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Are Colleges Helping to Maintain the Microsoft Monopoly?
lexus99 asks: "Recently, while attending college and wanting to take tests in order to avoid taking basic computer courses, I have signed up for a few SAM (Skills Assessment Manager) tests. What really surprised me is that these tests are entirely based upon Microsoft products (Windows XP and Office XP). Note that this course is -required- before taking any any of the more advanced courses. Is this not a clear cut case of U.S. Colleges forcing its students to exclusively use Microsoft's software? Does Microsoft pay for this 'privledge', or do the schools get some type of M$ discounts? I don't believe that I will have any problem passing these tests, as I frequently use M$ software in my workplace, but I cannot help but feel insulted that I have to take them in order to take more advanced UNIX courses." This issue is a lot more complex than it sounds. Many colleges fall into Microsoft's software because they do get decent volume discounts and Microsoft provides them with decent service, so why change what works? However, with the new licensing schemes that Microsoft is beginning to push, maybe we'll see some change in this area in the near future. Have any of you seen evidence of Microsoft worming it's way into your college courses?
You pay for what you get.
In my 400 level 'intro to graphics' the professor REQUIRED that we use MS Products for developement.
Several weeks later after ~50% of the class wouldn't be quiet about it, he said he'd allow any language, but no others were supported by the TA.
The following semester he continued to allow any tools/language, but only 'supported' M$.
This is not a troll ... I use Linux/FreeBSD exclusively; don't even own a Windoze box ... BUT ;), but this is the real world. (Unfortunately, IMHO), windows is what is "out there", predominantly. While I am excited by the growth in Linux's market share, and anticipate the day MS is no longer an effective monopoly, I am realistic; One needs a minimal level of proficiency in MS Products to succeed. At work, we are a GNU Linux/FreeBSD shop; all servers, all development,EXCEPT for the workstations in Sales, which are Win2000 ... So, even though I am a "Unix Guy", I still have to deal with Windows, which is the case in, I suspect, virtually any job (hell, even if you are a web developer in a strictly Unix Server environment, you STILL should test on Windows browsers!!)
... What exactly is your problem here? do you think you should be graduated ignorant of the OS with the *vastly* greater market share? What would *that* say about your school?
1) requiring students to have a proficiency in MS Products in no way "forcing its students to exclusively use Microsoft's software?" The problem here is your [mis]use of the word "exclusively".
2) I am as pro OSS as anyone (except perhaps RMS
So
I go to University of Texas at Arlington, and we have similar requirements here called Computer User Profeciency. Everyone is required to take it and demonstrate basic skills in Word processing and spreadsheets (also internet and e-mail). The tests occur on MS products, simply because that's what 90% of the world uses. However, they keep the tests as general as possible, and anyone who uses KOffice, the Gnome suite, or Open Office can do fine.
My CS 171 course is taught using solely VC++. In fact alot of students noticed when I brought in a non-Windows lappy into our lab (our classroom is several long tables with Thinkpads with NT4 on them) -- they look at me differently because I get all my work done with vim in a console. I am by no means even a power *NIX user, and it concerns me that I get the feeling that they think I'm doing something they couldn't do.
At UTD where I currently am attending, and the same with all UT system schools (including, but not limited to Tyler, El Paso, Austin, etc.) its $6 a copy for Win98SE, Win2k or WinXP Pro.
$6
I know this is not the popular opinion here, but for $6, I can have me a Legal copy of any of the preceeding OSes. I hate to say it, because I think that Micro$oft (ooo.. look at me, I'm cool becuase I used $ in stead of an 's.' I'm a clever boy) has too much sway and control over computing these days, but this is simply good business. Continuing to keep people using your products is not a sign of a monopoly, its a sign of a competitive business. All smart companies that desire to remain companies will do this.
I went out and got all three and then some other MS software because its dirt cheap, it does what I want and its what the world uses. Eventually, I will have a server running, using Linux, but not for my desktop.
But then again, I'm probably just a troll sell out or something. I can kiss my kharma good bye for this one can't because I have original ideas can't I?
I believe the root of this question lays in a general education requirements that a number of colleges/universities.
Lets say a university wants to employ a basic computing skills class for the general education requirements. So, you make a CS101 class. But, how do you create a lesson plan for this class? How do you teach word processing on a computer that's inexpensive from installation to support? Not to mention having the attempt for the class material to be applicable in the lives of the student.
As much as I would like to see a more competitive/open environment, the open source products of word processing and operating systems in general are not at that level yet, and certainly not in the past 10+ years. The only real player has been Microsoft with Corel/WordPerfect in a very distant 2nd.
At this point in time it makes economical and educational sense to go with MS products. However, this could change if a number of things happen, which I personally would like to see.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
" I get all my work done with vim in a console. I am by no means even a power *NIX user, and it concerns me that I get the feeling that they think I'm doing something they couldn't do."
(I'm quoting a post but not replying to it, because this is on a different topic, but Im quoting for relevance)
It's sad to see them teach students how to use a product, instead of how to use the language.
I think they should spend the first month on enviroments, 2 weeks to learn vc++, a few days on pico, a week and some change on vi(only the basic movement/insertion/deletion, stuff vimtutor would show), and the rest on all the fun gcc options. Then the students would be able to code in most standard enviroments, and the rest of the time should be spent teaching the kids the actual language. The teacher shouldnt even care what editor you use, as long as you turn in working code.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I recently signed up for a bunch of smaller classes at a newer and smaller Swedish college. They are 100% M$ and only give "support" for "WS_FTP" and such things.
The labs are all equipped with WIN-DOS, with a rare exception for the film editing classes, where classy Mac computers are used (and the executives also use TiBooks on WiFi).
The teacher (not a professor) in the graphics class is praising his M$ certification, but I wish he could get a more relevant Adobe certification instead. He doesn't even use Adobe, but has opted for Corel instead. In the real world, where I have been for a while before returning to school, the combination WIN-DOS + Corel PhotoPaint does not exist. The labs don't have Photoshop or Illustrator, so it's gotta be a money issue.
The web classes have a similar approach. They teach outdated 1996ish table-based and pixel-based HTML for Exploiter and Netscape 4.x, and don't give a fuck about standards and more legitimate web techniques. The WIN-DOS labs have Internet Exploiter 5 and Netscape Communicator 4.79. Mozilla is not known, and they really don't care about the Mozilla-based Netscape 7.
Now, at larger and more traditional educational institutions, Sun boxen and Macs are used to a much higher degree. When the web was born circa 1993, the sysadmins at a technical educational facility quickly installed NCSA Mosaic and set up a web server. This is more in line what I would expect from educational institutions, being ahead and being more advanced than what they require at a small company office...
Fortunately, they still do have a more Unix and Mac oriented view at those larger and traditional facilities, but I fear that they too will be swamped into the black M$ hole one of these days.
frawaradaR anahaha islaginaR!
At UT Austin, the Computer Science department seems fairly ingrained into Linux.
The Business School, however, uses Microsoft products. They won't buy any of "powerpoint/word/excel is proprietary" arguments -- they'll just smile and tell you that they are the standards.
"...but feel insulted that I have to take them in order to take more advanced UNIX courses."
Bah ha ha! So you see, Unix truly is better than Windows. They save the best for last. Windows is like the crappy job you take and keep for a reference before going onto the really good one.
On a side note, my university gave out copies of WinXP for free to computer science/computer engineering majors. Microsoft PAID groupd of students who headed a group called MSUG (MicroSoft Users Group) to brainwash people into being Microsoft junkies. They got an assist by handing out free copies of Win2K, Office, Visual Studio, etc. Digital crack.
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
At a certain College located in McKeesport, PA that I attend, I just a few weeks ago, for the first time Ever, decided to go into and look at the "New" lab. One of the first thing I noticed upon entering was a big old black banner in the back, "Where do you want to go today?".......
The network is exclusivly Windows, nothing else, anywhere. But the courses themselves are not MS specific except one that will reqire me to show the ability to make a web page, and we are only allowed to use FrontPage, but then again, the same class forces us to use Eudora for our college email account. My CS Course for this semester requires us to use not VC++, but Borland Turbo C++ for windows 4.5 (I think).
And then there was the software contract. Up untill about the end of August, you could get any piece of MS software free, and now, it's not free anymore, but we still fly their banner in the most high tech newest lab in the place....
(Score:0, Interesting)
Universities have been promoting Unix for many years and prior to Linux were probably the single most important factor keeping it alive.
Just as Unix and its derivatives have played a prominent role in industry on the server, MS OS's obviously have played a prominent role on the desktop. If a university wants to prepare students for the real world, it needs to include all the most important OS's, languages, etc. Instructors should point out the strengths and weaknesses of each and let the students draw their own conclusions.
Your school, if it is in the United States, probably has a "recommended system" that it is suggested you purchase. The college I attended required incoming students to purchase a computer since 1991. Usually included in this package is Microsoft Word. The simple fact of the matter is that the school can only afford to support one platform, and if you must choose one word processor for 10,000 users, why not choose the one most frequently chosen by people choosing systems for 10,000 users? These days there are really not many viable alternatives to MS Word and Office. If you have some philosophical problem with the school's behavior then why did you choose that school?
.doc or even .txt form. Everything should be in PDF, like it was at my school.
Regardless, I don't think schools should offer documents in
Are you kidding? No comment that links to anything on stileproject.com should ever be moderated up. Comments like that one should be moderated down quickly and quietly before anybody notices that they're there.
cost of office xp pro at the bookstore $6
think m$ wants me to tell future clientel thats m$ is the way to go?
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
The university is prepering your for your future. 95% of the computers run Windows. Do you see the connection here? If you can't handle computers, you are screwed. And computers are Windows, for most of the people.
Do you think you are going to be a better adult because you use Linux? Nope, you are going to ve alienated, outside of the real world.
University doesn't tell you how to drive your life, but it teachs you how to handle it in the best way that it is possible.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
People really do need to be able to work with Windows. Sure, unices may be better operating systems at the technical level and it's endearing that you're rooting for the underdog, but Windows is what is out there. When Unix is running on a significant percentage of home computers and a larger percentage of office machines, universities will be teaching that. They're teaching what's useful, it has nothing to do with Microsoft playing Big Brother.
The only computer science classes you're going to get on Windows at Carnegie Mellon University is if you're a non-CS major taking intro CS classes. These are done using Metrowerks' suite (as opposed to MS's).
Everything else is done on Linux or Solaris. I'm taking a *video games* course that is taught on Linux.
Couldn't be a better place if you like doing your work in a UNIX environment.
Students are told in their third CS course that while they can turn in proofs written in Microsoft Equation Editor, that it will be harder, and that they are strongly recommended to learn LaTeX.
I still remember a philosophy professor that handed out an assignment in Word format.
I thought about complaining, but thought that it wasn't worth it, so I just printed it out at one of the clusters that have Windows installed.
The next day, in class, the professor said "due to overwhelming demand, future assignments will be given in PDF format..."
There's no reliance within the university on Microsoft file formats, and serious animosity to moving to anything that's available only from Microsoft.
If you want a good CS curriculum that isn't a bunch of regurgitated "how to design foo in Visual Studio", and you like UNIX...you're likely to like CMU.
May we never see th
This has more to do with the fact that most colleges are little more than off-the-job training centers for big business. Major corporations long ago standardized on M$ desktops, so colleges followed suit. When businesses start using Linux, as many have, colleges will be right behind them, grovelling for handouts.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
That's ludicrous.
for $6, I can have me a Legal copy of any of the preceeding OSes...is not a sign of a monopoly, its a sign of a competitive business
This is called predatory pricing (unless you really think that total costs in producing and shipping that product to you were under $6) is is not only illegal but one of the top warning signs for a monopoly.
May we never see th
I have to agree.
GCC is a much better tool than Visual Studio for most people.
You could drop $100-$2000 on your development system for a product that's limited to few languages, doesn't support C anymore, and can't run anywhere but Windows, and has a UI that keeps changing, rendering old skills obsolete.
You could also get a software package that's freely downloadable, supports lots of languages (and keeps getting more), and runs on just about every software package known to mankind.
The choice seems pretty straightforward to me.
May we never see th
Thanks to Balmer and our good Linux-friendly friend news.com, we have more wonderful Microsoft quotes.
.Net is obviously XML): Well, the benefit of .Net is XML...We take the XML connection and we extended it across both client and server -- while other guys are only server-focused. It's about connecting people to people, people to information, businesses to businesses, businesses to information, and so on. That is the benefit....it's a set of code we ship that...people use to help build applications that process XML information....it's getting to be conventional wisdom that the future of IT is around XML. But I'd like conventional wisdom to be that XML brings benefits today, and the best way to participate in the XML revolution -- in terms of user benefits and productivity -- is Visual Studio.Net.
...next major Windows release, called Longhorn. I'm sure we will have some service packs in between.
Balmer Quote 1: The truth is, we probably made (.Net) a little harder to understand than we (should) have.
Balmer Quote 2 (in which Balmer makes it quite plain that he's going to drive home the point that the marketroids prepped him with -- that XML is Good, money should be spent on XML, and
Balmer Quote 3 (in which Balmer shows himself happily living in his own world): A Yankee Group study says 40 percent of corporations surveyed were looking at operating system alternatives such as Linux, in part because of the Microsoft licensing program. But I think they are okay with where they are.
Balmer Quote 4: The Linux [platform] hardly runs any applications, except a bunch of shareware stuff that's not very good.
Balmer Quote 5: There has yet to be any innovation, new features or new capabilities out of the Linux platform. [Me -- so how the hell has *Microsoft* pushed technology forward?] But I don't think anyone should expect anything innovative coming out of that [Linux] world.
Balmer Quote 6: And we are going to have as or more a community as Linux does. [Me -- in your wet dreams, Balmer]
Balmer Quote 7 (in which Balmer discusses the buggy nature of Windows):
May we never see th
I consult for a law firm and this is a big problem. Interns come in straight from undergrad and bitch and cry because they don't have Word. Despite the glaring security holes and lesser functionality for lawyers, they are considering deploying Word on their workstations alongside Wordperfect just to stay compatible with their clients and to pacify these interns.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Well, as they say in my high school, Microsoft has a dominating market share, so that's what the companies will want you to know. It's a good point, for reasons that are still unclear to me. Whenever companies switch to *NIX, that's when they'll start appreciating j00nix knowledge.
What is this?!
You are in college, and you can't spell 'privilege' correctly? Did you pay your way there? What can we do about it!?!?
Good grief. You're lucky they're not making you take a spelling test, too. Good luck testing out of your basic computing skills class!
~GoRK
I just recently graduated from the Comp Sci department at SFU. My impression: The business faculty is very pro-Microsoft. Everything is done using Word, PPT, IE, etc. The problem is that the people making the decisions have gained their skills on MS platforms.
A good chunk (probably about 2/3) of the professors in the Comp Sci department despise MS products and are *nix guys. In other terms, prefer to use *nix on their primary machine. But, and a big but, a lot of stuff that is taught that is platform specific, is taught with respect to MS products. For example, GUI development is taught using MFC.
And that is the problem. When general computing methodolgies/techniques are taught, they apply to *nix platforms without much tinkering. But when you try to apply techniques to MS platforms, there is a poop-load of exceptions that you have to be aware of.
For example:
This how you code in C++, but this is how VC++ implements for-scoping.
These are the techniques to design "good" user interfaces, but this is how you would implement them in Windows.
There is a lot of pressure from industry for students to learn to be efficient on the Windows platform and other "high demand" tools/methodoligies (such as Java/extreme programming/XML/etc). What usually happens is that companies screen based on "buzz words". And there is a lot of pressure from industry to produce graduates that have training in licking the flavour of the month, rather than having solid understanding of Comp Sci principles. They seem to want MCSEs, that can get the particular task done now and do not care about the future; rather than people who understand general principles that will apply for decades to come.
For example, a local Vancouver company [cough]Crystal Decisions[/cough] did not want to hire me for a position because I had not programmed in Java. Despite the fact that I have been writing Object-Oriented C++ code for 5+ years and that I'm currently teaching my sister Java who is taking CS101.
The problem is that CS departments are very heavily influenced by industry. And who is the biggest heavy-weight in industry? (That question was rhetorical).
I got a downmod in some story about five seconds after posting a comment... I couldn't believe it. On the other hand, I think I deserved it... Given that you link to stileproject.com, you probably do, too.
Let's see
1) Use Unix to teach IT courses
2) Use Windows only in passing
3) Graduate
4) Can't get no job cause you have no expirience in using the predominant OS
Our university uses Linux and Unix on the servers and our department (Computer Science) uses Linux on all the desktops. Some some of those PCs run W2k also but as a second alternative only and mostly it's used only because there is some licenced software for it of which the department doesn't want to part with.
Propably this "slight inclination" towards Linux is because Torvalds was a student here at Computer Science/University of Helsinki ;-) and of course, it's quite free. We're using our own modified version of RedHat and what an upgrading it must be even now when it's automated.
Other departments and public computer classes use a hodgepodge of terminals (yes, really), Macs, W3.11 and WinNT machines but luckily I don't have to watch after them ;-)
If one is not able to use these MS products while taking a CS degree, then it is clear that one's choice for what to do in college is obviously wrong...
I've seen this happening
\m/
A really sneaky way to go about solving the problem follows:
E
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
is that the advertisement i saw on this article is for Visual Stuido .Net
Aside from that, only the CIT (computing and information technology, that provides computing for the general public) are Windows. SENS (science and engineering node services) maintains a mix of Solaris (public) and SGI (engineering majors) boxen, and the CS servers run Solaris as well. But I get the impression that I wouldn't like Solaris nearly as much if I hadn't gotten a Linux box to play with back when I still went to the pure-Windows Jamestown Community College.
__CmdrTHAC0__
In Soviet Russia, Spanish Inquisition doesn't expect YOU!!
At Drexel - We have to take a course in UNIX before most advanced courses - such as OOP, Operating System courses, etc. Shell scripting, makefiles, using gcc/g++, vi/emacs, grep, etc. is all covered. They basically only teach the basics of being a UNIX user and writing programs on a UNIX box, but nothing about sysadmining or installing your own Linux box. The CS dept provides a few Sun servers (donated by Sun) for student use.
The course is not explicitly required in order to take advanced courses - meaning it's a not a pre-requisite for any other course, except that not taking it might cause some trouble on the part of the student as many (all?) upper level profs generally require programs to run successfully on the CS dept Sun systems. This avoids the "well it worked on my machine" argument. In addition, the course is required for graduation.
The UNIX course is taught to sophomores. Freshman use Metrowerks CodeWarrior because of academic licensing and that it can run decently on both Macs and Windows. The Dept also realizes that of the 200-250 freshman CS majors each year, only about 100 are still CS as Sophomores. (The rest change to something less demanding or drop out.) So they dont want not-so-serious students using their Sun systems if they're not going to remain CS students, which I think is a good thing in the end.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
It seems that microsoft makes use of the MSDNAA program (http://www.msdnaa.net) to hook into schools. Can't beat a $800 price tage yearly for copies of everything for anyone either in the department, or taking classes.
I'm using Gnome 1.4 for a VLSI Layout class and Win XP for Signal Processing. Here's what I've noticed...
.login files and corrupt desktop settings. XP provides this, Linux doesn't. I believe this will change in a few years...
Gnome:
1) Recently Gnome suddenly started refusing to start up. I needed to log into a Windows machine and blow away "~/.gnome*". Bye bye settings. Figuring that out and then setting everything up again killed a LOT of time. It was infuriating.
2) No decent text editor. gedit stinks. Today, Kate is just now becoming usable. It'll take two more years for today's version to get onto the lab computers.
3) No word processor. AbiWord is only just now becoming usable. OpenOffice is becoming decent too, but holy cow is it big and slow. Again, two years until today's versions are in the labs.
4) Motif apps. Mathematica and Matlab are big, slow (try resizing a window), clunky (careful of the numlock key), and ugly. Mouse wheel doesn't work. They are painful to use.
5) Can't copy and paste pictures. Think I'm kidding? Try writing a paper where you need to save all 45 Matlab plots to disk and manually open them in AbiWord. It takes forever.
XP: I use Matlab and Word and I've never had a single issue. Well, the XP UI is one of the most hideous things I've ever seen, but it seems to work well enough.
I run Linux exclusively at home. At school, though, it is time-consuming and hard to use. Right now, Microsoft deserves to dominate the computer labs. I just need to get my work done ASAP, not fiddle with
..I saw the same thing at my local library, a tax payer ripped off county establishment. They are offering to n00bs "intro to computers" It's an "intro to the microsoft operating system" mislabeled piece of consumer fraud. I bitched about it to no avail. Just the FUD people learn, microsoft=ALL COMPUTERS that gets ingrained into people's minds from the gitgo. I hate it. good luck at your college. Hmm, if this college is tax payer sponsored, even in part, ands is "open" to the public,think about suing them in small claims court for forcing you to use OS that is propietary. Just a thought, I'm contermplating a formal complaint to my public service commissioner at the state level and complaining about this county using all microsoft and not even thinking about anything else. It's MY money in part going to this nonsense, it's just as ridiculous as if the county bought a fleet of yugos as their official vehicles.
The XP UI really bugged me until I discovered that you can change it back to 'Classic' look 'n feel (in 'desktop settings' if I remember correctly). Personally I find the Win95 GUI was the best one MS produced.
Recently Gnome suddenly started refusing to start up. Have you tried Enlightenment? You can install it (like anything else) in your home directory, without root access, by conifurging it with something like --prefix=/home/dozer/enlightenment and adding the executable to your .xinitrc or .xsession file.
Luckily with Linux you have an alternative to using mem-heavy UI's like KDE and GNOME, while still getting the benefits from having their libraries installed. (You can still run programs that require Gnome, without running the Gnome environment).
As a side note, you probably could have used Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server and edit those files on the console rather than using a M$ machine to do it ;)
No decent text editor. gedit stinks.
Download NEdit. You get syntax highlighting, line numbers, and a whole bunch of other nifty stuff without feeling "bloated" while using it. It even comes precompiled for most platforms ;)
Motif apps. Mathematica and Matlab are big, slow ...
The rest of the world agrees. Write a letter to Wolfram. =P
No word processor. ...Can't copy and paste pictures.
Sounds like it's time to take an hour and learn LaTeX. Afterwords, you'll never want to use a word processor or paste pictures again. Additionally, your term papers and reports will be written faster and look more professional. An added benefit comes when you consider that most science journals would require you to submit a paper in LaTeX, so it's better to learn *now* than *later* after you've written your 100+ page thesis in M$ Word and have to transfer all of it.
-=[You cannot consistently judge this statement to be true.]=-
This is not a troll ... I use Linux/FreeBSD exclusively; don't even own a Windoze box
Bullshit.
Everyone in my university received an "invite" to a trailer that M$ are dragging around to plug the wonders of .Net.
The head of dept. wants everyone to use M$ products (specifically Windows and Visual Studio), but pretty much all the good work coming out of my research dept. is done under UNIX of one form or another (usually Linux, but there are some Sun Stations around).
All the computers in shared clusters for undergrads are Windoze machines. Very few are UNIX boxes.
That said, I think universities are vital in educating a workforce in the use of UNIX and specifically open source OSes:
1) Unis often have little money, hence "free" software would be attractive.
2) Historically, most Profs grew up on UNIX.
3) Unis are often the comms centre for the region -- most of that stuff is done on UNIX, so there are UNIX support people around.
4) Unis are usually at the cutting edge of computing, so while Mom and Pop are just getting used to IE6 and the web, Unis are starting to experiment with GRID services, and M$ don't yet have any money to make from Mom and Pop, or most businesses, from such things, so they stick to making simple stuff even simpler for the morons.
I've seen one Uni here in the UK where it was Linux throughout the clusters, and they all ran wonderfully. It was a lovely sight.
If I had my choice, I'd use Max OS X *all* the time -- best of both worlds.
"The noble art of losing face will one day save the human race"---Hans Blix
In our entry level courses, which start with Java, we are presented with free copies of Borland JBuilder (the windows version) but are told we can write our code on anything, so long as it works. I used emacs and the JDK. Problem solved. In the next level course up, we are REQUIRED to use Microsoft Visual C++. Why? Because the professor doesn't want just the code, which is the part that proves we know what we're doing. Instead, it's simply because he's too damned lazy to create a new project with each of our sources - he wants us to include the .dsp, .dsw, etc. files with each assignment. Luckily, he's not up for tenure.
If this trend continues, this may be a problem. Currently I write my C code using emacs and compile it using gcc, then move it to one of the open labs and drop it into VC++. However, this is an annoyance.
I guess slightly off-topic, has anyone ever had any success using VC++ with VirtualPC (for Mac) or Wine (for Linux)? I have access to both, and I'm considering both just to make my life easier.
Prepare to be burninated!
At Georgia Tech Microsoft has recently begun a deal where any student who has taken the third CS class or higher automatically gets free access to a website where he can download two copies of each of the latest Windows OSes and many fully licensed copies of developer software. As far as I know this is free to school and comes with no strings attached. Smart move by Microsoft I say, as this seemed much more attractive and simple than the deals mentioned in some of the above posts.
-Miles Stoudenmire
There are really two important questions here:
The first question seems to about whether colleges are getting people comfortable with Microsoft products, or accomodating them if they are already comfortable. OTOH, the second question is a matter of whether courses specifically teach skills in a Microsoft-centric fashion.
Realistically, I can't speak to a trend, but I can tell you how things are at my school. I attend an engineering college. Obviously, this makes us not big on CS; therefore, we tend to deploy Windows on most of our open labs. It's what most students and professors are comfortable with when they arrive. Therefore, a lot of non-CS students see a lot of Windows. At least at first.
But simultaneously there is an open Linux lab in which anyone can get accounts with non-too-shabby computers. Almost no one but Geophysics uses it, but they require its use for some courses. And all of the nice physics labs for 3rd year and higher physics majors run Redhat. They're set up with Linux because all junior level and above reports must be done in LaTeX.
Everyone is required to take at least one programming course, which normally winds up being Fortran or C/C++ for everyone. Chemical engineers can take VB. C/C++ is taught almost exclusively on IRIX boxes. Only recently have we had a teacher that even required any exposure to visual studio for that class -- or any low-to-mid level CS class.
As far as CS students go, all high-level CS classes tend to either be a Unix-environment or a 'use any environment available on campus'. Most teaching is mathematically and theoretically centered. I can't count how many times teachers have said in lecture that we're being taught important theory and not too much application because we might as well go to a trade school if we just want to learn current applications.
What about non-CS required courses? We're all required to take a lot of general courses, one of which (EPICS) includes required use of Microsoft Project. We're all required to take a year of calculus-based physics whose labs were taught in additional Redhat labs. They're not Windows labs.
Myself, I find this pretty mixed. There are a lot of *nix machines on campus but they're frequently not obvious until you get in a class that requires them or you simply seek them out. We more-or-less force some cross-platform experience on all majors. But if someone wants to be all Microsoft, he can probably get by like that if he doesn't mind taking alternate courses and debating with his counselor. And the same can be done for someone who wants to go all Linux.
My experience is, despite heavy Microsoft pressure, we're a rather OS-balanced school. I can only hope all schools are along the same lines.
Oh, and how do I know we have heavy Microsoft pressure?
Just a hunch.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Windows rules in computers that people see. It does not rule the important systems that are needed to get things done. There companies like Sun (unix), IBM (mainframe, As/400, RS/6000, x86) rule. I've been in many big computer labs, and the only windows machines sit on the admin's desk where someone sits and makes sure the important machines are still running.
It is always a difficult battle convincing people that Windows has not won the battle. Windows won the desktop (but faces compititon from Macs, with KDE and Gnome starting to come on strong). In the backroom Unix is king with various other OSes there too (VMS, OS/390, AS/400 [whatever that is called], along with windows) In embedded systems vxWorks is king, but many have a custom designed OS that does as little as nessicary to get the job done and is not in the way the rest of the time.
There is more than the desktop to comtpuer programing. In fact you could argue that the future of programing is not on the desktop where most products are mature (few people need more than word97...), which isn't to say that there is no need for future development.
1) - So,I take it BeOS's total meltdown (At least partially from failure to sell their premium product, because they coulden't get a toehold against MS) dosen't qualify as competition killed off?
2) - If they're making money at $6/head, then why not offer that pricing more generally, rather than only at school bookstores, and requiring a Student ID on top of that?
3) - IIRC/IANAL, most of the anti-monopoly laws weren't enacted to protect other businesses, but instead to protect the consumers from being abused by the monopolists. My upgrade from Win2.11 to 3.0 was $20 - An upgrade from ME to XP was more like $100. I know that the price of a loaf of bread has only doubled in the same time, so I'm assuming it's not inflation.
Yet for some strange reason, only one of the classes does its tests via SAM at course.com and additionally via a program called ExamView. The class in which SAM and ExamView are required is called "Intro to Microcomputers" (heh, I graduate this semester, I've gone through 4 C/C++ classes and a Java class, I just never took this class 'till now). The VB class I'm taking doesn't require either SAM or ExamView; tests in that class are given in the traditional manner, part written and part "do it on the computer and turn in the floppy."
Are students being indoctrinated into the Microsoft culture? Are students being forced to use Windows for learning, forced to use Windows for programming (all my C classes were done in either Turbo C or MS VC++), forced to use Windows for testing? Yes, absolutely. Does that bother me? Not really; I run Windows and MacOS and FreeBSD and I'm damn sure savvy enough after all this time to know which I prefer. I was more offended at the fact that SAM requires registration. In other words, course.com and God-knows-who it's associated with now knows:
- My full name
- My email address - required as our username
- Which IT-related class(es) I'm taking
- The grades I make on every test for those classes
I don't much mind the fact that the tests are being taken on Windows computers using Windows software. In fact, I prefer the SAM/ExamView tests to written tests; and SAM is actually a pretty nice package. Not only can it ask questions, it can emulate any Windows application, e.g. in my Intro class it emulates Word/Excel/Powerpoint in order to test students on whether or not they can complete the necessary tasks. It truly is a neat application and I can easily see how the college was sold on it.What bothers me is that, in the case of SAM, the exams are taken, scored, and graded on course.com's server... Which means that course.com knows my name and my grades. There was a EULA presented when signing up for a SAM login, but it's not like I had a choice as to whether to accept or reject the license. If I want to pass the class, I have to take the tests via SAM. Which leaves me no other choice but to enter my real information and accept the EULA.
course.com knows what I'm making on my tests, and I have no idea what the fuck they're doing with that knowledge. That, and only that, is what really ticks me off; even if I am acing 'em. My grades should be between me and my college, a third party shouldn't enter into the equation.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I think you'll find that you're agreeing with me.
I was saying that your average Joe open source hobbyist giving away software is not predatory pricing -- he isn't a company. I wasn't saying that Microsoft wasn't using predatory pricing -- as a matter of fact, the point of my first post was that they were, in fact, doing so.
And protecting other businesses is how you protect consumers -- as long as there's competition, you (at least theoretically) force the market to give the consumer the best possible product and price.
May we never see th
apparently ucla's school of engineering and applied science has received a lot of... sponsorhip, from microsoft, through microsoft's msdn academic alliance, which provides hardware and software to schools at no cost.
the school's computing facilities just recently opened a new computer lab, stocked with new-ish hardware and loaded with windows xp. (the four other labs have windows nt, but dual boot into linux. haven't checked whether the new winxp lab includes linux.) furthermore, they offer downloads of visual studio.NET and windows xp at no charge for students.
at least the CS department's upper division course on operating systems is still based on linux. and various unix flavors power most of the campus' central systems.
umm...a lawyer considering giving in to the whines of an undergrad? if so, i'd say the lawyer deserves compromised security and a whap upside the head. oh yeah, right, we're not allowed to do that yet. damn, got to write my MP about that.
FWIW, WordPerfect is dominant in the law field in canada.
united states nuclear device terrorist bioweapon encryption cocaine korea syria iran iraq columbia cuba
The OU in the UK requires MS OSes and Word.
Not only that, but stuff that could be perfectly learned in any environment (Java) has to be developped using tools that run only on MS systems.
Needless to say I have been perfectly able to replace most tools provided by the OU with OS tools and programs (all my assignments are delivered in MS Word format generated in OpenOffice.org).
For an institution that is trying to provide affordable higher education and that goes to considerable efforts to do so it is shameful that they do not even consider OS alternatives for their students.
Oh, this brought back some memories. I got out of UT Austin's Graduate School of Business with an MBA in 1999. At the end of my first year, the school decided that everyone had to have a laptop, and, by the way, it had to be a Dell laptop, and, by the way, it had to use the full "UT approved" MS Office suite. Well, given that half the people already had laptops and the rest had purchased pretty good desktops for grad school, no one was thrilled with a susprise $3k expenditure which duplicated what they had. Incoming students also had to do this and UT waited so long to tell them that they mostly had already done the same thing and had wound up with two computers. When students got upset, they were told to sit down, shut up, and to be thankful that UT was so tolerant of their compaints. Yes, that was really the gist of the response. In the UT MBA program,most people are about 30, have been working for 8+ years, are realtively sharp, have had some management experience, and did not take well to being treated like children. Much hilarity ensued. Eventually, UT backed off somewhat, but the same problems (not too competent support, really strange policies) remained. In the incoming class, you had to use MS products for the homework. Period. As the CTO of the school said (I cannot remember his name -- former HP exec): If you don't like it, find another business school.
OK. Thanks for the warning, guys.
Later in the year, we found out that MS had given UT a lot of money. Quid pro quo? I have no idea, but the timing (the Dell-only/MS-only deal followed the "purge" of all of the Macs in the business school by the same guy) was odd. If you installed Netscape on your own laptop and connected to the network, they had a utility that would uninstall it. And so on. A pain, implemented by people who had no clue but were very much aware that they had you by the balls and that you basically had to cooperate. I didn't care too much -- I was going back to work for the company that I had worked for, it was not cool or sexy or "new economy" (cinder blocks, FYI), but it also meant that this sort of asinine shit that I had heard about from friends at Ford, GM, GE, Westinghouse and so on -- what my wife called "PC people problems" (she runs AS400s) -- was not going to be part of my life. The incredibly brain-dead "corporate IT" stuff. So, I coped until I could get back to UNIX and WordPerfect and DB2.
I think that it is really tragic that academia is seeking enlightenment in the corporate world when the general consensus is that IT in most companies has not markedly helped productivity and is terrifyingly expensive. Of course, a lot of that may be UT Austin -- a lot of stuff at the GSB was like that. While we were watching laptops get rolled out to the first years in August of '98, I actually heard people repeat to one another that "mainframes are dead, UNIX is dead, NT is the future". No shit. And someone was telling them this as gospel. Probably the same people who believed that "push technology" was the future of advertizing (I still have those notes) and that bandwidth trading was the perfect business model for "old economy" companies to emulate (I still have those notes, from a guest speaker from Enron)(yes, really).
If (a big if) I ever approach a graduate program again, I will get this in writing going in. I really, really hated giving up WordPerfect when a)it is a hell of a lot better than Word, b)I had paid for the fucking thing on Linux and it was working fine, c)I was good with it, and d)the content (the stuff that came out of my brain and onto the paper) was supposed to be the main point. Oh, and e)we had to submit the paper ON PAPER as well. I retained myself; I had to. And it was completely pointless -- thank you UT!
Have you considered Octave (http://www.octave.org)?
Its syntax is essentially the same as Matlab's. It only needs more toolboxes...
The singular form of the verb "speak" is "speaks", with no apostrophe. Before you hurl stones at another's glass house of slang, pls chk ur grmr 1st!
It seems then that colleges use "easy" software to "prepare" their students for the "hard" software later in life, then. :P
I attend RIT, and am currently enrolled in their software engineering program. Its a great program, aimed at training individuals for "The program that is the future of Computer Science." However, I do have speculations on both the order in which material is taught and how it is taught in the later years.
In the first 2 years, you learn basic programming skills, such as Java and what-not. During this time, all programming is done on SUN workstations in UNIX; the right way to program.
However, as you progress to the third, fourth, and fifth years, you begin to use nothing but Microsoft software.
So maybe they should do a switch-around type deal so that I am better prepared to go work for SUN when i graduate!
"Trying is the first step towards failure"
-Homer Simpson