Slashdot Mirror
Intel tells Harvard, 'Cover that Mac!'
datarealm writes "In a story on yahoo, Intel badgered Harvard into covering all iMac kiosks during an Intel sponsored event. Apparently the Intel provided covers trapped heat, forcing the machines to not only be covered, but also powered down." How much of is this happening in donations to education, and what questions need to be asked when companies sponsor these kind of things?
Read the article. the request went through the provost's office, before FASCS. True, it probably didn't go through Rudenstine, but it was at a higher level than the guy at the help desk.
Thanks for the link. It certainly gives a different emphasis to the story. The Yahoo article does not even hint that the display was originally supposed to have been somewhere else. Unless we know why the display had to be moved, and who decided to put Intel's display near a lot of iMacs, we should not assume that Intel set out to disable the iMacs.
Was it a case of "Hi. We have moved your display into a room full of your competitors equipment."? You don't have to be Intel to be upset by that if that is what happened. (But perhaps you have to be Intel to have anyone care that you are upset!)
yeah, or you could've just turned them off and covered them.. eerr.. thats exactly what they did
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
Sponsors give money for two main reasons:
In this case it was the latter, and it means they're effectively buying a service from Harvard.
Why should they give money to an entity that isn't indicating in return that they're fully behind the sponsor?
Harvard is benefitting from the money. If it doesn't like those terms, there's nothing whatsoever to stop it from accepting the money.
Harvard has obviously done a cost/benefit analysis of selling this part of their reputation, but blame Harvard - not Intel.
Hmmm, tons of comments, and nobody came up with anything essential unless you interpret essential as meaning 'essential now that you're stuck with Mac hardware.' O well.
I didn't think they were ever restricted from doing so, but just chose not to lest what goes around comes around.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
So, since they would not "donate" the money if they did not display only their product, is Intel donating or buying the support of Harvard? Should they be able to make that a tax write off since it is really becoming a form of advertisement?
Intel does deserve blame here. It is absolutely unreasonable to have such anti-competitive expectations. In addition, Apple DONATED many of those iMacs when Intel REFUSED to donate any equipment to the same lab. So this is how Apple gets rewarded for no-strings attached charity? To others - it is not an Apple/PC argument - it is about conflict of interest in education, and the way tech companies are only too eager to manipulate schools for selfish reasons. They are NOT salesrooms.
But remember... Harvard is an independant institution, and some departments (Harvard Science Center - media-services department, 90% Mac based) probably couldn't function when placed under that restriction (just think what would happen if your company/school wasn't allowed to use 9/10 computer s for a few days).
I know here at my University there are classes that just wouldn't run... because the entire thing takes place in the Mac labs. That's bad for students. Some of them may behind as is, and being FORCED to have unproductive classes ain't helping. This is education, remember?
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
"Never let your schooling interfere with your education" -Samuel Clemens
Ghost ? A Mac ? No, it's rather easier than that (cheaper too): Configure (but do not personalize a Mac). Boot it from a system CD, copy hard drive to an Appleshare volume. Next Mac: reformat the drive and copy the previous image down. Presto ! And requires no additional software.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
*gets up on same soap box*
Schools used to be a place for learning how to live. They don't teach anything about life anymore <mumble>they don't teach anything anymore</mumble>, everybody's too scared that their kids need protecting. If you protect them from the relativly controlled atmosphere of school how are they ever supposed to learn how to survive in the real world where there are no teachers to run to?
In high school I took Driver's Education, the closest we got to driving in that class was navigating the halls to get to the room. Sure, I learned lots of driving theories, and about how to park with out breaking any laws. Now if I were less than 3 years away from driving when I took this class it may have been more helpful. But either way it did not and could not teach me how to drive, the only way to do that is to get into a car, start it up, and hope you dont kill anybody (yourself included).
This soap box is getting shaky and I have to get back to work, so you can figure out what I was going to say next without me...
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
Not only does iMac support removable media, but portable/removable media drives. Is this not superior to all other desktops in terms of portability? The iMac even has a handle on the back of it!
When will people realize that floppies are obsolete?
Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
Become a Tupperware(tm) salesperson.
Offer free Tupperware products to a friend or acquaintance if they will host a "party" where you can demonstrate products and make a sales pitch.
Show up early and tell your friend to hide all of the GladWare that they usually serve snacks in, and please not to even open the cupboard where they're kept.
Be prepared for a short career.
The problem is that Linux isn't (currently) easy to learn and even if it ever became so the mem is burnt in..
Just as people think Linux is hard to use and hard to admin (Linux was NEVER hard to use... this implys difficulting on Linux experts... and that isn't the case... the difficulty is clearly on the new users who have yet to learn Linuxes obscure and cryptic commands).
Mac is very powerful but just as Linux is forever tagged with the "Hard" lable Mac is forever tagged with the "simple" lable...
Still it's pointed out time and time again the reason people pick Windows over Linux is Windows is "user friendly" it's not but it is easy to learn and thats a big step forward for newbes comparied to Linux...
But NOT comparied to Mac.. who really is user friendly..
So Linux scoops up the geeks, the techs and the power users and Mac scoops up the newbes and the techno paranoid...
It's got it's place in things....
And unlike Windows... Mac and Linux work together perfictly...
Mac has made the extra effort to work with Unix for a long time.. Older Macs have become Internet terminals in otherwise Unix networks.
Linux also makes an extra effort to work with Mac.. supporting AppleTalk protocalls at the kernel level.
On a network I doupt you could easly recognise where the Macs end and the Linux boxes start...
Or pick the odd box in a stack of systems...
For me an ideal office network is Macs and Linux boxes... between the two all needs are meet
I don't actually exist.
My school (UMASS at Amherst) is a good example of the effects of corporate sponsorship of education. A "generous" donation from Nike or Coca-Cola comes with a heavy price: the corporation expects and demands broad control over University policy and culture. In the last year:
- Nike has promised to withdraw all funding since we (students) convinced the administration to join the Workers Rights Coalition (an anti-sweatshop group).
- Coca-Cola and Starbucks have demanded and enforced expensive monopolies on all beverages sold on campus. The administration has also harassed students gathering signatures for the Ecopledge, a pledge not to work for a list of socially irresponsible companies which includes Coca-Cola.
- The administration has ignored the protests of students and professors by letting the Folett Group of Chicago skim profits from the Universities bookstores in return for undefined increases in "efficiency" (layoffs). Protesters against Folett must apply for a permit and gather in a confined space far from the bookstore or the Chancellor's residence.
Corporations who give to educational institutions don't just want recognition. They openly seek to stifle the free speech and progressive activism that make colleges more than short sighted training camps for career skills.
Agreed. When I went to the State U. of New York at Buffalo, corporate sponsorship ran across campus like wildfire. Public universities are especially susceptible to this because they don't have as many rich alumni to donate buildings and such. Of course, Coke signed a deal with the university which banned all other soft drinks from being sold on campus. Computer companies sold the university tons of equipment at very cheap prices, as long as their equipment was the only kind used in the public computing facilities. I now live in Stony Brook, NY, home to another big state university center. A local company (Computer Associates, if you're wondering) is essentially buying the campus. The CEO is "donating" a building, and the computer science department is essentially a CA employee factory. I'm out of college now, but I see this happen every day. It can't be good in the long run. I can see things like this leading to a loss of impartiality in education, and ultimately a lack of choice for university officials. For example, if you know Dell computers are pieces of crap, but Dell just donated 1,500 workstations to you, and you're the president of a cash-strapped public university, do you take the donation or look elsewhere?
And why should we expect that Intel shouldn't want an "exclusive" event? Really, it's a tradeoff. I'm sure that Intel (or any other company for that matter) isn't donating money sheerly out of the kindness of its collective heart. There are strings attached.
Is the entire University part of said event? All of it? That really doesn't make that much sense to me...
For example, Intuit used to (perhaps still does) donate Quicken software to high schools for use in personal finance classes. Not just because Intuit wants high school students to have balanced checkbooks (yeah, right), but because when those same students need to buy software, they will buy the software they already know.
Yes, but note that Intel didn't donate a bunch of processors to the school. (well maybe they did but it wasn't mentionned anywhere). You'll note that Intuit, Corel, and other companies who donate software don't actually ask for anything in return, they just assume it will happen (which it will). Had Intel donated a few (a lab) of PCs, then more people would use them and consequently buy them in the future... Note that this is not what happened. Intel is using a M$-like bullying tatic. Bad. Bad Intel. Stop being mean.
Same for Intel, they are doing it partly for charity, mostly for good PR.
And WHOA BOY did they fail! Gotta laugh at this one just a bit. A Yahoo story like this isn't going to get more Intel PCs bought... perhaps more AMD or Transmeta....
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
Uhh, ever hear of USB? It works just fine for that, and look, ooh, I can use my USB Zip on my PC and my Mac, but not my Linux machine. I know, they're working on it.
People often ask me why I buy macs and PC's and run every OS I can. The answer is so I can keep learning all sorts of interesting things. And besides, I'm getting to like the Mac even more. You can back up with a USB tape drive, if they exist (I'm sure they do.) Or, perhaps, a program like Ghost (hard drive images), onto a LAN.
I'm still disappointed at the academics and/or administration at Harvard bowing to any pressure, that separation from the "real world" is a key part of academia. That said, an iMac kiosk, if the Intel marketers had any intelligence whatsoever, they could say something like, "Use your Mac for browsing, but use the new Intel Sextium chip for QUAKE 3!!!"
Anyway.
later
Dan
That would have been te Sydney IT2000 / LinuxExpo 2000. The two conferences were sort of combined. Microsoft didn't just threaten to not turn up, AFAIK there was no sign of them at all! And this was right before the official launch of Win2k too! Though I don't think they were ever going to sponsor the event..
Isn't it about time people realize that if Havard, or whoever is at the blunt of slashdot complaints, didn't want to cover them, they didn't have to? It was requested, and they thought it might be a good idea.
No... note that the spokesperson for Harvard said: "[but we were] asked in a way that we couldn't say no." That says bullying to me....
Can't we just all grow up? You didn't like it when your parents made you share, now you don't have to, but you're telling other people they have to share, you're just like your parents.
Maybe one doesn't like sharing, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Maybe Mom and Dad were right...
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
This is just sad. When a school such as Harvard, which has the largest endowment of any school in the nation would even to stop to consider such petty antics, it speaks poorly for the backbones of our universities in general.
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
But here we are punishing just Microsoft and accepting Intel.
Can we avoid Intel? Personally, my lab is completely Intel and Microsoft free.
I do own x86 based computers but they have the processor from AMD.
By the way, the boxes running Slashdot powered by Intel?
Also I dont understand why VA Linux dont make any non-intel boxes?
Their sales person just confirmed to me that they do not have any non-Intel CPU products at this time.
I dont think I will be looking forward to VA clustercity for the time being. I might get Alphas.
--
If Microsoft is the solution, I want my problems back
If M$ gets split, Apple will port its OS to x86.
Very unlikely... Why would they kill their own business (almost only hardware) for such a risky move ? Who would buy Macintosh hardware if cheap PC clones running MacOS would do the job ? OK, the Mac architecture is better than PC's one, but the percentage of people who really care about that is marginal.
Moreover, you're talking about x86. Think about it : if MS is ever split (which I really doubt), it will not be before 2001 or even 2002. By that time (I hope I'm not thinking wishfully), x86 will be out and replaced by the Intel 64 bits Itanium architecture. Would Apple issue a MacOS X version just for old computers ? MacOS' market was always high end desktop machines, why would they suddenly care about oldest PC's ?
Stéphane
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
There was an extensive critique of university funding and its sources in the March 2000 Atlantic Monthly; it is online here. I agree with timholman, universities have been on the take for years. The university budgets and priorities are driven by research needs and not by some idealistic devotion to learning and tutelage.
I don't like Intel's actions here, but the guy holding the pursestrings gets to call the shots. It seems like they could have been more discreet about it, though.
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
The whole brand specific options do get old after a little while. I know that we've heard on more than one occasion that we can't get food we actually like on campus because "we have a contract with their competitor." Do they really think that we care who their manager owns stock in and therefor has us in a contract with? All we want is our Lucky Charms so that when the food is crap we can at least have cereal that we like. This from a company who's motto is: "We want students to eat here because they want to, not because they have to."
Not hard to explain: movie types are mostly mac-users in the first place, so it's only natural that they's put macs in the movies.
--
Here's my mirror
In reference to the whole computers for education spending shindig going on lately, i dont know about your schools, but the ones they supplied ours with absolutely and utterly blow. I tried to load a 186 meg ASF of Spaceballs up and the Celery 433 w/ 32megs PC-66 RAM chugged away at the issue for a solid 15 minutes before i just gave up and ripped the CD out of the drive. There are five of these computers in every science class. IMHO, it would have been much more worth it to purchase 1 or 2 nice computers (Pentium III's or so) instead of 5 stripped down calculators. So thumbs down to the school systems.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
There's this company named AMD......
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
Here in Korea, you can't publish any advertisement which compares products of one company with products of another company directly, whether it's true or not. I don't think it's allowed in the U.S. also.
You can in the United States (it's very common), but it is not allowed in many parts of Europe.
Yeah...I noticed that after I posted the other correction... :-)
--
Remember the first revisions of Mac AGP G4s had Intel ethernet controller chips. For that matter my Mac IIci has ROMs burned by Intel.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
It's all a bit sad a certainly, and in the UK we're starting to have to deal with this a lot more in the education environment.
I guess - you want the money/ resources - you strike a deal with Babylon.
Trouble is these guys have hardened sales people trained to cut hard deals day in day out, and academics, well they have other things to deal with (and would prefer to spend their time doing). I expect schools and universities are going to get burnt frequently until they start hiring hardened full time marketing people to cut these kind of deals.
(minor rant tinged with sadness..) Ok so put the boot in on European social welfare models of economy, but hey at least when it works it protects the education sector from having to do this kind of dealing rather than educating people...sigh... (off rant)
Intel gives money to harvard, harvard becomes intels bitch. what is so hard to understand?
.{redmist}.
-------------------------------------------------
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If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
"That 'Lending distinction to the school' means that you attract more students so can afford more staff, it's a jungle out there where the modern
university has to fight for every single student"
And it is a real drag when students pay +20,000.00 grand a year to have Professor Arrogant's class taught by an unintelligible graduate assistant because Prof Arrogant is too busy sleeping off last night's facilty party in honor of his last publication. Half of my college professors suffered from the inability to teach the classes they are being paid for.
"OK so there are fools out there who believe that if people are not out there working to improve the state of industry then they're wasting their time. but a lot of arts graduates take up a useful role in society someone has to make the TV programs you watch, someone has to look after the homeless (Unless you think it should all be down to policemen with clubs)"
Who said anything bad about arts graduates? (Although I think some would take issue with your about their place in society involving TV production). Reread my post. And that bit with the homeless, slow down with the coffee! Reread the original post and try again.
"Universitys are not First and foremost industries, they mainly exist to educate and enhance the culture of the society in which they are based."
And most private universities are in trouble financially because their ivory tower view of "enhancing the culture" is at total odds with reality.
"narrowing the spectrum of teaching into purely what would be useful for industry and therefore make money would make our institutions a shadow of themselves"
Universities are already a shadow of themselves. Pick a problem.. elimination of testing and grading systems, admission based upon color rather than achievment, sexual harrassment, etc.. need I go on?
Hey moron, some people want just that. Take me for instance. I made my computer by buying every indivual piece (down to the internal fans and cables). Whenever a part fails or goes obsolete, I find a good deal on a replacement. I've been doing that for years now.
I never bought a floppy drive or SCSI card for my machine. There wasn't a need. What would I need a floppy drive for? To install windows? Linux installations can boot from the CD. Floppies, besides being small and unreliable (I used to have one fail on me practically every week, when I needed them at high school) are also agonizingly slow. I have a CD burner and a Zip 250, and I don't even use 'em much. Any file transfer/storage I need to do I do on my home ethernet, or across the internet.
I'd love to have a nice fast SCSI adapter, but they're just too expensive, so I can go without.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Actually Apple has always enjoyed a large segment of the education market. In fact these are the most recent numbers. Anecdotally I would say that, at least when I was an undergrad, that institutions of higher ed are not as wintel centric as , say, corporate America. Keeping in mind that this was at a university I would say that Intel had reasonable motivation to be jerks. Of course, they should have also been a bit less childish after the first "no" from Harvard.
Now, AMD have x86-64/Sledegammer sitting there - fully backwards compatible, but extended. Also, if current form continues, better bang per buck.
;)
AMD has gained some credibility in the last months, but I really doubt they are strong enough to dictate the plateform the average Joe will use in the future.
Now, who's _honestly_ going to buy something that's slower for the price, and where the performance sucks even more for everything you've got right now - the only benefit is with stuff months down the line?
Slower and sucking performance... That's another big assumption
Moreover, who still cares about real, measured performance ? The recent 1Ghz hoopla (even if it eventually turned in the favor of AMD) shows that what's really important is the marketing, the eye candy. Those chips were 'simple' Athlons/PIII's, but 1Ghz sounded sooooo sweet.
I first though about writing 2 lines about AMD in my original posting, but the topic has been discussed so many times before : we finally have the possibility to get rid of this x86 mess. It took Intel 15 years to give us a non-x86 processor. I really hope the market won't perpetuate x86's hegemony by buying Sledgehammers.
When Intel decided to help porting Linux to the IA64, they made it clear that open source OSes can help the transition : when most of the applications just need a recompilation to work on a new platform, the pain of migration disappears magically !
Stéphane
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
Yes. It used to be illegal in the US. I'm not sure when the change-over occurred(somewhere near the early 90's I believe).
I also remember as a kid things like the obvious Tide box with it's name covered and the ad saying something akin to "Our stuff beats the leading brand."
Now companies aren't restricted from naming competitors in their ads.
"Four out of five of my fingers recommend using gum before breathing near me."
D
Around here we have seemingly hundreds of computers with a "Donated by Intel" sticker on them. So many that recently we lost a cluster of 30 or so fine Macs to be displaced by PC's. And a couple years ago we lost about 120 Macs in one place to be bumped out by Intel donated machines.
Just another note of what's going on.
It's stupid and it pisses me off.
Start Running Better Polls
guest: what was that thing over there?
really smart harvard guy: what thing? (acting nonchalant)
guest: that thing...it looks like an imac with a cover over it?!?!
really smart harvard guy: that...uh...that was a pigeon!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
How do you think they got to be so rich? Greedy people/institutions tend to have more money than those who aren't so greedy.
No you are not the only one. Most people just read the original, sensationalized EDITORIAL on yahoo, and skipped the original post in the Harvard Crimson.
The editorial, written by a Mac zealot, made Intel out to be evil, yet admitted he based his story on the Harvard Crimson story. The story in the Crime had the following quote:
"Because of the last-minute changes, we tried to accommodate Intel," Hess said. "There was no monetary pressure. It was just a courtesy to Intel because of the last-minute confusion."
A far cry from what was inferred in the editorial. It's unfortunate that the otherwise intelligent people here on slashdot lose all control of their senses when an editorial is posted that depicts negative behavior from Intel, Microsoft, and any other "enemy of the day."
It's also unfortunate that slashdot doesn't research the stories a little more and post links to the non-biased accounts of the information at hand. But that's another story :)
Is Intel saying their products are inferior? ;)
I own a Dual Intel boxen, but I don't toss a blanket over my friends Powerbook when he brings it when him.
Maybe this is the geek version of a security blanket?
-- to code or not to code
I don't know the motives either way. If DarthBobo's explanation is the real one, the they could have unplugged the computer keyboards and put a notice next to the iMacs reading: 'Out of use for the duration of the exhibit' - and maybe adding a note where an alternative terminal could be found.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
>OK so there are fools out there who believe that if people are not out there working to improve the state of industry then they're wasting their time. but a lot of arts graduates take up a useful role in society someone has to make the TV programs you watch, someone has to look afetr the homeless (Unless you think it should all be down to policemen with clubs)
Teaching arts is a GOOD thing.. teaching non-productive classes is a good thing... Teaching "think this way" classes is a bad thing...
People should help the homeless out of a sence of ethics within themselfs.. NOT out of a sence of ethics programmed into them at collage...
Am I to believe a person who got C in "Ethical behavure 101" are more ethical than people who never took the class?
[No such class exists as far as I know.. similer yes but not that exact one]
The problem with ethics and morals is it's all subjective.
To you and me it's ethical to help out those in need.
But there is the darwinist ethics who believe it's ethical and moral to run people over. Some people have turnned self intrested selfishness into a socal mandate...
I'd rather there be a class on how to research and learn about socal injustous than a class teaching it.
I don't want any one pair of hands stearing a moral colective... it allways leads to abuse...
I don't actually exist.
This whole incident just sickens me. It makes me want to puke. To puke all over those pretty iMacs, and the Intel reps too. Hell, I'd puke on everyone, I'm THAT sickened by it. Besides, everyone knows that Pepsi is better than Coke.
A lot of the same stuff (brand wars) is going on in junior high and high schools with Pepsi and Coke - Not just early advertising, but downright force of product in order to get donations. Is it just me, or is brand-consciousness going WAAAAY overboard here?
It's not like Intel was totally in the wrong in not wanting competitor products in the faces of the participants, but this kind of in-your-face no-holds-barred product endorsement smells almost like extortion to me.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
So he "neither confirmed, nor denied" the situation. That made me suspicious ;-)
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl dominos.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Sure, the design is different, but at this point, it's a bit passe, given that they've been out for, what, almost two years? I can imagine Intel sponsoring something at MIT and telling them to cover up anything in the Lab that doesn't look like a beige box that has a Start button in the lower left corner.
At some point, someone has to start looking at what the marketing department's policies are and how they truly affect the company's public image. Can't believe that the publicity this has generated has done a whole lot for people's impressions of the Wintel monopoly.
They weren't 100% right. Obviously they didn't want all the jokes along the lines of "Hey, did you see all those Macs in the intel publicity pictures".
Unfortunately they still insisted that preventing these jokes was more important to them than what they were funding. They should have backed down when they found that they were causing too much hassle. Partly out of consideration for others and aprtly out of good PR.
Since when does any company dictate what I buy? I'd have told Intel to take a flying leap! If I need 15% Mac to do my job, then that is what I need and Intel should be happy that I buy their products at all.
Covering up those computers could have permanently damaged them. It's not appropriate for any company to make requests like that.
If the companies don't like it, they can leave -- and lose my money.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
You shoulda included IBM in that list too, since IBM fabs make Transmeta and PowerPC chips.
This is another view of the world.
All I can say is so what.
You are a business, and you don't want competitors products around while you do your thing.
Here is a link to the story from The Crimson, Harvard's newspaper.
I would rather corporations making donations to educational institutions expected no short-term return at all: no publicity, no co-branded buildings or labs. But little-picture corporate leadership could never let that happen, sadly. If a university sells out, it should expect to face the consequences.
I wish there was another source of funding for universities and organizations that didn't involve selling out... but there isn't.
Gosh, it'd be wonderful if teachers didn't *have* to unionise to protect themselves.
They really have little choice. The school boards and government ministries are incredibly abusive toward their employees.
Without unions, class sizes would be enormous, teachers would not have lunch breaks because they'd have to monitor the schoolyard, extracurricular activity coaching would be mandatory and wages would be more abysmal than they already are.
As long as teachers are employees of a hostile employer, they'll have to be unionised. That's really unfortunate.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I remember seeing on 20/20 or something a few years back where the company that made the candy "Gushers" was 'donating' stuff to schools.
For example, Gushers candies.
And "learning" materials. "Eat a gushers candy... notice how when you bite down, the juice squirts out, not unlike a volcano."
Umm... yeah...
-bill!
Hey, that Sammy Sosa guy drinks Pepsi... I should, too!
What Harvard did was merely polite. If you received money from Coke, you shouldn't serve Pepsi.
I seem to remember a case last year of a high school student in Georgia who was suspended or expelled because he wore a Pepsi T-shirt on a day when Coke was sponsoring an event. Needless to say, the principal was embarrassed.
I don't think Harvard has anything they should hide, unlike the principal's embarrassment and retaliation to the student. But this incident does fit with many others that indicate Harvard and other institutions, that should be independent, are no longer performing as they should, but are becoming beholden to the bucks. I think we have a right to an response from the other side here.
Well my school didn't have recognized frats & sororities because they don't permit anyone who applies to join. And as it happens, many of the students don't really like them anyway.
;)
OTOH, we didn't have a football team anymore either, because except for about 50 years ago, they haven't really tried to recruit athletes. It was a lousy school for that; there was one race that I remember our team only beat another team that was unable to finish altogether.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I'm not clear on where you think schools should get the money they need to run.
Public schools are constantly being told "do x or lose funding."
"Racial" (actually ethnic) quotas are a prime example. I am against them (becasue I am not a racist), but the current regime still uses my money to try to force schools to impliment them.
I hope that you don't honestly think that governments arent an "interest"?
-Peter
Slashdot cries out for open standards, then breaks them.
The trick is this: require all the people donating to donate into an fund held by a third party. Then all cumulative donations are transferred to the school, but in a single lump, and the school is not informed by the third party who donated and how much.
Nike can claim to have donated $10 million if they like, but as long as the school sticks to the anonymous system, they have no reason to believe anyone.
It definately shows who's being altruistic and who wants their name on something.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Dave ( http://www.thursby.com/ ) for Mac.
UPS Sucks
Sort of like having Ray Kroc (sp? from McDonalds) giving a speech about Big Macs in front of a Burger King banner.
Well, in London's Picadilly Circus, there is a huge McDonalds ad in lights, (which I've heard they pay £5m a year for). Guess what is directly underneath it? You got it - A burger king!
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
Coke and Pepsi have long signed exclusionary agreements with restaurants and stores. A store can generally carry both, but cannot have both on sale simultaneously. A restaurant is generally only allowed to have products from one company or the other.
Since Coke and Pepsi already own just about every soft drink there is, and have bought or driven out of business any competitors, it is never a good idea to piss them off.
Of course this bears no relation to the Pepsi owned restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) which will of course always sell Pepsi, or the Pepsi-owned snack foods (Frito Lay, etc) which will promote and be promoted by coupons on Pepsi products...
I don't think MS has Color Sync yet.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
In other parts of the South all soda is called "Coke." I am sure there is a historical reason there... rather ionteresting.
Try http://thegeek.org/.
This isn't totally off-topic, but since we're talking about brand exposure for Apple...
Been to the movies lately? Have you ever noticed that when a movie is set on Earth, in the U.S., in the present day, whenever a character uses a computer, it's always an iMac, or some kind of Mac?
I saw Road Trip the other day. In both Josh and Tiffany's dorms, they have iMacs. The characters never use them, but the colourful neon green plastic looming in the background is unmistakeable. In Whatever It Takes, the characters who send email to each other use iMacs. Heck, in Independence Day, a Mac laptop is used to create and upload a "virus" to an alien computer.
It seems that, either by giving money to Hollywood Studios and asking them to include Macs, or supplying Macs to the studios as props, Apple is trying to make it so that when the general public thinks "computer", they think "iMac" or "Macintosh".
Of course, this isn't true of all movies -- remember the "hybrid" computers in Office Space?
This probably isn't as outlandish as it seems-- I'm sure Coke is responsible for characters in certain movies drinking Coke and Pepsi is responsible for other movies showing Pepsi vending machines and Pepsi trucks...
Has anyone else noticed this?
Whats scary isn't that they were once trusted...
It's that they still are....
And that makes it posable for any group to insert a socal mandate...
I'm sure cola and coffie companys would sponser hard work ethics... (work hardder.. buy more caffine)
Microsoft anti-piracy (Oh yeah don't copy ANY software... it's illegal)
and sports companys safty (gotta sell that protective gear)
It can all look innocent at first but it gets nasty quick...
I don't actually exist.
I believe this is the case whether the money being pursued is corporate or from taxpayers (i.e., teachers indoctrinating students to push their parents to vote in favor of bond measures).
Don't get me wrong; educators are entitled to make a living. However, they should be primarily interested in turning out well-rounded, educated youth.
--
Wow. I managed to piss off both sides...I must be doing something right! :-)
--
Universitys are not First and foremost industries...
Gee, Wally. I just thought they were in it to sell books.
Today, they have fucking sold out!!!! ... what is even more crazy is that Intel only sponosored part of the event, not 100% of the event.
duh!
Gotta news flash, Sherlock. Companies don't sponsor events or donate equipment out of altrusim. They're in it for money, and the name of the game is "marketing". While events like this one are obnoxious and worrying, I am even more worried about McDonalds, for example, sponsoring things in elementary schools.
In general, I am worried about the state of universities nowadays. Between corporate sponsorship, governmemt twiddling, funding messes, academic infighting, "publish or perish" and an overall "trade school" mentality, it looks to me like the traditional "university" is simply going away.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
Intel is 100% wrong. I have never heard of Apple requiring all non-Apple computers be hidden from veiw when they are putting on the very expensive presentations and making the generous donations to school they have been making for over 20 years. Apple has been the most generous of any computer company in terms of gifts/subsidies to schools. That Intel required that no Macs be seen, and that Harvard (already the most well funded university in the world) complied says nothing good about either of them.
What Harvard did was merely polite. If you received money from Coke, you shouldn't serve Pepsi.
If coke donates money to an educational institution then they have no right to say what that institution should do. Including whether or not they serve Pepsi.
In this case it ceases to be a donation and becomes sponsorship. And this carries all the problems associated with sponsorship. Should Coke be allowed to change the curriculum?
This has already occured in Japanese elementary schools where the sponsors have workbooks containing numerous images and references to animated TV characters. How far do you want this to go? Believe me, there is a danger of a slippery slope and you won't like the final result.
you also misspelled "money", a bit more embarassing error :)
Don't you hate it when people call soda "pop"? it's SODA, S-O-D-A. Pop is what you do to a Pringles can.
I think we should expect a little more backbone from one of our most prestigious educational institutions.
Historically, backbone is not something that has had a big presence in our educational institutions. Think about the 60's - most of the big ones basically bent over backwards trying to accomodate some of the radical students, right up to patting them on the back for taking hostages at gunpoint...
Be nice to your friends. If it weren't for them, you'd be a complete stranger.
But that's *exactly* my point. That despite lower costs and lesser facilities, they turn out better educated students.
I'm really just trying to argue that the focus on funding is somewhat misguided. You need a certain baseline level of money, and beyond that, you're not going to see any educational benefits.
--
I used to be a user assistant back when I was a student there and I knew Frank Stein. I quickly learned that there is _a lot_ of politics at Harvard (as there is in most universitys). I wouldn't be surprised if this order came from higher up than Frank Stein.
Many universities, including Harvard, rely on companies to donate or give reduced rates on equipment. This is not the first time FASCS would have been pressured into something. I remember a big issue when I was there was that the Harvard Extension school gave some money for the new SC lab, so the extension students were allowed to use the lab, but the user assistants were not allowed to help them because they were Harvard undergrads...
I think its sad that Frank Stein and FASCS had to give in to Intel. But I'm sure Intel in return was probably promising some kick ass machines. And when you weigh getting free/cheap computers with just covering a few Macs I can see how they gave in. In the long run the students will be better off. I remember the computers there as being just *awful* because FASCS (HASCS) was always under-funded.
I adore both platforms. Right now I'm using a Powerbook 3400c (because I'm on vacation;
normally i'd be using a k6-2/400 with RHL6.0) but I can tell you one thing, MacOS is not
always the easiest platform to work with.
I'm not kidding. I was raised on Win95 (i'm sorry; we all had to start somewhere) but was
basically helpless until I began to understand how Linux worked. I built a computer and made
the switch, and I've been very happy with Linux. I found it extremely logical, fast, stable,
and just dang cool to have all those penguins all over the place. Linux made perfect sense to me,
and I've been using it for about a year now.
Some time ago, I asked my aunt for any old computers she might have, and she started giving me Macintoshes. First I got a PowerPC 8100/80, then a Performa 6115, then an iMac DV-400 (THANK YOU LYNN) and now this Powerbook 3400c. I adore Macintoshes, but Apple's
assertion is entirely correct: Think different. You have to, to understand the MacOS.
A lot of rather UNIX-ish stuff goes on beneath the perty simple GUI. Initializing disks,
for one. And installing devices wasn't easy for me--admittedly, at the time, nothing talked to
OS9 very well. I'm still more comfortable with Linux, but I adore both platforms. Still, if
I had to put a label on them, I'd label Linux as easier than MacOS.
Windows is another thing entirely. Everyone and his brother knows how to use Windows. But why did it give me a kern386.exe error one day and completely die, leaving me with only my Linux partition (HUZZAH!) What causes the BSODs? Where are the memory leaks that Microsoft appears to know not of? Windows is neither cute nor logical. It's merely ubiquitous.
AMD processors in your PCs, Macs for everything else. Yum.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
But I went to public school, so there you go... :-)
--
The college I attended (clarkson university), is a big hockey school. When they built a new arena, Pepsi "donated" a scoreboard in exchage for an exclusive contract to sell that syruppy crap to the enire school population.
Before the scoreboard, we drank coke and could buy either in the school stores. After the board, it's pepsi as far as the eye can see.
Sheldon
I'm on the east coast and we say soda. But in upstate NY for some reason they say pop. I thought it was weird. The only other place I heard the term pop was in the south US.
School teacher appears on the monitor. ... You, in Cleveland..."?
[teacher]"Today's lesson is sponsored by Pepsi, the Choice of a New Generation. If I have 5 Pepsi's, and I give two Pepsi's to Jane, how many Pepsi's do I have left?
[little girl]"Pepsi?"
[teacher]"Partial Credit"
Funny, but also sad at the same time :-)
make world, not war
Universities allow themselves to be bullied by all the people that provide funding. Sometimes its in silly, obvious ways like covering iMacs.
Usually it's in more serious, intellectual ways that donors influence the agenda of what subjects researchers will research or what subjects Profs will teach.
I would have thought that Hahvahd would've had more backbone than to fall for a crass Intel demand like that.
.. but Harvard's. Maybe if Harvard was not so hard up for money, (worrying about Intel dropping their sponsorship for graduation), then they could have told Intel "tough".
Harvard needs money and therefore has to give in to these type of demands because..
) They have too many tenured, non-teaching, too worried about publishing, 'professors' who cost too much but are at Harvard only to lend some sort of distinction to the school.
) Waste too much time and money on non-productive majors related to ethno-centric, gender specific or social theory and planning. They should give that junk up and produce some money making alums.
) Spend far to much time and energy on politically correct behavior and policies rather than teaching and graduating students.
I direct your attention to the Harvard web site for further information.
Their need for funds, like so many other institutions of higher learning, is related to the corner they have painted themselves into.
But we in the U.S. had schools free of this nonsense for two hundred years.
I think it has little to nothing to do with our economic model; I think it has to do with a declining sense of morals and ethics among educators, and really among people in general.
It's simply ethically wrong for a school to enter into these types of arrangements. But the focus in education in the U.S. over the past twenty years has been money, money, money. The teachers' unions have been pushing for more money every election, despite the obvious fact that money (above a certain baseline) has no relationship to the quality of education. Our most horrendous schools in the U.S. happen to be in the school districts (like Washington, D.C.) with the highest per-student expenditures.
Our privately-run schools tend to do a much better job, while spending a fraction of the money of the state-run schools. The figures from a few years back were, I think, in Los Angeles, $7,200 per student in the L.A. Unified School District vs. $3,000 per student in the Catholic schools there. And the Catholic schools were turning out better educated students, even though they also had a reasonable share of economically disadvantaged students.
--
Ah, but the years before the plague will be so blissful.
I'm off to start a rumor in marketing about this - something about a giant space walrus, with photon flippers or something!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It seems that a favorite nephew was killed or seriously injured in a hazing incident at one of the Ivies and the donor in question developed a serious dislike of the entire Greek system. This occurred in the 1940s.
In other words, money talks, and it always has.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl dominos.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
For example, Intuit used to (perhaps still does) donate Quicken software to high schools for use in personal finance classes. Not just because Intuit wants high school students to have balanced checkbooks (yeah, right), but because when those same students need to buy software, they will buy the software they already know.
Same for Intel, they are doing it partly for charity, mostly for good PR. Why would they want to have a photo of their CEO or whoever is speaking at the event standing in front of a roomful of iMacs? Sort of like having Ray Kroc (sp? from McDonalds) giving a speech about Big Macs in front of a Burger King banner.
Basically, is everyone here just looking for something to complain about? Seems like it to me.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
I can see why Intel would want to cover the iMacs, as others have said, the iMacs don't use Intel processors. But surely they could have put up screens round the iMac area or something?
It seems over the top to use "heat-trapping" covers, forcing the iMacs to be shutdown. Its obvious they were in use if all these people were queueing for them. I think the press would have reacted much less if Intel had just screened off the area, blocking it from view from wherever the event was. Anyone who wanted to use it would already know where it was, so theres no 'Denial-Of-Service' as it were.
Then again, maybe there were just too many Macs to screen off. I still think heat-trapping covers is a bit much.
Intel Guy: If you can't see them, they can't see you
Havard Guy: Uh? Are you referering to the Macs?
Intel Guy: They don't exist, if I can't see them they don't exist
Havard Guy: Sure they do look [removing cover to reveal an iMac]
Intel Guy: PUT IT BACK ON!!!! PUT IT BACK ON!!!!
Havard Guy: [quickly re-covers the iMac]
Intel Guy: [starts rocking back and forth] STEVE JOBS IS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, STEVE JOBS IS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, STEVE JOBS IS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE!
Havard Guy: Are you alright Sir, can I get you a glass of water or something?!?
Intel Guy: [is still rocking back and forth] STEVE JOBS IS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, STEVE JOBS IS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, STEVE JOBS IS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE!
Havard Guy: Please settle down, can I get your anything, you want to sit down, a glass of water?
Intel Guy: [still rocking back and forth] THEY DON'T EXIST, MY CEO TOLD ME SO, THEY DON'T EXIST, MY CEO TOLD ME SO. THEY TOOK US INTO A ROOM AND GAVE US THESE SUGAR CUBES AND MADE US WATCH IMACS GET BROKEN AND SMASHED. THE VIDEO HAD MILLIONS OF MACS GETTING DESTORIED, THEY SAID THEY DESTORIED ALL OF THEM, THEY SAID THEY DON'T EXIST!! THEY DON'T EXIST, MY CEO TOLD ME SO, STEVE JOBS IS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE!
Havard Guy: [being sly] the Mac's died in the 1990's when Intel realsed the pentium that destoried them all [??]
Intel Guy: [shaking and in a cold sweat] what is going on, where am I, what happened?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
The point is not that Intel took some hits from demanding that these iMacs be convered. The point is that any other college budget approver, looking to see what he can do to optimize funding, may fear purchasing an iMac because Intel may pass them over.
That's the idea. Buy Apple, and your students suffer. Buy Intel, and your bribe is on its way.
There's a strong difference, of course, between the certainly legitimate and healthy educational activism of Intel and straight bribery. What Intel's staff failed to recognize was that by harassing Harvard's staff, they converted whatever positive good will they could get from the event into a negative, tainted force.
Fear can buy you alot. Respect buys you more. That's a hard lesson to learn; hopefully Intel will learn from this. Paranoid responsibility is valuable. Paranoid violence leads to the very press-connected Harvard getting harassed. Oops.
They'll learn. It's in their character--or at least, it was. If it still ain't, well, AMD can pop open some champagne glasses...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I personally don't care for hte MacOS, however there are too many people and too many business who make productive use of ir. It might be niceif they were all running Linux on their macs *grin*, but that isn't going to happen, and if intel feels it necessary to act in such a childish manner, then so be it. All of my systems are running AMD processors, which I still say will ourpreform an intel. If people want to use their macs, then let them...
yawn...
That's a big assumption, and one I wouldn't want to make
Intel want us to move to IA64/Itanium - but it's not a straightforward migration path and it's not too clever re: performance of legacy stuff - or, at least, wasn't last time I heard.
Now, AMD have x86-64/Sledegammer sitting there - fully backwards compatible, but extended. Also, if current form continues, better bang per buck.
Now, who's _honestly_ going to buy something that's slower for the price, and where the performance sucks even more for everything you've got right now - the only benefit is with stuff months down the line?
Intel could well have dropped the ball here. I'd honestly reckon AMD's route has an equal - at worst - chance of success.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
As a Harvard person myself, I can tell you exactly why Harvard gave into the pressure: they're greedy beyond all belief. When given a tradeoff between making a little more money from a sponsor and screwing over students in the middle of graduation (of all times), they don't even hesitate. Never mind being the second richest non-profit org. in the world (the Vatican is first). Just a little rant from someone who puts up with this stuff a lot.
This sounds like a campus legend. In other words, it sounds like BS. It's very similar to a similar legend about why my university didn't have a football team.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Harvard should have realized that they do in fact have a great deal of power here. They could easily have said- "No we will not cover the Macs, and if you insist, then you can just pull your money out of here."
Intel would have caved completely. Imagine the press reporting that Intel refused to sponsor Harvard because they would not cover the Macs.
Seems like the problem here is cowardice on both sides. Remember that bullies are as much cowards as those who don't stand up to them.
The golden rule is this : The man with the gold makes the rules.
It is a matter of principle. Intel sprend this cash to improve their image and market profile. They will not do this if there are wall to wall Macs in the place where they are doing it ! Harvard accept the money on this basis. And let's face it, this is Harvard, home of Harvard Business School ! If they don't understand this, then they are more out of touch than future MBA students and their employers might wish them to be.
Intel's position appears clear, unequivocal, consistent and principled. And despite any display of righteous indignation, something for which academics have notable talent, Harvard should have known the rules when they accepted the money. If they didn't understand this, and they truly believe in 'free lunches', then their MBAs aren't worth jack s**t.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
According to the professor teaching an advertising/PR class I took many years ago, advertisers use things like "Brand X" and "other leading brand" because if they actually mention the other leading brand, their target demographics get confused about who the advertisement is about.
I can understand that. There are many times I'm watching an ad and I get so insulted I want to go out and buy the competitor's product. (Usually, I just turn off the tv/radio or switch to a different station.)
Jerry
Anywhere a large corporation can eliminate the competition it will. Academia is not insulated from this.
It really is up to the academic institutions themselves to set the boundaries on sponsorship. Not unlike how PBS & NPR limit corporate "advertising" to a 5 second blurb.
managers...why god invented purgatory
Pop is for drinking and soda is for baking.
Culture is viral. Ain't it fun.
To pick a minor nit:
It's not Ultrix running on DEC Alphas. It's Tru64, formerly known as Digital Unix.
Ultrix ran on MIPS-based boxes in the very early 90's.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
The irony of course is that Intel has just annoyed a bunch of students with their trade show - students going to a prestigious university. Now, what kind of impression have they made?
And the professors? How inclined are they now to trust Intel technology? Want to bet that 90%-use-of-Mac may just increase?
Lesson for Intel: Bad for customers, bad for you in the end.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Harvard already lacks adequate computer facilities. The labs are always filled and far too small. The SC kiosks are one of the few places on campus were you can easily check your E-mail during the day. Otherwise you have to go all the way back to your dorm. The kiosks get a lot of use and are very convenient. To think that the students would give them up because there is a conference nearby is silly. As far as Harvard goes the Science Center is a "public" space. The conference was sharing the space just like the Greenhouse does, just like the Cabot library does, just like the numerous classrooms, labs, and lecture halls in the building do.
The media lab in question (that the yahoo/ZDNet article mentioned) is pretty far down the hall and around a bend from where the conference was. Actually quite a walk aways. And it has glass windows so if you looked closely perhaps you could see a Mac. To think that they papered over these windows is just stupid.
btw, I've always thought the SC was a poor place to hold a conference.
Clearly what happened with the iMacs was a last-minute compromise after a last-minute change of venue. I'm sure that if the same show happens in other years, all parties will be sensitized enough to the issue that there will not be a repeat performance. (semi-anonymous Harvard alum Science Center employee)
[reposted after I bothered to register]
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- The Doctor
"I came back without a hand, but my comrade was devoured"
(Folk tale: Two in Search of Evil)
Intel asked that Harvard put covers on the iMacs.. That was reasonable enough.
But the covers made the iMacs overheat.. The iMacs case is mostly airvents... hard to cover without blocking that...
Harvard should have taken the covers back to Intel and told them what was wrong. They didn't.
Intel didn't ask them to turn iMacs off.. They told them to cover same. It was purely a university choice to turn the iMacs off...
I'm shure Intel when faced with it would have backed down and said ok leave the iMacs alone.
This is the truely scary part.. Not so much what Intel asked but that the University took action in the name of Intel..
I think this should be noted...
Schools are waisting money on stuff not needed.. local governments trying to ballence budgets won't allocate needed funds... lots of evil money issues that a sponsership quickfix can help handle.
But at what cost?
Universitys are teaching ethical behavure (a function I an allready conserned about) now that ethical behavure is up for sale.. what shall we teach the new workforce...
(Coffie/Cola) Work ethics.. yes this is good.. but then we can forget to teach about sleep depervation. No Coke-a-cola wouldn't ask that but the Universitys would do it anyway...
It's not just that companys are paying money and asking something in return. Thats bad enough...
But Intel, Coke, and so forth would avoid asking anything that could turn into bad press...
But education institutions want to look good to the sponsers.. They don't consider the bad press they could generate for same...
So Harvard turns iMacs off for Intel...
Ispocan University removes all refrence to sleep depervation for a coffie sponser...
And Hoho Collage forgets you can get sports injurts even with protective gear for a company that sells same.
It's not what they asked for.. It's what they do on there own that scares me....
I don't actually exist.
Intel hates all competition & well this is jsut another example of the tactics they original started using when working with microsoft in the early days...
Apple is a competitor to Intel because they don't use any Intel materials: cpu's, chipsets, network cards (at least I've never seen one that worked on a Mac & I've done alot of networking), x86 arhitecture in general, compilers, & a few more things I can't think of right now...
Intel also can't bully Apple to do what they wish liek they have with mobo manufacturers (when the first Slot-A boards came out), memory manufacturers (because they wouldn't produce enough rambus memory to meet intels goals), OEM's (getting Dell's CEO to swear that Slot-A was crap in an interview with UK press & Threatening Gateway when they first thought of using AMD based systems), & lastly they make themselves the strong arm of every standards group they are involved with.
Intel is at least as monopolistic as Microsoft, but they happen to be several times larger than MS is or will be anytime soon. I mean if you ever compared the size of Intel to the 2 companies the hate most you'd see exactly how large they really are... I once say a comparison of the sizes of just those companies & it was insane... Intel was huge, AMD (their biggest cpu rival) was less than 15% their size, & Via (their biggest chipset rival) was about 2% the size of Intel.
Some other evils they have done to those two rivals include how Intel has bought employees from the other companies, revoking Via's rights to use the GTL+ bus because they were making to competitive a product, using a part of their lawsuit against Via to try to get several companies to stop making Slot-A motherboards with AMD chipsets, & in general doing everything in their power to make the other companies look bad.
Intel lost any of my respect along time ago & I don't think I'll be gaining it back anytime soon...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
fyi - that would be ZDNet editorializing (look at the article closely)
And anyway, this really IS an editorial - not a reporting piece. It would have been nice to have the link in the story point to an actual report, but hey, that's what slashdot readers are for! Thanks for the link.
-------
-------
"It was people! People soiled our green!"
Wasn't it illegal in the US at one point?
I remeber growing up to the 'Our Product vs brand X' commercials and wondering why we never saw brand X at the grocery store.
-- Gunther T Dull is not responsible for his opinions.
if they hadn't asked for the macs to be taken out of view, people would be posting about how stupid they were to have an event surrounded by kiosks provided by their competition.
They weren't saying to get rid of the macs forever, just put them out of sight for the event.
I don't see any problem here. Hardly up to par with some other things big evil companies are doing these days.
Even if they did have the right...
What good did it do? Covering an iMac doesn't make it cease to exist. They weren't fooling anyone. It was simply asinine (sp?).
And now because of it, they're getting loads of bad press.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Personally I think there's a difference. Apples are very conspicuous. Part of the design was to be noticable (I assume we're talking about iMacs here) Intel boxes are dull beige machines that are so ubiquitous that nobody notices them any more. You expect to see them.
Essentially, the very prescence of a Mac is an advertisement for Apple. Having publicity shots with them in the background would be as desirable to them as a great big poster behind Apple execs saying "Intel Pentium III" would be for Apple.
Here in Korea, you can't publish any advertisement which compares products of one company with products of another company directly, whether it's true or not. I don't think it's allowed in the U.S. also.
You can in the United States (it's very common), but it is not allowed in many parts of Europe.
A correction: It is legal to compare products directly in the U.S., but only if the comparison is true. Otherwise the offending company can be charged with False Advertising, a serious enough offense that it is avoided. However, the ad execs know how to get their point across and what results is more creative ways of saying "Our product is better than theirs" or strange attempts at confusing the consumer enough to buy their product.
Dave
Today:
:)
Shortly after Microsoft donates money to XYZ University the University staff addopt strange antiUnix policys and starts offering classes in Microsoft notepad...
Tomarow:
Shortly after VA/Andover/Slashdot donates money to XYZ University the University staff addopt antiWindows policys (Such as banning anything that may carry e-mail viruses or other such defects from the university network "to protect it from bombardment vea viruses" requiring all e-mail be RFC standard text so it may be readable and prohibiting any hardware or software not compatable/ported with/to Linux to be sold at the University book store).
and offering new classes (Such as how to get First Post)
as well as cancling a few (Such as how to use Microsoft Excell)
Now note above... This could happen WITH OUT VA/Andover/Slashdot asking ANYTHING of the University.. They just do it so that VA/Andover/Slashdot will be pleased with them. They'd do far worse than any Linux Zellot has ever advocated in the name of making Slashdot happy.
This probably explains all the strange pro-Microsoft policys at Universitys over the years. Maybe Napster should start making donations to Universitys...
Maybe Universitys who won't ban Napster are receaving funding from Real Networks, or some other company who dose a piratable protocall or dose MP3s... Maybe the Universitys who do ban Napster are receaving funding from the Music industry....
My mother showed me a list of collage classes I could take (my sister wants me back in collage to learn stuff I allready know or don't care about) it was a bunch of computer classes (Ahh my sister saw computer classes my mother didn't look) Microsoft... Microsoft... umm Microsoft... NT... CE... While I am reading this off I am padding with classes like "The fine art of MsNotePad, How to win MsSolintare, The reasons why Linux is evil". A few years ago I got a similer pamplet stuffed in my hands. Full of Mac and Unix classes. Poof.. all gone... all Microsoft Windows classes now... and most of it is garbage...
I allready know this stuff... "How to use MsOffice" Don't... use StarOffice or something smiler... I'm holding for KDE Office but I'm elcheapo and want free... but I'm not stupid... advocate for Star or other existing commertal office pacage for Linux... while downloading KDE office..
Anyway... I end up laughing when I see classes in supposidly user friendly technologys...
I guess this is why...
Now if there is a class in pirating MP3 music with Napster... I'm there...
I don't actually exist.
Does it make sense to inconvenience students paying major dough and hamper people working on other donors' grant money so that one mid level manager can light up an exploding PR cigar?
Last time I checked, universities were supposed to be about teaching and research, not holding trade shows.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yeppers, I'd say you're just about alone in this.
/rant on? Oh well, maybe that's assumed, this is /. after all.
Look, here's a rich technofirm browbeating a rich academic bastion of "academic freedom"... and the school rolls over like some moronic crack-whore?
This ain't some cowflop community college here, this here is Harvard University, maybe the most prestigious institution of higher learning in this here country (both of my maternal uncles went there - one was a Unitarian minister for about 50 years, the other was a chemistry researcher at a major company, both are now comfortably retired, but would be appalled at Harvard as whore).
And Intel has the balls to push them around over some stupid commercial schtick? How brainless! Academic types have good memories and love to hold career-long grudges. Intel has just pissed-off a few people at Harvard, and these people don't forget any slight or brow-beating. Look for Harvard comp-sci to start investigating alternatives to Intel chip technologies real soon now.
Intel is right on the edge of losing dominance of the consumer-oriented chip market. Their latest, best-effort Pentium processors are lame on price/performance scales compared to what AMD offers, and Intel can't push out enough chips to supply customers - that's why AMD is selling chips.
Add to this Intel's continuing mobo chipset failures and stupid insistance on Rambus RDRAM (a doomed technology that even Intel's support can't save), and you've got the picture of a stagnating firm that can't see clearly: yeah, cover up those G4 Macs! What a bunch of idiot marketroids! Intel should fire 'em all wholesale.
Apple is not one of the companies that will hurt Intel in the next few years, yet the marketroids at Intel target it because it's out there now.... Intel deserves to lose half their market share to AMD and VIA because they're becoming senile.
Harvard should be ashamed of itself over this...
/rant off - Oops, did I forget
Not just a floppy (don't make that mistake and allow Apple marketing people to preach about floppy obsolescence) There is no room for any form of writeable removable media. (say, a zip or LS-120 drive...)
There isn't even a SCSI jack on those things anymore, is there? I guess Apple assumes than nobody who buys an iMac will be generating anything on the machine that ever needs backing up or transfer to another machine. Is the iMac a glorified light bulb? Is the iMac customer buying an enhanced WebTV?
The yahoo article does suggest that Harvard didn't want to cover up the iMacs. So they didn't think it was a good idea. Whether this was becuase people needed to use them or whether it was marketing related I don't know.
Uhh...no offense, but I can't decide if you are being intenionally obutse for the point of making a joke or you just haven't read the book he's making reference too. (and no, I won't say what it is just in case it's the former)
Either way, it made me laugh, so thanks.
-------
-------
"It was people! People soiled our green!"
When you buy an Apple PC you are NOT buying an Intel processor in it. Therefore, yes, they are competitors in that Apple ships a product that uses a competitors part.
Apple seemed like they were getting their sh*t together with OS-X. Then they pulled an iMac on us.
Apple announces iMac: May 6, 1998
Apple announces system software strategy (later revised): May 11, 1998
Try again, this time with feeling.
I submitted this story, with the link to the less-sensational Crimson story, several days ago. It got rejected, I guess I should have looked around for something written with more editorial content.
2000-06-09 14:45:45 Intel makes Harvard hide iMacs during Intel-sponsored event (articles,intel) (rejected)
Normally I bypass all these posts too, but I used to get my news from Slashdot, now I just see old news here. Can we get some submission guidelines written up, so we don't waste our time submitting things over and over again?
To keep this relatively on topic, I don't think that Intel did it necessarily to hide their competitors products, but they could have made an effort to accomodate the students a little more, that's for sure.
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
The main computer lab in the Science Center is, if I remeber correctly, about 40% Ultrix on DEC Alphas, 40% Macs, and only about 10% or so PC's (as opposed to the public access terminals in question, in the lobby). I wonder what Intel though about that?
The Imac kiosks in the main lobby (I remeber them as being mainly 7xxx's and 8xxx's, though, but it's been about 6 months since I was there) are basically Netscape and telnet boxes, locked down in such a way as to be useless as Macs, i.e., they are effectively dumb terminals, useful only for anonymous web surfing and telnetting to other systems (Harvard's main systems are Solaris and Ultrix).
All things considered, Intel-based systems seem to be in the minority in the Science Center.
darren
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
He he. This reminds me of a Pepsi commercial here in Sweden they had a few years back. They had done a marketing test, and had found that most people preferred Pepsi over "the other leading brand on the market".
;)
I wonder which brand they could be referring to?
Direct link to Crimson Story without all the inane Yahoo editorializing.
So: not content with being one of the biggest suppliers of CPUs to your average user, Intel don't even want to acknowledge that other suppliers exist.
Pathetic. If you feel like it, why not point as many hacks as you can back to the original story? That should generate a fair amount of low-grade embarrasment for Intel for the next few weeks.
Those with a little more spare time on their hands should check out Fred Hoyle's "A for Andromeda". As Lovecraft remarked, "The old ones are... the old ones".
Love and kisses,
Simon
"Free Luna!"
-- Free Luna!
I wonder if Intel has learnt anything from Microsoft - shutting down other machines on events that they "just sponsor", is like Microsoft forcing OEMs to only use IE, and treat them if they want to use Netscape ... Bad attitude Intel .. Will we see Intel bashing companies to use intel platforms instead of f.x Transmeta?
-Stskeeps, http://unrealircd.com
This isn't really a "scary possible future" situation...higher education in our country right now, especially in the Big 10 arenas, is more of a corporate machine than an educational institution.
Many college campuses are now littered with either straight-up (college sanctioned) advertisements, or cleverly disguised school activities sponsored by major name-brand corporations. "Pepsi Presents such-and-such". "Freshman All-Nighter at the Union, Sponsored by blah blah blah." And this presents no real problem to the University, since it's easy money.
At the Univeristy of Illinois, a recent contract war between Coca-Cola and Pepsico ended with Coke buying the 'pouring rights' to the campus. As a result, all non-Coca-Cola vending machines were removed from any and all college-owned or operated buildings, and replaced with new Coke machines. It is currently impossible to purchase a can of Pepsi or a 7-up on the entire campus of the U of I.
It's kind of a weird cycle - College needs money to attract better students. College gets advertising dollars from corporations to make this a reality. College gets the students, grooms them into successful adults, which allows them to recruit more students, which allows their advertising dollars to grow, and on and on and on.
And in all the corporate sponsorships and monogrammed coffee mugs, we seem to lose sight of the ideals behind higher education.
Apple, in a smart marketing move, made you have a Mac lab on campus if you wanted to sell them. We made a 20 mac lab (Apples minimum), which I essentially ran, and it worked well enough that the University pres came in one day (when I'm in my basketball shorts and no shoes) and was convinced enough that it could actually work to bring some real computers on campus. No 3290s, no screen oriented tn3270 terminals, but *real* computers. They now have iMacs and real nice G3 Towers all over campus, essentially putting (R.I.P. Mac room...) my old room out of business.
I like to think we changed stuff, but it really was people just realizing the stupidity of being locked into things, and realizing that you just use the right tool for the job.
["A company in the PC business" hindered Macs from public view, or access.]
But.. I've never heard that the Apple did the similar thing ever.
Are the companies in the PC business not moral, or the Apple people are stupid enough that they can't protect their business, or.. simply the article were just rumor?
If it's true, it's very serious issue. Maybe it's worse case than the MS's dominance in the PC industry.
Here in Korea, you can't publish any advertisement which compares products of one company with products of another company directly, whether it's true or not.
I don't think it's allowed in the U.S. also.
And.. the case we talk about is much more serious than that.
Hmm..
Keep in mind, though, that this was after classes ended (mandated moveout for underclassmen was on the 28th)...the number of people checking email in the science center was probably pretty small. And even if seniors were around, of twelve kiosks, the eight by the staircase were covered. The 3 by lecture hall D were apparently still visible. Even if those were full, it's a 1-minute walk downstairs to the labs. Furthermore, I'd agree with the "inadequate computer facilities" argument only insofar as the Tru64 boxes are concerned. While those are often full, I've never seen the Mac or PC labs filled. If the main, multiplatform lab is full, go across to the Mac and PC classrooms across the hall. (They're better Macs, anyway.) When 97% of your students have computers, the need for giant labs is somewhat less. Not that I'm defending Harvard on ethical grounds--they're utterly spineless when it comes to donations, and can't even pay all of their workers a living wage. I just don't think this is quite as blatant as it seems on the surface.
"It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious." --Oscar Wilde
Intel, Microsoft, AOL, other companies - we've seen them judged as evil, manipulating, grasping, etc. One trait that is not often considered is that they are also out of touch - and the case of the "Mac War" is an excellent example.
Remove Macs in use in a department that's 90% Mac? Threaten to pull funding over a childish tiff? Forget any moral questions - how stupid can people be?
This does nothing more than make people bitter and angry and make the company look bad. It's made national news, its been displayed here, and now Intel looks a bit stupider. Is anyone involved in this fiascon on the Intel side thinking?
Some of the big Info/Tech/Soft companies remind me of companies in Hollywood - churning out product and making policy with no idea what's going on or what the repercussions are. I have to wonder how long they can dodge real life.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
On the one side, you've got student-critical functionality.
Uh, actually, no. Someone mentioned earlier that the other public terms on the first floor of the science center were left up and running. They're all Macs too. The ones that were off were sitting right in the middle of the exhibits. Secondly, there are two labs full of Macs in the basement, as well as IBM's and Alpha stations, all of which do everything that the iMacs do, and more. There is also another lab and the tech showcase on the first floor, right around the corner. No Harvard students suffered because of this, save for those two lazy to take the very nearly 15 stairs down to the basement (where there are chairs, unlike the kiosks upstairs). At most, it was a minor inconvenience, not a chilling threat to students ability to get connected. Comperable to when a dignitary visits, and we have to walk a block over or not shortcut through a yard because security has it locked down. I think that what Intel did was bad PR, but I think it's been blown way out of proportion.
I think its great that this has been put in news (well slashdot and other such sites), people should know what Intel is up to. However I think too many people out there are "monopoly" or "strong arm" sensitive. I don't believe Harvard giving in to Intel had anything to do with Intel's position in the market place. Here is the last paragraph of the article "For better or worse, the MS-DOJ proceedings have put discussion of the proper (and improper) use of such power on the front burner. If it wants to avoid taking the same sort of heat, Intel should take every step necessary to ensure that such a clear abuse of its economic clout isn't repeated. " I believe the same thing could of happened at Harvard if the company in question made toasters. The article talks about how Harvard gave in because they didn't want to lose the sponsorship. It was the sponsorship money and nothing to do with what Intel market is why Harvard folded. I don't agree with what Intel did, i hope they get some really bad PR because of it. But blaming everything around the "Microsoft / Intel monopoly" doesn't make it true. Yes some of these folks at Intel need a good ass kicking. Who knows what they where thinking, the benefit of covering up iMacs is not worth the cost of pissing off a university. The real problem with companies like this is just plain arrogance, and managers who like flexing their muscles. But you know what, most large companies have these issues, not just ones related to computers. Do you think companies like GM Moters, or Sears has never done anything like this? Why do we have to make such a big deal of it because it involves technology?
Am I the only one who thinks that Intel was 100% right? They were the ones splashing the dosh so they had every right to ask for iMacs to be covered.
This event cost a lot of money, and attracted a lot of attention. If you were paying big money to sponsor an event would you like your biggest competitor getting free advertising from your money?
If Harvard does not like it, they should find sponsorshipt money from elsewhere. But I doubt that anyone would pay without asking for something in return.
What Harvard did was merely polite. If you received money from Coke, you shouldn't serve Pepsi.
Its not like they covered up, and powered down all apple products throughout the entire university.
t
From the Yahoo story it looks like they covered the windows. I only remember one of them having windows (the one that's less than 10yrs old).
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Actually, the really scary thing here has nothing do with Intel and market share, but how much an educational institution can be beholden to one of its benefactors. This was simply a case of a corportation donating money to a university, then dictating to that university how things ought to be run...
As long as our educational institutions feel the need to play along with corporate sponsors, these situations will continue to occur. And with all the big money grants and donations available, more and more schools will feel the urge to get some of that money for themselves. Unfortunately, this can only hurt the students and faculty, ultimately.
If an institution of higher learning is beholden to _any_ interest, corporate or otherwise, they can longer freely pursue their academic interests in _all_ avenues, if a free, unfettered way. That would be a greater blow to our freedom than anything MS or Intel or any other monopoly has done to date.
Of course I use Microsoft. Setting up a stable unix network is no challenge
What does Linus do in this type of situation?
After donations from a environmental cleanup company...
How to care 101:
After donations from a larg apathetic corprate empire...
Now to not care 101:
I guess it'll all depend on who donated money to your university....
Or grade school...
Or kinder....
Ohhh look the legue for mindless obedience is finding the local K - 12 schools...
Now.. Mind you 100 years from now they won't care about Linux, iMacs, Intel or Slashdot....
But they... it's quite posable.. that they don't care about anything at all...
ever... again....
Some things shouldn't be sponsered....
I don't actually exist.
I would imagine Harvard has to kowtow to the likes of Intel more than a good public university would. Harvard can't rely on government funding. Therefore, just because Harvard has buckled in the eyes of the public, I wouldn't forecast the demise of higher education.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
How much of is this happening in donations to education,
I don't know... How much of this is happening in the real business world, and who really cares? If there is a problem with requesting that a competitor's product be covered during an event, then Intel must die, right? Isn't it about time people realize that if Havard, or whoever is at the blunt of slashdot complaints, didn't want to cover them, they didn't have to? It was requested, and they thought it might be a good idea.
Can't we just all grow up? You didn't like it when your parents made you share, now you don't have to, but you're telling other people they have to share, you're just like your parents.
www.sheepdot.org
Where the sheep and the antelope play
Gotta say, Harvard has been bowing to corporate interests more and more lately. Now admittedly, this isn't as bad as that Yahoo/ZDNet editorial makes it sound (I really don't think Intel had sabotage in mind, they just didn't want their displays up right in front of a bunch of iMac kiosks, which are REALLY visible, as anyone who has been in Harvard's Science Center knows). But this is the second time this year Harvard has bowed to a big tech company - at the dedication of the new CS building (donated by Gates and Ballmer) all the Linux boxen and other non-NT systems were moved out of the kiosk area so Ballmer wouldn't see them. I think this is somewhat inappropriate for a University, which is supposed to be an unbiased educational institution, with a responsibility to educate their students about the full depth and breadth of technology. Restricting viewable technology to Microsoft only just stinks of corporate asskissing.
Intel sponsored an event and didn't want a competitor shown. Wow. Do you see a RedHat booth at Microsoft's TechNet conference? Do you really think they'd let a Microsoft booth promoting Win2K and Office in at LinuxWorld Expo?
This is Intel's business. They are out to sell Intel CPUs. They aren't a charity. If Harvard didn't want the money they could have refused.
Before Intel pulled this stunt, I had no idea that Harvard had public, iMac based Internet kiosks.
Now there are probably lots of other people out there who are thinking that maybe a nicely styled iMac with a trackball would make a pretty nice and relatively inexpensive kiosk for their campuses.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But does he like to bathe?
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
As long as our educational institutions feel the need to play along with corporate sponsors, these situations will continue to occur. And with all the big money grants and donations available, more and more schools will feel the urge to get some of that money for themselves. Unfortunately, this can only hurt the students and faculty, ultimately.
The damage has been going on for 30+ years already. The entire university landscape has been dramatically altered by the growth of federal research funding, and any large-scale corporate funding is not going to make things that much worse. As a faculty member in a research university, I can assure everyone that no university is going to think twice about getting money from wherever it can.
My employer, like every other public university, never gets enough money from the state legislature. The only ways to deal with growing operating costs is (a) increased tuition or (b) grants and gifts. Rather than pass costs for new equipment on to the students, or beg for it from the legislature and Board of Regents, a school would much rather take a corporate donation.
Faculty members and university administrators fully realize the potential conflicts, but taking money or equipment from a company like Intel is better than the alternative - no modern lab equipment or computers for the students. If you are unhappy about this situation, consider the alternative: Would you be willing to pay 2X tuition, or a 2% higher state sales tax, or a 5% higher state income tax, etc., to provide your state's public univerities with enough money? If not, then it's moot to complain about corporate influence in higher education.
What they learned was that many higher institutions can be bought out for the right price, as demonstrated by the "academic research" chairs many Fortune 500 companies have helped finance.
And much like the Pepsi Arena, whomever's renting the tent for a show can drink whatever they like...those iMacs wouldn't have been covered if a "donation" by Steve Jobs had helped put paint new lines in the faculty parking lot.
I propose that we colonize Alpha Centauri. Marketing people, being so essential to our society, get to leave on the first ship, along with the telephone sanitizers and record company executives.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Apparently the Intel provided covers trapped heat, forcing the machines to not only be covered, but also powered down.
Not only that, but you couldn't insert or remove a floppy, either...oh, wait...
------
------
You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
Do people really think Harvard is nothing but moneyhungry? I think Harvard cares about image just as much. And I think that's what this was about. There was a conference about to happen, tickets bought and everything. A last-minute cancellation would have been a mess. I expect that was the leverage more than Intel's money.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- The Doctor
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Intel clearly is not making any friends here. It's a dumbheaded move that will do them more harm than good.
But what about Harvard? If you look at the Crimson Online story, you'll see that the Computer Services (FACS) group diod not believe that covering the Macs was the right thing to do.
According to the article:
(1) "FASCS Director Franklin M. Steen said he felt the request unfairly impaired student usage."
(2) "[Steen] allowed the computers to be covered 'only after multiple request and great reluctance.'"
So if Harvard felt that this was wrong, why didn't they refuse the request? It's a prestigious, rich institution that could have afforded to tell Intel to take a hike. If Harvard has to kowtow to the corporate gods, what kind of hope is there for other academic institutions?
They probably figured it wasn't worth fighting. That's their decision to make, but still, it's kinda sad.
It's kind of funny--when I was a student, we complained endlessly about the quality of the Crime. It's obvious now that it was because we didn't read much "mainstream" journalism.
Really, read the original story.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
I'm assuming that you're referring to the 5419 cluster (the computer cluster used for teaching and doing assignments in the introductory programming class). The switch from Macintosh to PC (which happened at least 2 years ago) had a lot to do with MacOS's notorious lack of memory protection. From what I've been told, you could tell when the bulk of a classroom full of students were working on test problems involving arrays and/or linked lists by the sudden onslaught of Mac-startup-gong noises because simple bugs would crash a student's computer.
And because Macs are faster not the other way around. 300 Mhz iMac's best 600Mhz Pentiums on like software... i.e. compile something on Redhat Linux and compare it on both platforms. But of course this is always flame-bait for the Mhz morons. I think if there are roughly 20-50 K PC titles in all, there are something like 4-5K Mac titles... so this is roughly 1/5th not 1/100th. And to say a 433Mhz Celeron even is faster than a 333 Mhz iMac is stupid. Celerons if they were full Pentium III's wouldn't be faster... the only current competitor chip slower than a Celeron is a crappy Cyrix M series.
With the exception of the new Miscrosoft-funded CS building and its flashy new workstations, the vast majority of Harvard's internet kiosks are in a woeful state (the iMacs in the Science Center replaced a decrepit bunch of IIsi's).
But the larger question is what the hell does Harvard need Intel sponsoring anything for? The $14,000,000,000 Harvard endowment generates $2M per day in interest, and I for one will be outraged if there's corporate sponsorship at my commencement next year.
in one of the UNIX-based (Sun) labs at NCSU, there was a plaque on the wall thanking M$ for their donation of software for the lab, but obviously nothing in that lab was running M$ products. i always thought that was funny.
-- ken williams
I challange your assertion that it is ethically wrong for (undergraduate/graduate) schools to enter into these arrangements.
I hardly see how corporate sponsorships are tied to declining moral values. Corporations are not evil.
What moral principle are you invoking here?
-Stu
it's standard business practice to keep your product center stage in any corporate event you sponsor. Trying to twist this into some big evil plot to control the world is just wrong, and makes you look stupid in the process.
AC,
On the one side, you've got student-critical functionality.
On the other, you've got a direct threat against a source of funding.
Intel demanded that Harvard disable student-critical functionality in return for cash. That they demanded any institution pimp out its reason for being on the basis of a cash grant is evil; that they did this to Harvard was the height of idiocy.
I keep on bringing it up(cue broken record), but it's reminiscent of Microsoft revoking Compaq's right to sell Windows, or forcing IBM to buy Win95 off the street: To attack anyone else liket this, it's evil marketing practices. To attack major multinationals such as Compaq or IBM like that, it's just stupid.
You're absolutely right, AC--they thought of themselves as keeping their product center stage. The problem was they forget both where they were(an educational institution with a primary purpose distinctly different from selling stuff, i.e. a trade show) and, even worse, exactly where they were. Screwing with Academia is one thing, screwing with Harvard is far stupider.
They'll learn.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Mac OS X DP4... or in 2001 Mac OS X. Mac OS X Server... (not as essential as OS X will be). If you say NT compares to OS X... it really doesn't. NT still BSODs... the frequency of kernel panics with UNIX-based systems is 1/100th of that in NT/2000. Also Windows ME is still DOS based... gag... you would have thought they'd make the switch now with 2000. 2000 Professional plays all the games (95%) that I needed 98 for... why not make the switch now?
If I went to a university that denied me the right to choose whatever products I wanted to use or consume, I would transfer to a different university and take my tuition money with me! The only way to make these universities listen is with your pocketbook. As students, you have the power to show them that you are not sheep and you will not permit such heinously unethical behavior! Form a student union and threaten a mass withdrawl. Or, if you don't have enough balls for that, start a petition and organize a student/faculty conference on the subject. If you don't speak up, no one else will.
Tulane University, where I go, is located in the middle of new orleans, so the campus is pretty pressed for space. One of the results of this is that there's only room for one book store on the entire campus. This book store has a pretty significant monopoly on the books and supplies that I need to go through my classes. (The online bookstores help some, but I go through a lot of other supplies, and don't have time to wait for shipping.) The markup in this bookstore ranges from suprising, to extremely upsetting. But more than I'm upset at the bookstore for this, I'm even more angry with Tulane for allowing its students to get screwed over like this. The same thing goes with the absurdly priced meal plan, which all freshmen are required to have, the $75 charge if you misplace your room key and have to borrow a loaner (3 times and they recore your door and send you a bill, even if you find your key and show it to them).
It's pretty sucky how the school treats us more like customers, and less like students. The fact that a school would bend at the will of coporation like intel doesn't suprise me in the least.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
If an institution of higher learning is beholden to _any_ interest, corporate or otherwise, they can longer freely pursue their academic interests in _all_ avenues, if [sic] a free, unfettered way.
It has always been thus. Exactly how can you avoid being beholden? If the government gives you money, you have to follow their rules. If you want a rich alumnus to give you money (e.g., Phil Knight), you have to be doing things that, at a minimum, do not displease that alumnus. If you want money from rich corporations, you have to provide some quid pro quo.
Not only was I an exhibitor right next to the covered Macs in question, but 5 years ago I was a student using those same Mac terminals to check my email.
The Macs in question were directly (2 feet) behind 3 exhibitors - for students to use the terminals they would have had to have been continuouslly tromping through the the exhibits. There were 20+ exhibits in all - Intel had one, and it happened to be the one in front of the email terminals (the iMacs) - they would have wanted them shut down no matter what brand they were. They were covered to keep students from walking up and booting them up (which they would still occasionally do anyway.)
Finally, Harvard left a number of Mac terminals open at the edges of the exhibit hall, in plain view. It was only the terminals that sat in the middle of the exhibits that were turned off and covered.
This whole thing smacks of a bunch of whiny Ivy league kids with nothing better to do. Remember Intel spent a _bundle_ funding that conference and the majority of exhibitors and participants were from non-profit organizations. Give the company some credit when it deserves it.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
About the same time as the current MS action. I recall some of the issues having to do with
cutting off advance chip info to InterGraph, and the suing DEC/Compaq over the Alpha chip. Intel reacted quickly, made an agreement with DOJ, and made concessions. The didn't try to be belligerent and probably came out ahead.
1) The conference wasn't held in the Science Center, just the exhibits. And the exhibitors were good neighbors. 2) Classes were out - there weren't many students around. 3) There was usually a free uncovered Mac, so use wasn't a problem. 4) The computer lab was practically deserted (I noticed every time I went to take a leak.) Of course what it boils down to is some numbnut trying to cover his ass because he never thought to move the terminals instead of shutting them down. (Remember the place was littered with ethernet hookups for all the exhibits, so it would have been trivial.)
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
... Does anyone remember Amstrad Computers. ...
Anyone want to fill in the under 30 crowd one what Intel did to them ?
This is nothing new, it's been the standard Intel tactic for years.
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Acording to this article on Yahoo (but from ZDnet), a poster on Mac Central (although I can't find this actual post), Intel sponsors Harvards graduation (quote from forum posting):
"My wife works at the Harvard Science Center in the media-services department (which is 90 percent Mac-based). She was witness to the harassment and rude attitude of the Intel representatives. They were childishly demanding that the iMacs be removed from the premises or they would have to be covered up.
"Harvard argued that they were in use and wouldn't be removed. This escalated into a threat of Intel not sponsoring Harvard's graduation week (and therby removing their [monetary] contribution). Harvard finally agreed, and Intel also covered up the signs and windows to the nearby Mac multimedia lab. Absolutely pitiful."
Nuff said.