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Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

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Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#261

Post by wolverine876 »

tored wrote: post #244
joey_bob wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is a bit inflammatory, but in this clip from Scalia's testimony relates the overall concept well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0

Scalia has some good points, however some notes A gridlocked political system is not guaranteed to create "good legislation" as Scalia puts it, take US as a prime example of that, almost every legislation is packed with pork and other things unrelated to the legalisation itself. To Scalia defence he might have meant "not awful legislation", like avoid harming a minority, because of the bicameral legislature. But good…

Let's remember that Scalia was a judge, not a political theorist or a legislative expert. Scalia's expertise would be the operation of the judiciary, courtrooms, etc.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#262

Post by wolverine876 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #149
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #3

Former Microsoftie here. After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.

In the banks we have the same. As IT guy, the amount of quarterly trainings and their focus is a bit crazy, most topics I will never ever touch since I don't work in ie Legal and I am so far from ever interacting or even seeing any client. Most of the trainings are about a fine we got due to being caught doing something bad, say 10 years ago, and part of legal settlement is apart from direct fine, a nice 30-60 min tr…

Perhaps by training everyone, potential bad actors know that everyone in the company will recognize what they are doing?

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#263

Post by a4isms »

wolverine876 wrote: post #253
gentleman11 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s frustrating that law only applies to the lower classes, and not to the upper corporate classes

Who are the "lower classes" that do business internationally and are prosecuted by the US Departmet of Justice?

This is unproductive quibbling.

If I, a middle-class independent contractor, attempt to bribe a government employee to award me a contract, I am going to jail.

If someone with even lesser means attempts to bribe a social worker to award them welfare of some kind, they are going to jail.

That is the discrepancy that matters.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#264

Post by wolverine876 »

Qem wrote: post #10

My work involves a public sector organization in Brazil. In the last years there was a big push towards microsoft products at my workplace, to a point where emails with announcements from corporate IT sometimes looks and sounds like spam pushing MS products. Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here too, or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership.

Microsoft products for large institutions are very popular; they don't need bribery (or even bad taste).

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#265

Post by wpietri »

mc32 wrote: post #76
wpietri wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter. For US persons and companies, it's always illegal. Here's the official page: https://www.trade.gov/us-foreign-corrupt-practices-act Here's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act And here's a detailed look at one particular project, a Trump project in Azerbaijan: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/donald-trumps-...

Of course the US considers it illegal. But if you’re a Bulgarian executive running the Bulgarian subsidiary of a US company, they may do things closer to local custom despite US corporate directives. You’re demanding that foreigners extirpate their foreignness while they are employees of a US company. It’s not going to happen 100%.

I don't think I'm demanding anything. But what I would like is for US businesses not to encourage or reward corruption, which harms the citizenry and diminishes the sort of strong competition that makes markets work well.

I also think it's both ridiculous and insulting to suggest that corruption is some intrinsic property of Bulgarians and their "foreignness". Or anybody.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#266

Post by wolverine876 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #224
rapsey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS is insanely powerful pretty much in every country in the world. They know damn well how to get into the power structures.

They just had the advantage of having the only viable GUI-based OS on mass market computers. Linux has only begun to be usable on the desktop around 2005-ish, Mac always was expensive because you had to buy Macs.

The reasons corporate IT uses Microsoft:

* Backward compatibility: Ripping out everything and starting over is very expensive; what is the return on this investment for the company's bottom line?

* Applications: Everything in business, perhaps outside creative arts, is compatible with Windows; much is only compatible with Windows.

* Management: Active Directory is by far the leading tool for managing thousands of computers efficiently. That has a network effect: Other management tools, including for specific applications, integrate with AD. This automation greatly reduces labor costs and improves quality.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#267

Post by worik »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #64

I bet this is normal procedure for most companies that do business in countries where bribes are common. In Germany foreign bribes used to be even deductible.

It is arguable that the prohibition of bribes is a cultural thing.

So insisting on not bribing in other cultures is some sort of "imperialism".

That would make bribing foreign officials a "legitimate" business expense.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#269

Post by fartcannon »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #193

If a government organization would want to use a Linux, how hard would it actually be? Is it a viable alternative?

Not hard technically, but hard because people associate free things with cheap and there's a lot of experience momentum that really upsets people if they think they're being forced to do something even slightly differently.

And yes it's a viable alternative and has been for decades.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#270

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

tedajax wrote: post #105
asd88 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Every year, the Standards of Business Conduct training talks about not bribing foreign officials and devs are like “who the hell is ever in that position anyway?”.

Me desperately trying to get a decent repro case for a bizarre networking bug in Halo: "Oh man, gotta remember, better not bribe any foreign officials while I sort this out."

Exactly...
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