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Why Intel and OLPC Parted Ways
runamock writes "The New York Times has an article that sheds some light on why Intel left the OLPC board: 'A frail partnership between Intel and the One Laptop Per Child educational computing group was undone last month in part by an Intel saleswoman: She tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country's commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization's laptops in favor of Intel PCs. Intel and the group had a rocky relationship from the start in their short-lived effort to get inexpensive laptops into the hands of the world's poorest children. But the saleswoman's tactic was the final straw for Nicholas Negroponte.'"
If not for AMD, Intel would be the M$ of the processor market. Although I fully understand the benefits of a free market, etc., Intel's behavior regarding the OLPC is reprehensible. Instead of offering cut-rate chips to support the project and potentially gain goodwill and new loyal customers worldwide they took the low road.
Shame.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Now regardless of who's making the machines and what OS, CPU blah blah they have in them, it's good that this device class actually exists and it's great that more people around the world get a chance to use devices that we take forgranted. OLPC and the Classmate are both doing a good job, and I'd love to see other devices like the EEE PC tailored towards developing nations in the near future.
I'm sure Intel is going to get lots of hate posts here. And most of that will be because a lot of people fail to see one important issue.
Intel is a for-profit corporation beholden to its stock holders...no profit, stock holders get pissed, executives get thrown out. OLPC is a non-profit that doesn't have to worry about making money, and in fact can lose money as needed...no one is looking for a profit.
The first reply I saw here made a comment about Intel throwing away good will by not selling OLPC chips at a big discount. Here's a news flash for you people...stock holders mostly don't give squat about good will. Good will does not increase the bottom line of their stock portfolio or give them a fat dividend check.
Intel is not a charity. AMD can work with OLPC because AMD is in second place and is willing to do anything to *be* Intel. Likewise, Negroponte (I've gotta put that guy's name in my spell checker), while his goals are commendable and I really do hope OLPC succeeds, is not being realistic as far as the business side of it goes in regards to Intel.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I hope it's not really "the poorest children" that are getting the laptops. You can't eat a laptop. Give them to the second poorest.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
OLPC is a charity, not a business.
Intel is a business, not a charity.
(using the word "charity" to get the phrase going, there are of course better sounding ones)
I have to agree with the above poster. Intel is raking in $$$$$$ on their products and a little benevolence toward the groups that the OLPC is aimed for won't kill their bottom line one bit. Huzzah to Mr. Negroponte for sticking to his philosophy and not rolling over in the name of $$$. There are many for-profit companies that can use this as a valuable lesson in philanthropy. One problem is that there are so few people out there like Mr. Negroponte in the business world. One thing that my mum keeps telling me is that $DEITY keeps track of things like this. Long Live OLPC and benevolence.
-- Aetherburner
"In the company of wind, dust achieves great heights. In the company of rain, it's mud."
Expect to hear all the usual "Intel is a business" bullsh*t that always comes up.
What has to be remembered is that Google is a business, Red Hat is a business, News Corp is a business too, and yet none of them actively tried to sabotage the OLPC foundation they had contracted to be a part of. Somehow they can justify their participation to the stockholders, but Intel can't? Intel was acting competitively before they joined the OLPC foundation in July of last year. After that time they continued to do so, only now they had access to a lot more information about XO potential buyers. Their behavior was despicable and only further enforces my decision long ago to buy AMD processors exclusively.
Adding insult to injury, Intel holds a press conference call announcing the decision to split, without informing the OLPC board. Read through the stories from last Thursday. The olpc foundation had no response because they were shocked.
They recovered nicely in my view with this official response. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Intel#INTEL_RESIGNS_FROM_OLPC
I hope Negroponte & company sues for breach of contract.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
The question is, why did Intel join the project to begin with ? It was obvious from the beginning that the only reason was to sabotage the project.
Just like M$'s OOXML, which has only one purpose, of derailing ODF.
Yes, but lowering costs does improve the bottom line. How much of the Classmate's cost is software? Remember, Microsoft isn't a charity either. Intel has no reason to help Microsoft, they could make an Intel computer at a lower cost with 100% free software in it.
Besides the cost of software itself, no matter if it's $3 or $300, Linux runs on lower hardware specs than Microsoft products. The XO needs extra memory to run a version of MS-Windows, which means still more cost.
I hear this "give food" talk a lot.
When you dump a lot of food into a depressed region, the farmers in that region can't sell a damn thing. They are driven out of their livelihood, further depressing the region.
Giving food keeps people in poverty. If you want to help.... give education. Give a cow. Give seeds. Give time and effort.
Dumping food on the poor doesn't help anyone.
-T
So basically they're a normal corporation, acting perfectly normally to create more value for its shareholders, eh?
I mean, just like, say, Sun during Scott McNealy's CEO days, going "we love Linux and OSS" in the morning and "Linux is teh suck! Die! Die! Die!" in the evening of the same day? Or like IBM showing up at Athlon launches and proclaiming its undying love for AMD, then spending 100 million on developping an Intel-only chipset that nearly negated the advantage of AMD's IMC and hypertransport? Or like AOL using Netscape to negotiate a big subsidy from MS, essentially a huge corporate bribe to use IE instead of Netscape, then suing MS for anti-competitive behaviour against Netscape? Etc.
Sad to say, that's just normal behaviour for corporations. Someone showing up at your product launches is more of a way for _them_ to be in the public's eye, than really meaning that they won't backstab you the next day.
What's normal for normal people, isn't normal at all for corporations and viceversa. If someone acted like a corporation and showed up to proclaim his undying friendship in the morning, then tried to lead a mob with torches and pitchforks to your home in the evening, chances are we'd put them in a mental institution. But conversely, if a corporation tried to stay your best friend even if it loses them money, the shareholders would want heads to roll.
To be entirely fair, though, it's also a mistake to see a corporation as one monolythic entity with only one brain. Just because department X thinks you're the best thing since sliced bread, doesn't mean that department Y won't try to backstab you. Sometimes even just because the manager of department X really just wants to undermine the manager of department Y.
In some cases they even backstab each other. See, for example, the sad story of OS/2. One department developed it as an alternative to paying the Windows tax to MS. Another department refused to ship IBM computers with OS/2 installed, because they could get a bigger discount on Windows if they're MS-only on the computers they sell.
Don't try to understand internal corporate politics, that-a-way lies madness of Lovecraft proportions.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Quite apart from being wrong (it's going to have some effect, for some slashdotters will be favouring AMD when all other things are near enough equal), your position is a little odd. Intel deserve criticism if they're doing wrong by the critic. Aren't all actors meant to be working in their own interests? Well, for some of us, our interests include the success of projects such as the OLPC. If you believe that "interest" necessarily means self-interest, you haven't studied your economics throughly. Supply and demand doesn't care about the cause of the motive, just its existance.
Wikileaks, no DNS
"Intel's behavior regarding the OLPC is reprehensible."
Intel employees I've met have gone further than that. They are saying that the management of Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini is reprehensible. They say he is socially unskilled. They are saying he creates dissension and reduces morale among Intel employees by creating adversarial situations.
Certainly Otellini's handling of the One Laptop Per Child initiative could not have been worse. It was as though he said to himself, "How can I get billions of dollars worth of free publicity for Intel, all negative?" Intel's actions have created the impression that Intel wants to kill acceptance of the OLPC so that it can kill the OLPC project and then raise prices on its own products.
Anyone thinking of buying an Intel consumer product should know that Intel had a consumer products division in 2001 and decided to close it: Intel axes its consumer electronics unit. Why? In my opinion, the Intel Consumer Products Division was extremely poorly managed.
Also, Intel's marketing has been incredibly poorly managed. At one point, Intel was trying to sell processors by giving away dolls. Typical reaction: "Could this be the end of the bunny ads? We sure as hell hope so..."
There is no evidence that I can see that Intel is managed better today. Here is an April 2006 example I found quickly: Intel's consumer fumbling, in which Intel is trying to sell products using an unpronounceable trademark.
In my experience, there are tons of people in the business world like Mr. Negroponte. We don't hear about them for two reasons. First, they tend to be small business owners. Second, they tend not to do heinous things. The news goes for interesting stories, which excludes the small fry doing something nice for someone else.
We have seen where for-profit business opposes people doing for free what they themselves would not do even for profit. Municipal WiFi is a classic and well-known example of this. These companies are not interested in building a WiFi infrastructure in a city because the profits would be to low or the initial investment too high for this to be attractive to them. And yet they will stop at nothing to prevent a city from taking the initiative upon itself to service its citizens.
In lesser-known areas, where state utilities commissions have allowed utilities providers (power and communications) to not develop a region, smaller, independent groups and coops have opted to fill in the need for their own profit and non-profit interests only to face opposition from the very utilities providers that refuse to service the areas themselves.
"The Electric Car" has been stopped and stalled many times by the opposition of big auto makers time and time again.
There are probably many other examples of established big business opposing small business in doing things that they themselves are unwilling or uninterested in doing... any come to mind? An under our "free market capitalist idealism" it's rather hard to imagine why big business would even care? It's because big business isn't interested in "free market capitalism." They want no competition of any kind and they want to charge as much money as they possibly can for their goods and services as possible.
These are really good examples of what big business is truly about. Every time you hear an argument about "free markets" being wielded by big business, I hope you consider what big business is truly all about.
(For example, the free market argument was given by Enron as the reason to remove or reduce government controls over the power industry and following that, every single state that allowed it suffered from ridiculously high power costs and even power shortages and irregularities in quality and delivery. The free market doesn't work EVERYWHERE and isn't the answer to EVERYTHING. And it certainly doesn't apply when there are human _needs_ at the consumer side of the counter. Utilities, food and medical care need heavy regulation to keep the nations of the world healthy and it's precisely the lack of strong enough regulation of the US medical industry is in the 'unaffordable' state it's in and before someone points to the US medical system as being the most advanced in the world, I hold it has nothing to do with the lack of regulation or the possibility of higher profits and everything to do with their exploitation of research done in public learning institutions... research not available to the public itself.)
Sit down, and wrap your head around the idea of sales. Salespeople are typically paid by commission. The more they sell, the more they earn. They also have quotas. If they don't sell enough in a given time span, they're terminated. Salespeople think short-term; they think tactics; they think until the end of the sale. They think, "If I don't get the sale I move on, and so does the other guy. It's just business." Long term, strategic goals don't enter the picture (that's marketing). And this isn't stupid or callous, it's what the job requires of them.
In Intel's case, a saleswoman saw an opportunity to push more product. She took it, it blew up in her face, and Intel gets to scrub the fallout. The story ends there. So please, do us a favor and cut the Microsoft conspiracy a break.
In my experience, there are tons of people in the business world like Mr. Negroponte. We don't hear about them for two reasons. First, they tend to be small business owners. Second, they tend not to do heinous things. The news goes for interesting stories, which excludes the small fry doing something nice for someone else.
There is a third reason. They don't stay in business very long.Business is not based on good or evil but profit and loss. One should never expect business to do anything but maximize its profits. To control byuiness, one needs laws that make it profitable to do good and unprofitable to do evil. That means costs for business should include the externalities, such as production of greenhouse gases, now subsidized by government.
For the rest of them [the other 80%, or thereabouts], they'll just be using their OLPC laptops to download pr0n and text-message their meth dealers [or clients].
Or, in the case of the girls, to upload pr0n.
See the power consumption data for the laptop. It runs a 2W (versus 10-45W for a normal laptop) in normal mode and down to 0.3W-0.8W when in "e-book" mode. Running that against the battery data which reports 16.5-22Watt-hours gives a normal-usage of 8 to 11 hours, or e-book usage for 20-73 hours.
You can also get a pull-string charger for when there is no supply.
This isn't comparable to companies supplying old hardware as a goodwill gesture: the OLPC has been thought through and planned for these situations from the beginning.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
As a stockholder, I'm happy that they are trying to earn money for me.
I hope you sleep well on your pile of blood money.
home
Bullshit.
There are lot of companies, which actually kinda see huge connection between doing good and getting profit. If it wasn't so, there won't be PR, there won't be ads, there won't be customer psyhology courses, Bs for different marketing types, etc. It is all connected and it comes back.
Problem is different. It is not ethical versus material. It is long term versus short term. It pays back to be good in long term, for sure. But in short term, sometimes it doesn't.
And it all boils down to "stupid" human survival instinct - it wants all now, it wants very strong guarantee now. Not tomorrow, not even after one hour. If human just acts, not thinks, it will choose short term survival as it's primary goal.
p.s. "stupid" in brackets means - I don't know how to solve it, it's natural and if people live like that, who am I to judge.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Reading this article made my blood boil. Intel very clearly acted in bad faith, and their actions against OLPC will no doubt result in poor kids being deprived of access to technology. Immediately, my thoughts turned to the business I've given Intel and whether I could ever buy from them again.
But my second, more constructive thought was "what can I do to help OLPC?" and I easily found two great answers.
1. Donate. For just $200, you can give an XO laptop to a child in a developing nation. It immediately makes a difference in the life of one child, and it's an opportunity for the XO to prove itself. Our donations no doubt will drive future sales for OLPC. Donations are entirely tax-deductible (Question: does anyone know they're tax-deductible for Canadians?).
2. Develop. If you're a programmer, you can donate some of your time and work on an XO Activity. There's already a pretty impressive array of available software, but there's lots of room for work, and this is one way that OLPC can really differentiate itself. Think about it: thousands of passionate hackers contributing quality free software, all targeted at this machine. That's something that Intel and Microsoft will never be able to compete with because no one else is ever going to be passionate about Classmate & Windows.
Let's make a difference!
Exactly.
No one else can sell laptops to third-world countries except OLPC. Intel has a more expensive and more feature-full laptop, and OLPC is afraid third-world countries might be lured into buying something like, you know, the kids in the developed world have access to - Windows and Mac PCs. Id the OLPC is the best for them, the third-world countries will buy them, if not, they'll buy what is - not what Mr. Negroponte has decided they need/want/deserve.
Ken
did you read the article? She was asked to bid on a SECONDARY school laptop contract but the Intel salesperson returned with a bid and aggression for the PRIMARY school deal which was already a done deal. She didn't even address the contract/bid she was asked to bid on.
To me, this stinks of some kind of commission for beating the XO project and not a standard commission on Classmate PC sales. After all, why would she give up bidding on a contract the Classmate PC was better suited for and instead, go after the XO deal? The devices are not the same if you look at the software and hardware spec's. She most likely was going after some big buck commission designed to end XO contracts. Hmmm, going after a competitors throat, killing the baby, cutting off their air supply? Remind you of somebody?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
This is entirely possible, but it doesn't much matter. Intel acted in bad faith and put immediate profits and hurting AMD above children's welfare. Whether some people Intel felt one way and some felt another (as I'm sure they did), Intel as an organization took action and are responsible for that.
When Negroponte made this public, it was embarrassing to Intel, and eventually the money balance tipped the scale and they withdrew from the OLPC.More likely when they realized they were going to be forcibly expelled from a PR friendly nonprofit for unethically trying to undermine it, they decided to pull out first and try to minimize the fallout. Whatever the politics internal to Intel, it would behoove all of us to raise as big of a stink about this as possible. The more it hurts, the more likely Intel is to put in place policies to stop it from happening in the future... which should be the goal of society as a whole IMHO.
Ok, I'll bite. Which catastrophe? I have worked with people of many races. I have learned a few things that hold true no matter the race. Some are basically good hard working people some are not. Children have a lot in common with their parents, but are not restricted or guaranteed to be like their parents (though all are always influenced by their parents in subtle ways). Intelligent children tend to have intelligent parents, and over a few generations of good, solid educational and family values, any group I have been around has been able to catch up with the other groups around it.
Living in California, I dealt with Hispanics from Mexico, Venezuela, Spain and other Spanish countries. I met some who were very successful, some who were very smart, some who were very talented, some who were gifted leaders... I also met many Caucasians who were complete failures, total idiots, could blow soda out their nose, dealt drugs... Same with the blacks, asians etc. Race had very little to do with it. But, most of them were raised in this country in our public school systems. I did note that the asians and the Spaniards I knew tended to be very strict about doing well in school, and being diligent in life. I did notice that most of the white and black families I knew were much more into sports than academics or business pursuits. I did notice that the gangs were a rainbow of races and they all seemed to have the same relative intelligence, much less than others of their same races whose families were more educated at first, spent more time with their children and pushed more at an education, work and legal business. There were exceptions. Another problem is that IQ tests rarely takes into account street smarts, though that also is a form of intelligence that is very important in this world
So, color me clueless, but not only do I not see what you are describing from my own personal experiences with people from these other countries, but I saw absolutely nothing in the references you gave to give one ounce of weight to what you are claiming. And those are some very big claims.
I do agree that poverty and lower intelligence tend to go hand in hand (but the cycle can be broken and has been broken by individuals). I know of no evidence anywhere in the real scientific community that even hints at this much disparity in racial genetic characteristics. This is a hobby of mine. I spend more time reading up on the research in the genetics and neurology areas than everything else put together. I am aware of no credible research. Please point me in the right direction. This is something I have obviously missed, and I need to study it to get a better grasp of what is really happening. Seriously, please point me at these studies. I do want to read them.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Wait a second - I don't understand the particularities of the intel/MS agreement (why is an Intel rep pushing MS products only in their computers? Intel can run anything), but at least from the MS perspective, they're aiming for the long-term: they're attempting to wean unsuspecting children on MS products. Once "endoctrinated" in a certain product, and the majority of other users are using the same, people are usually loathe to change... MS knows this perfectly well.
Intel's participation in this project would seem entirely against its very goals: 1) the laptops are not as cheap as other possibilities and 2) they only have their own interests at heart - not the children's, poor or not; in addition of their ability to impose "choice" on its citizens, government is a large source of quick cash for them - nothing more.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
The Economist is right on. I am dumbfounded by the amount of simplistic and condescending reasoning used to support OLPC. I lived in West Africa for 1 1/2 years. I learned that Africans don't want our technology dumbed-down, even if you dress it up as "charity" (How dare they!). They want real computers, so they can innovate the same way we do.
If we were serious about helping Africans, we would be looking far past manufacturing crappy computers to sell to their governments. Of course the fact that we aren't is no great loss to Africans. We may not get it, but the Indians and Chinese do.
The amount of AC intel shills is impressive.
Of limited use here really, if you were not ACs you might know why.
Nope.
I already have said many times that Microsoft long time planning is overestimated. Nevertheless, with long term in my post I meant "long term profit". Microsoft wants huge profits as soon as possible. Therefore unfinished products, "good enough" attitude, total control of their "precious intellectual property" like file formats, etc. indicates that they are very short tempered and actually aren't that smart. However, they are very convinced about their truth and they believe in power of mighty dollar - so they simply buy everything. They buy PR companies, they buy journalists, they spend money like crazy. It is short term thinking, because lot of people have already became immune to such attitude. In long term, Microsoft is bound to damage itself seriously with such attitude.
And if we are talking about Intel, they deserve bad press they get - AMD, RedHat, Quanta are also corps and not so small ones. However, they don't act so arrogantly as Intel does in this case.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
"Intel is a business" has absolutely nothing to do with this. If I were to volunteer my time and services to a church program to help feed the homeless, but then actively stole food from the program then I would not be surprised to find a group of angry people at my doorstep brandishing torches and pitchforks. Intel has just done the same thing and I see some folks here actually defending these fools! I used to think there was a special place in Hell reserved just for Microsoft thanks to the usually less-than-ethical business tactics they love to employ; but now it looks as if Intel wants a piece of that eternal real estate for themselves as well.
This space for rent!
But which in the long run is easier and cheaper to build and maintain?
Which is more likely to attract developers, run the most software? The mass-market laptop built with off-the-shelf parts or the customized OLPC? In short, again and again - OLPC isn't mean to be laptop in classical sense, it means learning tool. That's first. Therefore we are not talking about attraction of developers, because most of places where XO will be used there are no additional funds of spending money of some "attracted devs" software. However, if some "software company" thinks they can create something for it, first, XO is open platform, images are available in internet freely, so called "Activities" module uses Python, therefore any serious company can invest some money and create software for it without any big problem. Ohh, and don't say that those super devs don't know Python.
For me, such cries mean nothing but a "but it doesn't have Windows aka holy universal operational system! How can we earn something from that?". Guess what - world doesn't only turn around Microsoft and Windows sphere. Their choice was to be bind to success of one platform. Now they get nervous every time when some project accours who can destroy their monopoly? So be it. I am only getting nervous when really good people are getting called arrogant stupids, just because they said "No" to Billy boy.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
The Economist is a very good source of information about politics and economics, and yes, I have met people that write for it. On IT, frankly, it does tend to suck. I still read it because the CIO/CTO of a company is more likely to get their information from The Economist than somewhere useful.
The fact is that it seems that kids find these devices fairly intuitive. I would agree that perhaps teachers are missing out on how to integrate it with their curriculum, but sorry the government bureaucrat is the purse-holder but not the ultimate customer. Actually the OLPC is less about being a computer and more about propagating information. Some people are uncomfortable with that. The system it runs is criticised for not being Windows, but then what do they need Windows for? Are we training MSCEs or people who can write a few letters and do a budget and look up corn prices. Most of the competition at the low end isn't running Windows either. Lets forget about the software and look at the hardware. There are a lot of tough PCs around but they start around $2K. I've been to Africa. Yes, there are pristine classrooms but often they are like the towns they are in, sometimes dry and sometimes humid and sometimes without proper walls so the sunlight readable display is also useful.
See my journal, I write things there
The G1G1 program raised 33 million which implies around 150,000 laptops ordered. Quanta won;t be able to supply them all until the end of January.
The production lines are not sitting idle at all.
Windows environment is much more expensive to use than Linux based environment. There is no question about about. For examples, look at Debian. 18733 software packages. Enough said right there.
There was a guy in France who ate a whole bicycle. He powdered it and mixed it into his food for a year.
The laptop is RoHS-compliant, so you don't have to worry about toxic stuff like mercury and lead.
Just Eat It.