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Microsoft On List of Most Ethical Companies
walterbyrd writes "Microsoft is among the world's most ethical companies, according to a list put together by the Ethisphere Institute in New York. Overall, 110 companies made the prestigious list, including Microsoft and 35 other newcomers. The complete list was reported by Forbes."
The bar, after all, is so low.
Mind the Gap
I would have thought that refusing to license patents, demanding 30% of every purchase, and generally behaving in an anti-competitive fashion would have earned Apple a top spot on the list.
Clearly this is a different meaning of the word "Ethical" than I'm familiar with.
I wonder how much they paid to get on that list.
I was attributing this to Forbes malice, then i noted the message at the bottom of the slashdot page: Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
I do not think it means what you think it means. For a convicted monopolist with a track record of betraying their partners, subverting governments and standards bodies, and all around ruthless behavior to make the list, I wonder if the word 'ethical' means something to them other than what my dictionary says it does. Oddly enough Google, with their 'don't be evil' motto, doesn't seem to have made the list. I know they have committed their share of sins over the years, but it seems that what they have done so far does not hold a candle to even what Microsoft has done over the last decade.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
You know, I'm a touch younger than some of the people on this website. At 29 years old, I have seen Microsoft do a lot of shitty things, but recently, I have enjoyed a lot of their offerings. (C#, Zune, XBox, Win7).
Before the flame war starts, C# is basically Java with a few ups and downs. Zune is like iTunes except I enjoy the subscription aspect. The XBox is pretty solid, I think most would agree with that, even if you are a Playstation diehard...and Win7 is a nice operating system.
When I (me personally) look at Microsoft, I see an angry little kid who used to take everything from everyone and was a giant dick. Then along the way they started to learn how to play fair. Whether by Government regulations or getting their ass handed to them. But over time, they became less evil.
Microsoft is like your dickhead nephew. You might think he's a total ass, but since I am a CS major, Microsoft is part of my family. After a while, maybe I saw the good inside them, and they're not a complete evil monster anymore. But maybe that is what their PR team is paid to make me think.
Either way, I feel pretty educated in the Technology world, and whether they are playing fair because they are afraid of becoming obsolete, or because they see the errors of their ways is irrelevant to me. My stuff works with MS stuff, and I enjoy their offerings.
Yes but they weren't at all saying he was a good person, just that he had the greatest impact on world news that year; a perfectly valid point.
It's the little things that make your post stand out as a shill. You almost had it perfect except for a few sections:
Microsoft is part of my family
My stuff works with MS stuff, and I enjoy their offerings.
I feel pretty educated in the Technology world (note the capitalization)
I have to say, it was one of the better insidious postings I've seen. Empathizing with the target audience by noting historic controversy, then defending their current direction is a powerful rhetoric device. If you didn't make such over-the-top enthusiastic claims, you might have escaped detection.
Shill rating: 8.5 out of 10.
Microsoft is more like a guy in a large town who bullied and lied and scammed everybody for decades until he owned half the land and everybody was in debt to him. But their kids grow up thinking of him as the nice rich guy who donates textbooks to the school and gives every family free turkeys at Christmas. Raised on land stolen from the people now having to be smiley and deferential to even just get their turkeys.
It's easy to be "nice" when you're vastly rich. But nobody with a valid claim to good judgement should EVER forget where all that wealth and power came from. Or the amount that a just accounting leaves them owing to the people they screwed over. Or, crucially, how much those assets would have created if they hadn't been in the hands of a slimebucket. If you mug me and steal my wallet when I'm on the way to pay my rent, you're not "a nice guy" for then giving me a few bucks months later to help me pay the late fees accrued from not having had that money in the first place.