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Where or where are my mods points when I need them? Intel is a dirty filthy company who plays dirty filthy pool debasing the whole idea of a free market and undermining the progress of CPUs in the process.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/184882/A_History_of_Intels_Antitrust_Woes.html

http://www.osnews.com/story/21468/Source_Intel_To_Be_Found_Guilty_of_Monopoly_Abuse

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7574976&page=1#.Ua94NkDrz4M

and plays hardball against even the smallest of critics-

http://www.faceintel.com/kenwonintellost2.htm

All the while sucking as hard as any monopoly at the public teat:

http://www.faceintel.com/tax$subsidizeintel.htm

Intel is a dirty, disgusting company that debases the whole idea of a free market.

Where or where are my mods points when I need them? Intel is a dirty filthy company who plays dirty filthy pool debasing the whole idea of a free market and undermining the progress of CPUs in the process.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/184882/A_History_of_Intels_Antitrust_Woes.html

http://www.osnews.com/story/21468/Source_Intel_To_Be_Found_Guilty_of_Monopoly_Abuse

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7574976&page=1#.Ua94NkDrz4M

and plays hardball against even the smallest of critics-

http://www.faceintel.com/kenwonintellost2.htm

All the while sucking as hard as any monopoly at the public teat:

http://www.faceintel.com/tax$subsidizeintel.htm

Intel is a dirty, disgusting company that debases the whole idea of a free market.

I Don't think that's a good idea

On another note, Intel IS supposed to open up a R&D Center in Malaysia's Cyberjaya - the almost equivalent of the Silicon Valley

Anyhow, I covered the corporate welfare aspect of companies like Intel in this article.

I honestly doubt we really can have guys like Barrett running companies like Intel and really improve the math/science situation in the US. We need to rethink US immigration policy, money in politics and the whole set of intellectual property laws and the tendency for lawyers and CEO's to dominate the legislative process so.

"SE" means "suicide emblem". Get the facts at FACE Intel. Intel has caused numerous suicides. The grape vine says that the Pentium 4 is marked with the blood of 5 suicides.

Here is the correct link: FACE Intel.

Intel needs to seriously look at how they are doing business. These folks have more in common with Robber Barons than modern businessmen.

Link1

Link2

Some Intel employees seem to have another take on the R&R process, as well as having the general concensus that being put on CAP is equivalent to being targeted for termination.

Given the new attitude at Dell, perhaps it now wants to support AMD because AMD is simply more American than Intel. Intel hires a much larger number of foreign workers than AMD. Of course, Intel is also a slave galley, just like most Chinese companies. In fact, many bosses at Intel are Chinese.

Brutality and cruelty are a Chinese way of life.

Here is the correct link.

For the uninformed, I note that Intel grades its employees on a bell curve each quarter. Any employee who falls in the bottom 25% for two consecutive quarters "qualifies" to be fired. During an economic recession, the employee is automatically fired. When there is a labor shortage, the employee is given a stern warning.

My information comes from a managing director at Intel.

For the uninformed, I note that Intel grades its employees on a bell curve each quarter. Any employee who falls in the bottom 25% for two consecutive quarters "qualifies" to be fired. During an economic recession, the employee is automatically fired. When there is a labor shortage, the employee is given a stern warning.

My information comes from a managing director at Intel.

The Situationists made the powers-that-be so nervous, that when they helped catalyze the revolt in 1968 that had virtually every blue collar worker in France on strike, it was the French Communist Party that ultimately had to put it down.

You can be sure Debord would put a gun to his head before doing R&D for the Intel corporation. In his last book, he said he feared the spectacle would try to integrate even his ideas in some borg-like fashion, and thus he had to be even more cryptic than he already was. It seems his fears have come true. Paulos is spectacular all the way.

At least I'm pretty sure it is. "Net Slaves" by Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin chronicles some of the many people who were burned by the Internet and technological boom days - you remember, back when it was the best thing since sliced bread, everyone wanted a part of it and HTML "programmers" could earn $US85/hour?

Basically it's divided into chapters based on sterotype - Garbagemen (support techs, low-level coders etc), Cops & Streetwalks, Social Workers (think AOL chatroom moderaters, online chat hosts etc), Fry Cooks (overworked project managers), Priests & Madmen ("cyber-pundits" - basically anyone with half a grip on The Internet and the ability to overmarket their ideas) and lots more.

One of the stories told is about SoHo Nights - the Web's first online soap. It's mainly centered around a guy called Kellner, who together with Mira (fake names, naturally) first came up with and marketted the concept to Mira's company.

Essentially Kellner had the idea, didn't think it was a good one, but was talked into it by Mira, who recked she could sell it as an idea to her company.

At the end of it all Kellner is basically broke and berefit of any credit for the idea or the work he put into it. Mira, whose only contribution was marketing hype needed to sell the idea to her company, sold it as her OWN idea (along with another person at the same company by the name of Jullian). Kellner was left several thousand dollars out of pocket, the promised contract had not materialised (and why would it - the financing company thought it was all Mira's idea) and worst of all his BEST idea, much more successful than SoHo Nights (though it did eventually fail), was stolen from his laptop by yet another woman, put up to the deed by Mira and Jullian.

From the epilogue:

"Kellner never received another check from DBLY and was thrown out of his loft at the end of September. His American Express account terminated, Kellner's debt was referred to a collection agent. SoHo Nights survived as a ghost of a site until December of 1996, when Kellner's ISP took it down for nonpayment. Kellner now lives in Flushing, Queens, with his parents, who contantly nag him to "get a decent job and get married". Kellner has given up on beocming a Web entrepreneur, although he still gets the itch occasionally when he's not trying to get back into the video production business. As for Kellner's former partners, they all lost their jobs in late 1997 whne DBLY Interactive cancelled The Webmaster [the Great Idea stolen from Kellner's laptop]. Despite the fanfare and more than $300k in development money from Fox, the site failed to attract more than 30000 page veiews a day. This was a turn of events which thrilled Kellner to no end, although the whole experience of having his ideas stolen till left him with a queasy feeling, like he had been ambushed by a gang of mental succubae."

I picked up Net Slaves for about $AU2 in a second hand book store. It's not the greatest book in the world but it certainly does have some interesting accounts of various people who were fucked over by the technology craze of the late 90's. It even has the sad luck story of Ken Hamidi (Ken Hussein in the book) and how he came to found FACEIntel.

There are well-established techniques for assessing indeterminate risks in areas like this. The end of Moores law is a risk. Still, what are the major options-and their chance of success. What I'm seeing out of Intel is the level of innovation I might expect from the Post Office. It is worth many billions of dollars to the Intel shareholders to see Moore's law continue longer. Intel has an obligation to its shareholders to organize its resources to make this happen. If Intel can't do this stuff in-house-they could set up prize awards for those that can--and structure those in such a way there is minimal risk to Intel's shareholders. Instead, these folks come off like a general speculating to his troops about the possibility of defeat before entering a major battle.

A company like Intel is virtually a de-facto monopoly. Such organizations can afford basic research-as companies like AT&T and IBM have shown. More importantly, I would suggest that monopolistic companies that _don't_ do quite a bit of basic research find that in time they become objects of considerable hotility and regulation. If companies like Intel aren't going to seriously innovate, then in time, it may eventually make more sense to the public to just turn these functions over to non-innovative bureacracies(which in this case will probably mean a Chinese government-owned manufacturing firm).

It sounds like Intel has gotten seduced by the lure of indentured servitude and corporate welfare.

intel is having a few problems with its hire fire stratergy. The ex employees are taking a class action against the company over the "UNPAID OVERTIME" (Sorry but the website goes a little ott on the capitals)

... if it includes Intel in the top 100 companies to work for. I've heard nothing but nightmares. Check out www.faceintel.com.

No, Intel sued Hamidi after making clear to him that his emails were unacceptable. For one thing, lists of employee emails are owned by the company and he ceased to possess the right to use those lists after his employment had ended.

If you're in my yard and I don't want you to be, it's probably not trespassing unless you have malicious intent (weapons, burglary tools, etc.). If I ask you to leave, and you do, and I call the cops, they'll do nothing. Why? You left when asked. If I ask you to leave, you remain, and I call the cops, they'll show up and escort you off the property and file a report. If you resist or take other antisocial actions, they'll probably arrest you.

Go read the briefs at Face Intel; for all that I think Hamidi's a grudge-laden tool of organized labor, he does have the guts to link to both sides' arguments.

The fact that Intel might be able to get away with this is, in my opinion, more troubling than the actual emails which were sent out.

Courts cannot be bought. Lawmakers can, but in this case "trespass to chattels" stems from English common law, not any pathetic made-to-order new law like the DMCA. Lawyers can be hired and lots of briefs filed, but fundamentally, the suit is judged based on the merits.

The facts are simple and not in dispute. Hamidi repeatedly, and after being requested to stop, sent thousands of emails explicitly intended to undermine management, damage employee morale, and support collective bargaining. Intel contended that such intentional disregard for its rights was a form of harm to its property--trespass to chattels. If you'll look at the rebuttal briefs, their contention is basically that "trespass to chattels" requires that the offending party actually harm the property involved.

That's a pretty weak argument, all things considered. Depreciation costs, network bandwidth, and the like were substantial at the time, and are still non-trivial today. The courts agreed that financial harm to Intel constituted harm, and, thus, Hamidi is prohibited by the court from sending his vitriolic spam to Intel's web servers.

Let's not forget to take a complete look inside intel..., not just at there technology.

FaceIntel.com

Nice company.... NOT!

If anyone gets anything out of reading the accounts, from both sides, it's make sure your employer knows what you are doing and approves of it. Some are very cool about innovating and others, like Intel, punish the talented while the stupid and greedy prosper (for any of you who'd like to know why /. has such a pro AMD bent, this is a good place to start understanding.)

@ Intel it's "CYA" or "See Ya Later"

Cheap chips rule in a soft market and AMD has demonstrated the ability to produce wicked fast at cheap prices. This would seem to be the best evidence yet that Intel has lost it's way and the bureaucracy is in need of some serious house cleaning.

Some blunders:

Tying themselves legally to Rambus

Talk of discontinuing the P3, their best mover.

Pushing the 1.13GHz P3 out the door before it was ready and suffering the consequences.

Slashing prices and subsidizing RDRAM just to move P4 product.

The P4 may have some advantages, but imagine what it would be like if AMD had rolled it out... um hm.. It would have killed the Athlon alright, assuming the Athlon were Intel's. ;-)

The truth is out there.

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All your .sig are belong to us!

This is INTEL we're talking about. Intel wrote the book on exploiting technical labor.

Take a look at FACE, Former and Current Employees of Intel. There are horror stories on the FACE site that I won't even go into. Suffice it to say, though, that Intel hires the cheapest pakistanis available, and treats their employees like crap.

The P4 isn't a chip for you and me. Wanna know why?

* In almost all kinds of applications, it is slower than an Athlon T-Bird 1.2 Ghz, and that's from a P4 1.4Ghz. Even overclocked to 1.7ghz, it's still slower.

* Almost all applications - meaning pretty much everything involving a floating point unit, including CAD, raw calculations, Office apps, and Unreal Tournament - are slower than on the lower-clocked and cheaper Athlong. Oh, and I forgot: It is atrociously slow compiling anything with gcc.

* The much slower P3s actually beat it in speed at many real-life applications.

* Tom's review compares it encoding a long DivX movie in high quality with a 1.2Ghz Athlon. The P4 needs twice as long at some tests.

* You can get a 1Ghz Athlon for less than $300 in some places, with Athlon prices dropping weekly. A 1.4Ghz P4 will cost around $1000. Prices won't be dropping anytime soon.

* The P4 needs a new socket, doesn't always play nice with all types of memory, its socket is of course incompatible with everything, it needs gigantic coolers which NECESSITATE new cases, where old cases are simply too narrow. That's right, many old cases (ATX format) simply won't take a P4+cooler.

* The P4 will not come with a multi-CPU chipset anytime soon. In fact, the P4 right now and in the next few months will definitely be a no-MP tool. MP Athlons are just around the corner, and so is the 266mhz FSB Athlon chipset for use with superfast DDR memory. Rambus, anyone?

And if you read the reviews, the only thing it's actually faster than the Athlons is at Quake3. Seeing how many buying decisions are made by completely irrelevant Q3 scores, this may be a very bad thing.

And yes, the incessant pro-AMD propagande isn't good, but have a look at face intel to see why intel really isn't a good company. Maybe that will explain some of the hostility.

Alex T-B
St Andrews

Anytime you talk about intel screwing the pooch, take a hard look at how they treat employees. Unhappy geeks make bad products. Unhappy environments make good geeks leave for your competitors. Sell your Intel stock and buy some AMD - The irony is a few years ago, AMD had the problems, and intel was king.. And I'm almost positive these problems are the result of deeper cancers growing in management.

Fast or not, your moral concious should prevent you from purchasing from Intel (as much as reasonably possible). Face Intel.

A lot of the problems with intel started with the processor serial number fiasco, there were some other questionable bussiness practices that intel did though... like patenting the bus for the PII and refusing to lisence it (the backed up when anti-trust lawyer started going after them).
But you also can't forget some of the employee problems the're having.

That site is full of stories of disgruntled employees who are fired, demoted or reprimanded for trying to innovate or not following the company line. Assuming the stories are true, Intel is in a very sad state internally.

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As for Slashdot hating them, I don't know. I think it's because most of the Slashdot community has little clue about technology,

Case in point, some have little awareness of technology or the workers who produce it. Good reading can be found here.

Perhaps more to why many hold a dim view of Intel would be that not every slashdotter believes Intel makes the best technology. Many, myself included, have worked on other platforms (many of which are vastly superior designs) which have been marginalized by the dumping of cheep WinTel boxes.


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Chief Frog Inspector

An Intel spokeswoman said something it was a good thing, as they have had to re-deploy expired visa workers to other plants around the world. I dunno, after reading the FaceIntel site, it sounds like more meat for their meat grinder.


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Chief Frog Inspector

Irrelevant. If they found it offensive, they would have said it by now - black people didn't used to be offended by being called "niggers", but they are now, and it's being changed. How many people were protesting when it was first introduced is irrelevant.

Exactly my point. Thank you for agreeing. The definition was changed.

Don't get so ahead of yourself.. it says "depreciated" not changed. From the dictionary...

depreciate (d-prsh-t)
v. depreciated, depreciating, depreciates. v. tr.
To lessen the price or value of. To think or speak of as being of little worth; belittle. See Synonyms at deprecate.
v. intr. To diminish in price or value.

Nothing here says anything about "changing" the definition, only a note saying that this is an uncommon definition of hack and is (or should be!) little used.

I know a teenager or early twentysomething like yourself might find this hard to believe, but 1996 is quite recent. 1990 is also quite recent.

First, age is irrelevant and you are being discriminatory and elitist by saying that my age somehow has a relationship to my ability to argue. But if you must argue the point about age, I'd like to point out that, almost exclusively, the progress in the computer technology sector has been coming from the people you just belittled. Anecdotal evidence - companies are discriminating against old people severely because of the widespread perception (fact?) that they are not as productive as their younger counterparts. [Source: FACEI] Second, wake up. This is the internet - 3 months of "internet history" is about 5 years of "real world" history right now. We're operating under a constant acceleration caused by technology advancement. If you think 5 years ago is "recent", remember that 5 years ago, e-commerce didn't exist, Linux had only been around for a few months in a usable form, and the "web" was still a morass of pasty grey webpages and broken HTML. Slashdot got maybe 10 hits a day, and IPO was just another word.

The "old" definition backs up the media.

I beg to differ, according to my research, hacker originally meant "someone who makes furniture with an axe". That's the "old" definition. As early as the 1960's, the term "hacker" was rechristianed to the definition in the Jargon File. Had you done some preliminary research, you would have discovered that this is where the derivatives "sports hacker" and whatnot came from - it was first used by the computer industry and then started spreading into normal use. That is, until the media misinterpreted it by equating computer enthusiast with computer criminal.

The media will generally call you what you call yourself.

There's about 20,000 people on BugTraq who would like to talk to you about that, as well as a few "hacker" organizations like these guys.

I'm going to stop replying now, as you seem to be intent on chasing your tail and offering little or nothing in the way of new insight on the matter. There's nothing new to discuss here.

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I posted the original FACE intel comment, I post it on every intel-fscks-up article that slashdot posts. So, for the third time today - here's the original article - and I won't venture any insight as to why the original comment got reset (kinda pisses me off), but it's most certainly a factor as to why Intel has been missing to boat. This is also in the Pentium IV thread.

I post this every time Intel screws up (which is pretty regularly, when you think of it) and every time, no moderators pick up on what's going on. So, for the good of my health, here's the same diatribe yet again:

Intel is losing their edge because they treat their engineers like garbage. Please have a look at the Former and Current Employees of Intel protest web site for the skinny on what's going on there. Intel's abusive human resource policies are coming back to haunt them, because the people with the experience to pull these projects off are getting fed up and leaving for companies like Texas Instruments and AMD.

Always look for what's going on behind the scenes.. Intel has some great spots to work, but the microprocessor division and their manufacturing lines are not one of them.

Don't buy intel. Don't buy their stock. They need to correct their HORRIBLE HR policies - and I wonder why Slashdot hasn't picked up on this earlier.

Faceintel.com

The poster's contention was that Intel is working its engineers to the bone, and under a demeaning work environment, and this is why Intel is falling behind - their top talent is leaving for AMD and Texas Instruments (TI) en masse as a result of management. This, the author contended, was the real reason for Intel's recent failures - they've pushed their engineers too far.

I doubt this is a conspiracy, but I'm reposting this anyway, as the comment deserves to be seen, as does the site.

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Remember the back cover of The Dilbert Principle: "Employees are the ninth most valuable asset of the company...carbon paper came in eighth."

I don't buy Intel now. My new box is powered by an AMD K6-2. And when I save up enough $$, I'll upgrade to an Athlon. But no P-III for me, thanks.

I have browsed across this link at www.faceintel.com. It really saddened me that such a respected and rich company such as Intel would give their employees a time in hell. Somehow, after reading the letters written by Intel employees, I see every effort on Intel's side with new eyes.

Maybe you will say it happens everywhere. I don't know, it doesn't happen in Nokia, that's for sure.

Now go on and moderate me -1 Offtopic, but tell me whether you can look at Itanium and say how cool it is after reading those letters.

To cut a long story short, Intel figured this out, and put the smack down on anyone who supported the Athlon. Not just VIA, (whom Intel despise for matching their chipsets in many respects, and then selling them cheaper), but motherboard makers too. ASUS didn't even put the K7M on the front page of their website for months, and that was widely regarded as the best all-round K7 board! Personally I think Intel need to be taught a lesson, which is why I'm a confirmed AMD advocate now. Hopefully with Duron, and maybe Joshua (Heh! VIA get their own back!) assaulting the basic Celeron, the Athlon taking on the Celeron II and PIII, and the Thunderbird and Itanium slugging it out, those of us who are more tech-savvy can return the smack to Intel.

Anyway, to avoid going too OT here, it will be interesting to see exactly how AMD will make up the shortfall in mobos when the Duron is released. If the vacuum that faced the Athlon upon release can be avoided, we can hope for an interesting fight, which I hope makes Intel question a couple of fundamental issues (Such as, don't fire your older workers, who've probably been in the game for a while, because they will go elsewhere). On another note, It would be cool to see AMD and VIA team up and use the same socket standards on their lower-range chips, or even better, to implement a standard everyone will use, and stop these tit-for-tat architecture changes, that renders building/upgrading machines a logical and financial grind! (Unlikely, but I suppose I can dream.....)

However, politically... those of us who actually work in the industry rather than own it (realizing that some folks do both), have very little influence. Politically, we are all over the map with a general spirit of libertarian ethics with a distrust of the megacorporation ingrained into our psyche by personal expierence and cyberpunk literature we have been gobbling for the last two decades.

And, if we formed our own party in the single member-district system of the U.S (sorry, I know the rest of the world is more democratic with parlimentary systems) such would be a third party which would never gain any influence outside of local elections in California and the Pacific North West. We also, as workers, don't have the money to buy...er...lobby politicans. Easy example... if you and AOL/Time-Warner lobby congress about MP3s, who do you think is going to win?

No, fellow workers... we get paid so much because we have power. Power, untapped and unrealized. Middle-management was gutted through downsizing and our network connections have given rise to more "just-in-time" capitalism. Our skills , if you believe the Software Labor Shortage Myth are in such short supply that we can not train and import workers fast enough. Imagine if we can collectively come to agreements in which we decide what things we will work for and will not. Not only can we have influence over technology, but a host of other things that need geeks to be accomplished.

Our power is in action, not the ballot box. We can vote with our feet. We can strike (here is the source. We can slack and slow down. We can sick-in. We can boycott. We can Direct Action. We can be as Electornically Civilly Disobedient, and we can be... it works like we did with Low Power FM through an organized political campaign of radio piracy, we were able to sieze part of the spectrum from corporate monoplization for community interests. We can break mass media blackouts of information, by making our own media, like we did in Seattle, and like we'll do again in DC.

Are you tired of 60-hour work weeks? Of corporations making deals with politicans to undermine over-time pay and encourage permatemping? We don't have to be slaves.

Are you tired of technology developing that penalizes both the worker and the consumer, to the benfit of a handful of the rich and power... anybody remember the Java Class War? Where was our class in that? Complaining about how the standards needed to be independent of propietary control, and largely doing nothing about it! We need to take control of training and make it clear that it is those of us work in the industry that can figure out who knows what, rather than some profiteering third party or a way for leading software companies to gouge folks for certification!

We need non-profit employment services (or hiring halls) so we can dump our contracting companies (ie. pimps, job sharks, etc... ) once and for all.

We need to organize, and organize in a way that maintains our autonomy and democratic values. We don't need any union bosses, telling us what we can and can't do... but we do need to be in solidarity with our fellow workers so we can support each other in struggle. Who among you wouldn't strike to help the workers in hardware manufacture to get a better shake? Some more pay, a safer environment, etc... Who among you wouldn't refuse to work, if you knew by refusing for a short time you could bring in ecological sound practices. We can bring on the Viridian revolution, but innovation won't be enough... we have to force the issue and force companies to clean up their mess.

We have to become responsible, or we have noone to blame for how bad work is but ourselves.

Solid,

Flint

Baltimore IWW Telecommunications and Computer Workers IU560

(San Francisco, Toronto)

Also check out: Syndicat de l'Industrie Informatique, Washington Technical Workers Alliance, FACE Intel, Alliance@IBM, BITE Division of NWU (Business - Instructional - Techincal - Electronic).

We Can Win! No Nerds, No Birds!

Given some of the creepy intel practices as seen on Face Intel I'd be really nervous about using it for much of anything -- they're already known to break into visitor cars and hire private investigators.

For lots of interesting perspective on how Intel treats its employees, check out FACEintel. Very interesting read.

Head on over here and then see what you think.

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grappler

/.'ed pretty quick.

The Register, which I'de call the European equiv to /. also ran the story so im guessing that poor server's been crunching bandwidth for a while. I too am an intel hater. Originally a Mac lover and just plain anti-PC, it wasn't until I really found out what a horrible company intel was. Plus, when I went shoppin this last summer to build my own machine, I was impressed with how small, fast, and inexpensive the K6-2s are/were. I've always figured that having a big ass chip that heats up a house is poor design: I could put a jet engine on a pinto and speed by a porsche, but i'de still have a piece of shit car.

The Judge forced them drop all the damage claims if Intel wanted to win a summary judgement. Read it here. And scroll down to "Intel's Motion is DENIED"

The guy started a website called a few years ago called FACE Intel (Former and Current Employees of) which was dedicated to exposing all sorts of human rights violations inside the company. How valid all of these allegations are I can't say first hand, but the site has a pretty big following.

There are some updates on the site from yesterday saying that many damage claims and clauses of "nuisance" have been dropped, and other updates show a string of charges had been dropped as the case progressed.

My fault, it's http://www.faceintel.COM/