Re: Programmer Liability

Very interesting article. IMHO, the root of the problem is the perception
that "their essential function is to be profit-making machines that
relegate all other functions and attributes (social, cultural, political,
technological and economic roles) to a distant second place".
I say "perception" because we usually take that statement as a given, when
in fact it is a choice. People still own corporations, basically, and the
owners of corporations can define their functions any way they want. It's
just custom and tradition to say that their only function is to make a
profit. This may be codified into law, but again, laws are made by people,
and they can be changed if people want to change them.
The underlying assumption, I think, is that while we can't all agree on
much else, we can all agree that you gotta make a profit to survive, so
the corporate goal becomes the lowest common denominator.  Unfortunately,
we can also mostly agree that a world populated by people and
organizations whose only motive is to maximize their monetary profits
might be a pretty dismal place to live, but that seems to get lost in the
wash.

Just my $.02 .. . .

Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries
<midrange-nontech@xxxxxxxxxxxx> on Friday, October 14, 2005 at 3:38 PM
-0500 wrote:
>And HOW TIMELY what you say is John ! I was just reading the Backspin
>column
>in Network World (10/10/05) at lunch today:
>
>http://tinyurl.com/amfc3
>
>Chuck


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx