Slashdot Mirror
Intel Employee Caught Running OLPC News Site
An anonymous reader noted yet another story about credibility and disclosure on-line. An OLPC news site highly critical of the project was run
by an Intel employee who actually is working on a project that competes with the OLPC. Oh, and the site failed to disclose this pretty serious bit of bias. The article talks about the most extreme interpretation ("Intel secretly bankrolls blog that disses competitor") but even the less extreme version ("insider badmouths competitors anonymously at night") is pretty fishy. Just more reasons to never believe anything on-line, including me I guess.
How many times is this going to happen before corporations realize front organizations don't work on the Internet?
The headline says "caught" as if this person was doing something illegal or unethical. Please explain.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Okay, after being forced to dive into the sources by lousy reporting, here is the story:
Christopher Blizzard has posted to his blog that Wayan Vota, a main writer for OLPC news is the director of Geekcorps. That Wayan Vota writes for OLPC news is not a secret (his name is on every post). And a Google search for "Wayan Vota" turns up the Geekcorps result as its third hit.
Now, on Geekcorps' website, of one their technology partners is listed as Intel.
I don't know about you, but that's enough to convince me that the black helicopters are involved! What a conspiracy.
BTW, is this the Digg effect? I notice more and more looney conspiracy stories over there all the time. Maybe it's spreading.
from the clues, I'd say TFA was written sometime at the back end of 2006.
I'd think the biggest "clue" might be the datestamp on the article (January 2, 2007 at 09:08 PM). No need to guess.
This guy's the limit!
"never believe anything on-line"? As opposed to believing anything that is printed on dead trees? Just apply the same rule to the internet as to books or newspapers: Use your own brain.
TFA: "It turns out that one of the site's authors works on an Intel project that is competing with the OLPC. Oops."
TFS: "An OLPC news site highly critical of the project was run by an Intel employee who actually is working on a project that competes with the OLPC."
TFS: "Just more reasons to never believe anything on-line, including me I guess."
q.e.d.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Wayan seems to be replying to every article about this.
His argument seems to be:
It is a coincidence that he is working on a competing product to the OLPC.
It is a coincidence that he started a "personal" project slandering his business rival and getting Google links to the OLPC.
It is simply standard procedure that he is buying negative Google ads to promote his personal site. (You know, the way you buy Google Ads all the time for your personal projects.)
His screeching denials are more damning than anything else.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
They really do happen. we have all seen outrageous things like this happen with MS and Intel before. More likely than not, this has funding by Intel and MS. Afterall, he runs no commercials on his site (i.e. it makes no money), and yet he is buying ads elsewhere. So what is his angle on it? Think it is just a free service that he is doing? I seriously doubt it.
This is just another OSS vs SCO/MS/Sun type angle being able to OLPC vs OLPCNEW/Intel. I would also not be surprised to see MS in this, but that has zero proof.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe mushrooms?
Baboons are cute.
He's working on his own version for his employer. He presumably thinks it's better. That would explain why he's working on this project. It would be great if more people who were critical of products created a better version.
It's only a blog. It's not pretending not to have a bias. It's a blog. They're all biassed.
He's allowed to say what he likes. He was critical of the OLPC when Intel were amongst its proponents, so it seems pretty likely that this is his personal opinion. as such it would have been a bad idea to mention his affiliation with Intel since that may have suggested it was the company's views rather than his own.
Looks like the case of the fake Open Document Foundation, that had nothing to do with ODF itself, and was just spreading FUD (probably trying to get money from Microsoft, in that case).
On the good side, these "schemes" tend to be found and revealed really quickly these days.
The red and yellow machines were prototypes. Models beginning with the letter C are green and white, as are the MP (mass production) machines. More here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pictures
Slashdot, with its numerous Microsoft bashing and Linux praising articles, is owned by OSTG (or SourceForge, whatever it's called) which has everything to gain from, er, the promotion of Linux and F/OSS.
So, where's the full disclosure on this, hum?
I write bullshit
By due diligence you mean that the reader should check if the author is not working for the competition? I mean, one of the first things I've been told when writing my thesis is to check the credibility of the authors of my sources...
Sorry to put it bluntly, your point is completely absurd, who gives criticism is completely relevant, since their position has a grand impact on how they themselves perceive events.
Just to let you know, in case you haven't figured it out... Intel doesn't need to badmouth the competition. Intel employees are some of the biggest zealots available on the market and HR at Intel hires based on how much of a zealot a person can be for their brand. Brand loyalty is the number one trait that Intel HR is looking for in a potential employee, above and beyond skill level. If you have ever had a conversation with an Intel rep you will know exactly what I'm talking about. They store up a bunch of company info and spew it at you, nonstop.
Therefore I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is a zealot who decided to take the zealotry to another level in the form of a website.
Zealots take business to the personal level, and therefore it would be false to suggest this was a paid-for stunt by Intel... even if they cop to it. A PR person might suggest that Intel takes the fall for this in order to drive the free media exposure higher than it has to be (businesses actually do that stuff sometimes), but that wouldn't be the truth, IMHO.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Nope, I don't think the story is wrong:
US Dept of State
When they get it down to $100 and stop charging wildly different prices based on order quantity (a scam since all the tooling is done, and they won't be placing individual orders with their manufacturers), you can call it the $100 laptop.
The tooling may be done, but it still has to be paid for. Charging different prices for different order quantities just makes those who place larger orders contribute less per unit to the cost of tooling. A common practice in any field of manufacturing.
Oh but Intel does support porn. I bet over half of the porn sites out there are running on Intel hardware! Intel is actually the mack daddy of porn supporters if you think about it in this way.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Yes, other people do unethical things. That's no excuse to ignore the specific instances of people doing unethical things. In fact, its why it is important to take note of them.
No, undisclosed conflicts of interest are always newsworthy, to the extent that they relate to a subject that is itself a focus of attention in the community in question. The OLPC has been the subject of attention on Slashdot, and OLPC News has been a frequently-cited source in Slashdot discussions of it (and, IIRC, also the source of several of the front-page Slashdot stories regarding it, though I'm not going to bother going back and checking at the moment.) The undisclosed conflict of interest at OLPC News is, therefore, worthy of attention at Slashdot.
Just in case anybody's wondering why Vota hasn't posted anything to explain this... I think he might be a little busy at the moment, since he's getting married today.
Not that that affects any conflict of interest either way, but he is a private citizen who's been running the blog in his spare time for at least a year. Sucks for him that this hits Slashdot today.
For my part, I've been reading olpcnews for a while and I think it's a serious stretch to call it "highly critical" of OLPC. Vota seems to love OLPC in general and has started a forum for Give-One-Get-One donors (like himself) to post hacks, guides, and help for the machines. He's pretty critical of Negroponte, but it seems that that's mostly because he (reasonably) believes that Negroponte's utopian rhetoric harms the project.
I'm not sure I've seen him weigh in strongly either way on Intel, but he's certainly very against seeing Windows on the OLPC, and has posted articles from other authors that are quite critical of Intel. So IMO: pro-Intel bias, maybe. Anti-OLPC bias, no way.
No jokes, please
The olpc news blog attacked the educational objectives of the project from the start, not by critically assessing the years of research and study that went into the plan rather, by completely ignoring not just the research and study but even the advertised objectives and methods written in plain english on the loptop.org web site. How many times does it have to be explained to these people that its not a laptop project dumping laptops on starving third world children, its about the educational concept of constructionism.
It even continues to this day where he posts "news" that there is no news showing that the kids who have so far received laptops are learning when again if he has been following the real news, you know, journalists and reporters actually out in the field finding out for themselves, the educational benefits are beginning to demonstrate themselves in small ways just as they did in the research.
And even if the blog is not closely followed, this guy is being interviewed and quoted all over the radio, even by NPR, as a source for OLPC news. That would be news about OLPC, not the website olpcnews which is a misnomer. Its disgraceful. Even though I stopped reading the guys web site I still had to listen to his crap on the radio when ever the OLPC project comes up in the real news.
Even though there is an obvious conflict of interest, and his site seems to be very biased, I can still see the possibility that he was just creating a blog about something he was interested in. I don't believe that the XO and Classmate were originally competing products as the target kids and communities for the OLPC educational program were outside the realm of Intel's existing educational assistance programs. The problem is that marketing PR, and in the case of Microsoft politics concerning open source software, drove them to "compete" in the OLPC "market" when in fact there is no market, its a charitable non-profit cause. As things were getting ugly in the media between Intel and OLPC he really should have disclosed the conflict of interest that arose.
As a real journalist, I can tell you from first-hand experience that in the more credible publications, (a) if a journalist was getting anything of value from a company (money, travel and accommodations, etc.) he would not be allowed to write about that company. (b) If an expert were writing something about his specialty, and he was getting something of value from a company as a consultant or something (which is legitimate), that expert would have to disclose his financial arrangements to the readers.
You can see these disclosures in scientific journals all the time. I just signed a disclosure form myself, in which I affirmed that I had no financial interests in the story I was writing about.
I admit there are a lot of astroturf publications in which an advertiser can buy a story, sometimes written by a PR firm, without disclosure, but I think most people who read those publications realize what's going on and give them the credibility that's appropriate.
I think the biggest concern is, what happens if you get sued for libel? The American libel laws tend to favor journalists who are writing about public figures, which means almost anybody who is in the news. If I make a mistake, as long as I was acting in good faith, they can't get damages against me.
To win a case against a journalist, a public figure has to prove malice. Malice is a specific legal term which is different from the everyday meaning of the term, but one example of malice would be writing defamatory charges against a competitor.
The worst case I can think of offhand was a TV producer for one of the major networks, who left TV and went into public relations. One of her clients was a bank, which was competing with Safra. The ex-producer got the bright idea of faxing unfavorable stories about Safra to newspapers and magazines, most of them in underdeveloped countries. The stories were anti-Semitic and contained false, defamatory statements about Safra.
When she was working in journalism, she was used to keeping her sources confidential, but in public relations, there's no such confidentiality, especially when people get sued for libel, and lawyers start taking depositions. She was so stupid that she didn't realize that her fax machine was sending her own phone number at the top of the fax and could easily be traced back to her. So she and her banking client got caught. (But they would have caught her anyway, because when lawyers sue somebody for libel, they can force the defendants, or anyone connected with the case, to disclose lots of information.)
Safra sued them, and the bank finally settled for several million dollars, which Safra contributed to charity, as I recall.
But the point is, if you're a journalist, you're operating by one set of rules. If you're getting paid by a company, and acting in their interest, you're operating by another set of rules. If you don't disclose your financial interests in the matters you write about, you're skating on thin ice, and opening yourself to libel. You're also dragging your client into liability for big (multi-million dollar) damages. If they sue you, all the facts will come out.
I expect that Intel will decide that they don't want to be associated with Wayan any more.
I work for a major engineering company. My views do not necessarily represent the views of my employer, and I wish it to remain this way.
So, if I personally felt that my employer's project was superior to a competitor's, should I be forced to disclose my employer? What if I felt my employer was following the wrong marketing strategy? Should I disclose then?
The problem, as I see it, is if I disclose my employer, people will associate my opinions with my employer. Or worse, if I am critical of some new technology, will assume that my employer is also critical of said technology. Either situation can damage the reputation and possibly the business prospects of my employer. In light of such, if people knew who employed me, I would be less likely to state my opinion, for fear of the negative repercussions.
Unfortunately, all too many people are willing to discredit others based on their affiliations and associations rather than the strength or weaknesses of their arguments. The problem, as I see it, is that everyone seems to want an unbiased source, rather than dealing with the fact that this is almost impossible in the real world, and rather than evaluating the bias of the debater, we should be debating the merit of his arguments. Sadly, because so many are concerned with the authority and credentials of the presenter, those of us who actually have authority on technical issues are loathe to discuss them in public. I would rather have my arguments evaluated in light of their strengths and weaknesses than whom has chosen to employ me.
And for this reason, I chose not to divulge my employer. I want my arguments evaluated on their merits, without respect for my authority in the field. Too many people have adopted the practice of taking a position in a debate based not upon the merits of the arguments, but rather, the authority of the presenter. I expect people to think; I'm not here to make up your mind for you.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Jeesh, go visit right now. The lead article's titled "10,000 Give One Get One XO Laptops Going to OLPC Mongolia". Hardly the stuff of astroturfing.
You really want _negative_? Go visit their forums (same site) and read the posts from the hundreds of "Give One Get One" donors who've been out $423.95 for over two months now and still have no XO laptops to show for it, due to OLPC's incompetency and inability to manage the program. _That's_ negative stuff.
Full disclosure: I'm one of those unfortunate donors.
for a while now. Does anyone realize the linked article is A YEAR OLD? It was written Jan 2, 2007. Subsequently, you can see a little back and forth with the accused (Wayan Vota) in the comments section through Jan 4, 2007. Then no one comments on the damn thing for *AN ENTIRE YEAR*. Then someone makes a comment on Jan 4, 2008, and the accusations fly again. Jan 12, 2008? Slashdot picks it up as if it's news. Problem is, Wayan quit Geekcorps a long time ago, so the article is no longer valid except that at one point in the past, there was an undisclosed conflict interest that no longer exists. At its height, you could say this was a bit shady and Wayan has most certainly continued to be an open critic of OLPC, but come on now, can we at least check the year before posting out-of-date crap like this in the future?
I haven't read olpcnews.com often but I thought it was VERY well written. It took me over 15 minutes to get a nagging feeling that something was very wrong with what I read (and I hadn't heard of the site before, I found it while googling for OLPC; olpcnews.com sounded more appropriate than "laptop.org"). I think it is quite difficult to impart on your readership the feeling that a project is well-meaning but delusional ("trust me, I've worked in the third world" - ffs).
What annoys me personally is to find this anti-OLPC criticism site BEFORE finding the project website; it really doesn't bother me too much that this Wayan person tries to wipe the floor with the OLPC project; in case it's fair criticism it can be used to improve and strengthen the project, and else, well everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
But I think it's really bad that he chose to deck out the website in OLPC-XO green and white and doesn't have a clear disclaimer saying he's working for a direct competitor, because it may confuse some of the readers (say, oh, ministers of education) that this is a more or less independent source of information.
BTW if you made an anti-Microsoft site microsoftnews.com, using Microsoft's logos and colour schemes, run by a RedHat employee, I think you'd get sued by Microsoft for trademark infringement (Mike Rowe Soft, anyone?). But maybe I've seen too many American lawyer drama's.
P.S. it seems microsoftnews.com is still available, I just checked to see if it was a RedHat-run covert operation ;-)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I also took money from Intel in 2004: they paid my salary for the entire year. Then, when my division was closed, I joined with Nicholas Negroponte to start OLPC. Calling Wayan an Intel employee is like calling me one.
OLPCnews is a great forum for commentary on the OLPC project, they are sometimes critical of OLPC, and like all of us sometimes get things wrong, but they are mostly amazed by and very supportive of OLPC. OLPCnews is certainly helping build the OLPC community that has expanded as a result of OLPC's "Give One, Get One" program.
I think Wayan is doing a terrific job.
- Mary Lou Jepsen
(former Chief Technology Officer of OLPC)
The Eee is by Asus, not Intel. I guess you mean the Classmate.
In either case, the PC is not exactly the best one to run Engineering/Math or even a compiler on. The Eee is intended for browsing, light word-processing, etc. The Classmate is intended for use by grade school kids.
I am a frequent reader of the OLPC News site and it seems to me that Wayan Vota loves the OLPC project, loves the XO hardware, and is NOT some Intel-funded slimeball whose purpose is to disparage the OLPC project. What is Wayan's biggest disagreement with Mr. Negroponte? He thinks that kids need more help to learn how to use their laptops than is envisoned by Mr. Negroponte. So do I! My first thought upon running the XO software was, "Where's the freakin' F1 key or the question-mark help icon?" Do I need to trawl the OLPC Wiki for the most basic details about how the software works? Guess so. Anyway, this has to the be the most unfair sliming that I have ever seen in the five plus years that I have been reading Slashdot articles. It's especially got to hurt coming on his wedding day.
I write of OLPC News. I am not Wayan Vota, but have known him form some months now as we exchange constant emails about subjects. This is a case of real bad reporting on slashdot.
1- Wayan Vota is NOT an 'Intel Employee'. Ok, in some point his company did business with intel, but to call him a paid blogger by intel is a long conspiracy stride by an uninformed net echochamber. He is getting married today, and I think this is not the wedding gift he was expecting.
2 - OLPCnews is not "anti-olpc" or "pro-intel". You have clearly never read o line of that blog. Some headlines:
3 - there is no number 3. Unfortunatley, althought I write for the blog in question my low"Classmate PC: Intel's Two Hour-Long Joke"
"Intel Can't Take the (Low) Heat & Power of OLPC XO"
"Halloween Horror Story: Nigeria Buys Windows XP Classmates"
I challenge anyone to find a post truly complimenting Intel for it's classmate. There are posts criticizing OLPC, but mainly criticizing some negroponte's statements, some of the foundations failures or something that was left unaswered, after all we are an independent news source. But never a post was written against the fundamental idea of one laptop per child and most posts on the XO are clearly praising it.
Alexandre van de sande
blog.wanderingabout.com