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Intel, Microsoft Despised the XO Laptop
gregsim writes "The Wall Street Journal today reports that the new XO laptop, centerpiece of the One Laptop Per Child project, is stimulating an active response from both Intel and Microsoft. The companies evidently feel threatened by the little upstart, intended to help third-world children. (The XO runs Linux and uses AMD chips.) Microsoft has cut their software to $3 each and Intel has designed their own laptop called the Classmate to sell between $230 and $300, nearly double the XO's price. Rather than defend the relative merits of his creation, professor Negroponte is crying foul and (if the article is to be believed) not even arguing the technical merits. The initial demand for the XO has fallen well below Mr. Negroponte's projections as Intel and Microsoft have successfully argued that their entries are superior. 45,000 have been ordered through the Give One, Get One campaign. I am happy that I ordered mine — it will be a landmark model in any case."
If Negreponte's goal is to get cheap laptops in the hands of poor children, why would he be angry? Those poor kids deserve choice, and competition from the Classmate provides that. So fewer kids get the XO, so what? Seems like Negreponte is letting his ego cloud his vision.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
It seems to me that the children to whom these laptops are going don't need whizbang computing power, they just need basic computing ability. The OLPC project has no need to "argue the technical merits" of their device against potentially more powerful (but more expensive) competition when the price for this technology is the lowest around.
The third world needs a lot more than a cheap laptop. They have to figure out agriculture first!!!
The real annoying thing is that they are not jumping in the market to help kids but undermine a non profit so they can get the market. Other companies like AMD have been helping the effort, but Microsoft and Intel see it as competition. This is a non profit effort. Next the pharmaceuticals will be going after the red cross because they want to sell cheap blood alternatives to disaster victims. Yeah competition! I am proud to have gotten one.
If so, I'm sorry to say he lacks the cynicism to deal with politicians, specially those from third world nations. These individuals will endorse any project that makes them look good. An OLPC endorsement is marketing gold from a politician's point of view, because it ties education, children and technology -- areas which third world nations are very reluctant to invest in -- all at zero cost.
Talk is cheap.
Competition is always welcomed, or so says everyone here
Do _you_ still say so, after this scenario?
Competition is good...
However, Monopolies are bad. This is a clear case of a monopoly using its power to stifle long term competition at a short term profit loss.
Do you honestly think Microsoft would offer both an OS and Office for $3 if it wasn't trying to stifle competition? As soon as the OLPC project is broke and a memory, expect the price of Microsoft's software to increase exponentially.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Run the numbers any way you like; it all comes down to the fact that a rapidly growing population is not sustainable. At current growth rates the mass of humans will exceed the mass of the known universe in 7000 years. We can deal with that now, or later. Later is more painful, with war and famine.
Right. You could buy a used computer. And a generator. Then all you have to do is arrange for the fuel truck to stop by every little while with more fuel... and the used notebook doesn't have much memory, and every machine in the school is a different model than every other machine... yes, great idea.
So perhaps you have some ideas about how vendor support will be provided by the likes of Microsoft?
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
But in this case, companies are entering a [new] market in order to kill competition. No wonder, even in the so called developed capitalist markets of the industrialized world like Canada, no foreigner can own a majority stake in the telecommunications sector for example.
Add something in? A used computer would need a generator a hundred times as powerful than the XO requires. Continually pedalling on a bike might work, or maybe a small gasoline generator. Yay. The XO is also meant to be durable - unless the used PC was a Toughbook, it'd quickly be trash, as would the Asus EEE and the Classmate. Not the XO.
There are plenty of places where people are surviving and have basics like clean water, but are still poor. This is something intended to give them more opportunities, it isn't the only thing they need. (Sending food, by the way, usually just ruins the local farmers and/or fattens the pockets of warlords.)
You are clearly an intelligent and compassionate man. Kudos to you for your extremely nuanced and well-researched opinions on the cultures the OLPC is targeted at. I hope you will consider running for political office in the future, and once you inevitably make it to president, that you suspend the constitution and act as a benevolent autocrat, guiding the world with the light of your brilliant mind.
Because "choice" is not always good, and merely getting "cheap laptops in the hands of poor children" is not the goal. One must be mindful of what the choices are and their long-term implications. A choice of being dominated by a proprietor is inappropriate for all users. This computer aims to educate and a system users can totally modify and learn from to suit their needs. Basing the XO on free software is entirely appropriate as is using the computer in freedom. Building the XO on proprietary software is wholly inappropriate. It's a good thing that these kids can investigate what's really going on and help one another, making their computers do what they want and only freedom can assure that.
The "choice" argument is one used by software proprietors and their sympathizers to make non-free alternative seem equal to free software. Dependency and separation, an imposed inability to help oneself is far worse than independence, helping one's community, and social solidarity.
Digital Citizen
Studies in India have shown that the best way to reduce population growth in a democracy is to educate women. Percolation of computers and cell phones into the rural areas have allowed significant (class room/world exposure type of) education to happen even outside the schools. This has been a more recent phenomenon and while these have had definite economic advantages (e.g. google - kerala fishermen cell phones). It is not clear as yet whether this type of education will also help in the same way but it definitely seems plausible. In the absence of coercion there appears to be no other reliable way to reduce the growth rate. Needless to say, the benefits of education and access to computers has obvious advantages in things like agriculture, etc.
Oh my, Business 101?
If they can sell a machine for 2x what he does, I guess there is some pricing flexibility he can leverage OR he can focus on even poorer nations. He should stop moaning and focus on sales and charity.
On another note- I have to imagine that allot of people out there would love to buy his machines in bulk and give them out. I wonder if no one wants to piss off the Gates Foundation? Ether friends or potential recipients... Wouldn't that be a twist - LOL.
BTW: If Gates decides that his new Wintel boxes are the key to both Windows' future and kids' education there will be MILLIONS of these things built in the next few years.
Behold "peace" with Intel and M$:
but
Par for the Wintel course, self restraint is foolish because M$ and Intel will always pull every trick they can. When convicted monopolists urge you to hold back, listening to them is the worst thing you can do. Intel traded a few million dollars for what's going to millions of units in sales. That's too bad, because Windoze is the wrong OS for the job.
It's easy to see that the usual one size fits all Windoze is not useful to school children, especially those in the developing world. It's designed for US fortune 500 businesses and to satisfy the wants of the MAFIAA. It's dependent on a $400 "office" suite for the most basic of paper writing in English and it has little else. Native editing and authoring tools are pathetic, networking is designed for an office LAN and media tools are designed to extract money from rich US college students rather than to encourage creativity. Foreign language support in Windoze is pathetic, as you would expect from software that can't take corrections in the field. All of this can be said about M$'s latest and greatest OS. I'm scared of what they have to offer for $3. Any developing nation that wants to see what will happen to the Intel machine has only to look at what happens to the millions of used laptops the developed world disposes of daily in their backyard. Laptops being tossed out by the developed world are more powerful and have better software but could be used right now by developing nations for next to nothing. They are not used because they are not well suited to the task and Wintel laptops that make it to the developing world today are sent there as toxic waste. OLPC addressed all of these concerns in their design.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
That particular idea is fundamentally flawed. If there is one thing that we have learned from the technology-based industry in the western world, it's that the vast majority of people have absolutely no ability to work in it. It's not like farming - if you can hold a stick, you can be a farmer. To write custom software worth paying for takes ten years of near-full-time experience and practice, a flexible mind, and the ability to think. People in the third world are not going to be any better at doing these things than we are, and we suck at it. A small handful will be able to do it, probably will do it, and will get disproportionate attention in the media. The vast majority will accomplish nothing at all. You do not turn farmers into knowledge-based workers by giving them a laptop. There are no short cuts in establishing a modern-style economy across half a planet - it takes centuries of work, in education, industry, construction, and technological development. Nothing that you can put into a media soundbite will accomplish a damn thing.
If this endeavour is going to have any benefits at all (and that's pretty questionable - whether it's worthwhile is open to debate, but it is definitely not certain that it will be), this is not going to be one of them.
I said work in intellectual property including custom software. Today, a few thousand people with these laptops could probably make more than they do now, by solving captchas. Pretty much anyone can learn to be literate and to read/write several languages with a few years of training, so they can be paid for translation work and editing. Then there is original content production, data entry, etc.
To write custom software worth paying for takes ten years of near-full-time experience and practice, a flexible mind, and the ability to think. People in the third world are not going to be any better at doing these things than we are, and we suck at it.Right, so they're no better at it than we are, but have a thousand times the unemployment rate in some localities and will work for one one hundredth the cost.
You do not turn farmers into knowledge-based workers by giving them a laptop.First, they aren't farmers now, they're children without much in the way of skills because farming does not pay enough to pay taxes on the land when the US is giving the same food away for free. You turn them into knowledge based workers by giving them a laptop and network access and a wealth of educational data and software specifically designed to be easy to modify for their entire childhood. It is called an education, and growing up with a basic laptop, wikipedia, and internet access will allow them to develop computing skills as they grow. Did you have access to a computer when you were young? Do you know many people who program who did not?
There are no short cuts in establishing a modern-style economy across half a planet - it takes centuries of work, in education, industry, construction, and technological development.Does the phrase "modern-style economy" actually mean anything? An economy is an economy and providing tools that educate and are usable, certainly can make a real difference.
If this endeavour is going to have any benefits at all (and that's pretty questionable - whether it's worthwhile is open to debate, but it is definitely not certain that it will be), this is not going to be one of them.Okay your skepticism is noted. That said, this is the best effort I've ever seen to provide a sustainable income for people growing up in some of these countries. If you think giving up is a better idea, then there is not a lot of point talking to you, otherwise; let's hear your better and more effective idea.
Competition is basically when a consumer has a choice among products.
In this case, both Microsoft and (especially, in this particular case) Intel use their market clout to *shut out* the OLPC. They are basically buying off governments or distributors to the point that OLPC isn't facing competition-- it's not getting a chance to compete.
That's the problem with unbridled corporatism (which is what we are seeing, rather than capitalism). Corporations get to the point that *they* are afraid to face real competition, so they do what they can to ensure competition never gets a chance to take root. This includes non-market avenues like controlling distribution or buying off governments.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
That's the problem. Competition is good, but fake competition (selling a product you don't want to sell, to ward off a potential future threat to the market you care about) is not good.
In the USA many jobs require some basic knowledge of computer concepts, like files and folders, user accounts and passwords, use of a mouse, etc. They also require knowledge of word processor use, spreadsheets, e-mail, web browsing, etc. For those uses, Windows, Linux and OS X are interchangeable.
The XO operating system is a little further out there, because the UI is quite different from Windows or mainstream Linux distributions, but even there the differences aren't going so large that significant retraining is required. Especially since the XO is specifically designed to encourage exploration and make its users comfortable with the computer, rather than afraid of it. A user who is willing to explore a little and understands basic concepts can easily figure out how to get the job done, without a lot of remedial training.
Even more important than all of that is the simple fact that we're talking about kids who aren't going to be in the workforce for years, and during that time the systems are going to change -- probably more radically than they have in the last 10 years. The key is to understand what computers are and how they work, and for that purpose the XO is a significantly better system than any variety of Windows. I think kids who grow up using an XO laptop will probably be more capable of using a Windows 8 system than kids who grow up on Windows.
Finally, odds are that in the parts of the world where lots of XO laptops are used, when the kids enter the workforce they won't be using Windows anyway. That, of course, is what terrifies Microsoft.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The major point is that their project was free/libre opensource based. It could have been emulated by any one else. And whole point of Negroponte is that one day, as those kids grow up, they would be able to easily start their own computer technology project, based on knowledge they acquired learning on tools like the OLPC and using technology and ressources available freely for them to base they project on, thanks to F/L-OSS.
It's not a monopoly to Negroponte because their technology isn't locked into their own hands at all.
Your analogies are bad.
It's not Pespi or Coke, it's OpenCola and Vores Øl (recipes freely available on wikipedia for every one to use) against both of those corporation.
It's not BigMac or Super...whateverstuffyoumentionned, it's home grilled buger on your own backyard grill (without any intellectual property lawsuits involved) against the fast-food corps.
The main purpose behind this is bring those kids a tool that they can subsequently own themselves and do whatever they want to do. This is possible with free/libre software, because that's the whole point for which the GPL license and the FreeSoftware Foundation where created.
This wouldn't be possible with microsoft in the play, because whatever happens with the Classmate, the software running on it will continue to be the private property of Microsoft. Everything one could dream to do with it will have to be done only after obtaining license. Even if it may cost only 3$ currently, it remains in the hand of a foreign US company.
XO Laptop is about empowering the current learning kids, and giving them something that they can control.
Classmate and $3 Microsoft softwares is about creating a steady stream of future consumer which have been raised into sheepishly thinking that information technology is only something that come from a foreign US company, and who could one day buy Microsoft's future software at whatever price they decide then.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Until 3 years later, when they need a new laptop for a new child or for a project or their old laptop needs upgrade or replacement. And until you need new software, which is locked to that proprietary OS and costs 5 times as much as it should.
Yeah, so I don't like the OLPC project because it implies that human problems are technological. I've heard that the OLPC was inspired by Papert's Logo work, and even comes with a version of Logo. Great. Send instructors trained in the 'Logo method', work with locals to build schools, and provide cheap computers with Logo installed, and you've won me over. Sending the computers alone is obnoxious.
It's also obnoxious because they initially weren't going to sell them here. They're only doing it now as a desperate measure, and they still force you to buy a donation. So what's not good enough for us is good enough for Africa? Boo.
It's obnoxious because it missed its $100 price by a factor of 2 -- they even had to change the name of the product.
But nothing takes the cake like *complaining* when the sales you thought were destiny don't materialize. Oh yeah, it's the competition's fault! Weak. Presumably Negroponte thinks the competition is evil because they're for-profit. That's like Microsoft complaining about Linux being free.
But there is something good about the OLPC: it's gotten much farther than any other Media Lab project to date. How to really help the Third World: take the millions blown at the Media Lab on barely-functioning undergrad art "installations" and put it towards some Logo schools. Or maybe even just -- gasp -- regular schools.
-Carl
It's kind of sad and silly you're stuck in 1987. x86 has won the uarch wars, and it's making its way into everything. First, Silverthorn will have superior performance compared to e.g. ARM - period. Second, it will have comparable power use. Finally, people know how to develop for x86, and the tools know how to target x86 easily. You're going to "sadly" see it trickle down to smaller and smaller devices, but nobody but people stuck in 1987 who still where "CISC sucks" t-shirts will be sad about it.
of the next floor down.
You know, looking at the world upside down.
It's infel's Classmate that is trying to be the cheap "everyman's computer".
Or, I could correct your little composition:
All those who are worried about support can go to the olpc wiki and look at the pilot projects in progress. The only reason there would be logistics problems is if infel and Micro$oft deliberately interfered.
... Windows would have been long dead.