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.
Looks like a duck. Quacks like a duck. Has feathers like a duck. Shits like a duck.
It's a duck. No names, just quacks.
In other words, you have nothing -- you just saw something somewhere you thought was a duck,
but it's really just some battery-powered duck decoy that happened to float by.
If there were a real duck, you can be sure the guy over there behind the bush with the rifle would already have got it.
The European Parliament is so gullible, a few handwaving promises about the US handling the data according to EU rules and the EU developing its own storage system with the purpose of exporting data in a more controlled manner "within five years", and they drop all previous opposition...
If they have a shred of guts in their entire body, then they'll take the US failure to uphold their end, and stop upholding their end / shut down whatever systems thay are providing that are not being used as agreed.
If they don't, then, well, they don't. Kind of think the US government needs to learn a lesson eventually -- possibly the hard way; HOPEFULLY in a way that doesn't do any damage to the US people beyond a slap on the wrist (?)
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.
So what is the criteria for being 'ethical'? Is it following proper business practices, not breaking laws, not getting on people's nerves, or is it being philantropic?
Bolded necessary conditions to be an 'ethical' company.
Getting on people's nevers is orthogonal to being ethical.
And just because a business practice is unorthodox does not mean it's unethical.
However, there are unusual business practices that are unethical: for example, failing to uphold your end of an agreement,
entering into a business relationship and failing to do what you promised you'd do, or making a misrepresentation.
Hurting people personally, invading their property or personal privacy are net negatives, and examples of unethical behavior.
Ya, your definition probly does not include all the humanitarian and ethical things microsoft does that places like apple do not.
Doing a lot of very good things -- if you also do unethical things, is just a sign of a guilty conscience.
You can cure cancer, mass produce the cure, and give the cure away to the world for free out of pocket, but if you also cheat on your taxes, you are no more ethical than the rest of them.
Don't worry, Hitler received many similar awards too,
[citation needed]*
(*) Despite that any publication showing an ethics reward received by Hitler is likely to have been banned in Europe and any copies been burned.
Without a cite, it's at best speculative
Maybe there's a huge list that I'm forgetting but I can't think of a lot offhand that really make me think of them as really evil. I don't always like their approach, but most of the time it seems like legitimate competitive behavior. When I think 'unethical', I think bribery, hidden agendas,
Unethical != Evil
So called "legitimate" competitive behavior might sometimes be unethical.
For example, lying, renigging on agreements, deception, are some unethical actions; misperceptions.
Many marketing activities are deceptive, and Microsoft is no stranger to zealous marketing, remember
the "Get the facts" campaign against OpenOffice?
An example of deception would be hiring a bunch of people on the street to post fake reviews praising a product,
or to write letters (eg "fake grassroots campaigns").
Giving awards/money/items to members within a privileged position, such as a standards organization or regulatory org and encouraging them to
vote in your favor.
I was just wondering about that too, if Google wasn't nominated, or just didn't make the cut
Google had "significant" legal action against them in the past 5 years. They nixed their chances by accidentally capturing WiFi data while riding around in their privacy-violating google vans.
And they probably didn't donate enough to *cough* sufficiently worthy causes (such as the organization making the list)
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)
Makes you wonder how many RSVPs there woulda been, had a link to the party been featured on Slashdot.... oh, hmm, I guess Facebook would have gone down, due to the Slashdot effect, before it broke 5 million RSVPs
Ability to blind and de-orbit enemy satellites in wartime.
It's too slow, and any satellite with propulsion will be able to compensate.
Unless your laser is powerful enough to cut up or burn parts of the enemy satellite,
or they rely on unprotected optics, then it won't work.
However, the truth was conveyed in a malicious and--more importantly--deceptive manner.
It is, however, malicious misconstruing of the situation
No. Truth cannot deceive. Intentionally distorted versions, explanations, or selected renderings of a portion of the Truth can deceive.
Explanations of the Truth can deceive.
It is still a malicious lie (and not the truth) to say just that he was involved in car theft.
That's no different than going to a federal prison to visit an inmate and talk with them.
And then having someone who saw you maliciously write a letter to your employer a few years later saying that you were in [the] jail.
A "half truth" is still a lie. Chances are, if you try to defend yourself from libel claiming such a half truth is somehow "true",
you will find yourself paying the plaintiff.
Yeah... I will grant that it's insane.
The defendant ought to have prevailed if for no other reason than the plaintiff has Unclean hands; with regards to the matter under dispute.
The plaintiff acting illegally and unethically in a way that effected the public gave rise to a journalistic duty
for journalists to cover the subject. And the journalist is being sued for covering the subject.
about 8 hours though, so they had to truck in new generators, but apparently they had the wrong plug. Oops.
I don't think 'having the wrong plug' alone would have stopped them.
Cutting off a plug and hardwiring a generator is trivial for an electrician or anyone who can install generators.
There must have been a little more of a problem than the mere type of plug used. Perhaps the "replacement" generator had inadequate wattages or amperage capacity....
So if someone loses wages or feels bad because you told the truth you can get sued and actually lose.
For some reason that makes me feel worse than I thought he lost a libel case...
Hm.. perhaps it's time to start going around suing posters of "Linux Sucks" comments?
Those just make me feel bad... plus i'm sure I could find some people who lost money because
fewer people tried Linux.
Shady retailers could also start using this avenue for RIAA-style lawsuits against anyone posting negative reviews.
Hell... eBay sellers can probably sue anyone leaving negative feedback.
Since intent is well understood -- negative feedback is intended to reduce their sales by
alerting every prospective seller that they had issues with that seller.
Because the truth used to be a defense against libel. However, with the swing to the far right (not a party swing, but the whole country, including both parties are swinging that way for some topics), freedom of speech is being trampled. There are already states where true statements about some protected industry is illegal if the statement is negative. Now you can't say anything to get someone fired, even if true.
What's interesting here is the suit is not a libel suit.
The suit was prosecuted on the basis of he wrote that maliciously for the purpose of getting the plaintiff fired; so libel or defamation is not a claim made in the suit.
The plaintiff could not sue for defamation or libel, if he tried, he would have failed, due to the truth of the information.
The article mentioned
Jane Kirtley, a U of M professor of media law and ethics, called the lawsuit an example of "trash torts," in which someone unable to sue for libel, which by definition involves falsity, reaches for another legal claim. She predicted the verdict will be overturned.
The verdict also surprised U of M law professor William McGeveran, but he wasn't so certain that it will be easily overturned. Appeals courts tend to give a lot of credence to jury verdicts, he said.
I think one of the government's jobs is to protect against natural disasters or mitigate the damage, since as other people have pointed out, the free market sure doesn't do that.
The purpose of government's is well-defined in the US:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Note that preventing natural disasters has nothing to do with Justice, domestic tranquility, or the common defence.
You could argue that some natural disasters might be preventable, and that would fall under promoting the general welfare, but that's as far as you get.
Look: nothing can protect you against natural disasters, or an earthquake of 8.5 or higher on the moment magnitude scale.
The government can do things to help ensure the people are prepared, but the government cannot protect you from a natural disaster... the government cannot prevent or stop a natural disaster.
The government can't even prevent itself from being impacted by a natural disaster -- the government employees live in the country too, and there's no magic aura surrounding government infrastructure to insure they can continue to function after all infrastructure was obliterated by an earthquake.
Japan is among one of the most prepared places for powerful earthquakes, and look how helpless their government still is to do anything to have stopped the earthquake from killing thousands?
But... this conclusion would probably hold for most other western states as well. We all remember Hurricane Katrina. The mantras of free market solutions and small government have left most western nations with barebones disaster response capabilities. A major Earthquake, Tsunami, Hurricane or firestorm in the wrong place could probably turn most western countries into Haiti within hours.
The Government's job is to provide protection from foreign powers.
Nobody can protect against natural disasters.
If one happens, it's up to the people to respond to the disaster
and do what they need to survive and maintain order in their area
without help from the government; since a disaster implies also a breakdown of government and government property/services just as much as it implies damage to personal property.
The government only needs to be concerned about disaster plans for working towards restoring public infrastructure.
The government can't "save" you from acts of God, nor is it their job.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
Looks like a duck. Quacks like a duck. Has feathers like a duck. Shits like a duck. It's a duck. No names, just quacks.
In other words, you have nothing -- you just saw something somewhere you thought was a duck, but it's really just some battery-powered duck decoy that happened to float by.
If there were a real duck, you can be sure the guy over there behind the bush with the rifle would already have got it.
The European Parliament is so gullible, a few handwaving promises about the US handling the data according to EU rules and the EU developing its own storage system with the purpose of exporting data in a more controlled manner "within five years", and they drop all previous opposition...
If they have a shred of guts in their entire body, then they'll take the US failure to uphold their end, and stop upholding their end / shut down whatever systems thay are providing that are not being used as agreed.
If they don't, then, well, they don't. Kind of think the US government needs to learn a lesson eventually -- possibly the hard way; HOPEFULLY in a way that doesn't do any damage to the US people beyond a slap on the wrist (?)
astroturfing (and some right here, right now in this thread), and so much more.
Citation and proof of astroturfing here please, now.
It would be unethical to specifically accuse Microsoft of astroturfing in this thread without valid concrete evidence. Put up, or shut up.
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.
So what is the criteria for being 'ethical'? Is it following proper business practices, not breaking laws, not getting on people's nerves, or is it being philantropic?
Bolded necessary conditions to be an 'ethical' company.
Getting on people's nevers is orthogonal to being ethical.
And just because a business practice is unorthodox does not mean it's unethical.
However, there are unusual business practices that are unethical: for example, failing to uphold your end of an agreement, entering into a business relationship and failing to do what you promised you'd do, or making a misrepresentation.
Hurting people personally, invading their property or personal privacy are net negatives, and examples of unethical behavior.
Safest nuclear power plants
1. Fukushima Daiichi plant
To be fair, Forbes did not compile the list. I think the so-called "think tank" is more to blame.
Forbes decided to give credence to the think tank by publishing it. Have Forbes mentioned them in the past?
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.
Ya, your definition probly does not include all the humanitarian and ethical things microsoft does that places like apple do not.
Doing a lot of very good things -- if you also do unethical things, is just a sign of a guilty conscience.
You can cure cancer, mass produce the cure, and give the cure away to the world for free out of pocket, but if you also cheat on your taxes, you are no more ethical than the rest of them.
Don't worry, Hitler received many similar awards too,
[citation needed]*
(*) Despite that any publication showing an ethics reward received by Hitler is likely to have been banned in Europe and any copies been burned. Without a cite, it's at best speculative
Maybe there's a huge list that I'm forgetting but I can't think of a lot offhand that really make me think of them as really evil. I don't always like their approach, but most of the time it seems like legitimate competitive behavior. When I think 'unethical', I think bribery, hidden agendas,
Unethical != Evil
So called "legitimate" competitive behavior might sometimes be unethical. For example, lying, renigging on agreements, deception, are some unethical actions; misperceptions. Many marketing activities are deceptive, and Microsoft is no stranger to zealous marketing, remember the "Get the facts" campaign against OpenOffice?
An example of deception would be hiring a bunch of people on the street to post fake reviews praising a product, or to write letters (eg "fake grassroots campaigns").
Giving awards/money/items to members within a privileged position, such as a standards organization or regulatory org and encouraging them to vote in your favor.
I was just wondering about that too, if Google wasn't nominated, or just didn't make the cut
Google had "significant" legal action against them in the past 5 years. They nixed their chances by accidentally capturing WiFi data while riding around in their privacy-violating google vans.
And they probably didn't donate enough to *cough* sufficiently worthy causes (such as the organization making the list)
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)
Makes you wonder how many RSVPs there woulda been, had a link to the party been featured on Slashdot.... oh, hmm, I guess Facebook would have gone down, due to the Slashdot effect, before it broke 5 million RSVPs
Ability to blind and de-orbit enemy satellites in wartime.
It's too slow, and any satellite with propulsion will be able to compensate. Unless your laser is powerful enough to cut up or burn parts of the enemy satellite, or they rely on unprotected optics, then it won't work.
They shouldn't have "tested everyone with access to the area".
Police should have covertly affixed tracking devices in the bag, put it back right where they got it, and waited until someone collected the bag.
But did they go to the cages and test the space chimps/chimp "astronauts" ?
However, the truth was conveyed in a malicious and--more importantly--deceptive manner.
It is, however, malicious misconstruing of the situation
No. Truth cannot deceive. Intentionally distorted versions, explanations, or selected renderings of a portion of the Truth can deceive. Explanations of the Truth can deceive.
It is still a malicious lie (and not the truth) to say just that he was involved in car theft.
That's no different than going to a federal prison to visit an inmate and talk with them. And then having someone who saw you maliciously write a letter to your employer a few years later saying that you were in [the] jail.
A "half truth" is still a lie. Chances are, if you try to defend yourself from libel claiming such a half truth is somehow "true", you will find yourself paying the plaintiff.
Yeah... I will grant that it's insane. The defendant ought to have prevailed if for no other reason than the plaintiff has Unclean hands; with regards to the matter under dispute.
The plaintiff acting illegally and unethically in a way that effected the public gave rise to a journalistic duty for journalists to cover the subject. And the journalist is being sued for covering the subject.
about 8 hours though, so they had to truck in new generators, but apparently they had the wrong plug. Oops.
I don't think 'having the wrong plug' alone would have stopped them.
Cutting off a plug and hardwiring a generator is trivial for an electrician or anyone who can install generators.
There must have been a little more of a problem than the mere type of plug used. Perhaps the "replacement" generator had inadequate wattages or amperage capacity....
So if someone loses wages or feels bad because you told the truth you can get sued and actually lose. For some reason that makes me feel worse than I thought he lost a libel case...
Hm.. perhaps it's time to start going around suing posters of "Linux Sucks" comments?
Those just make me feel bad... plus i'm sure I could find some people who lost money because fewer people tried Linux.
Shady retailers could also start using this avenue for RIAA-style lawsuits against anyone posting negative reviews.
Hell... eBay sellers can probably sue anyone leaving negative feedback. Since intent is well understood -- negative feedback is intended to reduce their sales by alerting every prospective seller that they had issues with that seller.
Because the truth used to be a defense against libel. However, with the swing to the far right (not a party swing, but the whole country, including both parties are swinging that way for some topics), freedom of speech is being trampled. There are already states where true statements about some protected industry is illegal if the statement is negative. Now you can't say anything to get someone fired, even if true.
What's interesting here is the suit is not a libel suit. The suit was prosecuted on the basis of he wrote that maliciously for the purpose of getting the plaintiff fired; so libel or defamation is not a claim made in the suit.
The plaintiff could not sue for defamation or libel, if he tried, he would have failed, due to the truth of the information. The article mentioned
I think one of the government's jobs is to protect against natural disasters or mitigate the damage, since as other people have pointed out, the free market sure doesn't do that.
The purpose of government's is well-defined in the US:
Note that preventing natural disasters has nothing to do with Justice, domestic tranquility, or the common defence. You could argue that some natural disasters might be preventable, and that would fall under promoting the general welfare, but that's as far as you get.
Look: nothing can protect you against natural disasters, or an earthquake of 8.5 or higher on the moment magnitude scale. The government can do things to help ensure the people are prepared, but the government cannot protect you from a natural disaster... the government cannot prevent or stop a natural disaster.
The government can't even prevent itself from being impacted by a natural disaster -- the government employees live in the country too, and there's no magic aura surrounding government infrastructure to insure they can continue to function after all infrastructure was obliterated by an earthquake.
Japan is among one of the most prepared places for powerful earthquakes, and look how helpless their government still is to do anything to have stopped the earthquake from killing thousands?
But... this conclusion would probably hold for most other western states as well. We all remember Hurricane Katrina. The mantras of free market solutions and small government have left most western nations with barebones disaster response capabilities. A major Earthquake, Tsunami, Hurricane or firestorm in the wrong place could probably turn most western countries into Haiti within hours.
The Government's job is to provide protection from foreign powers.
Nobody can protect against natural disasters. If one happens, it's up to the people to respond to the disaster and do what they need to survive and maintain order in their area without help from the government; since a disaster implies also a breakdown of government and government property/services just as much as it implies damage to personal property.
The government only needs to be concerned about disaster plans for working towards restoring public infrastructure.
The government can't "save" you from acts of God, nor is it their job.