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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."
...WIndows Genuine Advantage for that.
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.
I love it. White is Black and Up is Down.
Don't worry, Hitler received many similar awards too,
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Clearly this is a different meaning of the word "Ethical" than I'm familiar with.
Is the only one on the list that tried to screw me. After a year of them trying to get me to pay for the same airline tickets twice I finally had to get a lawyer after them.
To me this says more about the companies that aren't on the list than it does about Microsoft,
"Companies" is the plural of "company." "Company's" is the possessive form.
After reading the actual list and seeing some of the other alleged ethical companies in there, it's really not much to be proud of.. eBay??
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
... as if millions of geeks suddenly cried out in objection and were suddenly silent.
Who do I have to pay off to get on that list?
Must have cost a lot in bribes for M$ to get on the most-ethical list.
Life is tough. Life is even tougher when you're stupid.
Where's paypal? Oh hi eBay!
I honestly thought there was a tie with Ethisphere and Microsoft but after looking at every one of their board members and ties...
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Forbes has been pro-Microsoft, anti-Linux for years. Someone with some weight at Forbes has a conflict of interest I imagine.
A list of ethical companies released by Forbes? What will be next, list of best people released by Hannibal Lecter?
You have to be when you are reporting in to your parole officer weekly.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ethisphere Institute rockets to top of the list of least ethical research institutions displacing former champion Mindcraft.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
There's a difference.
Nearly 3,000 companies were nominated--or nominated themselves--to be considered this year. The record-high number of nominations and applications demonstrates companies' desire to be acknowledged for high ethical standards.
See... companies nominate themselves... I wonder how much money under the table to the think tanks or people paid off it takes to be listed as most ethical? Is it as many as it takes to get OOXML a rubber stamp as an "open" standard?
Ethisphere reviewed nominations from companies in more than 100 countries and 36 industries. Ethisphere's proprietary rating system, which it calls the Ethics Quotient, is based on a series of multiple-choice questions in a survey that is designed to capture a company's performance in an objective and standardized way.
Ah, it's proprietary. That means first and foremost "We won't tell the specifics of how this was determined" That's what proprietary means, right? The exact details are secret, and therefore magically valid?
The winnowing process includes reviewing codes of ethics and litigation and regulatory infraction histories
Because unethical companies always have successful litigation/regulatory infractions against them, and ethical ones don't? There's no such thing as a regulatory agency being in bed with a corp. Judges are never corrupt. What's unethical is never legal and always breaks regulations, and what's ethical is always legal and never breaks regulations?
evaluating investment in innovation and sustainable business practices
Because innovative companies are automatically ethical and companies with "unsustainable" business practices are automatically unethical?
Any company that has had significant legal trouble over the past five years is dropped.
Because getting billion dollar fines in 2008 and being found liable for patent infringement is not significant legal troubles?
Companies that focus on alcohol, tobacco or firearms also get the boot.
Because it's arbitrarily declared unethical for Alcohol, Tobacco, or Firearms, to exist, or what? That alone totally undermines Ethisphere credibility.
Firearms are essential for the preservation of human life.
So is Alcohol.. first of all Alcohol is one of the first antiseptics humans made, has important medical scientific uses; has spurred many innovations. The product is not a bad one, and also, many "green fuel" producers are Alcohol companies (also referred to as Ethanol)
I was a subscriber for a while, until they sent me a renewal notice written to look like a collections notice. A prior orkplace used to routinely be named on a "Best Places to Work" list (not by Forbes, though) to the collective dismay of all who worked there. These sorts of lists don't mean what you think they mean, unless you think they don't mean anything.
"I don't want part of any club that would have me as a member".
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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.
They still bill you per socket. Which is almost as bad. I still think that Oracle bills per core. MS is still doing this with it's server line though. Want more than 32 GB of RAM? Upgrade to the enterprise version.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I doubt a respectable source would attempt to do such list. No surprises here.
How can that be "unethical" if it's what all vendors do? The only time MS got any criticism is when processor makers started producing multiple processors per socket and their software wasn't licensed with that idea in mind. How can you blame them for following the status quo for personal computers since their inception? Now MS, like all the vendors, has per-socket pricing.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Indeed.
Ethisphere selected the companies for having "leading ethics and compliance programs".
Having a program has as much to do with being ethical as being in a program has to do with being sober.
to get on the list
If I control the criteria for judging, I can name any company ethical or unethical, which is why lists such as this seem completely useless to me.
In my opinion, all corporations as they reach certain size, became evil.
Microsoft was already evil when it consisted of just Gates and Allen (Gates provided enough evil for both at the time, but later Allen tried to make up for lost time). Then Microsoft grew up to become way more evil that most of the companies you are thinking of.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I'm pretty sure that the Medicis were total bastards. And why is an Italian family even on this list?
In other words, one member of the circle jerk is complimenting the size of another member's penis.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
How can that be "unethical" if it's what all vendors do?
Because popularity and ethics are orthogonal concepts?
IOW, that says more about "all vendors" than it does about the ethics of the action.
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.
Microsoft repeatedly changed agreements with developers. At one point, they required developers to pay thousands of dollars for a two-year membership, and then less than a year later simply discontinued that program and replaced it with a similar program that required new payment.
Microsoft sold Microsoft Money, claiming that it could import Quicken data. In fact, the box was empty but they promised a download in less than 60 days, which was repeatedly delayed. By then, it was too late to legally return the empty box to the retailer. And, finally, it did not import Quicken data. The entire product was a fraud.
Microsoft sold versions of Office, at the same time, which were different. We needed to standardize, and complained to Microsoft. We were told that “the version in each box was the version we purchased,” and that “version control was not part of the product.” In fact, Microsoft has admitted that they have no idea what versions they produce or ship and are not able to replicate builds.
Microsoft has an effective monopoly on Word. As a result they have terminated development work to fix bugs, and Word has many of the same bugs it had 15 years ago (such as tables not formatting across page boundaries).
Microsoft simply overpowered the Justice Department in their monopoly probe, paying about 100 times as much in legal expenses as the Justice Department could afford.
Europe has not been as scared to reign in Microsoft’s illegal competitive practices as the US. As a result, Microsoft is the most fined company in the world. Yet, the delay every time and consistently pay more fines for refusing to comply with ruling.
Microsoft charged PC vendors for a copy of their OS for every machine they built, even if the machine shipped did not include the OS. This requirement was built into their contract, and PC vendors could not negotiate.
Microsoft made retailers eat the entire cost of product returns, unlike every other software company. Retailers could not survive if they didn’t carry Microsoft software, but most retailers’ broke even or lost money because of the onerous return policy.
Microsoft required Intel to write all of the BIOS and low-level CPU code and give it to Microsoft for free. Microsoft then sold it. One year Intel objected and Microsoft refused to support Intel’s latest processor, causing sales to go close to zero. Intel had to immediately capitulate to the blackmail.
Microsoft consistently and purposefully damages the Macintosh user interface in their products so the GUI experience is not superior on a Mac compared to a PC.
IMHO, Microsoft should be awarded the LEAST ethical company of the last century.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Would an ethical company pay another (SCO) so SCO could continue to try to derail Linux with lawsuits (based on, AFAICT, nothing)?
Microsoft PAID for this right?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Did they look into the "per-processor pricing" days of Microsoft?
Those days are not over. Windows Server 2008, Exchange, SQL 08, and others are still licensed per physical CPU.
I for one, won't take anything they say seriously after naming Microsoft as an ethical company...
It's a low appraisal of EVERYONE ELSE.
Really though, Microsoft generally doesn't lock down their OS from tinkering (aside from lack of source), and unless windows mobile 7 has changed things you have file manager access and everything in their mobile platform. Android inexplicably doesn't come with a file manager last I checked. Absurd!
And unlike Sony, they aren't sending cease and desist letters to kinect hackers.
It is thanks to Microsoft (And IBM) we have the PC after all.
And they could easily be far worse patent trolls than they currently are.
A once-VP of a company I once worked for said, paraphrasing here: "Company 3 would negotiate with MS and MS would revise a contract between MS and Company 3 per the meeting. Then Company 3 workers would hold the new version and the old against the light (page by page) so they could find the changes MS made that were not part of the things agreed at the latest meeting." Hmm. Maybe that is considered ethical in some universe?
Safest nuclear power plants
1. Fukushima Daiichi plant
I'll bet they didn't consult Richard Stallman!!!!!
Microsoft isn't at its peak of douchebaggery, but the only explanation for the idealistic portrayal you paint is you not watching all news involving Microsoft. Someone who only knows of a company through their own product purchases should not feel qualified to comment on that company. To be fair, Microsoft isn't in the headlights like it was in the 90s, and news today is comparably enormous; most people do not read all Microsoft headlines, because there are more important things to care about.
In reading your post again I suspect I've been trolled by devxo. But I already wrote the above, so... whatever.
Slashdot: Serious Fucking Business.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The guy who cheats less seems ethical? The only think stopping MS from dominating is the anti-trust lawsuits they lost in the last few years.
If Microsoft is ethical in comparison to other corporations, what does that say about other corporations?
God spoke to me.
Actually, most of the world pre-WWII thought Hitler was one of the best and more brilliant leaders of the 20th century. Especially following the Olympic games. He was even praised as being multicultural and liberal during the Olympics (which, in case you didn't know, was the Reich's first true and widest international showcasing). Mind you he temporarily took down all the anti-Semitic signs, forced the citizens to treat the international guests like pampered kings and queens and hid any evidence of his anti-[insert one of several groups here] throughout the entirety of the games. But the Third Reich was thought of as a peaceful, wonderful and even Utopian society by the masses at the time. Heck--the Nuhrenburg Rally canceled immediately prior to the "justified" invasion of Poland was going to be themed around "Peace" that year. Of course, later we found out the invasion was entirely unjustified and the Polish attacks on the Reich were fabricated...etc...etc...
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Yes, the peak of douchebaggery are ranking-makers.
My power supplier was awarded "consumer friendly company" and "reliable company" awards last year, while they've sent all their invoices late (usually after payment deadline) and threatened customers with "outstanding" invoices with submission to the "bad debt registry".
I even called ranking-maker about this issue and learned, that companies submit themselves, then categories were created, and asked people (some 400 people in total, this was not an open vote) to indicate the most reliable companies. In largely monopolized categories (such as power supply) company can be nearly sure to be voted winner. (but that is ok, as they've paid fee for contest admission)
Just..
Word.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I'm going to go ahead and say that if you've ever had to change the name of your company because of a huge ethical scandal then you shouldn't get to be on a list of ethical companies for a little more than 10 years. I'm looking at you Accenture (aka Anderson Consulting).
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Hmm... "Most Ethical". Actually, I think it's kind of like awarding the loser in a beauty contest "Best Personality".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I guess profiting from those who fence stolen property is not a disqualification.
So is Alcohol.. first of all Alcohol is one of the first antiseptics humans made, has important medical scientific uses; has spurred many innovations. The product is not a bad one, and also, many "green fuel" producers are Alcohol companies (also referred to as Ethanol)
Indeed. I mean, how many people owe their very existence to alcohol?
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Bitter?
Life must be hard on a poor neocon like you, what, with people refusing to bow down before your obvious superiority, and raptly listening as you expound upon the inerrant wisdom of the Federalist Papers and the work of Leo Strauss. Clearly no reasonable person (50% of even those paragons of infinite virtue The Founding Fathers were on board... how could lesser men be expected to comprehend?) could ever know and understand precisely what you're talking about, yet still consider it a load of horseshit. Also, that must make them an evil socialist, because everyone knows that there are only two real political ideologies: Patriotic Republican Americanism, and Socialist Nazi Sovietism.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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.
Almost ethical?
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Indeed. I mean, how many people owe their very existence to alcohol?
Since the reason refrigeration was originally developed was to cool beer, and pasteurization was originally developed as a method to stop beer from souring, and those are just two of many examples; beer increased the size of the population the country could support... a lot of people exist who would not exist if not for Beer.
Oh right... and imbibing sufficient quantities of beer while accompanied by a member of the opposite sex, has lead to many births. Many famous people in history would not have been born if not for this; the world would not be as great a place as it is today.
Totally agree. In order for MS to stop sucking, they'd have to get rid of the extremely toxic in-fighting that kills everything they make that has the potential to be cool. They need to dump all of their managers and executives and start over—problem is, those managers and executives are the only people who can make that choice.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Do you have any irrefutable proof of unethical behavior by Microsoft? No, because they are smart enough to not be blatant about it; there is always some room for doubt.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I concur with you wholeheartedly. Frankly, I'd consider the companies on this list to be the most litigious, most likely to push one under the table to law enforcement, and least favorable to do business with. I should note, this is after seeing the headline and thinking "Wow, cool, Microsoft is improving. I've thought they've had some decent products over the last couple years, and have been particularly non-hostile."
Ditto on the alcohol and firearms. A firearm in the home is much more likely to be used to preserve life of the house's tenants than save it. Alcohol, in addition to being a great medical aide, is also (IMO) a superior antidepressant/coping mechanism than, say, SSRI antidepressants.
And tobacco. In terms of those harmed and business ethics, they're at least on par with "Big Pharma", and it's unlikely that they can pull too many favors due to the political hostility in play against them due to people thinking "what I think is good for me is good for you, too".
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
All the citations (including specific court records and findings) can be found here: http://www.groklaw.net/
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
"Companies that focus on alcohol, tobacco or firearms also get the boot." And why can't these companies be ethical? If it wasn't obvious that the list is skewed with the inclusion Microsoft then it should be clear by this auto-de-select criteria.
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
It's a form of advertising that people take seriously enough to actually discuss. Better than some ad that people gloss over without a thought.
1. Compile a list that will make any business on that list look good. ("Ethical" is a good enough topic, as it's suitably nebulous.)
2. Quietly enable businesses to pay to be on that list. (They don't necessarily pay in cash. Perhaps good will or free licences will do?)
3. Ensure the list is allegedly compiled by an independent body. (The Ethisphere Institute seemed cooperative enough, or perhaps it approached Forbes, given its "forgiving nature"?)
4. Let a well known name publish it for posterity. (Forbes is big and trusted enough, right?)
Now the listing businesses (Forbes and/or Ethisphere Institute) get what they want from the listed businesses, and the listed businesses get their positive exposure. Win, win!
Besides the obvious (Microsoft), there are other ridiculous entries. Like Freescale, who likes to pretend it loves the GPL while violating it daily. Or Patagonia, a company from the US who tries to enforce their trademark, even against companies that are actually based in Patagonia (Argentina), or eBay, who's subsidiary Paypal takes people's money without explanation, and censors free speech by closing accounts of any organization or person they don't like. Cisco, who is also a GPL violator and has engaged in tax evasion. UPS: scammed Canadians with import fees. Westpac: A company that raised mortgage interest twice as much as the Australian national bank and competitors.
Of course, many many truly ethical companies that contribute a lot to society and have strict codes of ethics didn't make it into the list.
The explanation: This is just a paid-for service like carbon offsetting, or ITIL, ISO 9000, and others.
Essentially: Pay us money and we'll give you good advertisement covered as independent research.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Hitler never once released unfinished, buggy software to increase his income. I'm not saying he was a good guy, just saying there were some nasty, destructive things he didn't do.
Hey, here it is. You must be four.
http://tinyurl.com/6zxpzpg
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.
How can that be "unethical" if it's what all vendors do?
Do "all vendors" bill you per-processor, whether or not you use their software on the computer?
Perhaps you need to go back and understand the licensing agreements that Microsoft that with the PC OEMs. Even if MS software was not installed, the OEMs paid Microsoft. The US DoJ had an issue with it all.
And while you're at it, it is interesting to take a peek here . Ignorance of history on a moderator's part is not a reason to mark a posting as a troll.
The only time MS got any criticism is when processor makers started producing multiple processors per socket
Wow, sometimes I am amazed how clueless some people are.
eBay and their subsidiary paypal is likely the most evil companies I've ever dealt with.
The point is you can't call MS out about it without calling out all vendors. Red Hat does per-socket. I think most SlashDot readers would call them ethical. EnterpriseDB (the commercial support for PostgreSQL) does it. VMware does it. I argue Google *would* do it, but they don't have anything that they sell other than appliances and web services. Per-socket shouldn't discount them from a "top X ethical" list in any way since by definition it's a relative list of peers and all their peers generally do it.
I also question what's unethical about it. It prevents corporations from getting around per-install licencing by installing the software once on a huge monolithic server. Corporations are assholes. You know they'd do that and not feel any remorse about abusing their vendor's price structure for support. If it's unethical, what's their alternative to prevent asshole customers from abusing support contracts?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
What do their productions have to do with this conversation? You made the same error as the GP, interjecting politics opinion with product opinion. "I like their product" isn't an excuse for "but they bribed someone to sell it." If that's how you think, move on over to a review website. You clearly only care about what you hold in your hands.
Next you will hear Apple being the second most secure company, beaten marginally by none other than our favourite, HB Gary.
For PETA it means 'hypocritical' or 'fashionable'.
Nobody said the OSS people are "nice". For example, Torvalds is known to be a git sometimes, and RMS is a known crazy fanatic. etc. etc. etc.
None of them are trying to get on any "most ethical person list", nor claiming to be saviors of the world by dumping billions onto "charitable causes".
And I, for one, avoids reiserfs like the plague, as I have for years ever since ext3 came out (which was years before Hans was even a murder suspect).
Don't quote me on this.
http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=unethical+behavior+by+Microsoft
About 45,500 results (0.24 seconds)
You're right - that number does look a bit odd. There may be a few dupes in that list.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
One word i would never ever attribute to Microsoft is ethical and im surprised anyone would put Microsoft within ten miles of a list with ethical companies. Their history is littered with examples of bad ethics and statements. They have been sued and sentenced numerous times in court.
Cant wait for their most privacy respecting list, with Facebook ontop no doubt.
HTTP/1.1 400
Why yes, Vista was a really fine piece of software and Windows 7 dont suck at all. WP7 arent a complete and utter failiure, Xbox360 never dies RROD and AD arent a total mess of totally hacked together things and thousands of managing tools.
Id really like to live in your alternative universe because you sure know Windows 7 sucks in mine when you long for the file manager from Windows XP.
HTTP/1.1 400
Ethics and morality are two different things afterall...;)
I like how no one's brought up SingTel's well known eavesdropping practices.. ethical my ass. and I'm sorry but no bank anywhere is ethical. At all. This list is entirely bogus (ofc that was obvious as soon as Microsoft 'we sue and troll by proxy to kill our competition' showed up on there.)
I guess you havent noticed but Microsoft is actually paying people to lounge around Slashdot all day and do damage control through some media companies.
Come to think of it its quite absurd, people get paid to astroturf Slashdot. The one place where astroturfing is seen through without a second glance.
HTTP/1.1 400
"Ethics" means different things to different people; what is ethical to us in the FOSS end of the world may not be entirely the same as what is ethical to a business. Businesses are predators at best (or parasites at worst), so perhaps behaving like a predator doesn't count as un-ethical; but to be fair, Microsoft (and Bill Gates) have put a good deal of effort into being seen as ethical. One can of course with some right be sceptical about the depth of their sentiment, but there is no doubt about the effort, and apparently that has paid off.
i totally agree. i think a good example is gates - everyone i know now talks of him as this wonderful guy who is changing the world or something. never about the fact that his 'charity' still makes money (openly) off companies abusing others (look at the wikipedia article if you don't know for a start), not to mention the wonderful 'future of education' crap that seems to be still revolving around proprietary lock-in to one company (guess which). if he is *truly* wanting to make things right and not just another rich guy with a guilt complex that just wants to get people to like him without *really* risking his riches, i'd be very surprised. so far i see no evidence at all of it.
Shit, I can't even imagine how humans survived back before the discovery of gun powder.
Constantly fending off bear attacks. It must have been a real nightmare
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
If Microsoft is on the top of a list of ethical companies then consumers are truly fucked.
Shakes head sadly. What a testament to the decline and fall of western society.
The attitude you display is the reason our country is in economic meltdown. This idea that someone, or some company, can be an unethical douchebag and it's OK with you as long as you can't see how you're directly affected by the unethical behavior is scraping the bottom of ethical bucket. Anyone who holds to that concept displays an amazing lack of ability to reason from cause to effect.
When trust is broken between all entities in a nation the economy of that country collapses. The only way trust endures is through honesty and integrity on the part of the vast majority of that nation's entities whether they be individuals, businesses, banks, or politicians. Yes, there will always be dishonest douchbags, but when they become the largest and most common entities in a nation that nation is on the way to economic and moral ruin.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
glad i'm not the only one :)
Indeed. I mean, how many people owe their very existence to alcohol?
Most of them.
Mod parent up!
Not that I "like" them, but MS is not the only culprit for such idiocies. Ever seen the pricing scheme of IBM for DB2?
I know this is off topic, but this back and forth shows what I consider to be the major problem with western politics as the public sees it.
Frequently consideration is not given to any more than two points in the solution space of opinion on any topic - never mind that they don't lie in a straight line nicely joining all of the available positions.
This childish distillation of politics into "you're either with us or against us" basically removes all possibility of sensibly discussing issues and the multi-dimension space of answers to individual problems.
Makes me sad and from what I've seen even here on Slashdot the American and (to a lesser extent) English political discourse devolves into name calling as a result of someone "not cheering for my team".
Yes, I feel better for getting it off my chest.
I guess you havent noticed but Microsoft is actually paying people to lounge around Slashdot all day and do damage control through some media companies.
Citation? I thought that was Apple. ;)
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=unethical+behaviour+by+google
;)
About 437,000 results.
Number of hits by a search engine is not a good mode of argument! Heck I got over 8,000 hits for unethical behaviour by aussie bob
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
There are so many better goatse links out threre, why 'd you try with this one?
Try http://goatse.ru/ for example.
We all have seen it more than a few times. No "shock" involved anymore, just boring.
Heck I got over 8,000 hits for unethical behaviour by aussie bob
I'll admit to about 7,000 of them, The rest were a frame-up.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I second parent's point.
This "ethisphere" is itself a scam.
For example, the number 4 "ethical individual" is a guy from Malaysia, whose department has murdered a witness and is still trying very hard to cover-up the murder.
It's a damn scam !!!!!!!!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Isn't it time for Slashdot to create an article icon for Apple as well? Yes, in the 90s Microsoft was the IT villain, but now Apple has surpassed it for good with its walled garden of closed experience. Time for a "Steve Jobs the Borg" avatar!! :p
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
it's impossible to do something wrong when you're that big and make so many decisions
There's a big difference between "impossible [not] to do something wrong" and "convicted monopolist who bribe/bully people into only selling their products" as MS and Intel have been convicted of.
which is totally what she said
They're also slowly becoming irrelevant as cross-platform technologies emerge and people become more able to to use other devices for their online/gaming fix.. took long enough deitiesdamnit.
which is totally what she said
The scary thing is that I'm starting to wonder if there are actually just some people out there who really think like that. Not that I would even care.. I'm used to being in a minority position when it comes to my views on OSes etc. It would just be sad if some people actually fell for the act. I am trying to be more level headed in my thinking on MS these days. I even bought a 360 at the end of last year just so I could play online with friends who can't afford a PS3 *hangs head in shame* but I really wouldn't be upset to just see them disappear off the face of the planet..
which is totally what she said
The point is that no matter what their views, they have been giving rather than taking. MS have done a whole lot of taking, but thanks to their monopoly position and lack of drive for innovation, parts of the computing world have been held back for years and only now things starting to get better. Since Firefox helped to drive web standards adoption (and I suppose you could say since Flash got ported to other OSes :/ ), it's been much more convenient to use any OS you want at home. In the workplace MS still have a pretty solid grip just because of the number of "Windows Only" apps, though hopefully things will keep heading in the direction of diversity there too. And there's always WINE/Crossover I guess, though I haven't tried either for any "serious" apps or games for a few years.. I just have a VM for when I need to do Windows development (also means I don't need to go through the hassle of reinstalling/authenticating Windows and MS Office when I get new hardware), and I do all my gaming on consoles now.
which is totally what she said
Not if you consider some of the other "most ethical" companies on the list.
Adobe
American Express
Best Buy
Microsoft (ok, originally the topic, and not one of the 'others', but might as well keep it there)
Starbucks
eBay
*any bank on the list
There's a few I'd take off for bad quality in my experience (5) alone, or because I know people who've worked there (1), and who've said they treat their employees like crap, but that's probably pushing it a bit, as I'm sure others have the opposite experience. In general the list is garbage. I'm surprised I don't see Sony and Apple on their.
The only company on there I have any decent amount of respect for is Henckle, and after seeing them on that list...
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
s/their/there/
HumanConsumeDrnk(ByOhTek, ++coffee);
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
If I were to have seen MS management on the beach in the face of an incoming tsunami, I don't think I would rush out to save them.
> For example, Torvalds is known to be a git sometimes
I had forgotten about that bit of slang. Now I won't be able to look at GitHub again with a straight face.
Microsoft beats Apple because MS has Zombies working as astroturfers. There are a documented case where Microsoft revived dead people and made them write letters in support.
HTTP/1.1 400
Caterpillar is the primary company that is aiding the Israelis in demolishing Palestinian homes and building Israeli ones. Best Buy is still the same company that brought us private Intranet copies of their website in-store with different prices than found on the publicly available Internet site. Just to name a few...
Best Buy made it on there, after all.
So this was a list in Forbes?
Forbes?!
Unless they became a good judge of humanity when I wasn't looking I think the source of this list has a lot to say about who is on the list.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Best Buy is on the list? They only outlived CompUSA and others because they are evil. Um boy, yes I'll take an extended warranty with that! It must be a list for last year only.
Hen, In Chicken House make Fox visit tasty.
Corporations should have all of the rights a slave has.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The Forbes in Forbes Magazine is Steve Forbes. It would not surprise me if Steve Forbes thinks Microsoft is ethical as his idea of ethics is Cash makes Right.
Managers and Executives are exactly what cause the problems in the first place. Does anyone really thing that the programmers want to release an absolutely horrible abortion like Vista and try to sell it as a step up from XP? No that's the executives and Marketing department. The problem with corporate america is executives and middle managers.
I got here through a series of tubes
Oh, I get it, you're being ironic .. nice one CmdrTaco .. for a minute there you really had me going. I wonder where Ethisphere makes its money ..
I know, I really don't get it. Microsoft and PepsiCo are on there; but at the same time, Monsanto isn't (I actually only looked at the list to see if Monsanto was listed, in which case I'd have to facepalm). How the fuck is Best Buy on there? At least Verizon isn't, nor Comcast.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
A corporation's only mandate is to make money. Microsoft doesn't poison wells or denude wetlands to make its money, but it's not estranged from all of the immoral-though-legal acts that every rich bastard makes use of to work the system. It's not a proud thing to be the most honest of all thieves.
It might be tough to define "good" and "evil" when it comes to corporations. And, I'll point out that even evil people do some good now and then - and good people do some evil now and then. I'll grudgingly admit that MS does something nice, now and then, just as I'll admit the dickhead nephew does good now and then.
But, the dickhead nephew is still a dickhead, and he'd cut my throat in a heartbeat if he thought he could profit from it and get away with it.
Microsoft is no different. Sure, they've given away a few things in recent memory. Today, they have money to burn, so they can afford to give away something now and then. It's good public relations, after all. But, given the opportunity, they would put every single competitor out of business tomorrow. Linux, Apple, BSD, Oracle, IBM - name anyone who competes against Microsoft. Firefox, Opera, and any other browser you care to name.
As you pointed out, the only reason Microsoft has been acting nice in recent years, is that they got their asses whipped a couple of times, and they had a really close call with the US government investigating them for unethical business practices. To bad George W. Bush was so willing to have all that trifling antitrust nonsense flushed down the toilet. Microsoft really should have been broken up into about 5 or 6 independent companies, and all those exclusivity agreements with computer manufacturers should have been declared illegal.
You would still have your Zune, your Xbox, Win7 and C# today. They may have cost a bit more than you paid - or maybe a bit less. You would still have them - but Microsoft would have sold Win7, MicroGAMES woudl have sold your Xbox, and MicroTUNES would have sold your Zune to you. C# I can't say. That may have come from MicroRESEARCH. All separate and distinct, and preferably competing against each other, as well as against the rest of the world.
I try to be fair - but you'll never hear me praising Microsoft. They were just to damned evil in their early days.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you didnt notice, Forbes didnt even make their own list. Was the way they chose the list of people even ethical?
Yes, it is a list of ethical companies and the ones we invest our money in. What's wrong with that?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Given that Idi Amin could be considered the 'most ethical' head of state if you massage the criteria sufficiently, what were the criteria for this selection?
What interest does the Ethisphere Institute have in making such a selection?
Who are Ethisphere Institute and where does their funding come from?
Who are Ethisphere Institute's leaders and what is their background, their expertise and interest in ethics?
These are all reasonable questions to be asked and without satisfactory answers, the selection of any company for this honor is questionable.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Really?
All of this is subjective - Microsoft is ethical in that they combat piracy in the workplace and promote ethical values (e.g. racial/sexual equality, anti-corruption training, etc) in the workplace, but their conduct as far as monopolistic behavior has been anything but ethical.
The number one in that category is Adobe, and they've had a similar history or relentlessly crushing the competition.
So what are you doing reading a list of "most ethical" companies then?
Per-socket shouldn't discount them from a "top X ethical" list in any way since by definition it's a relative list of peers and all their peers generally do it.
Maybe by your definition. By my definition it's masturbatory PR fluff bought and paid for by the very corporations (read "assholes" by your own equation) that are on the list.
The headline is probably true. Microsoft is probably among one of the most ethical corporations. That only means that corporations are not very ethical. That is reasonable given the facts. Their main goal is short term monetary gain for the quarterly report, they have the rights of a person and legally have none of the responsibilities of a person.
Oh, Ethisphere Institute, who claim to be a research based institute, yet seem to be a for-profit business selling certification and a magazine. Obviously an authoritative source.
Constantly fending off bear attacks. It must have been a real nightmare
Human populations were smaller. They did not encroach so much into bear habitat or bear territory. There was so much territory, conflicts were less likely.
Cars had not been invented yet, so travel was less frequent. Before gunpowder, cities were built with walls, and homes much stronger, more suitable to resist bear breakin.
Firearms had less technologically sophisticated predecessors that sufficed but were more dangerous/had greater risks.
Pointy sticks, darts, bows and arrows, boomerangs. The bear could still kill you.
Rocks, forged bronze/steel. Again, the bear could still kill; but in the face of such opposition if used correctly, they might be scared away, avoiding an engagement.
So, you do horrible things that we just don't know about because we are not watching you closely enough and you think Microsoft ethical because "they came out with some good products". If you are "an awful, dispicable person" and you like Microsoft, maybe I would be correct if I posited that you and Microsoft are just two, scumbag peas in a pod. Maybe?
Would that be a good assumption to make or a bad one?
You think ignoring news about continued Microsoft malfeasance because you like the pretty Aero interface on Vista should be called "being informed" and reading the news about continuous illegal behavior by Microsoft should be called "being a conspiracy theorist"?
Motherfucker, tell me you are trolling!
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Microsoft is ethical.
So I was looking to invest some money and figured, hey, as long as it earns decent interest, why not encourage ethical actions in the marketplace. So I looked at the list of the biggest companies in the "socially conscious" portfolio, and Microsoft was number one. Heck, I might as well invest in the vice fund; at least I wouldn't be lying to myself, and apparently they make a pretty good return on investment!
Nathan's blog
Literally speaking, they're obviously not essential because there was a time when firearms didn't exist, yet human life was still preserved.
There was not any point in the history of human civilization where there was not some kind of weapon used.
Different types of arms were used at different times. The purposes were the same, and the dangers were the same. It's just that they were less effective at preserving human life, and they were not as powerful a deterrant as a modified firearm
You going to say next that sword manufacturers, arrow makers, and people whose trade was to sharpen pointy sticks were evil too?
And any company that makes equipment used by any military is considered unethical?
Hell... if firearm manufacturers are unethical, what do you think about bomb manufacturers? How about nuclear power plant designers?
Let's just ignore all legitimate uses of these devices and assume they are all inherently evil. Nobody uses dynamite for any purpose but to blow people up, right? And guns are used for nothing but to shoot people, right?
Torvalds is known to be a git sometimes
It's not that bad. He even wrote a program to remind that to himself. Or maybe he wrote it to remind others?
Heck I got over 8,000 hits for unethical behaviour by aussie bob
I'll admit to about 7,000 of them, The rest were a frame-up.
Wow, I was too quick to judge! I've just checked and it seems that 845,000 of the 8,000 charges are indeed unjust as you say. My bad!
:)
H.
(And cheers for being a good sport and the laugh
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This place has a [url=http://www.wholesaleidea.com/][b]cheap cell phones[/b][/url], you can take a look.
Company based on lies and extortion, as well as slander, FUD, monopolies, ridiculous and perhaps illegal trade practices (dumping product to gain market share), patent infringement, etc. shipping jobs wholesale overseas when the government her does not capitulate to their legal demands. Overseas corporate offices, overcharging for defective softweare, slander, liable, and who knows what else. All in all the American dream (if you are Barrack Obama).
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Win7 is actually way nicer than XP... once you replace its file manager with a better one. And its start menu, and its taskbar, and its file search... so really, the whole UI blew. But the backend's much better! (This isn't sarcasm, I actually do have a computer running Win7 on which I replaced like 95% of all the UI with various programs/UI tweakers, most of which were based on the look-and-feel of XP, and now consider it a much better OS than actual-XP was.)
For what it's worth, VS is pretty decent, and C# is a great language. So they aren't *all* bad.
So, you do horrible things that we just don't know about because we are not watching you closely enough and you think Microsoft ethical because "they came out with some good products". If you are "an awful, dispicable person" and you like Microsoft, maybe I would be correct if I posited that you and Microsoft are just two, scumbag peas in a pod. Maybe?
Wow dude. No, I didn't say Microsoft was ethical and I didn't say that I was an awful person. I was implying that it is veering on the qualities of a conspiracy theorist to take what the original poster said and call it a "idealistic portrayal" and that he talked about, and that he was to blame for his pragmatic present-day views because he hadn't been watching all of the news about Microsoft. Read what he said, it was a very sober view that was irrelevant to all the news about Microsoft from the 90s.
Motherfucker, tell me you are trolling!
You posited that I was a scumbag and that I like the pretty Aero interface and finally you called me a motherfucker. I don't think I'm the troll here.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.