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Re: [News] Documents Revealed Which Show WIntel's Sabotage of $100 Laptop Project

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> __/ [ Mark Kent ] on Wednesday 23 May 2007 08:04 \__
> 
>> [H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> Verily I say unto thee, that The Ghost In The Machine spake thusly:
>>>> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> wrote on Tue, 22
>>>> May 2007 06:17:54 +0100 <31bai4-2ov.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>:
>>>>> Verily I say unto thee, that The Ghost In The Machine spake thusly:
>>> 
>>>>> How long would the Classmate® survive? Five minutes? Good luck
>>>>> getting your Classmate serviced in the middle of the jungle.
>>>> 
>>>> Actually, the Classmate looks to be fairly rugged, according to
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/chile/olpc_and_classmate_pc.html
>>>> 
>>>> so I wouldn't worry unnecessarily about that particular subaspect.
>>> 
>>> Useful link, thanks.
>>> 
>>> I watched the video too, where they appeared to throw something at the
>>> Classmate while it was sitting on the floor ... the equivalent of a
>>> "drop test" I suppose, only less revealing. Any standard laptop would
>>> likely endure such treatment. That tells us nothing about how well it
>>> bears up to conditions like sand, dust, moisture, heat, and sticky
>>> little fingers.
>>> 
>>>> Battery life and such, I'm not as sure on.  It's a 256 MB RAM 2 GB
>>>> NANDflash unit, with 900 MHz Celeron M.  Interestingly, the Wikipedia
>>>> entry suggests Intel will be selling them preloaded with Mandriva
>>>> 2007.  They are attempting to sell them to Mexico and Brazil.
>>> 
>>> Well just to prove that my dissent is not specifically with Windows, but
>>> with the Classmate initiative as a whole, I do not support even *Linux*
>>> powered Classmate PCs undermining the OLPC project.
>>> 
>>> Negroponte *depends* on large scale orders to make this initiative work.
>>> By undermining his efforts with direct sales to schools, Intel is
>>> effectively sabotaging the OLPC project, and of course they are well
>>> aware of the fact. They simply don't care. It's all about the money.
>>> 
>>> If you read the article again, you'll notice that although the Classmate
>>> *can* be ordered with Linux, many are opting for Windows instead, since
>>> Microsoft have adopted a predatory pricing policy ($3 IIRC) in order to
>>> sabotage Linux standardisation across school's curricula.
>>> 
>>> The poor countries of South America were eager and willing to migrate to
>>> Linux (something *especially* important in education, since schools
>>> should teach *principles*, not promote commercial products with
>>> taxpayers' money), and the OLPC had a real chance of displacing the
>>> current propriety Intel Educa curriculum with a more agnostic FOSS based
>>> solution (amongst younger schoolchildren).
>>> 
>>> But now, thanks to the sabotaging efforts of Intel and Microsoft, the
>>> OLPC project is in real danger of failure, especially in South American
>>> countries.
>>> 
>>> Like I said, Negroponte is offering a non-profit solution to the global
>>> problem of poverty and poor education, but Intel and Microsoft decided
>>> that this "problem" was actually a business opportunity for them to
>>> exploit the weak and poor for profit. It's one of the most vile and
>>> disgusting acts of the 21st century.
>>> 
>> 
>> If Intel had wanted to get in on this, they could readily have got
>> involved in the manufacture of OLPC machines, which would not have had
>> the effect of undermining the Negroponte effort.  I agree with you here,
>> I think this is a despicable act.
> 
> I am appalled to see some of the press covering this as though it's an
> innocent confrontation between Intel and AMD. They fail to see that there
> is/was a not-for-profit effort, intended to improve society as a whole. Just
> think of all those Microsoft lobbyists like Sonia and Rob, who put
> 'placements' in the media to discresit OLPC. How can they sleep at night or
> look at the mirror. Bear in mind that the company/ies they lobbied for
> is/are now trying to defeat 'fire' with 'fire' (ClassMate).
> 

I think that some people just don't worry about such things.  I don't
know how they manage to cope - I would find it far too stressful to have
to lie on a continuous basis, but you only have to look at our regular
Microsoft trolls here to see that for many people, it's just not a
problem.

-- 
| Mark Kent   --   mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk          |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |

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