I won't go into specifics, but for me a few extra dollars or potential for advancement would *not* compensate for the lifetime of guilt I'd suffer knowing something I built or contributed to was primarily designed to do harm. Likewise, I will lose respect for those in a similar position to me who willingly contribute or design those systems.

On the other end of the scale, folks struggling to get by have my sympathy when assigned tasks like this. Food on the table and a roof over their family's head may trump personal ethics in some situations. When I and the other senior engineers declined the tasks I refer to, they assigned it to new-grad immigrants who for cultural and financial reasons felt they couldn't push back. The Evil Bit(tm) was definitely set in that workplace.

... but their actions tend to contradict what they say.

Torture and the taking of political prisoners are touted as flaws of third world dictatorships and communists v. waterboarding, Guantanamo Bay and attempts to arrest Snowden and others who have taken a political stance they don't like.

The problem is that the general populace is neither aware of the option to have this sort of a living will or informed enough to be able to make a properly considered decision on the language and implications of having that clause included.

I'm not a doctor or a lawyer. When I went through the process of creating a will recently, some of the language and standard clauses were pretty scary sounding, especially the power of attorney. The "do not resuscitate" clauses will require more archaic legal language to deal with a topic that many will interpret to mean that they'd be allowed to die when there was still a slight chance they'd recover.

In spite of years of education, decades in high tech and life experience that has forced me to deal with the edge of this topic, I still haven't resolved the conflict between my logical-self that says this is the right and practical solution and my emotional-self that loves life and can't imagine drawing a line where I'd allow it to end.

And a shit load of bad ones.

This good ones, were excellent technically then took what they learned in MBA in terms of business functions and applied them in a way the made everyone more effective and productive. The bad ones tended to be poor performers in their chosen fields who ran to an MBA as a way to avoid working on technical details that they couldn't comprehend.

The worst were smart, but evil. They took an MBA as a fast path to management, where they gulled their peers with enough technical know how to achieve their dreams of power and influence. The more power they got, the less tolerant they became of other "smart guys." They were viewed as threats that might expose potential technical short comings in the MBA's plans.

Canada is harbouring dissident Romulan scientists brought here by James T. Kirk (Canadian William Shatner).

Google cache etc will ensure every public speech made since the late '90s is kept forever and many made before that will also be indelibly etched into history.

If the unions were still strong, they could've blocked the offshoring of workers by calling a company-wide strike in the US. That would've been effective while most of the talent and production was local. Corp-Exec bonuses are hard to justify when your sales are the shits because the corp wasn't producing anything for an extended period.

Now that all the jobs are disseminated to 3rd/4th world areas without any worker protection, the power is gone and won't be coming back.

Correction, the first hop that decrements your TTL and returns the expiry notification is a TekSavvy device.

Any number of silent routers and switches could be mining data in the Bell/Rogers owned "last mile."

Glad I'm not a Bell subscriber, but damn... Now that the line has been crossed I expect every alternate service provider will start doing the same thing.

Fuck.

Unless you're in senior management, you have absolutely no control over your future. I can do the best job, get top ratings for performance, but if I'm unlucky and am working on the wrong projects... poof no job. Layoffs are done by cutting whole programs, without even attempting to retain the best talent. We're chattel, nameless drones who are viewed as necessary evils. Worse, I may be potentially viewed as substandard by future employers because the product I was working on wasn't viable, as though I had any opportunity to influence it's direction.
I truly enjoy writing software, but I would never recommend this career to my children or grandchildren. Way too much volatility coupled with abusive employers...

Giving Apple or really any "smart device" company any credit here is incorrect. Garmin,et al with the advent of their in-car GPS solutions made paper maps obsolete. Phones etc, didn't start replacing those devices until such a time as GPS chips became both cheap enough and power efficient enough to include in them.

I'll take, "Professions You Get Paid No Matter How Much You Fuck Up" for $25 million Alex.

Excerpt from the new reality gameshow: Shareholder Jeopardy

I disagree.

My university was one of the first to get plugged into the Arpanet when it started expanding. Back then, my questions posted to the bulletin boards at the time were answered truthfully and frequently accurately. Information was accessible, there wasn't alot back then, but it could be obtained. Ftping the index.txt from a site would provide a carefully hand maintained index of what was available with a description and other relevant data.

Now if you look for something like, "nearest gas station", you'll instead get bombarded with ads for cars, motor oil, car wash products etc while waiting for Google to start delivering the search results while they update their database of search terms you're interested in.

I'd like the old, non-privatized internet back, thanks.

... so little attention paid to facts.

If you're making uninformed decisions at work like you make uninformed comments on slashdot, ya better be ready for the unemployment line.