The Internet Virus--A Commentary

[Gene Spafford]

In article <236 at bigbroth.UUCP> rk at bigbroth.UUCP (rohan kelley) writes:
>What rick rogers has done is make a strong case for requiring a course
>in ethics for every CS major.  It may not work, but a little more
>ethics in all our professions wouldn't hurt.  We put some pretty
>powerful stuff in the hands of some pretty young (and sometimes
>immature) individuals in the CS courses across the country.  

Funny you should mention that.  I'm on a taskforce of ACM & IEEE-CS
members working to define "Curriculum 90" for CS & CS undergraduate
programs.  The members of the netire committee have been in agreement
for the last year that there will be a substantial, required amount of
work in ethics and professionalism as part of the recommended undergrad
major.  We have been worried that many schools would fight such
a recommendation.  Thanks to the worm incident, I doubt we'll
have quite so much resistance.

Now if only we could get some Thorazine into Weemba and teach him
about professionalism....
-- 
Gene Spafford
NSF/Purdue/U of Florida  Software Engineering Research Center,
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
Internet:  spaf at cs.purdue.edu	uucp:	...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf