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Big Company on Campus
Daniel Dvorkin writes "MSNBC (oh, the irony) is running a scary article entitled Microsoft's big role on campus, detailing how Microsoft is working its way into academic computer science through a combination of bribery and propaganda. The aricle may be overstating the case, but it does make it sound as though MS products are displacing others at a disturbing rate in computer science departments. Given that academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software, this is a disturbing long-term trend."
When I was at UT Austin (89 - 93), it was all Macs. The computer lab in the FAC had forty macs to four PC's. I would wager there were more Unix boxen in Taylor, etc. than PC's in the labs.
Apple has targeted the education market for literally decades (IIe, the LC520, etc. etc.) What makes this news?
I was able to get Windows XP pro, .net 2003 (the week it was released), and 3 microsoft publishing books on .net and C#, all for free through a MS rep at my grad school (CS). Pretty sweet.
Our school is very cool in that it uses all Linux and OSS software. I think they save something like 2 billion dollars a year. Pretty awesome
In Canada at my university (University of Waterloo, Canada's MIT for those ignorant), Microsoft generously offered to buy the University 4 new computer labs for SE and CS students. Only for a small price, the curriculem must teach C# and the new .NET framework. Thankfully the university did not sell their soul to the devil.
DeVry University is going to begin teaching the intro programming classes using a UNIX-based (Linux more likely) system, instead of using Microsoft's Visual Studio as it is right now. At least that's the inside scoop I've heard from one of my professor's there recently.
/. elitists all think DeVry is a shitty school, but if this rumor is true, it just points to the fact that even a private university desperate for funds at every turn doesn't seem to think that being a Microsoft-centric university is necessarily a Good Thing these days. Perhaps industry is demanding a bit more of graduates than simply knowing how to program in Visual Basic these days???
And yes, I realize most of you
I went to UW Madison where Sun made a massive donation to the CS department (ultra 60s...flat panel displays. Was a wonderful sight). I guess what I am saying is that it goes both ways. Macs were known for selling to k-12 (although it didn't really work for them for whatever reason).
The truth of it is, a lot of development in the real world is done on MS Windows, you may as well teach people how to program correctly in it.
this is the potential future of computer science in the United States
My aren't WE large headed!! This does not just happen across the pond there, it happens in Europe too. In fact, MS has offered academic institution(s) here in Ireland _really_ cheap setups in the past, and there were 2 reasons.
o To lock them in (obviously)
o To test out NT in a large network enviornment
And boy was NT tested (some of the curses thrown at it were impressive. It caused an awful lot of hassle, never mind that the default setup allowed students to format the harddrive)
Now, the Computer Systems degree I'm doing in the University of Limerick, Ireland use a mix of Red Hat and Windows, and I believe that the Computer and Electrical Engineers use the same mix, but aside from that, the rest of the college use Win2k workstations with Active Directory and Exchange Server, which was a direct upgrade from the previous infrastructure... so I guess the lock-in worked
Rational thought is the only true freedom
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
Actually the University of Arizona runs DNS on VMS. Definitely a large variety of server platforms.
My only gripe at that level is the new MS only MS based student information system. If you want to fully interact with it, you need to be running Windows/IE/Office. No lie! cosmos.arizona.edu.
UT Austin does this. I will admit, it's nice getting software for really cheap. So far, our CS curriculum hasn't been influenced by the partnership -- there are no MS specific courses offered by the CS department, and I've yet to have a class that mandated that I use an MS product. (Most assignment must actually compile/run under Linux) However, I don't know about the Business school though -- I would suspect they play along and don't ask questions.
Interestingly enough, I was just reading some of Dijkstra's writings, where he comments on this very issue at UT.
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
I just arrived back to the BGSU campus a few days ago, and when I went into the lab in the basement of the computer science building, I noticed that all the SGI X-terminals and Macintoshes had been replaced by brand new Dells. That was the only lab I used, since I'd rather do my programming assignments on Solaris/CDE than in Visual C++ or on the UNIX system over telnet. I complained to a lot of people, but no one so far has been able to tell me why they did this or what happened to the SGI's. They got new Dells for at least one other lab too, which were NOT needed, while raising everyone's tuition again. I guess I'll never know, but I really think Microsoft had something to do with it. Maybe that's why we can buy Windows and Office (Professional versions) for only ten dollars at the bookstore. I guess I'll be using KDevelop now.
The guru's are correct, but ask them if they can tell you if they have encountered a real world case where gcc 3.3 wasn't good enough. Now ask the faculty if access to the source code is helpful in the advanced classes. I'll bet the answers will be .... ummmmm no and YES.
But, you are right - gcc needs to improve. And from the boost test results, I would say that gcc is improving rapidly. MS VC++ can compile clean on one platform, gcc is cross patform. Hats off to the gcc team for writing some great code.
See the boost regression tests
Think global, act loco
In '95 I spent a lot of time interviewing for driver developers for a Solaris project in New Jersey. I also wanted a couple of entry level engineers. I found that most Rutgers and NJIT grads at the time had already never worked on anything but the MS C++ compiler. I could not hire a single one of them.
"MSNBC (oh, the irony) is running a scary article entitled Microsoft's big role on campus"
1. It's a Washington Post article.
2. It wouldn't be "ironic" even if it was an MSNBC article.
Recently I participated in a High School Programming contest at the University Of Maryland. Microsoft was a key sponsor of the event, and even shelled out the cash for the prizes. In addition to that, they had their on campus student rep come and give an informative presentation about their new Tablet PC. But it looks like the contest is going to need a new sponsor next year, as they're switching the language over from C++ to Java. On another note, my favorite sponsor was Papa John's, who donated the pizza.
At UC Berkeley (home of Unix!), around May 1999, I was a teaching assistant for CS 61B (Introduction to Data Structures). The course was taught in Java (and before that, C). The UC Berkeley CS labs for introductory undergrad courses are all Unix (Solaris x86, HP-UX, DEC OSF/1).
The lecturer received a letter from a Microsoft rep with a proposition to switch to Microsoft technologies, offering all of the software that we could possibly want. It was, of course, immediately tossed into the recycling bin with some sort of remark containing the word "slimey."
dont forget Cisco.
their original product was the result of a university research project.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Minimum wage? Wow.
/. Typically, Professors were the top of their class (or near there) in their Undergraduate studies. Then they went on and gave up 4 - 6 years of their lives being Graduate Students getting paid peanuts for their long hours while their Undergrad. classmates were getting paid pretty well. Most likely, they were also near the top in their Grad. studies before finding an academic job. Then they went on and did a post-doc for not much money before joining the ranks at a school and working their way up the tenure ladder (while getting substantially less than their peers).
Let me remind you who these people are... I'll assume you're talking about Science or Engineering types since this is
What's my point? Becoming a Professor is definitely not about the money. Remember, these people are typically the top-of-the-top and could have gotten really great jobs but decided to stick around and teach for a living. Professors that have been around a while do pretty well for themselves -- but that's only after more than a decade of not.
You tell me... are you gonna work 60 - 80 hours a week for no money so that you can teach or would you accept that job with a company that would be more than happy to hire a world expert and would compensate accordingly? If we forced Professors to make minimum wage then only the worst are gonna teach because the others know they need to provide for their families. Don't say it's for the love of it... there are lots of things I love to do but I know I have to eat and so I don't do them for a living.
I have a very personal one:
Most of the technology used in autonomous disaster recovery robots (you know, the ones who go into earthquake zones and the like searching for survivors without any risk to humans?) where almost completely developed at the University level. It's involved NUMEROUS institutions who all contributed a certain piece (for example, I personally worked on flocking algorithms for controlling groups of these things while an undergrad).
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I was an MIT CS student from 1988-1993 (BS and MS). Part of what made MIT great was that Microsoft's crap wasn't used. MIT has always had a strong "home grown" culture. The software we used was largely developed at MIT, much of it written (at least partly) by other students. You saw, by example, that you could create the tools you need and you don't need to rely on some company's bug filled code to get the job done.
It is sad to think that MIT CS has become (or could become) a showcase for Microsoft tools.
At University of Maryland University College (Europe), first non-Windows disappeared - Linux was removed from all campus lab machines - claimed it was a "security risk". Next most non-Microsoft software was removed from the lab. The IT director knows M$ and nothing else.
.not). I have been reprimanded because I point out to my students flaws in M$ Windows. Want to take on-line courses - forget about it - Mozilla is barely supported and others are not.
I teach computer science. No longer can I teach with Borland (or gcc) and Linux. Everything is pretty much Microsoft-only. Everything must be VS 6 (and
I guess University of Maryland is really University of Microsoft.
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As an MIT graduate (Class of 1992), I'm appalled by this turn of events. But what really bugs me is that Hal Abelson is involved with this ludicrous arrangement between MIT and Microsoft, in an administrative capacity. (This is according to the article.) Hal is co-author of the SICP text book (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs), and was one of my professors when I was there. How the hell did they buy him off?
What will this mean for future MIT students? Will SCHEME be replaced by C# as the language of choice for entry level CS classes? The article bemoans that many universities are having their CS departments reduced to little better than vocational schools, where knowledge of proprietary software is prized over theory and general concepts that can be applied anywhere. I think this is a very real threat to future innovation.
Microsoft might win more mind-share in the short run, but they'll be screwing the world out of the next generation of advancements in the long run. I, for one, will have grave doubts about sending my offspring to MIT.