What Does Playing Games Teach Us About a Student\u27s Ethical Life?

Most of our students play video games. A substantial percentage of our students is required to take a computer ethics course before graduation. Both ACM and ABET require some form of computer ethics. This paper addresses gaming ethics as a subset of the computer ethics course. Specifically it considers the case of Grand Theft Auto (GTA), one of the most successful and most criticized game franchises. Through interviews with computer science students the study looks at mainstream reaction to GTA and finds that computer science students, probably one of the more sophisticated groups of gamers, have sometimes surprising ethical views about the GTA franchise. What implications does this have for the study of computer ethics

Task Scheduling and Simulation

Scheduling is a problem that is not only common computer science, but which also comes up in a variety of real world situations. Whether multi-threading computer processes, scheduling airport traffic, optimizing assembly line production and manufacturing, or ensuring that enough employees are on the floor at a given time, scheduling is important for increasing efficiency, reducing costs, optimizing production, and meeting deadlines. Scheduling has been used throughout history and has increased in efficacy through the years. Modem computerized scheduling techniques are typically much better than human calculations and often produce surprising insights and results which would have been otherwise passed over due to their counter-intuitive nature