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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."
I like how everyone is railing on Intel, which is a corporation. These were acts by sales people. Have you ever dealt with sales people? While it sounds like these were repeated actions, it doesn't sound out of line for a sales organization. If you have sales people where you work, do they embody the spirit of your company, and truly represent it as a whole? I am guessing.... not. Were these actions ethical/moral/nice? Of course not. Is that Intel's fault as a whole? Probably not, but it is a ding against them, and is getting some press. I am sure they don't like that. But people, please... let's keep it in perspective. Comments like "this is why I'll never buy Intel" are just stupid. If you base decisions on things like this, then you'll never buy anything, because I can guarantee you that there are sales people in every organization that would step on their grandmother's throat to make a sale. Nature of the beast, if you will.
I know there were sales people in a small company that I worked for that sold things to clients that didn't exist outside a prototype, and those weren't even authorized. A signed contract and money can go a long way in making executives say "ok, that was wrong - but let's get past that and work together as a team to make this happen!" Hahah... of course, doesn't hurt that the sales dope was best friends with the president and majority shareholder of the company. But I digress.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It still won't change the fact that the OLPC's (and Negroponte's) overwrought idealism and arrogance are dire threats to the viability of this program. Negroponte has managed to piss off many of his best sponsors and most of the governments he is trying to sell his laptops to. That is NOT the path to getting a laptop in the hands of kids. It's the path to becoming a forgotten philanthropic footnote.
But, please, don't let me interrupt the love-fest with my criticism. Expend some more mod points so that even the slightest criticism of this genius can be safely buried and ignored.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
More like NIGGERponte, am I rite guys?
First of all, your economics is silly; this kind of hardware has high fixed costs, so you almost always maximize profit by maximizing sales (or close to it). Nobody is preventing a nonprofit from buying classmates and giving them away at a loss, if that's the problem.
But the real problem is worse than that; you assume nonprofits follow their charter without fail. What happens in practice is that nonprofits eventually end up working to maximize prestige and cushy jobs at nonprofits, regardless of their ostensible goals, because that's the behaviour that gets rewarded. Negroponte apparently thinks he's entitled to a monopoly on this hardware class because his intentions are pure; no such luck.
Capitalism works. Deal with it.
Oh yes, some jerkoff who designs a laptop that sucks and markets it (he ain't GIVING it away, you know) to governments that he will ultimately only piss off is definitely comparable to Bill Gates, who has given and will give tens of BILLIONS of $ to Africa for education and to fight disease and hunger.
I just PRAY your post was intended as a joke. Saying that MS (or, more particularly, Bill Gates) has never done "crap for children's education anywhere" *has* to be intended as humorous irony.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.