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Foxconn Employee Reportedly Commits Suicide Over Lost iPhone Prototype

ddTaylor said:
I do not think so. I have not EVER heard of other people being detained in-house over a lost Dell product in pre-production! This fellow might have killed himself or may have been helped as a missing prototype could potentially cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars and a large chunk of the market if a rival developer were to get their hands on something like that.

So, do I blame Apple, Foxcon or China and the culture if suicide when something like this goes down? All of the above but I think the ultra-secret nature (understandable) of Apple and the major ramifications this could and will cause between Apple and Foxcon are the most likely causes. This poor fellow would never have worked at Foxcon or any other high-tech firm in China again - and the chances he makes it to the US are slim with not at all being far more likely.

D
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I said cutting-edge. That description does NOT apply to Dell.
 
mkrishnan said:
It seems to have been picked up in Russian and other Eastern European language news too but not yet in the West. What a tragedy. I think that a big part of the problem is that, with a relatively (or absolutely) large labor force, China is not that motivated to try to stop these suicides. Lots of them get reported in the news, too -- not just this one from an Apple supplier. It's a terrible shame. Particularly to be losing bright kids who could have had really good futures....
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It's also a cultural thing.

Whenever someone who has a lot of responsibility in China , especially in government, and seems to mess up really bad, it is often followed promptly by suicide over the shame of it all.

Remember when china had all that controversy over food quality? I remember the head guy at the chinese equivalent of the FDA committed suicide.

Some high ranking official committed suicide I remember when all the controversy about lead in toys came out.

Apparently its just what you do when you mess up in china....
 
olternaut said:
Perhaps the emotion pot should be stirred.
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I disagree. We should wait for facts before we start pointing fingers. Stirring up the emptions pot can lead to alot of distractions. There is no point in talking about Foxconn or Apple's secrecy for example f this was just a case of depression related stress.

Half the comments on Apple forums about this situtation has been about "oh cool so there is an iphone 4G prototype?".
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Unfortunately, trolls will exist everywhere. Reacting to them isn't going to do much.

Sickening. Both sides "SAY" that they require that employees be treated respectfully but they obviously DON'T mean it.
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Unfortunately, there isn;t much that we can do. What China does or does not do is their own discretion. Apple can exploit the terms of their contracts, but at the end of the day, Apple is not a government nor are they going to interject in the way a country operates. THere is a fine line between what Apple can do and what we should be leaving up for our government to address. One thing for sure, we cannot read into people's motives. Apple has documents on their website where they disclose their investigations into working conditions and what they have done. Unless you want to accuse Apple of fraud, well thats all we can do.

However, this is largely going to end up being a matter of what the Chinese government/police want to do with this.

Culture? What is this star trek and the prime directive?
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Different countries have different ways that they live their lives. The way the Chinese live is very different to ours.
 
Ping Guo said:
Poor guy may very well have been thrown to his death after being tortured. You can't trust any news coming out of China. Take it from somebody who lives here. You can just as well assume the opposite of what the story says, and 90% of the time you'd be closer to the truth.

This suicide story reminds me of the botched fake-suicide in Shishou that resulted in 3 days of rioting in mid-June.

.........
Rule of law doesn't exist here. For all we know, the officials investigating the suicide were complicit in the victim's murder. All that matters is your guanxi and which local officials are in your pocket or somehow indebted to you. It is extremely likely that there's more to this than is being reported.
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I agree that unfortunately, the media and police reports from China may not be completely reliable. They are controlled by the government and could be influenced to a certain degree... if you want proof, look at the recent treatment of Tibet and Urumqi riots... they are getting more open, but are still protective. OTOH, although the net is a free for all environment, the bloggers often forced the government and corporations to at least come up with responses rather than cover-ups.

I am not even sure if the 'suicide' is necessarily confirmed. Yes, we need proof.. but how to get it? It is not easy to get access to truth.... you have to think about how likely is a Foxconn employee (at 25, I'm assuming not a very high level employee) is given FULL responsibility of handling ALL the prototypes by himself for shipping? No redundancy check???

If so, the fault is Foxconn's... for having a system that allows an employee to lose something as important as a prototype.. so easily! You'd think Apple's probably periodic auditing of the factory should expose such problems! You have to think that in order to 'lose' a prototype, some higher up officials are involved and I can't but help think that the employee is a scapegoat.

As for the government, they may not be covering for Foxconn necessarily, but what kind of image is this incident going to project for the future investors from the West? If the police is covering up, they may be doing it to preserve the local factories so that jobs won't be lost when investors pull out due to serious thoughts about IP issues...

No.. there's no proof of these because the investigations are going to be closed-door and nothing will be of public record. One thing that can be said, a prototype is not worth losing someone's life over. It is truly a tragedy that he died.

In the end , even if it turned out he was a careless guy who happened to have misplaced the iPhone and someone else stole it and didn't know what it was and sold it .... he still doesn't deserve to die. Like I said, the system (or lack thereof) failed .. he should only be partially responsible IF he had anything to do with it....
 
pdjudd said:
I disagree. We should wait for facts before we start pointing fingers. Stirring up the emptions pot can lead to alot of distractions. There is no point in talking about Foxconn or Apple's secrecy for example f this was just a case of depression related stress.



Unfortunately, trolls will exist everywhere. Reacting to them isn't going to do much.



Unfortunately, there isn;t much that we can do. What China does or does not do is their own discretion. Apple can exploit the terms of their contracts, but at the end of the day, Apple is not a government nor are they going to interject in the way a country operates. THere is a fine line between what Apple can do and what we should be leaving up for our government to address. One thing for sure, we cannot read into people's motives. Apple has documents on their website where they disclose their investigations into working conditions and what they have done. Unless you want to accuse Apple of fraud, well thats all we can do.

However, this is largely going to end up being a matter of what the Chinese government/police want to do with this.



Different countries have different ways that they live their lives. The way the Chinese live is very different to ours.
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Again, culture? Don't give me that crap. Evil is evil plain and simple. I betcha they said the same thing about the black slaves down south before the civil war. Ya know....that it's their culture. I guess it was their culture back then. They were so used to the suffering that they didn't know life could be better.
Culture, pleaseeeeee.
 
eawmp1 said:
I said cutting-edge. That description does NOT apply to Dell.
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Are you seriously saying Dell has never released anything cutting-edge? That is a little Apple-istic isn't it? Only Apple releases cutting-edge gear nowadays?

D
 
ddTaylor said:
Originally Posted by eawmp1
I said cutting-edge. That description does NOT apply to Dell.
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Are you seriously saying Dell has never released anything cutting-edge? That is a little Apple-istic isn't it? Only Apple releases cutting-edge gear nowadays?

D
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My three-year old (it went out-of-warranty a couple of weeks ago) Dell Latitude has built-in 3G wireless.

Apple? Where's the 3G?
 
olternaut said:
Again, culture? Don't give me that crap. Evil is evil plain and simple. I betcha they said the same thing about the black slaves down south before the civil war. Ya know....that it's their culture. I guess it was their culture back then. They were so used to the suffering that they didn't know life could be better.
Culture, pleaseeeeee.
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I stay up late on a Friday night and this is what I'm reading... Culture education.

I feel sorry for the poor bastard. God bless his soul. I'd hate to lose the thing if I were him, too. Assuming that it was lost...
 
The blood of this man is on Apples hands.

This is worse than war,it's slavery.VIVA LA BUSH!!!:D
 
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