Tag: computers

The Seduction of Power (via Only Ed)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Battle. That’s a very strange word to use in the context of media in conflict but I don’t doubt its importance or relevance.

I believe the battle for the print, broadcast and cable media has been lost. The kind of news that was in the paper and on the television 35 years ago is gone. We now live in an age of “distraction” news, content free news and outright deception. It is a great pity.

A free people cannot defend itself without information, facts and leadership, we have none of that. We have celebrity scandals, fake facts that our sniveling media decline to describe as a lies and a jello spined leadership so beholden to financial interests they contest among themselves for who is the most slavish in their devotion. They throw their offering on the altars of these demigods like the food offerings thrown before the wooden carvings of Odin in Pre Medieval Scandinavia.

Read on and discover nations and cultures where the media is still up for grabs.

James Pilant

  The Seduction of Power   Posted 24 June 2011, by Raúl Pierri, Inter Press  Service (IPS), ips.org MONTEVIDEO, Jun 24, 2011 (IPS) – The governments and big private media groups in Latin America are waging a war to win over public opinion, the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy, and the only solution would appear to be to strike up an alliance. "Battle" was the most oft-repeated term in the seminar on "Communication, pluralism and the role … Read More

via Only Ed

Dell Lawsuit Proceeds

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics2 Comments

Written by Erik Sherman at CBS Moneywatch –

The lawsuit is three years old and the story continues. When a company makes a colossal error, it can simply make a clear breast of it, take its lumps, and recover. Or, it can try to bury the story, protect itself by claiming innocence, and prolong the pain. That’s the route that Dell has taken.

In July, Dell tried to deny fault and simply ignore how it allegedly ignored customers who were having problems with computers plagued by bad parts. And some of the explanations in the past were real hoots. For example, Dell told the University of Texas math department that the machines went bad because intense calculations overtaxed them. Right, the machines were actually supposed to be coasters and were only missing the sign that said, “Warning, Don’t Use For Math.”

Apparently taking responsibility was too risky.

This seems to me to be an obvious case of thinking only as far as the next quarter.

Any kind of long term thinking or ethical thinking would have called for a different action.

James Pilant

Dell’s full scale ethical meltdown (via Minding the Workplace)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

David Yamada’s blog, Minding the Workplace, has a great post about Dell computers and the company’s ethical problems as revealed in a current lawsuit. I could say a lot but I’ll let the article speak for itself.

James Pilant

Here's one they'll be studying in business school ethics classes for years to come: The story of how Dell, one of the world's leading computer manufacturers, morphed from being an industry icon to the latest ethics-challenged poster company. As reported by Ashlee Vance for the New York Times, a major lawsuit against Dell is unearthing a corporate cover-up campaign that concealed from customers serious malfunctions in millions of computers sold be … Read More

via Minding the Workplace