Oops, what about ethics?

Oops! What about a Million Kernel Oopses?

When a failure occurs in the Linux kernel, the kernel emits an “oops”, summarizing the execution context of the failure. Kernel oopses describe real Linux errors, and thus can help prioritize debugging efforts and motivate the design of tools to improve the reliability of Linux code. Nevertheless, the information is only meaningful if it is representative and can be interpreted correctly. In th...

Ebola: what it tells us about medical ethics.

Good medical ethics needs to look more to the resources of public health ethics and use more societal, population or community values and perspectives, rather than defaulting to the individualistic values that currently dominate discussion. In this paper I argue that we can use the recent response to Ebola as an example of a major failure of the global community in three ways. First, the focus ...

What is Ethics of Science and Technology?

Background: The existence of crises and problems such as non-compliance with standards and professional ethics in the field of engineering and technology, and existence of fraud and misuse in the field of science has resulted in importance of ethics in the science and technology. But the fact is that there is no accurate understanding of the ethics of science and technology, and this field is o...

Arguments about Animal Ethics

What Is Computer Ethics?*

A Proposed Definition Computers are special technology and they raise some special ethical issues. In this essay I will discuss what makes computers different from other technology and how this difference makes a difference in ethical considerations. In particular, I want to characterize computer ethics and show why this emerging field is both intellectually interesting and enormously important...