tragedy: Morton Thiokol engineers, Morton Thiokol senior management, NASA management? The cause of the Challenger disaster was the failure of two rubber O-rings to seal a joint between the two lower segments of the right-hand solid rocket booster. This failure was due to severe

CISC280 – Project 9 cold, and it opened a path for hot exhaust gas to escape from inside the booster during the shuttle's ascent. Morton Thiokol’s engineers recommended to their company’s top managers and to NASA that the shuttle not launch due to an unusual cold snap that would likely cause an O- ring failure that would lead to the loss of a shuttle flight and the launchpad; however, NASA and Morton Thiokol’s top management were more concerned about not delaying the launch and about giving President Reagan something to brag about in his State of the Union address the following evening. They ignored the engineers’ expertise and allowed the launch to happen, causing the destruction of a $3.2 billion spacecraft and, most importantly, the deaths of all 7 astronauts on board. I don’t believe the engineers should be held morally responsible for this tragedy at all; they were the ones who tried to stop it. I believe NASA shoulders the majority of the moral responsibility – they were the ones who strongarmed senior management to give the go for the launch; they were the ones who prevented the engineers’ negative recommendation from being communicated to the NASA officials who held the final authority to approve or delay the launch. Senior management certainly isn’t guiltless in this; they could have (and should have) listened to their engineers instead of allowing themselves to be pressured by NASA, who provided Morton Thiokol with more than half of their profits. This is a classic example of a company putting profits over people. I would assign blame to NASA and Morton Thiokol’s senior management 60/40, respectively. 4. You are a junior in college. You sent your resume to a half-dozen companies hoping to get a summer internship. Two weeks ago, Contoso Corporation contacted you and offered you a paid summer internship. One week ago you accepted their offer, agreeing to start work a week after your last final exam. Today you received a much better internship offer from Fabrikam Corporation. What should you do? I would turn down the offer from Fabrikam. Reneging on an internship contract would cause me to be barred from employment with that company and any of their sister and parent companies. It would also most likely adversely affect my future job searches because recruiters communicate with each other, and word would get around that I backed out of a legally binding contract. I would let Fabrikam know why I’m turning down their offer, but let them know how interested I am in their company – and I’d definitely save the recruiter’s contact info for when I’m looking for a full-time job. I would hope that my integrity would work in my favor with them, and if it didn’t, I wouldn’t want to work for a company like that anyway. 5. Two weeks ago, you started a new job as system administrator for a computer lab at a small college. Wanting to make a good impression, you immediately set out to learn more about the various applications provided to the users of the lab. One of the packages, an engineering design tool, seemed way out of date. You looked through the lab’s file of licensing agreements to see how much it would cost to get an upgrade. To your horror, you discovered that the college never purchased a license for the software—it is running a bootlegged copy! When you bring this to the attention of your boss, the college’s director of information technology, he says, “The license for this software would cost us $10,000, which we don’t have in our budget right now. This software is absolutely needed for our engineering students, though. Maybe we can get the license next year. For the time being, just keep the current version running.” How would you respond to your manager?

CISC280 – Project 9 I would tell them that $10,000 is far cheaper than the substantial fines the university would be hit with for using pirated software. If I was still met with resistance, I would definitely report this to the software publisher or a piracy watchdog group and let them handle it. 6. You are the manager of a software development group within a large corporation. Your group would be more productive if the PCs were upgraded, but you do not have any money left in your annual equipment budget. Because of employee turnover, you do have plenty of money left in your personnel budget, but corporate rules do not allow you to spend personnel funds on equipment. If you overspend your equipment budget, you will receive a negative performance review. You also know that whatever money is left over in your budget at the end of the fiscal year is “swept up" by the corporation. In other words, you cannot carry over a surplus from one year to the next—your group loses the money. You complain about your situation to the manager of another group, who has the opposite problem. She has plenty of money left in her equipment budget, but her personnel expenses are going to exceed her labor budget unless she does something. She offers to buy you the $50,000 of equipment you need out of her budget, if you pick up $50,000 of her personnel expenses out of your budget. If you take this action, both groups will get what they need, and neither group will exceed any of its budgets. Discuss the morality of the proposed course of action. This is both immoral and illegal. Assuming you and the other manager both report to the same boss, the ethical thing to do would be to approach your boss and explain to them the situation, then for the boss to have their board of directors and the CFO adjust your budgets so that each manager has the proper amount of money to spend in the appropriate places. 7. You are a member of the information services team at a large corporation. The president has asked for a confidential meeting with your group to talk about ways to improve productivity. The president wants to ensure that people are not sending personal emails or surfing the Web for entertainment while they are supposed to be working. The chief information officer suggests that employees be informed that their emails and Web surfing will be monitored. In truth, the company does not have the resources to do this and does not plan to implement any monitoring. The CIO strictly forbids anyone in the information services team from revealing this fact. Is it right or wrong to claim that the company is monitoring communications? What is your personal stance on this course of action? I believe it is wrong for the company to claim they’re monitoring communications and web usage when they’re not. People will figure out that the company is lying pretty quickly – either by someone in the IS department telling a trusted fellow employee about it or people just pushing the limits to see how far they can get – and that’s a sure-fire way to lose any trust your employees had in your company. Having worked for a company that actually not only DID monitor and prohibit access to certain websites, but had security cameras everywhere except the bathrooms, it’s definitely not a morale-booster to know your employer is playing Big Brother. A better way to go about improving productivity would be to offer incentives if certain work goals are met. Something as small as a pizza party once a month can go a long way. 8. The Department of Homeland Security is interested in using computers to identify suspected terrorists operating within the United States. It would like to mine databases containing information about purchases and travel to detect patterns that may identify individuals who are

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

CISC280 – Project 9 engaged in, or at least planning, terrorist activity. It asks a panel of computer scientists to determine the feasibility of this project. A panel member says the most difficult problem will be determining what patterns of transactions to look for. He suggests it might be possible to construct a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to mimic a terrorist organization. The program would determine the actions needed to execute a terrorist act. Once these actions were determined, it would be possible to search database records to find evidence of these actions. Is it right or wrong to develop a computer program capable of planning the steps needed to execute an act of terror? What would you do if you were on the panel? I do not believe it would be right to develop such a program, because it almost certainly would end up falling into the wrong hands, resulting in either an intentional or inadvertent catastrophe (see: WarGames). I am not comfortable with AI because of human nature – someone will always want to take something intended for good and use it for evil. 9. Five years ago, Al graduated from college and began working for Superlative Software Corporation. His most recent promotion has made him the manager of a large group of software engineers and support staff. One of Al’s responsibilities is to submit his budget request for the next fiscal year. He’s never done this before, so one day over lunch he asks Barb, a more experienced manager, for some advice. Barb: Figure out what you really need to complete the projects your group will be doing, and then add another 20 percent. High-level management always cuts everybody’s budget 10 to 20 percent, so after they reduce your budget, you’ll still have the money you need. Al: But the memo from the vice president said we should only ask for the amount of money we really need. Barb: Nobody pays attention to that. Al: What if they ask me to justify my budget? It’ll be pretty obvious that I’ve padded it. Barb: They never do that—they don’t have the time. Even if they did, you can work the numbers to justify the extra staff you’ll need to meet the tight deadlines they’ve set. Al: You mean lie? Barb: Look, what are you going to do if your group doesn’t get the budget it needs? You won’t be able to staff up for the new projects. That means you and all your current staff are going to be super- stressed all year long trying to meet the deadlines. Spare yourself a lot of grief and do what all the other managers are doing. What would you do if you were in Al’s position? Why? I would consult a few other more experienced managers and see if there’s a consensus among them about how they go about submitting budget requests. If that’s how the company operates, then I would do as Barb suggested and add an extra 20% to my required budget. I don’t see anything particularly amoral about this; again, if this is how the company operates, asking for $12,000 when you really need $10,000 isn’t that big a deal in my eyes. If the company granted the $12,000 and you pocketed the extra $2,000, THAT would absolutely be unethical and

CISC280 – Project 9 immoral. But that’s not what’s happening here. An ask is just an ask. If you get the money to be able to complete all the projects you need to complete, I don’t believe there’s a problem. 10. Connie interviews a candidate for a software engineering position. She feels the person has several holes in his technical background that could hinder his job performance. The next day Connie and five other people who have interviewed the candidate meet with the hiring manager to discuss his strengths and weaknesses. Before Connie speaks, everyone else voices the opinion that the candidate has great technical skills and should be hired. It seems clear to her that the hiring manager wants to offer this person a job. She wonders if she should bother voicing her reservations. What would you do if you were in Connie’s position? Why? I would mention the issues I saw in their technical background. While they may be easily overcome for the candidate should they be hired, they’re still absolutely worth noting. It’s possible the other interviewers overlooked these issues, it’s possible they’re purposely ignoring them, but if I felt they were important enough to bring up before everyone else supported the candidate’s hiring, they’re still important enough to mention afterwards.

CISC280 project 9

Related Documents