"Why are we getting ripped off for wi-fi?"

The Sydney Morning Herald travel writer, Clive Dorman, has some interesting points to make on why hotels charge for internet use. He suggests that the trouble is, that:

'...while wi-fi is a simple and cheap installation, most hotels regard it as a cash-cow in the same way as most airlines now price-gouge for so-called “ancillary services” that cost next to nothing to provide.

Most hotels wouldn’t dream of turning expensive air-conditioning systems or refrigerators into an ancillary revenue stream, but it’s still open slather for wi-fi.'

Read more here.

A quarter of bosses head to Facebook to vet CVs

WATCH what you post on social media over the silly season or risk losing out on your next job.

The warning comes as research reveals more than a quarter of Australian bosses are using social networking sites to screen job candidates.

Almost half of those screening applicants admitted to turning away prospective candidates based on something they had seen on Facebook or Twitter, an online survey conducted by Telstra said.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/a-quarter-of-bosses-head-to-facebook-to-vet-cvs/story-e6frfro0-1226208260693#ixzz1f3F5ETHP

Tired of getting spam?

Sometimes we do have to register online for some services or products. I always worry that if I do, the company is going to sell my email adress to other companies, and I am going to get even more spam than I already do. Spam is time wasting, resource wasting, and frustrating!

But, help is at hand: there are some techniques to find out which organisation(s) is/are leaking your email address to spammers. This Reddit link tells you how to find out.

NB Thanks to Minnesotastan's blog TYWKIWDBI which alerted me to this useful information.

Ethics and ICT

A fascinating area, and one we are morally bound to explore, is the issue of ethics and ICT. As a forerunning academic, Krystyna Gorniak-Kocikowska argued, "the computer revolution has a global character and that Computer Ethics should be therefore a global ethics."

But given that even Australian states can't agree about something simple and practical such as a standard gauge for railway tracks (hence, a train cannot travel across the border from NSW to QLD or vice versa: the railway tracks are different distances apart), getting the world as a whole to agree on global ethics seems to be an optimistic but elusive dream. But that doesn't mean we should avoid the topic.

Start your exploration of the topic by reading and discussing Dr Gorniak-Kocikowska's paper "From Computer Ethics to the Ethics of Global ICT Society"

Dr Gorniak-Kocikowska makes some very strong arguments. But is it achievable? Read and discuss Professor Luciano Floridi's wonderfully strong social-justice commentary called "Information Ethics: An Environmental Approach to the Digital Divide". It's powerful stuff. (If you're interested in his views on business ethics and information ethics, with especial notice on the concept of 'profit', read this article.)

The excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good overview article on Computer and Information Ethics. If you're interested in delving deeper into various perspectives, I can recommend "Phenomenological Approaches to Ethics and Information Technology".