Forum for Advancing Software Engineering Volume 6, Number 2, Fri Feb 2, 1996 Topics MISCELLANY Request for Articles for TCSE Newsletter Request for SIGCSE "Reporters" TEXT ANNOUNCEMENTS The Case of the Killer Robot EDUCATION SOURCES CTIComp News CONFERENCE/SYMPOSIUM/WORKSHOP/COURSE ANNOUNCEMENTS Are Today's Requirements Engineering Problems Being Solved? Software Engineering in Virtual Organizations 18th International Conference on Software Engineering CALLS FOR PAPERS International Conference on Software Maintenance Workshop on Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance A------------------------------------------------------- From: kpierce@d.umn.edu (Keith Pierce) Subject: Request for Articles for TCSE Newsletter I edit the "Education News" column of the newsletter of the IEEE Technical Council on Software Engineering Education (TCSE). This newsletter is distributed three times a year to over 30,000 members of the TCSE. The Education News column is the news source for the TCSE's Technical Committee on Software Engineering Education. Please consider writing an article for this newsletter; it will receive wide distribution. Articles on any topic of interest to software engineering educators and trainers will be considered. Length can range from very short announcements (web sites or sources of training materials, for example) to 500-1000 word articles. Here are some possible topics that come to mind: * position papers on methods, philosophy, style, ... of software engineering education or training * descriptions of new or innovative programs or courses * summaries of interesting conference events * book reviews * education and training sources * conference announcements (education or training related only) * news, articles, announcements related to professional issues and ethics in software engineering. The deadline for submitting articles for the next issue is March 15. If you would like to submit an article but can't make this deadline, subsequent deadlines fall every 4 months: March 15, July 15, November 15. Because of space limitations, some editing of your articles may be required. I look forward to receiving your articles. Keith Pierce A------------------------------------------------------- From: kpierce@d.umn.edu (Keith Pierce) Subject: Request for SIGCSE "Reporters" As usual, this year's SIGCSE Technical Symposium includes much of interest to software engineering educators. I would welcome from any attenders articles summarizing events, panel discussions, or talks that might be of interest to teachers of software engineering. A------------------------------------------------------- From: "Richard G. Epstein" Subject: Killer Robot Text THE CASE OF THE KILLER ROBOT [THE SAGA CONTINUES by Richard G. Epstein Department of Computer Science West Chester University of PA West Chester, PA 19383] The Case of the Killer Robot explores the ethical, social and professional dimensions of computing. It does this by means of an in-depth analysis of an industrial accident in which a robot kills its operator. The investigation into the accident leads to many important considerations in software engineering, computer ethics, professional and workplace issues and the social implications of computing. FASE placed the original killer robot scenario (of about 70 manuscript pages) in its Internet repository during the winter of 1994. This June the book version of the killer robot case study will be published by John Wiley and Sons of New York. The book is entitled The Case of the Killer Robot and it runs 400 manuscript pages. The book is no longer just a scenario. It is a meditation upon broader social, ethical and professional issues. The Case of the Killer Robot consists of two books: an outer book which consists of supporting factual materials and an inner book which contains the fictitious materials (including the scenario proper). Each part has its own table of contents. Here is the table of contents for the outer book: GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS [the outer book] Preface General Table of Contents Appendix A: real people and institutions Appendix B: endnotes and references Appendix C: discussion questions Appendix A helps the reader to distinguish between fictitious characters (like Ray Johnson, Robotics Division Chief) from real characters (like Ben Shneiderman, whose user interface principles are discussed). Appendix B contains copious references and endnotes on each story. Appendix C contains discussion questions and other suggestions for student activities. The endnotes and discussion questions introduce some important concepts in their own right. For example, the concept of a "penumbra" of a decision as the sum total of all people that are affected by a decision is introduced as a major tool for analyzing ethical decisions. The inner book is a compilation of papers concerning the killer robot and related issues. The fictitious editor of the inner book is Pam Pulitzer, the Sentinel- Observer reporter who is covering the killer robot case. Here is an annotated listing of the twenty-nine articles that are included in her compilation of killer robot articles: ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS [The inner book] 1. NEW GENERATION OF ROBOTS DELIVERED TO CYBERWIDGETS, INC. 2. ROBOT KILLS OPERATOR IN GRISLY ACCIDENT 3. McMURDOCK PROMISES JUSTICE IN 'KILLER ROBOT' CASE [The first three articles provide a new introduction to the scenario and tries to build the case that a prosecutor might try to hold a programmer responsible for an industrial accident that is caused by a flawed computer program. ] 4. SILICON VALLEY PROGRAMMER INDICTED FOR MANSLAUGHTER 5. 'KILLER ROBOT' DEVELOPERS WORKED UNDER ENORMOUS STRESS 6. 'KILLER ROBOT' PROGRAMMER WAS PRIMA DONNA, CO-WORKERS CLAIM 7. 'KILLER ROBOT' PROJECT MIRED IN CONTROVERSY RIGHT FROM START [stories 4-7 introduce the basic killer robot scenario] 8. FALLEN PROJECT DIRECTOR ACCUSED OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN KILLER ROBOT CASE [this new story discusses conflicts of interest, personal problems and their impact in a professional setting, the role of CASE tools on a software project.] 9. THE 'KILLER ROBOT' INTERFACE 10. SILICON TECHCHRONICS PROMISED TO DELIVER A SAFE ROBOT 11. SOFTWARE ENGINEER CHALLENGES AUTHENTICITY OF 'KILLER ROBOT' SOFTWARE TESTS 12. SILICON TECHCHRONICS EMPLOYEE ADMITS FAKING SOFTWARE TESTS [Stories 9-12 complete the original killer robot scenario] 13. A CONVERSATION WITH DR. HARRY YODER [A discussion of collective versus individual responsibility in an incident of this nature.] 14. ETHICS & COMPUTING: THE ACM CODE OF ETHICS [ACM President Turina Babbage discusses the entire killer robot scenario from the perspective of the ACM Code of Ethics. The ACM Code of Ethics is presented and discussed in some detail.] 15. SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS DISCUSS ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM [A bunch of software professionals meet at the Angry Ostrich Bar and Grill and discuss the role of ethics in their professional lives. One message: the presence or absence of clear ethical guidelines will influence the pleasure that one will derive from one's work.] 16. LONG-AWAITED SUITS FILED IN KILLER ROBOT CASE [Basic legal principles: negligence, strict liability and warrantees] 17. HACKER EXPOSES 'PROCESS MATURITY' CONTROVERSY AT SILICON TECHCHRONICS [A discussion of process maturity in general and the SEI CMM model in particular. Reasons why a company might want to buy into process maturity and reasons for not buying into process maturity. Also, hacking and computer security.] 18. THE UNHEALTHY WORKPLACE [Repetitive Strain Injuries and other hazards of the computer professional's working environment. Ethics of experiments involving human subjects.] 19. A TALE OF TWO CITIES [Seven factors which impact upon the quality of the working environment. Emphasis on what makes work rewarding and what makes work stressful and dangerous to health. These are issues students should seriously consider before plunging into the workforce.] 20. WEB OF DECEPTION [Social implications of the World Wide Web. Can there be such a thing as too much information? Quality of information. Fragmentation of society.] 21. VISITING A SOFTWARE VISUALIZATION LABORATORY [Using process visualizations to communicate the complexity of software. The difficulty of maintaining and testing object-oriented software. Basic software engineering principles: coupling, cohesion, information hiding.] 22. AI RESEARCHER QUITS TO PROTEST SYSTEM HE HELPED TO CREATE [Ethical implications and social impact of intelligent systems, in this case a system which alerts security officials of suspicious-looking people based upon ethnic and other visual characteristics. I call this "visual profiling" as opposed to "data profiling". The nature of intelligence. Computers as embodying our own intelligence or lack thereof.] 23. VISION QUEST: THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING [A reporter goes on a vision quest and gets to see the world of computing in 2011. An honest effort to predict what the future will be like, a combination of World Wide Web and Megaprogramming. The Global Landscape is introduced as a carefully planned and standardized Web of the future. The Global Landscape is a virtual image of business, governmental and educational activities.] 24. LETTERS TO THE SENTINEL-OBSERVER SUNDAY MAGAZINE [Readers respond to the Vision Quest story.] 25. VARIETIES OF TEAMWORK EXPERIENCE [A very detailed analysis of teamwork and the ethics of speech. Presents actual transcripts of killer robot team meetings and analyzes nature of the communications between team members from an ethical point of view. Uses four guidelines for evaluating the ethics of speech.] 26. THE CASE OF THE VIRTUAL EPIDEMIC [This article introduces another software disaster: a medical diagnosis system that is responsible for the death of a patient. Social and ethical implications of expert systems. Who is embodied in a complex computer system and how is accountability maintained in such an environment? In this case, an expert system misdiagnoses ailments with fatal results. Can computers steal human capabilities?] 27. THE CASE OF THE DEADLY DATA [Social and ethical implications of database systems. What happens when an unreliable person is hired by a company with extremely sensitive data - in this case, a blood bank? What kinds of data should a company be allowed to collect, albeit anonymously? Data privacy policies of organizations.] 28. IS YOUR COMPUTER STEALING FROM YOU? [Professor Lowe-Tignoff's assertion that computers can steal human capabilities. The social and ethical implications of this fact. Also, a discussion as to whether we need ethical guidelines for computer systems themselves, as well as for people.] 29. CANDID PROFESSOR [Professor Yoder's computer ethics lecture is video taped for the Candid Professor TV show. The students and the professor discuss the Collins et al. paper "How Good is Good Enough?" which proposes ethical guidelines for software developers.] A------------------------------------------------------- From: kpierce@d.umn.edu (Keith Pierce) Subject: CTIComp News From the October 1995 Newsletter of The CTI Centre for Computing at the University of Ulster at Jordanstownn: This edition of the NewsSheet includes reports from projects which have been funded under the New Technologies Initiative and which are of particular interest to Computer Science educators. A full list of the projects is available on the Web at the following URL: http://www.man.ac.uk:80/NTI/ * World Wide Web teaching resources in Knowledge Based Systems (KBS) and Speech And Language Technology (SALT) * High Performance Computing Training and Education Centres tc "High Performance Computing Training and Education Centres" Visit the Centre's web page at http://www.ulst.ac.uk/misc/cticomp/ A------------------------------------------------------- From: oczg@doc.ic.ac.uk (Orlena "Olly" Gotel) Subject: BCS RESG: Requirements Engineering Symposium The BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group presents: Are Today's Requirements Engineering Problems Being Solved? Thursday March 21st 1996 City University, London 09:00am - 17:30pm The BCS Requirements Engineering SG invites you to attend a symposium for directors and senior managers which investigates whether today's requirements engineering problems are being solved. In particular you should attend this symposium if your business is losing money because of inadequate specifications, your organisation is buying systems unsuited to its real needs, or get well programmes are needed within months of system installation. For more information, contact ORLENA GOTEL Department of Computing Imperial College 180 Queen's Gate LONDON SW7 2BZ Phone:+44 171 589 5111 x58237 Email:oczg@doc.ic.ac.uk Fax: +44 171 581 8024 http://www-dse.doc.ic.ac.uk/~oczg Home: +44 1865 749200 A------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill McCarty Reply-To: bmccarty@apu.edu Subject: Course Announcement: Software Engineering in Virtual Organizations Beginning Feb. 5, a 9-week course in the MSE program at Azusa Pacific University (Azusa, California) will address issues relevant to software engineering in the 21st century, including in particular software engineering in "virtual" organizations. There is a mailing list which will be used to host course discussions, which are open to the public. Information on the course and instructions for joining the mailing list can be found at: http://www.apu.edu/~bmccarty/curricula/mse598 Dr. Bill McCarty, Associate Professor Department of Computer Science Azusa Pacific University Ph. 818 815-5311 901 East Alosta Avenue Secty. 818 815-5310 Azusa, CA 91702 USA Fax 818 815-5323 mailto:bmccarty@apu.edu http://www.apu.edu/~bmccarty A------------------------------------------------------- From: girard@murtaugh.crim.ca (Jean-Francois Girard) Subject: 18th International Conference on Software Engineering 25-30 March 1996 Technische Universitaet Berlin, Germany ICSE is the flagship conference of the international software engineering community. The objectives are to provide a forum to present new software engineering research results, to exchange experience reports regarding the use of software engineering technologies in industry, to expose practioners to promising new technologies, to expose researchers to the problems of industrial software development, and to encourage the transfer of advanced software engineering technologies from research into practice. ICSE 18 is the main event of the International Software Engineering Week '96 (ISEW 96). The ISEW 96 in Berlin, Germany, is the premier international software engineering meeting in 1996. The venue of ISEW 96 is the Technische Universitaet Berlin. ICSE 18 will feature invited keynote presentations, parallel conference sessions, tutorials, workshops, plenaries, workshop presentations, reports from industrial experiences, mini-tutorials, and other events. INVITED SPEAKERS o Chip Anderson, Microsoft, USA o Victor Basili, University of Maryland, USA o Hans-Eugen Binder, Siemens, Germany o Anthony Hoare, Oxford University, UK o Tom de Marco, Atlantic Systems Guild, USA o Hasso Plattner, SAP, Germany CONFERENCE SESSIONS o Understanding and Analysis o Supporting Requirements o Testing and Analysis o Object Orientation in Use o Analysis of Distributed Systems o Measurement o Component-based Software o Formal Design o Configuration Management and Reuse o Process Effectiveness o System Validation o Environments o System Generation o Data Flow Testing o Maintenance and Evolution o Testing Algorithms WORKSHOPS o Third Annual European Symposium on Cleanroom Software Engineering; Tuesday o Fourth IEEE Workshop on Program Comprehension; Friday - Sunday o Workshop on Multimedia Software Engineering; Monday+Tuesday o Sixth Workshop on Software Configuration Management; Monday+Tuesday o Workshop on Technology Transfer; Friday+Saturday o 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design; 22+23 March o Metrics Symposium METRICS 96; Monday+Tuesday o First International Workshop on Software Engineering for Parallel and Distributed Systems; Monday+Tuesday o Third International Workshop on Software Engineering Education; Friday TUTORIALS Full-Day: The Experience Factory: How to Build and Run One Software Process Improvement: Methods and Lessons Learned The Personal Process in Software Engineering Safety Case Construction and Management Software-Reliability-Engineered Testing Inspecting Critical Software Software Design for Concurrent and Real-Time Systems Systematic Object-Oriented Software Construction With Eiffel Half-Day: Rigorous Requirements for Real-Time Systems: Evolution and Application of the SCR Method Computer and Network Security A Comparison of Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Methods EOS: A Model for Evolutionary Object Oriented Software Development and its Implications for Project Management Software Design and Implementation with C++ Components Understanding Software Systems Using Reverse Engineering Technologies For more information (W3 also registration) access: http://www.gmd.de/Events/ICSE18/ ftp://ftp.gmd.de/Events/ICSE18/ mailto: icse18@informatik.uni-kl.de Contact the general chair A------------------------------------------------------- From: girard@murtaugh.crim.ca (Jean-Francois Girard) Subject: CFP: International Conference on Software Maintenance CALL FOR PAPERS International Conference on Software Maintenance - ICSM'96 Monterey, California, USA November 4 - 8, 1996 The Workshop on Software Maintenance held in Monterey, California in 1983 marked the first in a series of software maintenance conferences than have evolved into the International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM). ICSM is recognized as the world's premier forum for state-of- the-art developments in the field of software maintenance. In returning to Monterey in 1996, it is appropriate to examine developments in software maintenance over the past thirteen years and to assess the extent to which these developments have added value to software products and processes. SUGGESTED TOPICS include software maintenance education For more information contact the submitter above, or visit the web site http://www.crim.ca/se/icsm96.html A------------------------------------------------------- From: girard@murtaugh.crim.ca (Jean-Francois Girard) Subject: CFP: Workshop on Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance CALL FOR POSITION STATEMENTS International Workshop on Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance Monterey, California, USA November 8, 1996 Deadline for submission: August 1st, 1996. This workshop is to take place following ICSM-96, the International Conference on Software Maintenance taking place in Monterey, California, U.S.A. It is in part sponsored by the Fraunhofer-Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE), Kaiserslautern, Germany. The focus of the workshop is on experimental quantitative and qualitative studies of software maintenance processes. Of particular interest will be the design of empirical studies, their underlying methodologies and techniques, and the lessons learned from them. Controlled experiments, field studies, pilot projects, measurement programs, surveys or analyses based on questionnaires, maintenance process models, etc., are examples of empirical studies of interest. Please, send your position statements to: For more information, contact the submitter or see the Web site: http://www.crim.ca/se/wessm.html E------------------------------------------------------- FASE Volume 6 Number 2 Send newsletter articles to one of the editors, preferably by category: Articles pertinent to corporate and government training to Kathy Beckman, sdmce@access.digex.net; Academic education, and all other categories, to Keith Pierce, kpierce@d.umn.edu (Messages routed to fase-submit@d.umn.edu still go to Keith) Send requests to add, delete, or modify a subscription to fase-request@d.umn.edu Send problem reports, returned mail, or other correspondence about this newsletter to fase-owner@d.umn.edu, or kpierce@d.umn.edu You can retrieve back issues by anonymous FTP from from ricis.cl.uh.edu or through WWW at URL http://ricis.cl.uh.edu/FASE/ Keith Pierce -- Academic/Misc Editor and ListMaster University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN 55812-2496 USA Phone: 218- 726-7194 Fax: 218-726-8240 Email: kpierce@d.umn.edu Kathy Beckman -- Corporate/Government Editor Computer Data Systems One Curie Ct., Rockville MD 20850 USA Phone: 301-921-7027 Fax: 301-921-1004 Email: sdmce@access.digex.net David Eichmann -- FASE Archivist University of Houston - Clear Lake Box 113, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston, TX 77058 USA Web: http://ricis.cl.uh.edu/eichmann/ Phone: 713-283-3875 Fax: 713-283-3810 Email: eichmann@rbse.jsc.nasa.gov or eichmann@cl.uh.edu Laurie Werth -- Advisory Committee Taylor Hall 2.124 University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712 USA Phone: 512-471-9535 Fax: 512-471-8885 Email: lwerth@cs.utexas.edu Nancy Mead -- Advisory Committee Software Engineering Institute 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA Phone: 412-268-5756 Fax: 412-268-5758 Email: nrm@sei.cmu.edu