It's the people getting paid part that prevents it from really being a charity. If you're running a business that pays your rent and feeds your kids, there's a good chance you'll prioritize your continuing paycheck over the values of the charity. It's a conflict of interest that I suspect most people wouldn't overcome. That sort of conflict of interest is specifically why the Bill and Meldina Gates Foundation stipulates that operations cease within 50 years of their death -- to prevent the "charity" from becoming a business in and of itself. There is that risk, but I wouldn't say it prevents it from really being a charity, and it certainly was a charity when it was started by the people who believed in their cause (unless you believe this whole thing is a scam of them to make them some money) Furthermore, the Gates foundation is of course quite different in that it is sitting on a *huge* pile of cash and it's only job is to give it away which make the organization a lot more prone to this problem.
It's only "unethical" of them if you presume to know their intent. It's not clear to me why you think Intel has an interest in gaining "marketshare" in a market where people don't have electricity and can't afford their products. At best they'd be buying future mindshare, but if they're giving away laptops under cost to people in places that won't be productive markets for Intel for at least a decade it seems a stretch at best to say they're doing it to make money or gain marketshare.
well, the people or children can't afford them, but the governments can, I heard that Libya will spend 250 million on laptops, so there is a big new market, and if there's a market, a company will try to get a piece of it. Especially if their number one competitor (AMD) is taking it all...
Couldn't their motives at least as easily be to produce a product closer to the marketspace they already compete in, for places that are poor but not totally undeveloped -- a market where the OLPC offering is less attractive -- and that they're comparing themselves to the OLPC to take advantage of the marketing that similar program has produced? that *could* be their motive, but they have already specifically targeted governments who are about to close deals with OLPC to sway them to the classmate, so they are after the OLPC market without a doubt. Intel doesn't even deny this, but it just says it wants to bring their technology to the children....
Again, I understand Intel's motives and I'm even willing to accept they don't have a choice here, but I just don't like it:)
How does competing "AGAINST a charity" hurt that charity? Are you suggesting that there can be only one charity in any given field, and that any field with competing charities is necessarily worse off? The problem is a non-charity (Intel) competing with a charity, where Intel obviously has an unfair advantage and a different goal. Intel wants money and marketshare, once it has that it's probably not interested in the charity part anymore if it ever was.
Not to mention that any "charity" that has any non-volunteer staff isn't really a charity -- they may do charitable work, but they've in business just like anyone else. utter nonsense, a charity is simply an institution set up to provide help to the needy, it doesn't mean that the people working at the organization don't get paid.
I know people don't always pick the product best suited for their needs, but I don't see how offering two choices for computing platforms hurts anyone. The OLPC needs a critical mass of several million laptops sold, otherwise it will be too expensive to produce it and the project will die a slow death. Intel knows this and is using it's money to sell their classmate at below cost. It's not illegal for them to do so, and you might expect it from any business, but it's certainly unethical of them.
If their laptop really is worse, then they won't sell many, and the OLPC program will be largely unaffected. And there may well be situations where Intel's laptop is better than the OLPC offering, even if you don't immediately foresee them -- it's hard for me to believe that the OLPC machine is the only one that could be useful for people who currently don't have a computer. I agree the Intel may indeed be useful for other markets, and there may be place for two or more of these laptops, but I think (and hope) the OLPC certainly has an advantage for the very undeveloped parts of the world. Especially with regards to the developed software, the better battery life, and the writing tablet ability.
So if humans want to survive things like this in the future we should go back to living deep in caves I think most slashdotters are already aware of this danger, living in the safety of their parents basement;)
hmm, I wish I had modpoints, can't believe the stupid responses here, saying Negroponte is doing it all for the glory, they should work together, it's just fair competition, bla, bla, bla
Cant say Intel's action really surprises me, I just hope they get some really bad press for all this and that they fail miserably...
Things like this *really* make me lose faith in humanity, I guess the Intel and MS bigwigs even tell themselves that it's better for the poor children, seriously, how *do* these people sleep at night?
Oh, and I also want one! these things look pretty sweet and if I buy one, another one will go to a poor child, so I know *I* will be able to sleep at night.
The appointing, management, and retention of US Attorneys is ENTIRELY political, from start to finish. When Clinton fired ALL of them, it was for political reasons, too... not because he suddenly found that they all sucked at their jobs. Political appointees are just that. These aren't career employees at some agency - they are people hired to expressly conduct their activities in keeping with the priorities and thinking of the person who appointed them, and the serve at that person's whim. I think the real story here is that the Attorneys (at least Iglesias) were told to prosecute people in order to influence the voting in 2004 and more recently in 2006 (Heather Wilson running for congress). When he refused he was fired. The firing itself is understandable, but the other facts are clearly illegal.
There's more stuff in the article (about caging), maybe you should read it....
stupid question, I know, but did you even read the article?
In this case the alleged crime is that they were fired because they didn't want to help republicans winning votes and the cover up here is the 'lost' 500 emails.
from the fine article:
In the 2004 presidential election, Republican operatives blocked a quarter-million new voters nationwide from voting on grounds they brought the wrong IDs to the poles. To justify this massive blockade, Republican officials wanted Iglesias to arrest some voters to create a high publicity show trial. Iglesias went along with the game. Just before the 2004 election, he held a press conference announcing the creation of a vote fraud task force. But the prosecutor drew the line at arresting innocent voters. Iglesias decided that the evidence that the Republicans had given them was junk and decided not to prosecute and this, along with another case he refused, cost him his job.
The corruption in America is getting worse and worse and the American people aren't even aware because the media they watch is owned by companies that support the government... it's like censorship, really
how about this one then, from the same article;)
"It feels very good. It feels all right. It was very tight," he said ah, selective quoting, it's so much fun...
I can't seem to get it working with full version on Firefox 2.0 although they say 1.5 is supported so I'd expect it to work for 2.0, it has been out for ages now... it's even included in Debian stable;)
if you look at the numbers of 2006 and 2005 you'll see that he sells a lot of his MS stock all the time, so nothing suspicious about him doing it in februari as well...
I remember seeing a powerpoint lecture given by one of the researchers there, who calculated that to make the Z machine feasible for providing fusion power, they would need to fire one of these off every 0.1 second, so once every 10 seconds is not even close.
hmm, so how about using a 100 of these in series? (or less, they can probably still improve it)
Right now there are 1000s of Wii consoles up on Ebay. So I feel some of the demand is a bit artificial due to people trying to make a quick buck. If people are able to make money selling Wii's on EBay then I'd say demand is still very high....
they are the *last* people who should be telling *anyone* how to run their business. no, they are telling them how *not* to run their business, i.e. how to stop breaking the E.U. antitrust laws.
But I guess for an American it's much easier to think of it as poor poor MS, struggling with all those nasty European laws just designed to make things difficult for non-European companies, right?
please, it's not FUD (FUD is a marketing strategy) and he's just pointing out that the IA-64 architecture didn't sell so well, of course you shouldn't take the 29 seriously....
thick as a brick...
Jobs works Steve up to orgasm by describing the hardware of the next Mac. you mean Steve Jobs was masturbating to his own next-gen Mac hardware? having seen his presentation of the iphone this sounds quite believable:)
one of those 'it's funny because it's true' sketches I suppose...
They traded stock for YouTube, they paid cash for DoubleClick. DoubleClick also asked for the money to be transferred in black satchel bags, using unmarked, 100 dollar bills.
Slashdot Mirror
well, the people or children can't afford them, but the governments can, I heard that Libya will spend 250 million on laptops, so there is a big new market, and if there's a market, a company will try to get a piece of it. Especially if their number one competitor (AMD) is taking it all... Couldn't their motives at least as easily be to produce a product closer to the marketspace they already compete in, for places that are poor but not totally undeveloped -- a market where the OLPC offering is less attractive -- and that they're comparing themselves to the OLPC to take advantage of the marketing that similar program has produced? that *could* be their motive, but they have already specifically targeted governments who are about to close deals with OLPC to sway them to the classmate, so they are after the OLPC market without a doubt. Intel doesn't even deny this, but it just says it wants to bring their technology to the children....
Again, I understand Intel's motives and I'm even willing to accept they don't have a choice here, but I just don't like it
utter nonsense, a charity is simply an institution set up to provide help to the needy, it doesn't mean that the people working at the organization don't get paid. I know people don't always pick the product best suited for their needs, but I don't see how offering two choices for computing platforms hurts anyone. The OLPC needs a critical mass of several million laptops sold, otherwise it will be too expensive to produce it and the project will die a slow death. Intel knows this and is using it's money to sell their classmate at below cost. It's not illegal for them to do so, and you might expect it from any business, but it's certainly unethical of them. If their laptop really is worse, then they won't sell many, and the OLPC program will be largely unaffected. And there may well be situations where Intel's laptop is better than the OLPC offering, even if you don't immediately foresee them -- it's hard for me to believe that the OLPC machine is the only one that could be useful for people who currently don't have a computer. I agree the Intel may indeed be useful for other markets, and there may be place for two or more of these laptops, but I think (and hope) the OLPC certainly has an advantage for the very undeveloped parts of the world. Especially with regards to the developed software, the better battery life, and the writing tablet ability.
(note that this is only available on the American version of XP)
I guess the first words those women hear will be: 'please be gentle'
Teh community will be saved!!!
hmm, I wish I had modpoints, can't believe the stupid responses here, saying Negroponte is doing it all for the glory, they should work together, it's just fair competition, bla, bla, bla
Cant say Intel's action really surprises me, I just hope they get some really bad press for all this and that they fail miserably...
Things like this *really* make me lose faith in humanity, I guess the Intel and MS bigwigs even tell themselves that it's better for the poor children, seriously, how *do* these people sleep at night?
Oh, and I also want one! these things look pretty sweet and if I buy one, another one will go to a poor child, so I know *I* will be able to sleep at night.
There's more stuff in the article (about caging), maybe you should read it....
In this case the alleged crime is that they were fired because they didn't want to help republicans winning votes and the cover up here is the 'lost' 500 emails.
from the fine article: In the 2004 presidential election, Republican operatives blocked a quarter-million new voters nationwide from voting on grounds they brought the wrong IDs to the poles. To justify this massive blockade, Republican officials wanted Iglesias to arrest some voters to create a high publicity show trial. Iglesias went along with the game. Just before the 2004 election, he held a press conference announcing the creation of a vote fraud task force. But the prosecutor drew the line at arresting innocent voters. Iglesias decided that the evidence that the Republicans had given them was junk and decided not to prosecute and this, along with another case he refused, cost him his job.
The corruption in America is getting worse and worse and the American people aren't even aware because the media they watch is owned by companies that support the government... it's like censorship, really
I remember Tom Cruise being 'shot' with a waterpistol and people being amazed that he didn't become angry.
I guess he also took the course...
I can't seem to get it working with full version on Firefox 2.0 although they say 1.5 is supported so I'd expect it to work for 2.0, it has been out for ages now... it's even included in Debian stable ;)
sorry, but the moderators have decided: you lose!
hmm, I don't get it...
if this guy is related to the famous journalist Zak McCracken?
if you look at the numbers of 2006 and 2005 you'll see that he sells a lot of his MS stock all the time, so nothing suspicious about him doing it in februari as well...
hmm, so how about using a 100 of these in series? (or less, they can probably still improve it)
But I guess for an American it's much easier to think of it as poor poor MS, struggling with all those nasty European laws just designed to make things difficult for non-European companies, right?
please, it's not FUD (FUD is a marketing strategy) and he's just pointing out that the IA-64 architecture didn't sell so well, of course you shouldn't take the 29 seriously.... thick as a brick...
maybe they didn't count the OEM sales?
(no I did not RTFA)
one of those 'it's funny because it's true' sketches I suppose...