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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.
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?
Intel wants to sell PC's. They don't care who gets them. For Intel all the feelgood stuff is just a means to an end.
OLPC doesn't care about selling PC's. ALL they care about is who gets them. For OLPC all the business stuff is just a means to an end.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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
Very true, but it's an excuse.
As a stockholder you are never asked about whether you want your corporation to behave well.
As a stockholder you are given an annual meeting, with buffet and speeches and an opposition which seldom raises questions like: why does this bank finances this oppressive regime? why does this corporation infiltrate and boycott this humanitarian program? To make me earn more? If I want to earn more no matter the ethics, I'd be a criminal. Especially in the criminal's paradise Italy has become.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Which is fine. I encourage Intel to keep seeking out revenue. That doesn't excuse them from attempting back-door deals that go against contracts that they have made. If Intel had never signed up to assist OLPC, trying to get a piece of the market would not only make sense, but it would be commendable (as any form of competition would increase consumer choice, and thereby most likely drive down prices and force innovation). If one sleezy sales person (sorry for the redundancy there) decides that their commission is more important than one of their company's contracts, that's another thing. I don't think practicing dishonest business is excusable.
At least Intel had the decency to void their contract, instead of just continuing not to honor it.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Bullshit. Sorry!
I'm sick and tired of this hard-nosed extreemist capitalist view. It's bullshit, pure and simple. Take a look at what you're actually saying - competing with and screwing over a charity is really bad form. You people need to remember that capitalism is NOT PERFECT, and worshipping it's principles as if they were the most fundamental rules in the universe is really dumb.
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.
"Um... that sounds a bit spun doesn't it?"
Maybe in favour of Intel? A more accurate headline, but one that could be construed as inflammatory would be:
Intel attempts to subvert efforts to get computers to children.
"the Intel machines it's trying to sell will still go to the same target audience as the OLPC units"
For about twice the price. Which means half the number of units.
"it's not like they suddenly hate kids!"
Well, no. They just dont like kids quite as much as they like money.
I don't particularly dislike Intel, but in this case I must say I find their behaviour offensive. This will go on their permanent record and get weighed in for future purchases.
"I'd love to see other devices like the EEE PC tailored towards developing nations in the near future."
In the long run, paving the ground for this device class is without a doubt the greatest contribution of the OLPC project.
Actually, it's not. There are still quite a few businesses that exist to benefit others. OLPC is not about making a profit... it's a non-profit organization!
Part of the OLPC, whether spoken directly or not, is that old "give a man a fish and he eats for the day, teach a man to fish and he eats for the rest of his life." There are plenty of charities and organizations built around the notion of "feed the children." I'd like to say "those bases are covered" but perhaps not as well as people would like. (You'll find their local governments are often the ones getting in the way of the 'feed the children' successes... some for good reason, some not.)
But as long as these 3rd world nations do not grow intellectually, they will remain the starving, dependent children of world.
If OLPC was intending to make a profit, there were many decisions that could have been made along the way that would have reflected that end. They made decisions and continue to make decisions based on their mission -- a charitable one. It's okay you choose not to believe in it. It's often hard to believe in something that's not profit oriented these days.
Most corporations have a "public interest" clause in their corporate charters. This is required by the State so the public derives some benefit in exchange for the indemnification of owners from corporate liabilities. Technically speaking, a corporation that fails to act in the public interest *as well as* the interests of the owners (which should often be one and the same) should have its charter revoked.
Unfortunately, State Attorneys General have forgotten this.
-- Cerebus
"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.)
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.
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
He made them an offer, and now Intel piggybacks on his effort and tries to weasel a deal to have more expensive machine, meaning that fewer children will get access to an educational machine (but hey, Intel gets to make more millions in profit, which is what really matters, huh?).
And all you can do is rehash free market dogma to support the people who are undermining a non profit charity effort in order to divert the money involved to their own greedy pockets.
You can't take the sky from me...
Negroponte believes that Intel does it just because they are afraid of competition. They actually DON'T compete, because Classmate PC is horrid afterthought, without any intelectual and engineer input, just thrown together box and just because OLPC has AMD! They are different classes, OLPC has been tested and engineered to survive harsh situations, Classmate PC is just a small laptop without any moving parts, but nothing else.
Negroponte can forbid Intel sell their boxes? No! Can Negroponte ask for them to actually deliver what they promised? Yes! Intel promised to streamline OLPC and Classmate PC, create OLPC XO-2 with Intel tech, not try to block OLPC sales for now, and lot of other things which they actually NOT delivered. Instead of that, sales person from Intel slammed OLPC behind the back of OLPC to OLPC customer, while being on board of OLPC!
I just wander who "capitalist dreamer" mod you up. Because you actually have NO clue what you are talking about. Check facts please before be so very elitist about corporations.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
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!
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.
"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!
It is so sad that you posted this anonymously. But you actually understood that you posting rubbish, didn't you?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Those kids are not a market, this non-profit enterprise is not a business rival. If they want to sell their power-hungry laptop with their fancy CPUs, they can sell them to the kids when they grow up with computer skills and outgrow their XO, but paying a fee to get on the board of a charity (a tax-exempting fee, I'm sure) and then telling governments that being on the board has let them glean information that make them think the whole thing is going to implode (possibly with the ring of truth that knowingly sabotaging them brings) is indefensible, you monster.
You can't take the sky from me...