Ethical Considerations

In the course of doing this project, we followed the IEEE Code of Ethics in every decision we made:

When trying to think of a suitable game to work on, we wanted to avoid games with excessive violence and brutality. Games with too much flashing and shock are also known to cause detrimental effects on players, so those must also be avoided. In the end, we find that “minesweeper” is a suitable game which is educational and fun. It promotes the player’s logical thinking and is neither too violent nor too addictive. We have tried to follow the 1^st code here: “To accept responsibility in making engineering decisions consistent with the safety, health and welfare of the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment.”

While working on this project, we learned a lot more about the logistics and actual mechanism of the PS/2 mouse, as well as the method of game writing. We explored and tested the working limits of the mouse and tried our best to improve its performance, and thus following the 5^th code: “To improve the understanding of technology, its appropriate application, and potential consequences.”

All of the results documented here in this report are true results we obtain after weeks of hard-work. We have received a lot of helps from the TAs and the instructor. We are also frank to point out that we have used one more microcontroller than we proposed. Here, we abide the 3^rd code: “To be honest and realistic in stating claims or estimates based on available data.”

While we are being lucky to be one of the first groups to be able to interface the PS/2 mouse, we feel that it was our pleasure to render help to other groups with their trouble with the mouse. We believe that mutual helping is the key to learning, and in the process of helping others, we also understand the logistics of the mouse better, and in turn this helps us to improve our own design. The 10^th code: “To assist colleagues and co-workers in their professional development and to support them in following this code of ethics” is our tenet.

We understand that without the help of Professor Land and his team of TAs, especially Sean, this project will take longer to finish. We are very grateful for their suggestions and helps given and we tried to rectify all mistakes pointed out. We are also very thankful for Mr Adam Chapweske for making a very good website on PS/2 mouse interfacing. We tried “to seek, accept, and offer honest criticism of technical work, to acknowledge and correct errors, and to credit properly the contributions of others” as guided by the 7^th code.