Slashdot Mirror
Negroponte vs Intel
Yogi_Stewart_4 writes "More OLPC/Intel love — apparently Intel used 'underhanded' tactics to try to block sales' contracts of the OLPC, trying to reach the customer directly after an agreement had been reached.
"They would go in even after we had signed contracts and try to persuade government officials to scrap their contract and sign a contract with them instead. That's not a partnership."
Mr Negroponte cited an example in Peru where Intel sales staff tried to persuade the country's vice-minister of education, Oscar Becerra Tresierra, to buy the Intel Classmate PC."
Or maybe he wants children to use open source software not windows?
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
>If Negroponte really just carted about the kids, and not his own ego, ...
...
If Intel cared about the kids and not their profits
Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact Intel signed an agreement with OLPC? If I were running a business and one of my subcontractors ran off behind my back trying to poach clients, I'd be a tad pissed off too.
... and a partner firm sabotaging sales agreements is most certainly a threat.
Even with a "humanitarian" purpose, OLPC has to be aware of threats to its overall business sustainability
No, he wants kids to have good laptops and good educational materials. The Intel Classmate PC does not qualify on either count!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The flaw lies in that Intel promised to NOT poach like they seem to have been doing and did it anyway.
It's not that Negroponte has an ego (but everyone is seizing on the fact the man DOES have a big ego...)
but that Intel didn't live up to it's promises. If the stunt in Peru is provable, then Intel DOES have
a big bit of explaining to do- and what Negroponte has been saying isn't QUITE the "hogwash" they're
claiming it is.
It's not that he doesn't want laptops in the hands of kids. He wants education TOOLS in the hands of
kids. Unfortunately, all the Classmate devices seem to be is indoctrination tools for Microsoft products
as opposed to engines to be re-worked, etc. to teach thinking in addition to knowledge. OLPC's goal is
that. All the Classmate seems to be is discounted Windows stuff for kids and calling it "education".
I've a problem with that.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
This is a troll above. Truth is even in regular for profit business if a partner company did this to my group of companies i would kick them to the curb in a split second. It is not about profits this is about being outright dishonest. You do not do business with dishonest companies.....plain and simple. Unless you enjoy getting screwed over. Why waste your time and efforts working with a dishonest partner? I know i do not and have survived as a US maker of Audio products (OEM level) for more than 40 years. Never underestimate the power of being honest and keeping your word....it will allow you to survive long after all the other bigger players have either went bankrupt or sold to off shore companies because they are no longer viable to operate here. I have seen and purchased many of those whom thought they were so smart and keen (and dishonest) yet my company is still in the USA and still making jobs and growing....and making a nice profit....why....becuase when a customer partners with me....they know they will not be screwed over. 40+years and counting....:) I wish Negroponte the best , he should have known that the likes of MS and intel cannot be trusted they are NOT honorable companies. Yes they have made huge profits....but i sleep very well at night and customers i have had for 30+ years call me more than supplier, many consider me close personal friend. Those who say business is only about profits....need to take an ethics course or 10 and also need to realize it is not just about profits. Many times ive made the choice that was less profitable or not profitable but was the RIGHT thing to do. What will you do when pressed by such a situation? Will you choose profit or what is right? The answer will determine if you really are an enlightened individual or just a blood sucker. Thats the difference.
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
I take it that since the rights and free will of the citizenry aren't at stake no one finds it necessary to think of the children, only the profits. But good luck with that, Intel may be a company, but last I checked they actual human beings are the ones making these decisions and going ahead and acting them out. So bravo, another +mark for humanity.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
It doesn't matter how badly Intel wanted to sell their more expensive, less functional copy of the OLPC laptop. It is simply unethical to use insider information to quash a deal and sign a separate one yourself with a client.
This is a big black mark against Intel and should serve as a warning to future partners that they can't be trusted at all. I mean you can't get much worse publicity than "deliberately sabotaged a charitable organization". Maybe the CEO of Intel would like follow it up by kicking puppies and eating babies?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
That's an interesting issue but your answer is naive.
Non-profits and for-profits are more alike than people think. If a non-profit doesn't pay the electricity bills, the lights go off. If a non-profit program doesn't reach sufficient volume, its unit costs go through the roof because of the fixed costs are amortized over fewer units. Just like a for-profit.
The difference between non-profits and for-profits is why they do what they do, not how.
If there are 270,000 children who need laptops in Peru, a non-profit would try to equip as many of them as humanly possible. A for-profit will try to equip the number of children which would maximize its profits. For example, suppose Intel's profits are maximized by equipping 135,000 children in Peru. The government would buy more if the price were lower, but Intel's profit margin would be lower. Intel could increase its unit margin so that it made more on each PC, but Peru would buy sufficiently fewer that the net profits would decrease.
The difference between a non-profit and a for-profit is that a for-profit never considers costs that are external to itself, such as the cost of 135,000 children who grow up without access to information and the world economy. A non-profit internalizes as much of that cost as possible.
When two for-profits compete, they try to poach the plum contracts from each other, and it doesn't matter. They both act in exactly the same way, so the differences between the two are small. When either looks at a population of 270,000 customers, 135,000 of which don't have enough money to play, they see a market of 135,000, give or take a few, plus 135,000 non-entities who they have no intention of serving. When they compete with each other, the more efficient of the two might equip 140,000, and the less efficient might equip 120,000, and so market efficiencies maximize the public benefit, if the only choice is between two entities that weigh the public benefit in exactly the same manner.
When a for-profit cherry picks the plum contracts from a non-profit, it's a different matter altogether. The efficient for profit equips 140,000 where the non-profit would equip 270,000. What's more the non-profit can't pick up the slack, because (a) there's no money and (b) they are amortizing their costs over fewer units so they can no longer provide product at lower prices than the for-profit.
Right or wrong? You decide. But it's certainly about more than personal ego. It's about educating students whom it is not profitable to equip; and if it is not profitable, it will never happen.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Most large companies have a set of explicitly stated business rules that employees are expected to follow or face disciplinary action. Typically, employees are expected to periodically read and review these rules, and certify that they have done so and will follow them. Sometimes, these rules include explicit prohibitions against trying to sell when the potential customer has already placed a legally-enforceable order with a competitor. The rationale is simple, the order is a contract. You shouldn't encourage anybody to break a contract, because you would be encouraging them to break the law. Apparently, Intel's senior management apparently hasn't seen the need to set the bar that high for their employees. That's too bad and a black mark against Intel for sure. Just another reason to keep buying AMD.
Negroponte has a right to be upset. Intel shouldn't have been doing this against ANY competitor, must less one that they were cooperating with.
It signed agreements with OLPC, so it has a responsibility to live up to that. "Maximising profits for shareholders" does not make it okay to break contracts, lie, cheat or steal, despite what many MBAs seem to think.
Because Microsoft *IS* the evil boogeyman lurking in the shadows, etc, etc...
The connections in this and other cases are pretty obvious for even the lay person to see. Further, it has been demonstrated that Microsoft knows no shame nor boundaries in their efforts to buy, push or influence governments and other businesses to do their bidding.
If you've got a dog that has been historically pooping on your carpet and you come home today and find poop on your carpet, you're going to look for the dog!
At the company I work for, the Code of Conduct we are required to review every year has an explicit prohibition against this sort of thing. The section is actually entitled "Selling Against a Signed Order". The code isn't that long, so the fact that there is a special section for this one situation shows how important it is.
If I were to try and sell against a signed order, I would be fired. Immediately. With no chance of appeal.
Encouraging a customer to break a signed contract could get both the customer and my company sued by the competitor for contract interference, and rightly so.
SirWired
Providing a choice is always a good thing. Do you like that Microsoft and Intel traditionally get to decide what is 'good' for us? Negroponte has at the very least been raising a lot of awareness about the state of education in poorer parts of the world. Even if you disagree with his solution and methods, and even if he has a big ego as a few people here are claiming, he's providing a choice and making the big boys like Intel notice, so he must be doing something right.
which is totally what she said
...but many customers are demanding Windows so the children can compete in the global job market.Which is sheer stupidity! Learning Windows is not what children need to compete in the global job market. A good education is what they need. Something that Negroponte, the educator, and Papert, the master behind the scenes who has devoted his life to studying how children learn, understand a bit better than Intel's sales flacks.
I wish I had a catchy name... "Bill's Law" just wont catch on. Anyway, here's why companies like Intel can both support OLPC with heartfelt charity, while at the same-time underhandedly stealing their market:
A corporation's actions are dictated by the weakest morals of it's leaders.
Corollary: The simplest way to make a corporation good is to have a strong ethical leader. I guarantee that the leaders involved in working with OLPC are honest people. I also guarantee the leaders involved in knee-capping OLPC are dishonest. A strong leader would find one personality for the company, and enforce it on the troops. Weak leaders allow multiple personalities to come forward when convenient.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Before you go on the whole competition is good for laptops speech, remember that OLPC is not a laptop project, it is an education project.
The idea is to improve education in poorer countries, and the laptops are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Intel's laptop sabotages the OLPC goal because it is a laptop project, not an education project. Remember that the OLPC comes with education based software and even has a "show me the code" button not to mention a screen which is very suitable for reading electronic books. They are carefully designed for education. Intel's laptops aren't. Therefore, competing with OLPC sabotages the goal of better education for poorer people.
Oh, and just to cover the other point, no, you can't eat a laptop, but that's not their purpose: they are not disaster relief tools either, they're education tools.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The success of his project is dependent on getting enough orders to give them economy of scale savings. He is courting the wealthier countries right now, and as he gets more orders, he can reduce cost further, and reach a more and more impoverished market. If Intel uses this as a way to have OLPC do all the front work of identifying markets, getting in to talk with the people who can make the buying decisions, and then end-gaming them on the sale, they are not only hurting the success of the OLPC project and shortening its eventual reach, they are also directly stealing value from the project which did the initial effort investment. Some of these countries might not have talked to Intel directly, but had heard good things about this OLPC thing and so first entertained the idea only because of the merits brought by that project. Intel is therefore operating under the guise of friendship and help, while cannibalizing the underlying foundation of the project.
OLPC laptops are more open, more free, better designed, and less expensive. Intel ClassMate PC's are proprietary, less rugged, and require more power to operate. Worst of all they are for-profit, and those profits are sent to Intel stock holders, making wealthy business men wealthier at the expense of money which would better be used satisfying an educational need in the exact same arena as the laptop was advertised as intending to assist. They unnecessarily drain valuable resources from the very market they are pretending to aid.
Basically this is about as disgustingly slimy as I think they are able to be.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
"Intel has invested a billion dollars over the last 10 years alone in education around the world," said Mr Otellini.[Head of Intel]
Very telling indeed, but not in the way he intends it. He's basically saying they have high stakes in this market and, being a corporation, they expect a return on this investment.
He's basically giving away the motive for Intel to do such rotten things to the OLPC project.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Well, the Classmate hardware specs *are* better than the XO -- but only "conventional" specs.
What about innovative features that the XO embodies? The sunlight readable screen, the tablet like e-book mode, the ultra low power capabilities, the mesh networking? Admittedly, you could argue that the mesh networking is as much software as hardware, but the hardware is a part of it.
In addition, is the Classmate as rugged as the XO?
I don't think just adding Sugar to the Classmate would match up. I submit that despite the higher specs on CPU speed, RAM, and storage, the Classmate hardware represents inferior hardware for the stated purpose as compared to the XO. Those specs are not very significant to the mission that both these units claim to aim at. The hardware advantages that the XO brings to the table *do* make a difference to that mission.
And it wouldn't be easy to save a ton of money by dropping Windows. MS is deathly afraid of non-MS OSes taking hold in the developing world -- they are offering Windows in that market at $3 a pop.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Here that woosh sound, I wonder what that was?
I think you can go further: the OLPC was designed from the ground up to be an educational tool. The function of educatign kids was pretty much always foremost in mind with regard to everything about the laptop, from hardware to software. Ultimately the OLPC is an educational device which happens to bear some similarities to a laptop because that was the best technological base on hand at present (if Negorponte could have delivered "The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer" from The Diamond Age instead, I'm sure he would have).
Comparing the OLPC to low priced laptops is an apples and oranges comparison. You are comparing an educational device for kids to a general purpose computing device with no specific user in mind. They just aren't comparable.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
That can't be the complete story because they were about to unveil a new intel version of the OLPC's XO at CES. This would have led to more chip sales and yet they chose to sabotage their partners and ruin the chance to have intel chips sold with the OLPC campaign. This really sucks, I was considering an intel chip for my next computer as they have definitely outpaced AMD, but now I need to consider whether I want to do business with such a company. Maybe a few less instructions per cycle is worth it to support AMD when they can play nice with charitable causes and do some good in the world.
You're not a kid in a developing country who might have never used a computer before. The machine has to be tactile, simple and responsive. Minimal eye candy to confuse, minimum text to aid understanding in as many languages as possible. You've seen it all, Jorge in Uruguay hasn't.
Intel should not have signed a non-compete agreement then.
It might be ok if they were just cold-calling countries.
It is a little shady if they try negotiating with countries which they already know OLPC is negotiating with.
It is downright unethical for them to go and ask countries to break their contract for OLPC's to get an Intel product.
It is pretty sleazy for Intel to figure that there is more profit here than potential fallout over doing it.
vi +
Negroponte would do well to put the Intel relationship behind him. This is turning into a "he said v. they said" argument.
Of course, Negroponte could use these tactics to generate more buzz for OLPC at Intel's expense (regardless if it is actually true).
I'm not saying which side is right. I am saying Negroponte needs to move on... Jesus, how many more of these OLPC v Intel stories do there need to be?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...