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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."
"....Microsoft provides a broad range of policies, programs, and products that are focused on our commitment to responsible and ethical business practices that promote user choice, industry opportunity, interoperability, and transparency....."
Last I checked Microsoft's Exchange Server works well only with IE. Unlike Gmail or Yahoo mail. Exchange is lousy with Firefox, Opera or Safari. Where is the choice?
And Exchange Server 2008 I belive even screws up the IMAP support, so Thunderbird users get the bird as well... So much for interoperability and transparency.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You know, sometimes you'll find organisations with the most detailed and extensive ethical guidelines imaginable. And in the same cupboard you'll find several inches of dust. "A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else" (Gandhi, M).
'Microsoft did not make any payments to foreign government officials' while lobbying for OOXML
But obviously they pay bribes to squash the Open Source Software Law in Peru
No kidding, since they probable followed the two they're getting called out on.
"Microsoft did not make any payments to foreign government officials"
Well, they were probably foreign business men, now weren't they.
"Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition"
Of course they do. If they don't they get slapped with huge fines.
Also: "the customer-focused approach creates products that work well with those of competitors and open-source solutions"
Well duh. It doesn't say anything about making it easy for open-source solutions and competitors from working well with IT, though...
what i pose to you, is how would you do things better? try running a company where the janitor gets an equal vote on say, corporate strategy and see how long you last.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Microsoft isn't evil. It simply spends a lot of it's time exploring the boundaries of the law around the world. And when you explore boarders, half the time you're on one side and the rest on the other side.
All in an effort to help the children (new corporations).
So they will know "You can go this far without getting into trouble. You can go this much further, and pay a small fine after doing it for 10 years. You can go twice as far, but then the fine will be 10 times higher, but you will only have to pay it 50 years later." And so on...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Funny how they say "Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition" instead of "Microsoft will not engage in unfair competition". Gotta keep those loopholes open!
Co-Ops - or Workers' Cooperative. One of the largest retailers in the UK is a Co-Op.
If you work there as a janitor - you own part of the company and thus get a vote. It's working well for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
I'd rather have every person in the company own it and be responsible for running it into the ground than 1 over paid CEO who will just run away with a golden parachute if anything bad ever happens.
Sounds about right.
I heard that the next major version of windows will have a SQL-based file system.
And General Protection Fault / Illegal operation has occured is being enhanced.
Not only will windows now kill applications at random, but will corrupt files you were working on at random.
And the newest enhancement is corrupting files you weren't working on at random.
Because the documents you weren't working on will be stored on disk within the same binary blob.
Windows explorer will transparently open the binary blob with all lots of your documents in it as a folder, so you can still drag and drop them to other document stores or send a document as an e-mail.
My employer's senior VPs got caught bribing middle eastern royals some years ago in a very public scandal. To atone for their sins, the corporation must implement a 23-point ethics recovery plan contrived by outside consultants. What really pisses off the rank and file employees of this multinational is that we're the ones being forced to watch to a never-ending stream of training videos (like the VD films of past eras) when it's the Rolex and pinkie ring crowd that should get the Clockwork Orange treatment. Corporate ethics, honest politicians, honor among thieves. Yeah, right.
Mostly it was just stupid. It was Microsoft snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: really pretty good hardware, but with mediocre firmware and terrible, terrible on-PC software. If they'd just left the thing hackable, every Leengux weenie in the world would have bought one to Rockbox it. But nooo, control took precedence over making some actual money.
Another example is the Xbox 360 - a great console with great games, they were even going to make a profit from it ... until they cut corners so badly that this joke is instantly understandable and its reputation was almost irretrievably trashed. Maybe they'll get it back with the super-cheap low-end model, we'll see.
Microsoft do some great stuff. But jeez, they need to get better at it.
http://rocknerd.co.uk