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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

"I quickly took it to the Xerox machine, made a copy, and put it back."

1. Don't leave anything confidential out on your desk.

2. Don't let this guy loose in your office.

3. Ethical behavior should be a prerequisite to blogging :)

[EDIT: This was downvoted within 2 minutes of posting, exactly what I expected. It happens every time. Why do people here have such a problem when someone mentions ethical behavior? Is is because they don't want to be preached to or is it because they want to do whatever they want, consequences be damned? Either way, a down vote should be accompanied by a comment. AFAIC, nothing OP had to say mattered once I understood how he got his raw data.]

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> AFAIC, nothing OP had to say mattered once I understood how he got his raw data.

Why does that make sense?

Perhaps data is only correct if it was acquired ethically? :/ Maybe the unethical collection of data introduces large margins of error from the ethic-goblins.

You're missing the point. It has nothing to do with the correctness of the data, and everything to do with the means used to collect it. See also: torture & search warrants.

Torture introduces possible error into data. So it's an extremely bad analogy.

Picking up a sheet of paper doesn't call the validity of the data into question. It's still the same data.

Let us say someone posts something like this: "Hey guys, I wrote a webapp in C and used Google AdWords to get traffic. I spent $n and made $(n+m) (where m=|m|). This is what I learned about AdWords using my analytics..."

Your comment is like talking about why it is not best to write webapps in C. Yes, you will be correct in saying that it is not a good idea to write webapps in C. Everyone knows that already! For whatever reason and under whatever circumstances, this guy wrote his webapp in C. It perhaps still is a Bad Thing™ but here we are talking and trying to learn about AdWords and analytics!

I didn't downvote you btw :) And let me preempt anyone about to reply "are you saying unethical behavior is only as bad as language of choice of webapps?". That is not what I am saying.

Down-voted because it's irrelevant to the point he's trying to make. Arguing ethics isn't really that interesting. Discussing success, cash advances, etc etc is far more interesting.

Success = (Factor1 + Factor2 + Factor3 + ...) * Ethics

Ethics is a binary 1 or 0. Maybe not that interesting, but hardly irrelevant.

(Don't believe me? Let your customers find out about you lieing, cheating, or stealing. Then see what happens to your revenue stream.)

(Don't believe me? Let your customers find out about you lieing, cheating, or stealing. Then see what happens to your revenue stream.)

That really just convinces me of the equation

Success = (Factor1 + Factor2 + Factor3 + ...) * Appearance of Ethics

Which still doesn't explain Microsoft, oil companies, tobacco companies, etc.

>> Let your customers find out about you lieing, cheating, or stealing. Then see what happens to your revenue stream.

Your formula for success isn't true in the least. Whole companies have been built on lies and cheating since the world began.

Bell for example, built a whole company after stealing someone elses patent to the telephone.

I'm afraid most customers don't particularly care that much about ethics. At least not to the point that you seem to.

Ethics is certainly not a 1 or 0, otherwise humanity wouldn't struggle with the subject so often. Suggesting that they are a 1 or a 0 indicates to me that you are in no way qualified to judge ethical behavior.

I don't have any problem with people mentioning ethics; however in this case it has NOTHING to do with the point the writer of this article is trying to make.

If you feel so strongly about ethics, write an article about it and post it here.

You were probably downvoted because:

1. People don't come here for education in ethics. They might decide to discuss ethics if they find that discussion interesting, though, which leads me to my next point.

2. The first two points of what you said were completely obvious and, by virtue of adding nothing useful, devoid of interest.

Respecting confidentiality is not exactly high on my list of ethical priorities. If the information is not dangerous or likely to be misconstrued, and the other party has not earned the respect, I don't think it's morally wrong.

(did not vote on post)

It was downvoted because people anticipated you'd be whining about downvotes, and no one likes whining about downvotes.

I'm not sure the ethical merit of what he did is germane to the message of the article.

Either way, a down vote should be accompanied by a comment.

I said this once and PG smacked me down. I think he's wrong. Unless you made an incredibly vapid comment with no substance whatsoever, you don't deserve to be downvoted unless there's at least one comment beneath your post. (Not to say I follow this rule all the time.)

Ooh, now that's ironic. Someone just did a drive-by downmod of all my posts!

edit: and again. I see the Reddit and Digg refugees are out in full force!

Upvoted grandparent, downvoted parent. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.

Oh, the reason's fairly obvious; upmodded for leaving a comment. :)

Using methods to invalidate accurate results only makes sense if you're more concerned about suppressing certain methods than about accuracy.

Of course, one can find these results interesting and agree with your (1) and (2), as I do.

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