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?

Comments

Re:Graphics @ mah.se

[DarkVein]

I'll not dwell too long on this; Your analogy to Esperanto is flawed. Mozilla speak's the Queen's HTML/CSS/DOM/etc, while IE speaks a slang popularlized by MTV & friends. Those who understand the slang might not understand all your fancy words or be confused when you respond positively to a double negative, but you're speaking pure English.

I see you don't claim to be a web designer. A casual speaker of English wouldn't care at the misuse of a semicolon. A professional writer wishing to write to a casual audience might curse that he can't convey the exact meaning a semicolon would bring, because the causal audience wouldn't pick up on it. So he curses and writes longer sentences that everyone will grasp.

Web designers writing for the causal, apathetic, audience have to write so that IE understands. IE is the 7th-grade English level that novels need to be written for. IE doesn't understand what a comma splice is, but it understands "UR K-KOOL DUDE", even though "UR" should be "U R".

I see many pages that IE renders blatantly wrongly, but then, like most web designers, I've usually written those pages: The next 75% of my job is getting IE to display it the way my other 7-10 browsers do. Successful web designs are done this way because it is impossible to start with an IE-specific design and go to a design everyone can use.

Your last paragraph is curious. The standards are set, and people build implimentations off those standards. Because I impliment the standard in a sub-par way, but I market well, should the quality of the standard be lowered and invalidate the work of dozens of higher quality projects?

It has been a long time since I saw a web site Mozilla does not render properly, by the way. css/edge is one I usually point out when arguing for standards acceptance. These designs are beautiful and elegant, but fail in IE and old versions of Opera. These are simple things. This copy of the OGF's SRD demonstrates one of the simpler things IE just can't grasp.

Anyhow, I understand your run-with-mob perspective, but I don't believe it can apply rationally in this case. It's a quick step to communication lockdown if we allow our method of communication to be controlled entirely by a single corporate entity, whoever the hell they are.