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Microsoft's Ethical Guidelines
hankwang writes "Did you know that Microsoft has ethical guidelines? It's good to know that 'Microsoft did not make any payments to foreign government officials' while lobbying for OOXML, and that 'Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition' every time they suppressed competitors. In their Corporate Citizenship section, they discuss how the customer-focused approach creates products that work well with those of competitors and open-source solutions. So all the reverse-engineering by Samba and OpenOffice.org developers wasn't really necessary."
I'll point out that they've had a big anti-trust target painted on their foreheads (both in the US and the EU) for a long long time now. I'm sure they actually do spend a lot of time making sure they don't run afoul of the local regulators, watchdog groups and newspapers.
Having said that, Microsoft?? Ethics??? hahahahaha LET THE BASHING BEGIN! Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of assholes!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
There really do seem to be people who believe that a Code of Conduct is there to limit what a company can do. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First and foremost, a Code of Conduct is an integral part of the company's PR effort. Every self-respecting company has to have one. It's cool to have one, and you look stupid and unsophisticated if you don't. Besides, there is no need to be without. There are templates with good-sounding Codes of Conduct that are guaranteed to leave everyone a comfortably free hand.
Secondly: damage limitation. A Code of Conduct is there to be able to shield a company from legal consequences of unethical conduct by it's employees on its behalf. If an employee is caught red-handed, it really helps if a company is able to state (truthfully) that this action contravenes their official Code of Conduct. This can really limit the damage.
You can pick any browser you want from these alternatives: IE6, IE7, IE8
Not always. You can't pick IE6 AND Vista. Many sites work well only with IE6.
Recent versions of Exchange Server work well only with IE7 or later. So in a Corporate setting with Win2K systems running IE6 for the Corporate Intranet, things get very clunky and unmanagable. Add multiple versions of SharePoint, Office, Active Directory... and pretty soon, you realise even Microsoft's products do not work well between and amnongst themselves. Unless you upgrade all of them, all at once. Which is pretty much impractical and terribly expensive.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Strange definition of "works just fine" - works fine but not everything works. "Works just about" would have been better.
Uhm, Exchange 2003 at least certainly works with FireFox - I use it daily. It may not be as rich as the environment you get with IE, but it certainly is perfectly usable.
But why? It looks like it's been specifically engineered that way, not anything technologically lacking in Firefox or Opera. Try replying to a neat HTML email in Firefox and it reverts to basic text, and looks terribly ugly. Also a simple plain vanilla email from Firefox is rendered in a miniscule size font when read with IE.
Mere meaningless words on an ethics page will not make the products interoperable or promote user choice. This is 2008, not 1998.
There is no way to search your messages from any browser except IE... that is a broken email program!
I don't expect it to be as feature-rich as Outlook, and I don't even care if IE has more features... but SEARCH? As a result, I forward all of my mail to a gmail account. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what if my gmail is compromised. Cry me a river.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
that might be the dumbest thing I have ever read on any messageboard anywhere on the net.