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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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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;
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)
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.
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!
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.
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.
If Microsoft is on the top of a list of ethical companies then consumers are truly fucked.
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.
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"
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
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.
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.
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.