Really? Being a passionate programmer requires a "dystopian view of the present"? You can't be motivated by pure intellectual challenge, or find the world pretty much ok as it is but want to make something new or better? Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are plenty of other motivations people have that don't make them sound like they think they're some kind of outlaw superhero with a Destiny to save the world single-handedly by coding Perl in their mum's basement.

So? Even assuming your theory of corruption on WV's side is correct, how does that absolve Cisco of any blame? Both giving and taking a bribe are wrong, as are selling and receiving stolen goods, and colluding on an inflated purchase still requires two people to collude. Unless you're claiming that every single person involved at Cisco was actually dumb enough to not realise how inflated their bid was... I mean, recommending a router that can handle 1000 VoIP connections (and not spotting that you've not included the actual VoIP modules required) for a branch library in a rural town with less than a dozen phones is just such an easy mistake to make!

Why would they provide you the means to whine about them on their own site? I haven't seen forums or "tick here to say we're shit" on 99% of corporate, charity or personal sites I've ever visited. If you don't like it, ignore it, or do your complaining elsewhere.

People also sometimes don't know that there are things they might like because they haven't tried them! This isn't a revolutionary concept in human understanding.

The video I watched a few days ago had mostly computing people - Bill Gates and Gabe Newell are the ones I can remember, but there were several others, all talking about coding and what they love about it. It seemed quite decent at appealing to their target audience, unlike most of the suggestions I've read so far on this story... I mean, Scheme? Maybe we should have RMS talking about it while eating his own toe cheese?

Linky to code.org video

That argument is pretty much the same as claiming an unlocked door makes theft the fault of the home-owner i.e. you're blaming the victim and absolving the perpetrator of any responsibility. If someone makes a poor decision, you still have to choose whether to take advantage of it or not.

You seem to be unable to distinguish "being able to get away with something" and a moral imperative. Nor understand anything about long-term consequences. Something even your average sociopath could manage...

All four of your simplistic rules fail when applied to actual humans in the actual real world, although it may apply to a world of homo economicus i.e. a world of identical sociopaths. It ignores any number of irrational behaviours that people's brains are wired for, ignores any effect of risk, ignores any effect of altruistic behaviour, ignores any long-term planning or perspective (even a sociopath might consider reputation and consequences!), ignores the many cultures where gift giving and receiving have been hugely important, and in fact ignores circumstance, context and individuality at all!

And saying people will be more careful with their own money is not even necessarily true - a lot of people would be much more careful if looking after say their friends' money than their own, especially if you're bad at managing finances! How much care they spend on other's money depends on a number of variables, including how close they are to the money's owner, the consequences of failure, the chance of failure and the amount of money itself. There's been a ton of research on these questions in the field of behavioural economics recently, and the answers aren't as simple as "people are rational narcissists".

Actually we're getting pretty good at figuring this out - I would recommend checking Dan Areily's talks on behavioural economics on TED, there's been a lot of research into this over the last 15 years or so. It's fascinating stuff - for instance people would rather earn $20K when their neighbours earn $10K than earn $50K when their neighbours earn $100K. This isn't in anyway what traditional economics and "rational actors" predict, people judge almost everything relative to other things, not against any absolute scale. There's plenty more stuff about motivation, rewards and happiness that's been studied.

This seems like an amazing development, but just today we've had a story about Monsanto and how well their error correction is going despite haivng the best in Western thinking availalble to them. Why should we trust that IBM's procedures are any better?