Wednesday, September 28, 2011

HW3

1.) Work in progress!

2.) The topic I chose to talk about this week is kindof in the middle from last week's topic an today's. It's about code plagiarism.

The case I chose to represent this was the (almost) recall of Word 2007 a few years back when it was discovered the dev team used stolen code to encode documents in XML, as well as read and create XML documents. This is of course a copyright issue with the code, but it also has a place in workplace ethics. The programmers "created" code, and put it into the final product, when the code wasn't actually theirs. This is, in my opinion, a good example of bad workplace ethics.

Links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/6874126/Microsoft-ordered-to-stop-selling-Word-2007-in-US.html
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/12/22/judge-orders-microsoft-to-stop-selling-office-by-january-11th/
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-08-12-microsoft-lawsuit_N.htm

Monday, September 12, 2011

HW2

1.) Email on the way!

2.) I've been exposed to a large debate recently where science was put at odds with religion. It was spured by a comic which discussed the author's opinion that religion is uneccisary, and that it can only cause bad things to happen (The Comic - From Reddit). I think I'd like to discuss the dangers of merging of politics, religion and science, and what happens when they collide in unfavorable ways. I have a few different cases I'd like to present, including the few I posted in homework 1.

To be more specific, I think I'll focus on freedom of religion in poltics. It's no secret that if you're running for office in the US, religion can be a major part of your platform. In a nation where religious freedom is the first article in our Bill of Rights, there are far too many politicians trying to limit those rights (The Wild Hunt - The Christian Propaganda that Inspires Michele Bachman).

3.) I decided to talk about what I feel is a big issue today with IP rights involving game development. In most cases, when an independent (indie for short) developer makes a game, he has a few options for publishing his game:

1.) He can use services like the Xbox LIVE Arcade or steam, which can result in little exposure, and his items can occasionally go on sale for very little without much choice, or

2.) He publishes through a larger publisher (EA Games, etc), and looses his rights to his IP.

I've found a few articles about this:
Extra Credits: :Let's Talk About Publishing
Game Theory Online - Why Video Game Developers, Publishers Must Own Their IP

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*This will be updated periodically until 9/23/2011. After that, no edits will be made.