But given that we have the IT professional community that we have:
Incidentally, your case neatly demonstrates the near-uselessness of the IEEE-ACM Software Engineering Code of Ethics, which is very long on what the ethical obligations of a software engineer are, but has nothing useful to say about what you should do where others are ordering you to act unethically.
Bunch of papers at SC13 presented this year. Suggest sunny look them up.
hi there, i'm one of the folks who work with limor at adafruit and i'm familiar with this product. this is one of the few products that we had to sign many NDA's in order to develop, so we are not able to open source it as per the agreement(s). for that reason we do not put the OSHW logo on it. we will be doing more with BTLE and for those we will have fully open source designs.
But, hey, science.
Should we militarize the entire American workforce given that 13 Americans die every day in workplace accidents?
$30,000 would pay for 600 hours of individual tuition from such a tutor.
What do you think would improve a student's learning outcomes more?
The emitted radiation is far too dangerous for on-Earth use without tons of shielding.
To take some specific examples in the English-speaking world, in Australia, the local conservatives did manage to repeal it the first time around. The second time around, they didn't get back into government for thirteen years until they promised to keep it, and they've never seriously tried repealing it since despite long periods in power. In the UK, even that hero of the right, Margaret Thatcher, left the NHS alone. The overwhelming evidence is that once universal health care systems are introduced, they are enormously popular.
So, yeah, drag this one out into a political fight to the death. It's unlikely, but possible, you'll knock it off. But if your lot continues with this crap for too long once it's in place, you will consign yourself to electoral irrelevance; even the ridiculous malapportionment and gerrymandering that goes on in the US won't be enough to save them.
In the medium term, I won't be terribly sad at that; while sensible health care reform will ensure that millions of your fellow citizens have healthier, longer lives, it doesn't affect me directly. But a couple of your party's other insanities, particularly its delusions on climate science, do. And if you do manage to consign yourself to complete electoral irrelevance for a few terms, the United States will be able to act effectively on climate change.
Back in the real world, the doc could have told me just about anything about the cost of the operation, and I would have agreed to it.
But, because I live in a country with universal health care, in a situation where the treatment was clearly medically justified, the docs were able to go ahead and do the surgery, and we got a bill for $0.
And your notion of an "end of year shutdown" in hospitals is complete and utter bollocks. Does not happen - if there's even a hint of this kind of thing, the relevant docs go to the media, who get the requisite photos of people who've recently been treated and interviews with the docs, and the government tips in some extra funds.
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.