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Re:AT&T Case Asks High Court to Assign Privacy Rights to Com... by patio11 on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @03:08AM (#2119105)
Prior to calling for the scalps of someone peripherally involved in an incident, I think engineers should pause and reflect as to whose finger is going to be physically on the "go" button directly before something important breaks at their company.

Captain Planet -- where all environmental damage was caused by acts of malice by identifiable people -- made for a great TV show... when we were eight.

Re:AT&T Case Asks High Court to Assign Privacy Rights to Com... by ck2 on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @03:19AM (#2119126)
Sure that's one extreme that makes it look silly.

But don't you think when there is a decision to pursue an extremely risky behavior (ie. drilling in the gulf, running private armies in foreign battles, selling derivatives) and when that risk literally blows up and kills people, SOMEONE should pay? Perhaps the people who pushed for that risk?

I mean there are other ways to make money that do not endanger lives, these people decided that there was zero risk to them personally so to heck with playing it safe and instead risked other people.

Re:AT&T Case Asks High Court to Assign Privacy Rights to Com... by HeyLaughingBoy on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @01:53PM (#2120789)
It's easy to make a case that "SOMEONE should pay" if you cherrypick examples but most cases aren't that simple.

What if you make pacemakers that save millions of lives but one day there's a software update that ends up killing a thousand people? Who's the "SOMEONE that should pay?" The developer who coded the bug? The analyst who misunderstood the use case and wrote the wrong requirement? The Quality Assurance team that tested the code and said it was A-OK? The software department head who signed off on the release?

In the real world, the cause of most lethal mistakes are shades of gray, not black and white as you imply.

Re:AT&T Case Asks High Court to Assign Privacy Rights to Com... by DannoHung on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @07:18AM (#2119542)
BS, someone has to bear the responsibility of decisions and policies made and approved. If this sort of thing keeps happening and CEO's point the finger at underlings, well then maybe people will start getting wise on the social responsibility of the places that they work at. Or maybe the CEOs need to go to jail and learn that they can't keep shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Deal with it."

Maybe we need people to go to jail in a society for wrong doings in order to prevent pathological behavior from becoming the norm.