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."
cuz I had the same joy there.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
He doesn't want kids having laptops and educational material. He wants kids having HIS laptops and HIS educational materials.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
no contest really. let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable. some of US should consider ourselves somewhat fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's right in
What I want to know is ... is there a hidden 3rd party pushing Intel *cough*Microsoft*cough*? Intel's device is available with Windows XP. I wouldn't at all be surprised to find out that our "friends" in Redmond are responsible for this in order to get their software into the emerging world instead of Linux.
My current system is an old AMD dual system, and with the way Intel is acting on the world stage, I'm sticking with AMD for my next system.
Blar.
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
I don't think MSFT is the driver, more of a means to an end for Intel. Their interests are aligned at some level but mainly Intel wants to sell chips. I'm guessing they don't care which OS runs as long as they can keep a finger in the emerging market pie.
MS and Intel have common goals, but that could change.
What's more interesting is the callous, self-serving manner Intel is undermining a project trying to help people. It's pathetic. Lacking in even basic decency. You can claim corporations exist only for profit but it hasn't always been that way. It's a fairly recent development that we have have, at least corporately, started to turn into the Ferengi. And there are limits. When you start undermining humanitarian projects in order to protect your market position, you're over that line.
Maybe Negroponte should just pull off the gloves and make a deal with Wal-Mart and Costco to carry OLPC's. Use the profits to donate machines to developing nations. Or use the profits to cut schools in this country a big discount. If Intel and MS want a war, give them a war.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Disgusting behaviour like this by Intel is why I'll never use Wintel and only buy Apple
29 mpg. YMMV.
More power to Intel for trying to sell something better. (It certainly won't be hard)
From Intel's website:
Corporate Mailing Address
2200 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549
USA
(408) 765-8080
A phone call or a snail mail letter will go a long way toward letting Intel know it crossed the line.
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.
IF targeting the 3rd world, the classmate sucks:
a) There are cooling holes on it! Hello dirt and debris.
b) The keyboard is non ruggedized, at least compared to the XO.
c) It uses a conventional montior arrangement rather than the OLPC "behind the monitor" arrangement. This means that it has a complex, wire heavy connector through the hinge rather than just a USB and power connection.
I don't see how the classmate could last 6 months in a third world environment.
I question some of the OLPC's intent, but their hardware design blows away that Intel POS its not even funny.
Test your net with Netalyzr
How is that of all the other OLPC partner companies, Intel is the only one that just couldn't resist but to pull a fast one? I have a thick skin usually when it comes to corporations' behaviour, but NOT when it's detrimental to a charity. fsck intel
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I wanted to like the OLPC -- no I wanted to *love* the OLPC. I wanted to love it so much that I wanted to tell the world how awesome it was, and how everyone should participate in the give one get one program.
Then mine arrived in the mail.
Initial reactions were off the charts. The packaging was even excellent! The machine is sturdy, well-built, solid, cleverly designed, rugged, and absolutely perfect for it's purpose. I can't say enough about how many of the design decisions were fantastic. The keyboard was perhaps smaller than I had anticipated, but with the intended use case scenarios even that didn't detract from the brilliance of the hardware.
And then I turned it on.
Anyone who says that the interface is revolutionary or different is trying to put a nice spin on it. Yes, some of the organization and terminology is novel, and one could even praise some of the attempts at getting you to re-think how computers work. But the entire thing feels astonishingly like X Windows from the late 1980s. The interfaces are clunky and inconsistent, and worst of all it suffers from a pervasive design philosophy of "because we could" not "because we should." I could easily forgive a lack of graphical polish, but it's much more difficult to forgive the nearly-20-year giant leap backwards in interface design.
I know what the slashdot crowd is thinking... "it's open source! Write a new UI yourself!" but that's not the point. My point is that I wish the OLPC project had spent half the effort on the software that they did on the hardware -- if they had, then maybe we really would have a device that would change the world. Who knows... maybe a version 2 will have a new UI that actually will.
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
"but many customers are demanding Windows so the children can compete in the global job market."
You just make crap up and pass it off as fact.
Who are these customers, and how does "knowing windows" help compete for any job?
Be specific in replying. The whole world knows you're making junk up. It's up to you to convince them that you have a *bit* of a clue.
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.
This is disgusting. In this day and age where corporate responsibility is a prominent issue, how can Intel go and try to sabotage a charitable organization? Is the Red Cross or Unicef next cause they may have AMD chips in their computers? Do they think they can capitalize on 3rd-world children? Will the dollar difference between the OLPC and Intel version be negligible to those people? What hot-shot marketing guru thought this gem up, was it Scrooge McDuck?
I would like to see Intel publicly humiliated for this. Personally, this changes my decision to use Intel in my next computer. *sigh*... Why does the devil have to make chips?
http://laptop.org/vision/people/MaryLouJepsen/
Man, try this for the ClassMate (TM)
http://www.intel.com/intel/worldahead/classmatepc/
Notice any similarities like the graphic at the top?
bang goes my karma... again...
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/grove/paranoid.htm with 'only the paranoid survive'. Hey, those bleeding-heart commies have taken business that is rightfully OURS, that means war.
I'm fighting back this year by buying more and more from employee-owned (John Lewis, I'm from the UK) organisations, cooperatives (Telephone Coop, local credit union), mutuals (Royal London) and anything else that doesn't have shareholders and then lastly for-profits with a verifiable social agenda and a record of honourable behaviour (harder and harder to find though).
I'm having a hard time explaining that open-source/Windows is an ethical choice too, many people here seem to only understand that in the context of food-miles and sweatshops, not in the context of technology.
As I work for non-profits, they often say 'we get really good discounts from Microsoft', so we don't want any, without considering the deeper implications. I now send them to this: http://www.freegeekvancouver.org/en/node/125 comprehensive and well-stated.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
new doesn't mean you'll like it.
You've learned certain ways of doing things.
You've got used to them.
You like them.
Now, a proper XO laptop (not a cadged one meant for the children in poor countries) can have a different version of the OS on it. You'll lose the propriatory stuff (though later versions of the XO will have open source drivers or new hardware that does) but you can add a USB wireless connector that works with linux for that.
You have the hardware.
And that's the beauty of ensuring that the XO is free and open. If it used MS Windows you'd probably agreed to only have Windows on it.
The OLPC idea needs perhaps 5 or 10 years to mature, in my opinion. After that, when every country in the world realizes how much computers help grow social strength, the market will be far larger and well-defined, and commercial efforts will be very welcome.
The OLPC idea is founded on these understandings: 1) That students will be far more interested in school if they have a way of accessing the world's information, especially where books are not easily available. 2) That students can teach themselves. 3) That computers are fascinating and provide an incentive to learn. 4) That one or two people in a community who are especially good at teaching themselves may provide leadership that helps the entire community grow.
If a foolish entry like Intel's competes, that may kill the entire OLPC experiment. The entire good idea could become discredited or delayed many years.
Intel has in the past been amazingly bad at producing items for users. Until 1991, Intel had a Consumer Products Division that was extremely badly managed. Can it be wise that Intel has decided to go into the low-cost, commodity consumer business, when Intel has always failed at that business? Given Intel's past history and core competency, can Intel become a strong competitor with Mattel?
If Intel wants to compete, it should offer Mr. Negroponte cheaper processors to compete with the AMD processors used now. Producing processors is what Intel does very well, apparently in spite of top management.
Intel, apparently, never wavered from its position that it was in competition with OLPC. Intel tried to kill the program before it got fully started; that's how it appears to the public. Internal attempts at spin control at Intel don't change the public perception that Intel has been, and intends to continue to be, destructive.
Many people seem to think that the underlying problem is that Intel CEO Paul Otellini has extremely poor social skills. It seems to me that the OLPC issue could eventually bring such an accumulation of bad press to Intel that the Intel board fires Otellini.
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.
Intel marketing should possibly be called Intel "marketing" because it is often propelled by utterly foolish ideas. One example is the Intel trademark "Viiv", which was a bad idea even if people could pronounce it. See, for one example, the article Intel admits defeat with Viiv.
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.
"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."
More like NIGGERponte, am I rite guys?
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.
The OLPC gains economies of scale by launching in wealthier, and more populous countries such as China and India, first. China has a long history of expertise in making inexpensive copies of anything that can be manufactured.
http://www.livenudejournal.com/
-- Subvert the dominant paradigm. Repeat as desired. http://ownlifeful.com/
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...
I admire him for trying to bring computing to poor third world kids, even if a competitor eventually succeeds. He created this market, while big-assed companies ignored it until Nick showed it might be possible.
More practically, Al Gore probably used up the American & techie "peace prize quota" for five years. And the Bill Gates Foundation is ahead of Nick in this queue. Plus Nick's brother is considered an assh*l* by many Europeans for his lapdog service to George Bush (UN ambassador, Rice undersecretary).
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.
I don't care if the Classmate is priced below cost or the OLPC is made with fairies' dust. The only thing myself and anyone, including Negroponte, should really care about is that there's not only one, but two cheap computers for emerging nations. And that, no matter how you look at it, is a Good Thing(TM).
If Negroponte is telling the truth and Intel's ulterior motive to underprice their Classmate is its own long-term "benefit" for the sake of market share, the only true winners are the kids, the recipients of those computers. And if Intel is trying to push their option by highlighting its strengths versus the OLPC and the governments decide to buy Classmates based entirely on technical merit, that will be good for Intel but the true winners will again be the kids. I'm sure those children won't give a damn about what type of processor these machines have (in fact, I doubt they will give a damn about a computer over a sandwich at this point, but that's an entirely different debate.)
And what about if the governments decide to buy an OLPC instead? Well, maybe that will force Intel to drop their prices even more and once again the kids will be the ultimate winners, as they will have more powerful machines for less money.
I suppose I could always bite the bullet and buy non-Intel/non-AMD systems. Price would be high, but it beats supporting a douchebag company.
Blar.
Negroponte has done more for humanity than any CEO, CFO, POTUS (except maybe Carter). Intel, M$, Toshiba ... now want to compete for a future market, which they will abandon depending on MF$$$. OLPC is providing what greedy/stupid SOBs would never give ... a tool too prevent poverty by allowing learning environments anywhere in the world to poor and wealthy alike.
... many other companies and governments did not do AMFT/crap for children's' education anywhere (even low-tech poor nations). To compare Intel/CEO/POTUS & OLPC/Negroponte is like a stinking piece of shit trying to say roses are smelly. IOW: BullShit from a CEO, POTUS, Pope, or you still stinks of hubris, evil, and stupidity.
..., I was happy to fulfill your implied request.
A nation's economic stability is nurtured by education, depends on citizens learning, and provides for innovation and defense of the country. The USA economy and reputation internationally has declined (IMO, I am reasonably sure) proportionally to the decline in a real egalitarian quality education for US Citizens over the last 50 years.
Intel, M$, U$, EU
If you posted for a flame
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
While the Classmate is more powerful than OLPC, it also uses 10 times the power. Intel had to donate generators to their pilot projects before they could use the classmate. OLPC can run on hand cranks. I would say the Classmate is a better fit for industrialized countries with easy access to clean power, but not for the places OLPC is trying to reach. I believe that Classmate also doesn't have mesh, so that connectivity from the school would only reach as far as a WAP.
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.
It's not the pricing, it's the "partnership" that was a problem. They were stealing deals from them.
Is it OK for Intel to stab partners in the back just because the partner is headed by someone with an ego?
If so, is it OK if I mug rich old grannies? After all, they're always going on about "kids today don't show their elders respect" showing a huge ego.
Did Negroponte shag your mum up the arse or something? You've got a hard-on for hating him for some reason...
I agree. The support wiki is full of holes but it seems to be getting filled out. The great advantage I see in the buy-one-give-one program was to get it in the hands of people in the FOSS community that can find such weaknesses and fix them. We can support OLPC by developing applications and providing input to the project.
In the rush to get everything done on time I'm betting no one coordinated their UI ideas with everyone else, and now each activity is built from the ground up without a unifying lead.
That's why god invented "version x.2"
You can't take the sky from me...
People have been trying to integrate computers into education for years. But what is the level of success in the mainstream?
In the education mainstream, computers are used for:
a) typing up essays, and
b) learning about computers.
They can do more, but nobody has demonstrated good ways for them to be used for more. Yeah, you can load books and them and stuff, but you can also play games on them and stuff. The distraction factor is terrible.
Negroponte and Papert are radicals. Their ideas are wild and unproven.
Papert is the guy who thought Logo would be a good idea. I can tell you straight out that Logo is overhyped shit that accomplished precisely nothing. It was always presented as this great educational programming language that would encourage kids to teach themselves and it was always, always inferior in fun and self-education to things like BASIC (which came out 4 years before Logo).
Logo accomplished nothing and wasted a lot of resources. Papert is full of shit. He's the kind of guy who blames the failure of bad ideas on insufficent commitment to those bad ideas. He's fucking dangerous when he's got access to other people's money.
Papert has never been a broadly balanced expert on education. Rather, he's simply been a champion of constructivism: a philosophy of education which holds that students should be considered responsible for teaching themselves, and instructors should only be their helpers. He promotes unproven ideas, and his emotional commitment to extreme views may make him less qualified to educate children than the average adult who has never researched education.
Papert is essentially hostile to the basic concept of authoritarian teachers, even at the grade-school level, which is applied in conventional education in every rich, literate, and successful country in the world. In short, he's a fringe nut whose work undermines the educational tradition that built the first world.
Negroponte is the man behind Wired Magazine. Now, Wired can be entertaining, but it's also completely retarded. It's full of breathless optimism and uncritical enthusiam of the kind that fueled the dot com bubble. It serves mainly to promote bad ideas and whip up irrational exuberance. He's a real hazard when other informed people let him speak as some kind of authority to uninformed people, because there is no doubt he is going to mislead them while speaking with total confidence and conviction.
Trying out their radical ideas is really what this is all about, and it's a selfish motivation. They want hundreds of millions of dollars from the poorest countries in the world to run a massive psychological experiment on millions of children who are desperately in need of proven, reliable education (classrooms in good repair, papers and pencils, decent textbooks, blackboards, and literate teachers who show up every day and actually do their work) NOT crazy techno-hippie stuff.
The reason they aren't trying to sell the XO to first-worlders isn't that they're more concerned about third-world children, or that third-world children need more help. The reason is that first-worlders are confident and skeptical enough to reject their radicalism. Third-world governments - corrupt, incompetent, and aware that they aren't doing so well - are vulnerable to manipulation.
In the third world, they see weaknesses that will allow them to dominate and control the same sort of people in positions of authority who have rejected their ideas and humiliated them. Donning the mantle of charity is part of their strategy to manipulate third world governments, and a weapon to shame critics into silence.
And somehow they get away with it, despite trying to extract billions of dollars from the poorest countries in the world.
There is no way the OLPC project could succeed as a business. No chance, no hope, no matter who they were trying to sell their stuff to. That's why it's a "non-profit organization": it sounds better than "unprofitable corporation".
I am bored of parrots mouthing shareholder interest arguments, do you think other people don't know this 'illuminating' fact. Shareholder interest doesn't mean you can ride roughshod over rules and ethics, shareholder interest operates within the framework of law and general society. Human beings man these cooperations and cannot hide behind faceless nameless corps to behave unethically. Mature individuals are expected to behave ethically and morally in all societies, that's universal and working for a company doesn't absolve you of that responsibility.
Corporations is US are really out of control, ethical standards have gone for a complete toss, all these platitudes people in authority seem to utter and expect from ordinary citizens and employees seem to be for public consumption only because the entire management class seem to be operating in environment where they make the rules and don't give a fig for anything else but their personal wealth. Just look at the sub prime crisis, the telecom & cable monopoly demonstrating the subjugation of public interest, co-operating with China because you 'got to follow the rules", appalling labour conditions in third world operations, obscene exit packages for executives running their company to the ground and causing massive layoffs. And now Intel kicking a charity project for relatively insignificant gains. This sort of behavior appears to be borderline evil.
Is it in shareholder interest to take a company to the ground, cause massive layoffs and parachute out with hundreds of millions of dollars in golden handshakes or like Carly buying multiple planes and laying off employees at the same time. What happens to shareholder interest at these times, are they effective in curbing this behavior even a single percent. This is just illusion of empowerment.
Before I get into a tizzy over which is better, OLPC or Intel, has anyone done any actual science to determine and quantify the benefits of access to laptops and the internet for 3rd world children? There's science to back the notion that mosquito nets improve the lives of children in the tropics (measurably lower rate of Malaria). But on computers, we're just taking it on faith.
Intel is no different than Microsoft, does anyone remember Zylog? Intel will do to chip makers what Microsoft will do to software makers.
I can't say AMD is more ethical, but it is at least a counterpoint to the Intel near monopoly of P.C. CPUs.
Actually there are other problems associated with the classmate and all the other low cost PC ideals.
#1 Built for profit will ultimately mean the end user will have to pay out of pocket for profit margins. In most modern PC companies this means support, or bundled software with nagware.
#2 If these laptops end up with Windows on them, they will be asked to purchase AV, Spyware, and ultimately face what everyone else in the modern world faces. Support nightmares fixing windows machines or having to reinstall the OS every year because education on a windows machine means something completely different than on a Linux machine. And the whole idea was to allow these kids to muck with the OS, something you will not be doing on a windows machine.
#3 None of the other solutions are built to the same standards as these XO machines. Drops from 6 feet, dust proof, water resistant try that with the eeepc.
#4 power consumption. anyone else have a pull string for power on your classmate.
And if you read the article on the OLPC by the economist http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10472304
you will find that they seam to have missed the whole point of why these exist. He had to do to terminal mode to get youtube to work? And youtube is all of a sudden is a make or break education tool?
This isn't really a unique situation. The Big Pharma companies regularly are caught trying to impede, co-opt or otherwise obstruct the efforts of the Red Cross or the Gates Foundation. Unfortunately they have huge advertising dollars so it never makes it into the corporate-owned press. Even this barely makes it into the techno-geek news sources, you'll never see it on the Six O'Clock News or in the Chicago Trib.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Starting to see things...
Something Pez forgot to mention is that you can emulate an XO relatively painlessly. There is even a premade image file that is available that you can drop into say QEMU and see what it's all about.
A few caveats: Use something with virtualization which unfortunately means x86. Trying to run this emulated on a high end PowerPC system was saddening. Yes it is only a 433MHz target, but 433MHz is pretty high when you think about it. The other thing to keep in mind is that the premade image wants to change the display to about 1024x768 instead of the XO native 1200x900. The Sugar manager seems to be fine with it but most activities (XO apps) will not display properly.
are you a shill? i doubt intel wud have the balls to put one on here.
intel IS a SALES company. hello? u following this? their reason for existence is to SELL chips and chipsets. not to make better chips, or make the world a better place. the only reason they continue to make better chips is because they have to. if not a competitor would take their lunch. and even with this, they only do the BARE minimum, look at them historically, and their advertizing, it all seems to be bold letters round numbers, and over simplified specs, like MHZ!TM. with their rnd budget they could have (and probably did) made so many innovations, but they will never see the light of day until they HAVE to release something new, or risk losing sales.
never forget, dumbass, that sales companies can be one of 2 things. 1) ethical, believing in good will as an asset, treating customers well, and being assured of repeat business or 2) completely ammoral, with no regard for law, human beings, or anything else except their own growth.
which one would you rather support? i will also never buy intel again, unless i cant possibly help it, but given whats out there these days im not worried about it
I haven't heard of Negroponte before. Can someone give me some backgrounds for this. software development
because it allows them to define and create their own system for use. this is something no amount of money can buy. it is in the realm of unknown developments, and rightfully has big companies like intel and M$ so scared that they want to kill this project at all costs.
this is why ppl here are calling you stupid and modding you down; you cannot see the traditional renaissance picture of two people holding a rose out to each other, while holding a dagger in the other hand behind their back.
so your 90% of the world uses argument is pure shit if its not what they really want to use, and people are very adaptive, especially at an early age, learning linux, then windows is not very hard on anyone, except windows, which is hated here, for numerous reasons.
as for your article, where manufactures needed someone like negroponte to actually make a 100 notebook, that is really bad and fasle economics. any major hardware vendor/company cant do this easily. the question is why? they would never do this because it would destroy their own profits forever. and for the author of the article not being able to write it on the olpc, just think of late 70's and 80's pc's and how shitty their interfaces were, yet ppl wrote on them every day.
you look like a sock puppet, and the link you give is a very biased magazine
i usually don't feed trolls, but sometimes shit like yours needs to be buried
Wouldn't call you a troll, but you do miss the point.
You expect a magazine like the Economist to give a damn about getting laptops to third-world kids? No. The unnamed author of that piece doesn't get it either. He compares the OLPC to his own overpriced Vista Aero piece of gold plated silicon with a Ferari logo. Author exaggerates each side's argument to suit his own ends. Overlooks the lack of ruggedness of the ASUS Eee Pc or power problems of Intel's ahem "Classmate" PC. Nah. It's naysayers like whoever won't put their name to that article and you who are trying to drag the OLPC into the ground for reasons I can't fathom, but I can guess.
An innocent giant evil corporation used underhanded tactics? Doubtful. I think the philanthropist is lying! :P