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The SIGCSE mailing list has been having a very active discussion of plagiarism in computer science classes of late. These discussions seem to recur with disappointing regularity. If not in the SIGCSE list they show up on the APCS mailing list. These discussions tend to follow some very predictable paths...

I have to confess that I have not been doing a great job of keeping up with my blog reading lately.  I’ve been reading more books for pleasure lately. That’s been great in some respects but in others I feel like I am missing things. One post I almost missed was this one by Scott McLeod called Economically...

And by Big Brother I don’t mean the government. No, I mean the companies you do business with. If you want to get mildly freaked out (or majorly league freaked out depending on your nature) read this article in Forbes How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did . Oh and if you...

Or is it “mind” the data? Last week I read a blog post by Stacey Armstrong ( CS News – Video Game Data Mining ) that linked to an article about how game companies collect and use the data they collect while people play their games online. ( Video Game Data Mining ) This is going to...

This story on cheating in Computer Science classes is one of those things that really makes you think. Years ago one of my students was so tired of students looking over his shoulder and stealing his code that he started using variable names that made absolutely no sense at all. He figured that if they...

Ever wonder how they get the sound effects for car racing video games? A Tesla gets recorded for Microsoft games . Interesting story really. Hacking and ethics I was really hoping more people would leave comments and opinions on that post.Especially after a former student of mine left a strongly dissenting...

I get a lot of interesting email. Today I received an email from a student in Japan asking me the question “ Do you think that hackers will decrease if we improve Information-ethics-education ?” My first thought was yes. My second thought was no. My third thought was maybe. Helpful answers? Perhaps not...

On top of the discussion about robo-ethicists wanting to revisit Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics I saw several pointers to a New York Times article called Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man . Will we have thinking machines that are self-aware and smarter than humans? One of the famous papers...

Computers and vision – what’s up with that? Things we do with our eyes without out a seconds thought are difficult for computers. From Scott Lum  (@ scottlum ) I learned about a page outlining Computer imaging & vision projects from Microsoft Research Fascinating stuff. Paolo Barone (@ pbarone...

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately one of the things you hear about are machines on the battle field – or above it. For the most part these machines are controlled remotely by people who make the actual decision to “fire” or not . But increasingly there is interest in machines, call them...

Have you seen a show or movie about a huge heist lately? The “Mission Impossible” type of movie or perhaps the TV show “Leverage?” One of the things you will notice is that there is always one computer hacker on the team these days. To steal something large and valuable seems to require computer access...

It all started when I saw a link to this article about students creating videos to show others how to cheat . These young people don’t see anything wrong with cheating or helping others to cheat. Oh they understand that their teachers don’t like it but they don’t seem to really understand why. This led...

Kim Cameron is one of the top experts on identity and personal information management in the world. He may be best known for his Laws of Identity . Over at the Identity Blog he has listed these laws in easy to understand English . They are also listed below: People using computers should be...

More and more computer science programs are including units on ethical and legal issues. Perhaps one of the most controversial issues involving computer technology these days is that of intellectual property (IP). One of the problems is that young people (and many older people) really don't understand...