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."

Comments

This makes me angry

[Lane.exe]

I'm trying to register for classes right now and my stupid university's servers (which run MS) aren't letting anyone log on... and all it took was >30K students trying to register. I'd hate to see what a /.ing would do.

Re:This makes me angry

[quantum bit]

I'd hate to see what a /.ing would do.

Post the URL.

Re:This makes me angry

[Red Avenger]

Well if it makes you feel any better I can't do an add drop right now and my school uses apache + php. All it took was >15k students to swamp the system.

Re:This makes me angry

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft software per se, it has to do with whatever bonehead did your campus system's capacity planning.

Re:This makes me angry

[jabberjaw]

Heh, this morning a UW Madison ResNet router was taken out, so my connection was gone for ~6 hours, yesterday they "updated" ResNet (I guess so something like this would not happen?) again, lost connection. Hell, it has been shoddy all week here....

Re:This makes me angry

[AKnightCowboy]

I'm trying to register for classes right now and my stupid university's servers (which run MS) aren't letting anyone log on...

Well, I always say, never do today what you could put off until next week. It's amazingly stupid that your university requires you to register on the first day of classes. Most of them let students register months in advance. Oh, you were too lazy to do that right?

Re:This makes me angry

[TMacPhail]

My university has an old system that uses some sort of ugly backdoor hack into the telephone registration system. If the phone reg system is swamped then there is almost no chance of doing so online. I've also heard that the security is rather pathetic as well.

Re:This makes me angry

[brandorf]

Horray for ResNET with all the stupid bandwidth planning. At UWW some moron decided to split the school's total bandwith 50/50 between the dorms and the school labs, with roughly 300 computers getting one half (the labs) and 8,000 computers getting the other half, so the Labs run at blazing speed, and the dorm's connection is almost unuseable.

They just updated our systems too, and nobody can apply for financial aid, for whatever reason.

Re:This makes me angry

[hesiod]

> apache + php. All it took was >15k students

Umm, they're using MySQL, aren't they? Yup, wonder why.

Re:This makes me angry

[hesiod]

> Linux registration computer would get overloaded when there were only 4,000 students.

Even a great OS cannot compensate for a badly-written program that runs on it.

wow

[dragoncortez]

In 1998, the company began to quietly fly academics to its headquarters for previews of the technology. Damien Watkins, then a lecturer at Monash University in Australia, recalled that some of his peers wore Linux T-shirts to show their skepticism. In the end, though, they were won over in part by the promise of the technology -- and by a $150,000 donation the company made to the university, he said.

If I'd known professors were that cheap, I'd have picked up a couple a long time ago.

Re:wow

[hazem]

In many schools, profs are expected to get donations and research grants - I think the normal rate is 3x their salary. Oh, and they're supposed to publish frequently (publish or perish). And, I suppose if they have time after all that, they might get around to teaching.

A nice $150,000 donation pretty much takes care of a year's grant/donation hunting. I'll bet MS would even though in a new t-shirt for the ride home.

Re:wow

[Gherald]

> They're supposed to publish frequently (publish or perish)

That is, until tenure...

Re:wow

[yintercept]

Professors are cheap and the price is dropping.

Textbook sales are another good example of the professor and business. When the prefessor, or department, can dictate the purchase of thousands of dollars in books, you can be certain that there is a great deal of schmoozing going along with the sale. If you want your $100 a pop textbook to be accepted by a major university, you better be prepared to roll out a red carpet for the decision makers.

Re:wow

[buck-yar]

A lot of them are. My university's wages Assuming of course you include associate and assistant 'profs'

Re:wow

[EastCoastSurfer]

Heh, even better is this one class I took and had to buy some book that I had never heard of. Got to class the first day and realized the professor wrote the book...

Re:wow

[davebo]

Textbook sales are another good example of the professor and business. When the prefessor, or department, can dictate the purchase of thousands of dollars in books, you can be certain that there is a great deal of schmoozing going along with the sale.

It goes without saying that this isn't always the case. An example:

The "classic" textbook for a particular course in my department (which, it so happens, was written by 3 professors in the department), is not always used to teach the class. If whomever is teaching the class that semester decides they want to emphasize a particular area which is covered better by a different book, they use a different book. This directly takes money out of their pocket, but so be it.

I think they also do it because it lets them approach the material from a different perspective, which gave them ideas for the next edition of their own book.

Re:wow

[ENOENT]

Gee, for some reason, profs who write textbooks tend to think that their textbook is the best on the subject.

Imagine that!

Re:wow

[vsprintf]

Gee, for some reason, profs who write textbooks tend to think that their textbook is the best on the subject.
Imagine that!

Gee, imagine that professors who write textbooks and get royalties might have an ulterior motive in requiring the text for their classes. Nah, nevermind -- I was just being cynical, it couldn't happen in real life.

Re:wow

[Daniel Zappala]

There's a big difference between an equipment donation, a curriculum grant, and a research grant. We're talking here about an equipment donation, which is usually made to a university or sometimes to a department, not to an individual professor. Moreover, if you're looking to get tenure -- at a research-oriented university -- you will be evaluated primarily based on your research grants. I don't know of any professors that go looking for donations from Microsoft because this will make their road to tenure easier.

What's really happening here is that Microsoft is looking to hold onto their dominating position in the marketplace, and the university is happy to take the money. With state funding of higher education at all-time lows, this is not unreasonable. I suspect the means by which the technology is going to be used has very little review, because after all everybody runs Windows, right?

(I use Linux for all my coursework, research, and personal work, but I'm in the minority.)

Re:wow

[instantnoodles]

Yeah I remember my High School Biology teacher telling me that text book companies updated their books uneccessarily frequently to cut down on the resale market.

$100 for a book is ridiculous, especially for impoverished students.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

What's even more fun is when your professor has himself written a book, and since he gets to dictate what the "required texts" for the class are, he includes his own almost-related book. It gets better: After each of the 300+ students has been forced to buy his book, he fails to use it whatsoever in the class.

Let's see... 300 students per quarter, 1 book per student, and the author gets ~5 bucks per book sold (yes, that is an acurate figure for most textbooks) - that comes out to a cool 1500 per quarter. Not much compared to his salary, I'm sure, but it's nice pocket change.

But I suppose that's not technically extortion, is it...

Re:wow

[big-magic]

That trend has changed a great deal in the last couple years. It is now very common for Universities to have "post-tenure reviews". Most of the tenured professors that I know hate it (obviously). But it has created a large amount of pressure for professors to stay active after tenure.

Re:wow

[WoTG]

Yeah, I had that once or twice. Of course, the official reason is that the text better matches the topics of the course. After all, Prof's wouldn't take advantage of students... would they?

Re:wow

[Carmody]

Gee, imagine that professors who write textbooks and get royalties might have an ulterior motive in requiring the text for their classes. Nah, nevermind -- I was just being cynical, it couldn't happen in real life.


You are right - you are just being cynical. How is that pose working for you?

The royalties on a particular textbook are not that large. The royalties on a particular adoption of a textbook (i.e. if I get my 100 students to buy it) are insignificant.

Professors do not write textbooks to get rich. If you calculate their income/hour of writing they often don't make minimum wage. There are easier ways to make money.

The example in this thread were CS professors. Computer Science professors who want to get rich can do things that are much easier than writing textbooks. For example, leaving academia.

There is a line between cynical and just silly. If a professor spends two years writing a book, it seems pretty clear that s/he is going to want to actually USE it in class. Why would there be an ulterior motive? Sometimes Occam is right.

Re:wow

[hesiod]

> That should be illegal or against the school's rules.

But what if it truly IS the best source for the material? Do you expect him to teach his students with something other than the best, when the best is easily available? Is that fair to the students?

Re:wow

[hesiod]

> the royalties they are earning are likely in the 5%-10% range

Considering, however, that most textbooks are outrageously priced anyhow, and also taking into account that schools will be buying them in the hundreds of copies each, it's not quite as bad. It's not full-time job pay, but a decent source of additional income.

Re:wow

[vsprintf]

The example in this thread were CS professors. Computer Science professors who want to get rich can do things that are much easier than writing textbooks. For example, leaving academia.

No doubt. However, I had a CS prof in a master's course who wrote several texts while a professor and then went to work for the company that published his textbooks. Then he went back to teaching and requiring people to buy his books. Careful you don't cut yourself with Occam's razor, while I continue to have faith in human nature.

Re:wow

[Merk]

Guess you've never had a prof give the class an unfinished textbook, so we could be the guinea pigs. I had that happen a lot actually. Instead of using a good textbook, off the shelf, we had to use a horrible, unfinished, badly written book the prof was currently writing.

Re:wow

[Carmody]

Guess you've never had a prof give the class an unfinished textbook, so we could be the guinea pigs. I had that happen a lot actually. Instead of using a good textbook, off the shelf, we had to use a horrible, unfinished, badly written book the prof was currently writing.

Now, unlike the previous example, THAT is completely unethical. You are talking about a professor who KNOWS the materials he's handing out are not the best available, and uses them anyway for his or her eventual profit. I think that is really bad behavior.

You are right- it never happened to me. But I know people to whom it has.

I remember when..

[grendel_x86]

MS was selling their C compiler in our bookstore for REALLY cheap. FUnny thing was that all the CS dept was using Suns, so it was worthless.

Re:I remember when..

[stratjakt]

Worthless? You can still code in your dorm and compile it on the Suns, can you not? If you cant do so with minimal effort, you aren't learning anything.

I did all the coursework for a microprocessor class (based on the 68k) on an emulator. I was there learning concepts and technique.

Re:I remember when..

[Anonymous Coward]

Selling it? At my school they were giving a bunch of microsoft tools away (due to a shady contract). However our CS department was also all suns.
From what I hear though since I've graduated, a few of the profs are trying to switch to MS stuff. The university has since created a Windows lab much to the displesure of the rest of the CS department. Even most of the students are upset about it.
Many people were first exposed to unix systems there and would never have considered anything other than windows. Of course microsoft wants to get rid of these unix systems so that people continue to think that there is nothing else out there.
And the are winning.

Re:I remember when..

[IM6100]

Its amazing at this point in time what great Sun hardware you can get for pennies at University surplus auctions. I got a whole pile of SparcStations (19 of them) for $10 recently that way. A lot of them were SparcStation 2's, but there were four 5's. And I got three Ultra 1's for $12.50 each. Because nobody at all at the auction would spend a dime on them. They were all hustling and salivating over the Pentium II and Pentium III boxes.

Re:I remember when..

[Trelane]

Actually, if your University (like mine, unfortunately) has a Campus Software Agreement, it's actually not cheap. You pay for it semester after semester, whether or not you actually use all of the Microsoft software (to the tune of several million per year ($10 million / 50 thousand applicable people == 200 per year per person (you pay for this in your campus privilege fees). If someone has exact numbers on the cost of a Campus Agreement, please post!). Not only that, but a previous version is required. Therefore, if you buy a new PC, you're unlikely to actually be able to use the new version (because you already have it, as required of the OEM by Microsoft). If you do end up going down to buy a copy from your uni, you most likely don't need a new version; your old one would likely have kept you just fine (how many are still using Windows 98 with Office 97?), so you're actually shelling out quite a bit for software you either don't need or wouldn't buy ordinarily.

Indeed, you're actually paying several times ($1000-2000?) what you would ordinarily be paying.

Microsoft, of course, loves this. You (myself included!) feel like you're not getting your money's worth if you don't go down and stock up on software you're already paying for. On top of that, you're spamming friends and relatives with the latest versions of MS Office, Windows Media Player, and requesting software for their latest version. You're becoming a vital cog in their upgrade treadmill and are more effectively advertising Microsoft than their marketing department could(!), and you're paying for the privilege of helping Microsoft!

Re:I remember when..

[kableh]

WiFiPods!?! Sign me up!

Re:I remember when..

[penguinlust]

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.

Re:I remember when..

[sumho]

actually i work for a college and we pay 34 dollars per desktop for a bundle of xp/office/visio/and visual studio. this is changing in 2005 though. microsoft is dropping our educational discount. that's why we're heavily researching linux on the desktop. plus we're a novell shop so ximian desktop is going to look really good to us in 2005.

Re:I remember when..

[Schnapple]

I worked for Texas A&M when they went to this system. I don't recall exactly but I'm pretty sure that the Office CD wasn't an upgrade. The OS CD may have been, but that might have been so that the students wouldn't have to blow away their existing OS install. Either way shafts people. If you fail out of the University you don't get to keep the software (or at the very least you wind up a EULA violator), but graduate and you geet to keep the software.

If memory serves, the cost for each student was something like $50 per semester, or $5 per credit hour or something like that. This is in addition to the $5 per CD, so if you want WinXP it's $5 for the CD, VS.NET was $25 for the 5 CD's. Financially, it works out best for people about to graduate.

And at A&M the students voted it in. There was a referendum and everything. To put it in perspective, say it was a $5 per credit hour increase - we had just passed a $30 per credit hour fee increase and people raised bloody hell. I was even in charge of writing the code to select all the students "grandfathered" against that fee when they decided only to hand it to incoming freshmen and certian other students with this bizarre algorithm.

But at a major university, you've got to remember who's paying. Many of the kids are there on their parents' nickel, and they see anything on the bill as something they won't have to see or mess with. It's kinda the same mentality of paying for something with a credit card - anything that's not out of pocket is seen as "free" (no surprise then that credit card companies often target college students).

No, it's only the students that either have restrictive scholarships or are paying for everything themselves through financial aid or out of pocket that raise issues - and they're voted down by the majority of the students. Ultimately it boils down to college being expensive in any event.

But on the other side of the coin, to some degree we all know piracy is rampant on college campuses, and students instinct is not to go to free (as in GPL) software. Your parents buy you a Dell but it has XP Home and you need XP Pro to join a domain. No problem, find the guy with the XP Pro Corporate God edition to upgrade your system. Get Office XP Pro and VS.NET while you're at it (even though you're an English major and will never need VS.NET ever). Now Microsoft is offering you the opportunity to not be a dirty pirate for the low price of $5 a CD and some fees you'll never see because the bill goes to your folks.

So let's say you take 15 hours a semester - two semesters times $5 per credit hour is $150, plus a one-time $5 per CD fee. VS.NET alone is over a thousand dollars (though in all fairness not everyone needs it). By your numbers, you would have to be in college for over ten years to rack up $2000 in these MS fees.

Re:I remember when..

[juan2074]

UC Berkeley is a public university.

Re:I remember when..

[blugu64]

Cough Cough...University of Texas...cough cough..

Re:I remember when..

[glitchvern]

the cost for each student was something like $50 per semester, or $5 per credit hour or something like that.
[snip]
And at A&M the students voted it in.
[snip]

It wasn't at all anounced that the microsoft fee was going to be on the ballot that election though so no campaign was mounted against it. There were a few articles in the Battalion about CIS considering a license agreement with microsoft and a few mail calls for and against the idea, but there was no mention of it being on the ballot that semester. Most of the people who vote in the student elections are people who live on-campus, ie fish who don't know any better. It was passed by a pretty wide margin though. The price was $1.25 per a credit hour. Works out to be a little bit more than the price of the educational edition of office for the mac over the course of four years. The license specified the OS was an upgrade but the cd wasn't actually an upgrade cd, it was a full install. The license covered the full version of office.

Re:I remember when..

[billatq]

I'm at Texas A&M right now, and I'm currently the President of the Unix-Linux users group. A lot of us were very dismayed when this fee came up because they were somewhat vague on the voting system for what they were getting. It made it sound as if they'd be purchasing it for a one time fee of $5. Instead, I have to pay these ridiculous fees just to never use it.

On top of that, our CS department just got rid of our solaris lab for a microsoft ".net" lab. It's irritating how much force microsoft is exerting. On another note though, when they give away software, I can always sell it on e-bay and then recover the costs of the fees.

It's very irritating when I'm picking up the cost of college myself and I run into crap like this.

Also, they have very restrictive licensing rules. Here's an example of the agreement for anyone interested:

This acceptance form is valid for the Microsoft products
listed below, which shall be referred to collectively herein as the
"Software". Software is made available to you because Texas A&M
University has purchased license coverage for the Software through the
Microsoft Campus Agreement 3.0 Subscription Student Option effective
September 1, 2002 through August 31, 2003. Texas A&M University is
extending to you the right to use the Software on a personally-owned
computer or an institution-owned computer designated for your
exclusive use. You do not own the license or the CDs, rather you are
leasing the license and CDs from Texas A&M University for the term of
the agreement. You will be required to remove the Software from your
personal machine immediately upon the earlier of (a) any event, with
the exception of graduation, which causes you no longer to be a
student of the institution, or (b) the expiration of the Campus
Agreement 3.0 Subscription term without a new agreement in place
(i.e. Texas A&M University does not renew the agreement).

If you graduate during the agreement term, the Software
license will convert to a perpetual license (meaning you own the
Software) as verified in your Student License Confirmation, which may
be obtained from Texas A&M University at the time of graduation. The
Student License Confirmation is proof of Software ownership.

You are granted the right to use the following Software
products per the term of the Campus Agreement 3.0 Subscription Student
Option:

Microsoft Office for Windows / Microsoft Office for Macintosh (these
are mutually exclusive)
Microsoft FrontPage
Windows Upgrade
Visual Studio

I agree to the following:
* I will read and abide by the license agreement associated with
this Software.
* I understand that no technical support is provided by Texas
A&M University.
* I understand the minimum specifications to run the Software as
listed.
* I understand that I will be required to remove the Software
from my personal machine immediately upon the earlier of (a) any
event, with the exception of graduation, which causes me to no longer
be a student of the institution or (b) expiration of the Campus
Agreement 3.0 Subscription term.
* I understand that if Texas A&M University does not renew the
Student Option Agreement, then I must delete or remove the Software
licensed under this agreement from my computer at the time the
agreement expires or is terminated.
* I understand that if I graduate from Texas A&M University
during the agreement term, the Software license will convert to a
perpetual license (meaning I have full ownership of the Software).
* I understand that it is my responsibility to contact the institution
to obtain the Student License Confirmation, which is proof of Software
ownership, prior to graduation from the institution.
* I understand that the return period for unopened Software is 7 days
from date of purchase.
* I understand that damaged Software may

Re:I remember when..

[liverbugg]

Heh ebay...that's exactly what I did when MS came on my campus two years ago and gave away software. The senior running the program had no idea what anything was, ms probably gave him a job or something if he ran the program. I emailed him requesting a copy of Win2k Advanced Server, then got VS 6.0 pro, 2 copies of WinME, Office 2k Premium, and a couple of Whisler(XP) betas at the meeting. Sold everything on ebay and it paid for almost all of my laptop I bought over that summer that hapily runs Linux now.

Re:I remember when..

[danceswpenguins]

My school provides free copies of Microsoft 98, 2000, XP pro, Windows CE, DotNet Enterprise Server, and Visual studio .net. But then of course no Computer science courses above programing 1 uses windows machines. Hmmm...

Re:I remember when..

[Trelane]

I know for a fact that the Windows copies are for upgrades (although they may or may not be full copies on the CD, it says so in the license and at the info page (here and here)).
The MS Office stuff looks like it's for the full version (hmm).

A new important point is that, if the Uni decides not to renew the Campus agreement, you're treated the same as if you had not graduated (i.e., your license is revoked). The more I read about the program, the more ominous it seems, especially when you factor in the university's liabilities as Microsoft may see it (and they're the ones who can force an audit of every computer involved with the campus!)

Good points on the fact that the students never see the fees. Doubly so, because they're on their parents nickel, and the fees are hidden.

Finally, while MS Studio may cost $2k for most people, it's only $100 for the full Visual Studio system, so it would take exactly two semesters at $50 each to pay for it as a student (and as a university, I believe). The student rates for the other software is comparable (ca. $100 each). The students and university in general is getting ripped off, especially when you factor in the various anal clauses and things in there, and the Auditing bit.

Re:I remember when..

[kannibal_klown]

At least while I was in attendance (98-2003), NJIT's CIS dept was strictly SUN. We learned basic shell commands and what-not, and were encouraged to use pico or vi. All of this was via a console connection (telnet) to connect to our AFS servers. In fact, if the professor could not run our code in Solaris, we would get a really low grade (possibly fail). Each of my professors tried to steer us away from MS VC++. However, the school supplied us with a version of Turbo C++ if we "rented" one of their PC's. But none of my professors even wanted us to touch it, let alone learn to use it.

Re:I remember when..

[kannibal_klown]

BTW, I got my Masters there as well. Hence the extra year.

Re:I remember when..

[PPGMD]

At the university I was at, you didn't have to pay for the CDs. They had the CD available at the Library for free, all you had to do is check them out for 24 hrs install and you are ready to go.

Re:I remember when..

[grendel_x86]

Actually we could telnet from our rooms, use vi, and compile on that. It compiled faster on the Ultra5 than on my p75. I also used it to run our perl, Java, and Assembly stuff.

Re:I remember when..

[dustinmarc]

Not the case at the University of Massachusetts. Here Microsoft will give any Engineering, Computer Science, and I beleive a few other majors free copies of all of Microsoft's software (except for Office). It's part of a program Microsoft has called the Microsoft Developer's Network Academic Alliance, or MSDNAA for short. The university has an internal website where you just click on the software you want to download and you get an .iso file to burn onto CD. Needless to say I have just about every piece of Microsoft software made. Not that I ever use it, but it substantially adds to the value of my software collection.

Of course Microsoft is only doing this to try and get all the techies at the school to use Microsoft software, which really is just standard business practice. However we get the best of both worlds since none of the professors are obligated to use Microsoft software for their courses, and most don't. We still learn C/C++, Java, Lisp/Scheme, etc. and most professors encourage the use of Unix based systems. So far I've haven't seen it affect my courses in any way whatsoever and I hope it stays that way.

Re:I remember when..

[pmz]

the cost for each student was something like $50 per semester

So every student pays? Is this software welfare or something? If there are 10,000 tuition paying students--that's potentially 1,000,000 dollars of raw revenue for Microsoft, per year, guaranteed. Guaranteed revenue is every business' dream come true.

Re:I remember when..

[Schnapple]

On top of that, our CS department just got rid of our solaris lab for a microsoft ".net" lab. It's irritating how much force microsoft is exerting.

Well the other side of that coin is the fact that college has to prepare you for what the "real world" uses - which is why your high school runs Macs but your university runs PC's. The trick of course is in predicting what the real world will be using in the future - the converse of what I experienced in middle school: how to run an Apple ][.

When A&M's CS department decided to switch a lot of their curriculum to Java in 1997 or so, lots of people were livid, since Java was seen as a way to make buzzing web pages, and web pages were not seen as something neccessarily useful. But I've heard a prediction that in five years, 40% of the world's actively written (i.e., not just maintained) code will be in Java, 40% will be in .NET, and 20% other - by switching to .net, colleges are trying to prepare students for what's going to be out there.

Plus, in many cases, Windows development is where the money is at and colleges have to be able to adapt to that. Linux may be better technology but Red Hat doesn't take 5,000 developers out to lunch. Ask most college freshmen and they'll tell you to take your principles and stick it - they want the career path with the most money.

Re:I remember when..

[Schnapple]

Well as it has been stated above, the actual cost is $1.25 per credit hour, so if you take 15 hours then that's $18.75 a semester. If we take that to be the average and multiply it by the 42,000 students Texas A&M has, then that's $787,500 per semester, or $1,575,000 per year (not including summer school). Plus the one-time $5 per CD fee, so let's say the 6,000 annual incoming freshmen buy at least Windows XP and Office XP and that's another $60,000 right there.

Microsoft may be many things, but ultimately they're not stupid.

Re:I remember when..

[penguinlust]

What years were you at NJIT. As I said I was hireing in '95. It could also be I had many more applicants from Rutgers. I am just not sure any more.

At any rate I found new graduates had no idea at all of how to code basic C pointer and bit field routines.

Re:I remember when..

[pmz]

$1.25 per credit hour

It's very interesting that a corporation find itself powerful enough that it can impose a tax.

I hope more people than just me find that tremendously unsettling.

Re:I remember when..

[kannibal_klown]

I was in attendance between Fall 1998 and Spring 2003 (of which 1 year was spent on my Masters).

Like I said, the school gave out Borland's Turbo C++ ver 4.5 with the computers you could "rent" for $50 a semester, but most professors said it had to run on their Solaris accounts. Then again, that wouldn't stop a kid from writing it in Borland or MS VC++, and then testing it in Solaris to iron out any problems. But the professors were very strict about that.

Re:I remember when..

[ncc74656]

But then of course no Computer science courses above programing 1 uses windows machines.

Courses above the introductory level shouldn't care what you're running. Your code should run the same, no matter where you run it...toward the end, we had a mix of Linux, Win2K, NetBSD (which replaced SunOS on some ancient SPARCstation 1s), IRIX, and some other stuff I can't remember...it was usually recommended that you make sure your code would build on whatever the TA would use for testing, but properly-written code should build on anything. I usually did most of my coding/debugging on Linux on one of my machines and only did a quick compile/test on the grading machine to make sure I didn't do anything non-portable (which rarely happened). Hell, as late as 1997 I even ported one project (finding a knight's tour from a given starting position) from C to BASIC on an Apple II so that I could add graphics to it to plot the tour (not knowing at the time anything about graphics under X11 or Win32). I dumped a few of those to an Imagewriter and turned that in along with the C and BASIC programs.

Used to be Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Used to be Macs

[thomas.galvin]

When I was starting college, we had a one-day orientation to let us get to know the campus, and the professors who would be teaching us. During a question-and-answer period, one of the kids asked the Comp Sci head what kind of computer he should bring with him. The professor spoke for a few minutes about the college's development labs (mostly MS), then about the DogNet lab (BSD), and finally settled on saying that a dual-boot, MS/Linux pc would be the best bet.

Then he looked at the kid and asked, completely straight, if he was "thinking about doing anything silly, like bringing a Mac."

Of course, this was far before OSX, so his critisism was justified.

Re:Used to be Macs

[Wobbly Bob]

plus, it's unix, not Unix.... We're trying to dilute that trademark out of existence.

Actually, it's not not Unix, it's not UNIX.

Hook 'em while they're young

[rc.loco]

It works for the U.S. tobacco companies, so why not?

Re:Hook 'em while they're young

[ivanmarsh]

It works for the U.S. tobacco companies, so why not?

At least the tobacco companies products work.

Re:Hook 'em while they're young

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite true. When I was in school, we had several different computers: TRS-80s, Ti-994/As, Apple IIs, and maybe a PC somewhere. True, they weren't used to their full potential in that no one that I know of was doing any programming on them, but at least you got to see a variety of hardware running a variety of software. Now, you have Windows, Windows, Windows, and maybe a Mac somewhere in there. Kids are growing up knowing nothing but MS products, and MS likes it that way.

Where are the open source advocates in all this? Schools are strapped for cash, and this presents a wonderful opportunity to expose them to new things. My God, look at how much they can save if they switch to OpenOffice the next time they upgrade their office suites. How about having someone who would like to teach basic programming offer to teach students one or two days a week, maybe on a weekend. There may not be many students who'd volunteer to come in at those times, but the ones who do would be really interested. And it makes the school look damn good in the community. The volunteer teacher also benefits by getting a nice entry on their resume. And finally, the students benefit by not only getting a class that they might not otherwise have, but they're also exposed to something other than the same old MS software. And the open source movement benefits by getting additional exposure and a pool of future programmers. Everyone wins.

Re:Hook 'em while they're young

[mfchater]

I could be wrong, however my CS prof. today said that unix was given away to the students in the 70's and they charged 21,000.00 to a corp. This is just what I was told, however I have no real reason to doubt him.

Re:Hook 'em while they're young

[hesiod]

> Everyone wins

Except the Admins who have to hear a billion times "this doesn't look like wordperfect, I'm confused! I can't learn this, I'm too fucking stupid (ie, I refuse to try learning)"

In Other News

[the darn]

Naming rights for the first two letters of XXNBC now up for bid...

Re:In Other News

[Gherald]

It was a Washington Post article, MSNBC just published it for them.

A common practice in the journalism industry.

Huh?

[stratjakt]

Fundings funding. If they want to give my alma mater 1.6 million to use Windows, I think that's just great.

Computer Science isnt "how to use your computer". The concepts and techniques you learn are beyond any operating system. Good algorithm design and analysis transcends linux vs windows vs mac osx.

When I did my degree, half the classes used Windows, the other half linux, and now, a few years later, I really cant remember which was which.

It was irrelevant, I wasnt learning computers, or even how to program in C, I was learning concepts.

Re:Huh?

[garcia]

not only that, but with the current ecnonomic situation affecting higher education (especially here in the State of MN) if someone wants to give the institutions money SO BE IT.

That's less money the students have to pay, that's less they have to pay back later, and that's more excellent programs and hardware they have to work with.

Re:Huh?

[goodviking]

half the classes used Windows, the other half linux, and now, a few years later, I really cant remember which was which

Less binge drinking should clear than problem up

Re:Huh?

[TWX]

"Good algorithm design and analysis transcends linux vs windows vs mac osx."

That may be, but remember, Sun donated or sold very inexpensively LOTS of computers to university-level education. They had a very significant market share when commercial Internet ventures began, before the whole dotcom fiasco.

Had the stock market not taken quite such a feeding frenzy on dotcoms, having been a little more sane, I wouldn't be surprised if Solaris had stayed top commercial server OS for TCP/IP. This isn't to say that Linux is bad, but commerical products tend to make executives feel more secure, for whatever reason.

Re:Huh?

[Florian Weimer]

Computer Science isnt "how to use your computer". The concepts and techniques you learn are beyond any operating system. Good algorithm design and analysis transcends linux vs windows vs mac osx.

Some of the funding is used to encourage universities to choose the right programming language for some courses, and the right examples in others. It appears as if some universities are willing to sacrifice some of their independency to acoomodate such a beneficial sponsor, even if there isn't a contractual obligation.

Re:Huh?

[Usquebaugh]

The issue is not so much CS, were most of the students are learning concepts. Although, I've met a few CS majors who seemed to have missed the computer part of the course while also avoiding the science part.

The issue is that most people are not taught concepts but rather tools. It's here that MS is buying it's future.

Re:Huh?

[stratjakt]

If your choices are "use J++ for the Java courses" or double tuition for Comp Sci students, I say go with J++.

I remember my elementary school had a bank of about 15 Apple IIs, and only one Commodore 64. Why was that? Because Apple was superior? Or cheaper? No, it was neither. They were donated. The 64 was actually the librarians personal property, I was to find out later.

Re:Huh?

[phurley]

I don't disagree - but I have some followups:

1. Many of the people doing open source work started (and continue) because of their exposure to open source, GNU, etc. Which will be limited if the initial exposure is completely proprietary.
   
   
2. None CS students will be exposed only to MS solutions and when they enter the business world (as our wonderful managers) they will request/require solutions based upon what they already know.
   
   
3. Many venues of higher education are not much more than glorified business schools and their graduates are not getting a good foundation in concepts, but rather are becoming trades(wo)men. And they will be pounding with the only hammer they know.
   

Microsoft is well aware that controlling education (especially higher eduation) will give the a huge leg up in the future. I'm not sure that if I were in charge of a CS dept. and was offered a large grant even knowing all this I would turn it down, but there is a downside.

Re:Huh?

[jared_hanson]

To an extent I agree with you. However, if Microsoft manages to get their software used across the entire ciriculum, that will put a huge dent in the inroads other OSs are making.

I had played around with Linux a bit in high school, but for the most part held on to Windows pretty closely. CSC 150 and 250 both used Windows and Visual Studio as a programming environment. When Data Structures came around, and programs were supposed to be written for Linux, I found myself dreading giving up my click-to-comile IDE. I didn't want to learn how to write a makefile and debug on the command line.

In any case, I was forced to, and now I dearly love my non-GUI programming environment. In fact, I prefer it now, and Linux has become my OS of choice. Concepts and theories were the heart of the course work, but practicle use demands a set environment. If I had gone to school at a place where Microsoft products were used for the courses I took, I would never have gained the insight into just how much better Linux can be.

Re:Huh?

[rk]

And look at this way... Every dollar MS gives to schools is a dollar they don't have to give to SCO!

Re:Huh?

[stratjakt]

Well, then you're a masochist. I surely dont miss makefiles, gdb, etc.. I like clicking and dragging to build forms, etc. I love being able to step through and over code in debug and setting watchpoints.

You can still compile from a makefile on the command line with a million and one /switches, if you really want to.

IMO, Visual Studio's MSFT's best product by far. I'd love to see something equivalent come out for OSS, it'd draw in a ton of developers like me who have a desire to contribute and love to code, but just dont see why they should spend their spare time being annoyed with trivial shit.

Re:Huh?

[sporty]

Big problem though. People assume, how you do things in school is verbatim, the exact way you do things in the real world.

You get people trying to create applications without someone hovering over them to say, "This is why you use title case" or "This is why you make code neat." Not to make it more readable to just yourself, but to everyone maintaining it.

You have people trying to use straight science vs engineering. You get over-normalization and unscalable systems. They look pretty, but they aren't done in a real world sitation.

It's the same difference between chemisty and chemical engineering. Making a bottle of ink is easy. Making vats in mass production.. takes a little more thinking :)

Re:Huh?

[jared_hanson]

You make a good point, and there are days that I agree with you. However, I often think that perhaps the reason Linux code tends to be more reliable that Windows code is that you weed out all the coders dependent on the graphical IDE.

I've done countless things in Visual Studio where I had no idea all the compiler switches that were being used. In some cases, this created some problems.

In Linux however, I am forced to read all about the switches to get things done. When I need to do something, I read the man page to find the switch I need. I also tend to read about at least 5 other switches in the process. I know what's going on when I compile with gcc, but I'm not real sure about Visual Studio.

Re:Huh?

[ashkar]

The problem is when their windows only setup locks out other platforms.

For example, I'm a freshman at a school where a "MS products only" policy is enforced. Students are required to have a laptop. Only windows is supported by the school technical staff. This is not a big deal; sadly, I don't expect more because, even though my school portrays itself as up and coming in the technical education department, most of their graduates couldn't diagnose a bad port on a switch.

To print on campus, you must use a printing program (for payment purposes) that is windows only. Buy vmware or virtualpc or you can't print on campus. Considering I live an hour away from school, this is more than a little inconvenient.

Teachers only accept emailed documents in word format. I understand most teachers won't be able to open a .cwk file so this is a point I usually glide over, but at the moment I want them to look as evil as possible. ;)

The software required for ALL math courses is Mathsoft's Mathcad. This is also windows only. Calc II seems like it might be possible to survive without the software, but the labs in Calc I make it absolutly necessary for that and most lower courses. With all the cross-platform products available, why do they use this one?

My complaints fall on deaf ears, and I have no doubts (and also no proof) that my school has sold out to Gates and Co. Any school purporting to educate in the technical fields should be totally open to encouraging the learning of alternate platforms.

PS. They don't teach standard HTML either from what I hear. Fortunately, I'm a CompE major about to transfer so I don't have to continue to suffer, but, damn, everyone should teach standard HTML. http://www.clayton.edu/

Re:Huh?

[ImpTech]

Thats the classic argument, but lots of things in Computer Science are not entirely about algorithm design and analysis. I find that as Microsoft products become increasingly ubiquitous in academia, people tend to get more and more attached to them, knowingly or not. And its not all the same. I had a "Software Design" class, and it was all MFC and Visual Studio, and it drove me nuts, because most of the class really had nothing to do with anything but Windows. I guess on some level every system has its own version of "events" or "windows messages" or whatever, but when you use one system exclusively you tend to gloss through the general concepts to get to the details. Those details will allow you to do all the fun things, but they're only important if you're using Windows and MFC, and have no applicability outside. I mean, in my working with Linux, why the hell do I care whether OnPrepareDC() or OnPaint() or OnDraw() gets called first when you draw a window?

This software design class wasn't taught very well, and had little to do with design IMO, but I think its a perfect example of what happens when Microsoft gives your department unlimited free software, as it did to mine. Fortunately, it was only the one class. The rest are (for now) relatively untainted.

Re:Huh?

[Qzukk]

Computer Science isnt "how to use your computer". The concepts and techniques you learn are beyond any operating system.

Right. So Mr. Windows-Schooled sits down at his brand new job at Unixwerks, and goes to open up Visual C++, and... err... well... opens up pico and flounders around looking for the button to press to bring up the dialog editor.

Or more likely, he'll have skipped Unixwerks in the phone book and fired his resume straight off to WindowsRUs.

Personally, I don't care. If microsoft wants to flood the already saturated job market with even more Windows-Only people, it makes it easier for me to sell my Unix programming skills, at least until the Windows-Only people are so numerous that there are no more Unix jobs, everyone's switched to windows shops to take advantage of the dime-a-dozen nature of the programmers.

Re:Huh?

[CapeBretonBarbarian]

Computer Science isnt "how to use your computer". The concepts and techniques you learn are beyond any operating system. Good algorithm design and analysis transcends linux vs windows vs mac osx

Back when I went through university my first computer (outside the Pet/CBM I had at home) was a HP 3000 running MPE. Most of my early computer science courses involved this although I had the assember course was on the 6502. Later on it was Unix workstations (Sun Boxes) and a big old IBM mainframe.

Yes, there were also PCs and Macs around and I certainly had a PC at home plus most of the work on the side I did was PC (and DOS/Windows based) during that time, but it was the true multi-user systems that really caught me, especially the Unix systems.

If the schools I attended didn't have MPE,the IBM mainframe or the Sun boxes and only Wintel machines then I doubt I would be working with *nix to this day. Yes, I may have still understand most concepts, but my preferred environment would probably be Windows because that's what I was exposed to.

It's frightening sometimes to see just how clueless some Comp Science students are these days who are coming from the Windows generation. It doesn't feel like they really understand what's going on because all they really know is windows and windows hides so much of what an OS does.

I really think that it's important that students be exposed to a variety of technologies, not just one set of technologies (i.e. the Mircosoft way).

To this day I still prefer to work in Unix (or its derivatives). Yes, I worked with PCs as well, but I had the advantage of being to exposed to all sorts of env

Re:Huh?

[JonnyElvis42]

Every dollar MS gives to schools is a dollar they don't have to give to SCO!

Wow I wish that were true. Well, I suppose it technically is true, but think of it this way:

$49 Billion in the bank - $500 Million to universities over the past 5 years = Still a hell of a lot of money.

Even scarier, imagine that that $49 Billion is invested for a modest 3% interest. That's $1.47 Billion in interest annually, which ought to pretty well cover some cash for schools and hiring a few lawyers for another antitrust case or two.

Re:Huh?

[gbjbaanb]

Totally correct - when I did my degree Windows was version 3.1, Linux was just an argument with Tanebaum, and the best OS around was Amiga.

We all programmed in Pascal, and I think we're all the better for it. Not that I use *any* of the above anymore - if you think what you learn at University today is all you'll need you are very much mistaken, and will probably be programming Java as it becomes more and more legacy in the face of future developments.

Take my advice - go learn and use all the different systems available to you - yes, even Windows - as then, and only then, will you be able to see just how everything works, without being blinded by only one side of the 'argument'.

Need an example? Ask whether a microkernel is a good or a bad thing, think of applying that knowledge to application design.

Re:Huh?

[gbjbaanb]

Or Mr Unix-graduate sits down at his new job and asks, where's Emacs? and .. err.. they have a company policy only to use Vi, and he throws a temper tantrum. After all, Everyone knows Emacs is God's only text editor..... :)

Re:Huh?

[PhoenixFlare]

For example, I'm a freshman at a school where a "MS products only" policy is enforced. Students are required to have a laptop. Only windows is supported by the school technical staff. This is not a big deal; sadly,

And it will continue to not be a big deal, sadly or not, until non-Windows platforms make up the majority of installed machines.

To print on campus, you must use a printing program (for payment purposes) that is windows only. Buy vmware or virtualpc or you can't print on campus. Considering I live an hour away from school, this is more than a little inconvenient.

Geez...You can afford to commute an hour each way to school, but you can't buy yourself a cheapo printer to use at home?

Teachers only accept emailed documents in word format. I understand most teachers won't be able to open a .cwk file so this is a point I usually glide over, but at the moment I want them to look as evil as possible. ;)

You're trying to be funny, but that doesn't really help your argument.

The software required for ALL math courses is Mathsoft's Mathcad. This is also windows only. Calc II seems like it might be possible to survive without the software, but the labs in Calc I make it absolutly necessary for that and most lower courses. With all the cross-platform products available, why do they use this one?

Because it's a standard, it works, and it works well. Just because using something cross-platform would make you feel all warm and fuzzy, that doesn't mean it'd be the best tool for the job.

Frankly, you should either obtain a copy of Windows/Vmware or do your math work in a Windows lab at school, and quit whining. Face it- the vast majority of students and professors don't care one bit about uber-established software like Mathcad being Windows-only.

My complaints fall on deaf ears, and I have no doubts (and also no proof) that my school has sold out to Gates and Co. Any school purporting to educate in the technical fields should be totally open to encouraging the learning of alternate platforms.

Uhmm...You want people to listen to your complaints, but you openly admit you have no proof at all that the school's "sold out"? Seems kinda self-defeating, that.

Any school purporting to educate in the technical fields should be totally open to encouraging the learning of alternate platforms.

Think about this- have you actually been working on your education, or have you been spending too much time worrying about Microsoft products? Sounds like the latter, especially if you're going to transfer based largely on the software choices for school-owned hardware.

You're obviously not the type to be brainwashed, so just suck it up and realize that software packages are tools, not religions.

And for the record, the school I attend is quite friendly to non-Windows platforms, and I dual-boot my personal system.

Re:Huh?

[Kenja]

If you went to class to learn how to program and only learned how to use Visual Studio or GCC you got ripped off. If you learned how to program the tools quickly become irrelevant and the differences in programming languages is nothing but syntax. This is the difference between a programmer and a code monkey.

Re:Huh?

[shaitand]

Yeah but SOME professors actually bother with practical hands on coding along with the theory. Not to mention there are more classes in a college or university than CS which use computers!

Having windows on the desktop in schools where people often start becoming familiar with a computer for the first time definately shifts things as much as preinstalls.

Re:Huh?

[mindriot]

1. Many of the people doing open source work started (and continue) because of their exposure to open source, GNU, etc. Which will be limited if the initial exposure is completely proprietary.

Also, many of the people doing open source work started (and continue) because of their exposure to Windows.

;-)

Re:Huh?

[Lyran]

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.

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 .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 guess University of Maryland is really University of Microsoft.

Re:Huh?

[vsprintf]

If your choices are "use J++ for the Java courses" or double tuition for Comp Sci students, I say go with J++.

Okay, and Java would be more expensive because it's free (as in free beer, which all students will be able to evaluate correctly)?

Re:Huh?

[vsprintf]

I surely dont miss makefiles, gdb, etc. . . You can still compile from a makefile on the command line with a million and one /switches, if you really want to. . . IMO, Visual Studio's MSFT's best product by far. I'd love to see something equivalent come out for OSS, it'd draw in a ton of developers like me who have a desire to contribute and love to code, but just dont see why they should spend their spare time being annoyed with trivial shit.

Mod that up +Interesting. Apparently one man's freedom to control the accurate compilation of their code is another's trivial sh*t. To each his own, but I think drag-and-drool programmers (who can't code without a mouse and the overlord's permission) are not yet needed by OSS. We're still learning, so please bear with us.

Re:Huh?

[Nucleon500]

Windows and Linux do represent different ways of thinking. There are differently designed. Yes, they are just tools. But why shouldn't you be allowed to use whatever tool you want?

I think schools should go out of their way to expose students to a diverse toolset, so they can choose the best one for the job. This goes for computer science and everything else. Would you go to a school that required PaperMate(tm) pens, even when just taking notes? Suppose the pens were discounted? I still wouldn't. It's not that there's anything wrong with PaperMate(tm) pens (although I prefer Bic), it's that the school is making pointless rules and/or has sold out.

BTW, which school do you attend? If I had been considering Clayton, ashkar's story would have been a big con, and your schools friendliness would have been a pro.

Re:Huh?

[Lumpy]

Personally, I don't care. If microsoft wants to flood the already saturated job market with even more Windows-Only people, it makes it easier for me to sell my Unix programming skills,

Shhh dont let out the secrets....

it is even in the IT world. they let go 13 of the 15 IT staff last month.. 2 windows guys and Me, the ONLY linux guy are left. the 2 windows guys had some linux exposure and experience because of me.

Linux was the reason we kept our jobs here....

It's nice to be the wierd geek with that crazy hippie OS 3 years ago to the guy who still has his job because of it today....

thanks microsoft.

Re:Huh?

[grahamdrew]

Strangely enough, University of Maryland, College Park seems to be an almost entirely UNIX based shop. The development cluster used for most Computer Science courses is Digital UNIX based, on alphas. Basic UNIX commands are part of the entry level curiculum, and most development is done with either gcc or cxx, Compaq's alpha compiler (You can develop your stuff on whatever you want, but when you submit it damn well better compile and hit the primary output given the specified compiler). Most of the labs contain Sun Ultrasparc based machines running Solaris, if not being entirely comprised of them.

Microsoft has been trying to give a lot of "technology preview" presentations on campus, with freebies to atendees. A couple of CS guys I know sat through thier .NET presentation and walked out with an academic copy of XP Pro and VS .NET. Most of them installed Visual Stuio, and probably haven't touched it since.

Can you run an MS based development system at College Park? Sure, but it's going to be your ass when you rely on Microsoft's compiler. The first time you end up spending 12 hours debugging because Visual C++ let you get away with some random pointer based wackyness, but g++ beats you down tends to be your last. Most students just SSH into the cluster and go it from there, although a couple run linux or bsd systems, with a few using cygwin and the like.

I feel for you out there in Europe, but at least some of us here in Maryland have some leeway.

Re:Huh?

[terrab0t]

"...until the Windows-Only people are so numerous that there are no more Unix jobs, everyone's switched to windows shops to take advantage of the dime-a-dozen nature of the programmers."

Much like the universe destroying itself and reforming into a more complex and unmanageable state, it is theorized that this has already happened.

Re:Huh?

[THEbwana]

The problem is that this student will leave university with a CV that reads MS-only. When I get a CV that is MS only (for SW developer, SW engineering positions) it goes straight in the dustbin as my previous experience tells me that hiring people with this type of CV results in improductive teams who have _one_ hammer that they are frantically trying to apply to every problem. In the real world - system environments are heterogenous. People who've only experienced one type of environment are like interpreters (in RL) who only know how to speak one language.
Students should be exposed to one or two operating systems and their related development tools (including MS Windows) during each year of their studies.

Re:Huh?

[PhoenixFlare]

Windows and Linux do represent different ways of thinking. There are differently designed. Yes, they are just tools. But why shouldn't you be allowed to use whatever tool you want?

Quite true....I think what some people don't realize, though, is that if the school doesn't support it, it doesn't mean use outside of school is prohibited.

I think schools should go out of their way to expose students to a diverse toolset, so they can choose the best one for the job. This goes for computer science and everything else.

Yeah...Some do, some don't, I guess. Another reason to do your research when you're applying. As i've said a lot already, though, I don't think software choices should be the sole factor.

I attend RIT. at the moment. I'd say non-Windows stuff is pretty entrenched there...Heck, our whole Student Information System, most of the course registration functions, and the school's email are accessed via VMS and VAX clusters. I'm not a CS major anymore, but they start(ed) out those students learning Java on Solaris machines, as well.

Re:Huh?

[AppyPappy]

If you drop a unix programmer in an MS shop, he'll get along pretty good. Dragging and dropping is as simple as poking a stick in an termite mound to get fed. You dump an MS programmer in a unix shop and he'll look like a puppy in a pet store window. I've looked through that window.

Re:Huh?

[Sabalon]

There is no MS only product policy. Lots of people run Linux. Profs in the IT department run Linux servers. Almost half the campus servers are Linux. There is even a local debian mirror.

However support resources are finite. Usually people running Linux can support themselves. As long as people can get on the network, they should be able to do whatever. And there are quite a few people working at the help desk running Linux as well.

As for the selections of software and other programs, part of it may be the aluded to buddy-system like book dealers and profs. Part of it (the buggy uniprint, which has a stupid design flaw making it trivial to bypass) are because there are not a large number of products to choose from for some of these solutions.

I am not saying it's perfect, but it is hardly the MS stormtrooper filled place you paint it as.

Re:Huh?

[hesiod]

> Bearing that in mind, I'm not so sure that you're right...

No, I still agree with him that execs like stuff that costs lots of money. Remember, they are not tech-savvy -- they have MBAs, which tells them that businesses make products better than random people. They also get the idea of "you get what you pay for." It's not true, and they're still idiots, but that's at least WHY they think that way.

Re:Huh?

[hesiod]

> drag-and-drool programmers are not yet needed by OSS

While I agree with you idealistically, more programming tools (even "drag & drool") would help more people write *nix software, which is generally a "Good Thing."

Re:Huh?

[jwallom]

I will have to also add in that I am one of those at the help desk who runs Linux. OpenOffice is a great solution for word and powerpoint files that the teachers require, however if you need to do excel I highly recommend gnumeric. It works with all of the functions in office and is much faster.

Uniprint is really horrid.

Re:Huh?

[pmz]

Good algorithm design and analysis transcends linux vs windows vs mac osx.

So, you are saying Microsoft Windows and Office are good case studies in algorithm design and analysis?

Quite honestly, Microsoft software as a learning tool is best employed in the Marketing Department.

Re:Huh?

[pmz]

I have been reprimanded because I point out to my students flaws in M$ Windows.

I thought Universities were the last hope for FREE SPEECH and the FREE EXCHANGE OF IDEAS. Here's a warning to all University of Maryland University College (Europe) students: GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN.

A true university can tolerate a lot from their professors. Hell, I went to a Catholic university that had an atheist in their philosophy department. As a university, they protected free speech over Vatican dogma as much as they could get away with.

Re:Huh?

[pmz]

Well, then you're a masochist. I surely dont miss makefiles, gdb, etc.. I like clicking and dragging to build forms, etc. I love being able to step through and over code in debug and setting watchpoints.

Well, you're lazy and short-sighed. What do you do when Microsoft's binary proprietary "makefile" corrupts? What do you do when your software tools fail you? How do you perform configuration management over your software products?

Makefiles are transparent and give the software developers control over their end product. Would you want to sell software that you couldn't really quite be sure about?

Good debuggers, such as Sun's dbx, come with features that are a C programmer's dream come true. Memory access checking, leak detection, pretty-printed data structure output, highly flexible conditional checkpoints, etc. etc. etc.

Good source editors, such as emacs and vi, actually allow the programmer to type without constant pop-up interruptions.

Good compilers, such as gcc, allow portability that Visual Studio thinks can exist only in theory.

Visual Studio is the eye candy and glimmery shiney addict's tool of choice. People who really care about the inner-workings of their programs and really care about the maturity and stability of their tools and really care about knowing how their program gets from point A to point C don't use Visual Studio.

Re:Huh?

[gl4ss]

dunno if this is relevant.. but our english prof at our (technical) university who is form england bitched a lot on how there had been too many other educational institutes converted to universities during the past few years in england(the amount of universities growed 10 times larger in 10 years or something like that, changed from polytechnics mostly iirc/afaik) and how their quality varies so much that if we even dream of going to someplace as exchange students we should check the level of the place _very_ thoroughly so that we wouldn't end up someplace that would just not meet any of our exceptations for an university and end up just wasting a year(which could be just ok for me).

as for our uni(tampere university of technology, www.tut.fi), hell yeah there is much ms on desktop(almost all computers in labs are ms, some cs profs use linux on laptops and it is generally quite well known to exist even though there are not that many people using it outside cs), but most programming excercises and like are done on unix(that means that _every_ student has to finish at least one, short, programming course on c++) and the courses are at least somewhat trying to be generic into it so that you learn concepts rather than just "press the green button".

yeah the prof might go 'wtf' on this text as well but this isn't the exam paper luckily, not that the exam mattered that much even compared to the actual classes which got carried away quite usualy, which was a good thing since what most of us needed most to improve our english was vocal discussion anyways.

Re:Huh?

[ashkar]

I don't expect to have support for anything besides Windows, but I do expect to be able to perform simple tasks such as printing and completing a lab in a math class w/o resorting to running an emulator. If you disagree with everything else I wrote, you will at least acknowledge these are major obstacles for students. They also account for 95% of my griping.

While I definately do see Linux, *bsd, and OS X on campus, their use is discouraged because of these limitations. Try demonstrating an alternate OS to someone and, after you have their interest, tell them the limitations imposed by school policy/purchase decisions. Any interest that existed will disipate instantly. This limits their use to the geeks which, though from an elitest view may seem good, ends up being a very bad thing.

Re:Huh?

[ashkar]

OO is a great application in progress, but can seriously dick the formating of a document at times. This has caused me to always want to check it on another computer running Word before I send it anywhere for a grade. Kinda defeats the purpose, eh?

WINE has been picky in the past with StudyWorks. I have not yet tried it with Mathcad, but I know that several people I have talked to have had issues running StudyWorks in Win98 supposedly due to video driver incompatibilities. This is what I blame my problems with WINE and StudyWorks on. I do plan to try it again with Mathcad this semester. Also, this solution is not possible for those with a powerbook or iBook. With the multitude of applications out there (maple, mathematica, matlab, etc), why use Mathcad?

Re:Huh?

[ashkar]

I'm replying to acknowledge your reply, but this was never a main point in my argument, just a side note. To expect anything but Word to be acceptable is lunacy. I noted in my original post that I understand it is the standard.

OO is definatly still a work in progress. To call it complete would be an insult to the developer's aspirations. The program needs serious perfomance increases, and the formatting bugs do come out once in a while even in an apparently simple paper. I can't comment on the other portions of the suite, but I assume they also have the unfinished feel of writer. Truly an amazing project but not quite there yet.

Business should not be allowed...

[mao che minh]

..to intrude heavily into an academic environment. I understand that it would silly not to allow some influencing, and let companies spread around a little bit of free "hits", but academic officials should take it upon themselves to prevent any given company the ability to guide the education and goals of their students. This isn't a free iMac in a classroom or two, this is the potential future of computer science in the United States being misdirected by a party that is guilty of monopoly practices, and practices the closed source model (obvioulsy not as healthy to development and learning as is Open SOurce).

It is unethical on so many levels.

Re:Business should not be allowed...

[DarenN]

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

Re:Business should not be allowed...

[Ieshan]

Academia is an industry just like everything else. It has competition. It's difficult to find a grant. It's hard to win over peer support on a tough theory. Most professors never make the cover of Science.

I work in a lab where Visual Basic is the programming language of choice. Why? Two reasons:
a) It's easy. The guy I work for is a *rarity* - a programmer in a non-programming field. Understand that most people don't know how to code, and most people never will, and for people to learn how to code at all is better than for people to hold microsoft in distain.
b) It's cost-effective. For what comes out to be cheap in the end, you get quite a lot. Visual Studio is a damn nice environment for doing the things we need to do.

Do I run linux at home? Yep. Posting from Mozilla in Redhat. Am I being influenced by my use of VB in the lab? Maybe, as I find myself typing the wrong commands while shell scripting and using the wrong stupid syntax while coding up some PHP for a website. Do I neccessarily care, since I'm not a computer science major and never intended myself to be? Not at all.

I think your post is too critical of the mainstream american student. Most of us who program without a CS major don't really care one way or the other - it's a tool that transcends language and operating system. I picked up VB almost immediately; it certainly didn't over-write any previous programming knowledge. =P

Re:Business should not be allowed...

[pmz]

Business should not be allowed to intrude heavily into an academic environment.

Businesses should be allowed to fund research and development. It allows professors to further their discipline and can provide an infusion of the "real world" into a university.

However, I agree that this influence should not be able to leak down into the curriculum. Big-money research is one thing, but the purity of an undergraduate's curriculum should be considered sacred. If undergraduate students want "real world" exposure, then they are best served with internships, co-ops, or research assistanceships. They should not be focused on work experience in class or doing semester projects. BTW, internships look really good on resumes (it surely beats volunteering at the animal shelter--professionally speaking).

Yes because very

[The Old Burke]

...much of the innovative software has been developed at ".edu's".
Look for example at that comapny called Microsoft, I think they where a proprietary software-company. And look how bad it went with them!!

Re:Yes because very

[3141]

Just in case you do actually believe their false advertising, Microsoft have actually done very little in the way of innovation - certainly when it comes to products they actually release. (In house, who knows?)

Most of their products are extensions of existing ones. They did not invent the computer, operating system, word processor, spreadsheet, mouse, BASIC, C++, Java or just about anything else people quote when "innovation" comes up.

It's called "embrace and extend". They take a protocol or product, add bits that are incompatible with everything else, and encourage people to use those bits. Then everything else seems to be broken when it is in fact just Microsoft not adhering to standards.

Re:Yes because very

[Mr_Matt]

Heh-heh...you're joking, right? Let's look at some innovations that came out of .edu's...

• The Mouse - developed at the Stanford Research Institute and forwared to Xerox PARC...
  
• Windowed GUI systems - again Xerox PARC, which benefited from it's University of Washington roots...
  
• While we're on GUIs...the X-Windows system was an MIT project
  
• Although DARPA created the Internet (Al Gore notwithstanding :) it was universities that spread its use to students long before AOL came around...
  
• You are familiar with what the "B" stands for in "BSD" aren't you? (hint: it's Berkeley, as in UC-Berkeley. OK, that's more than a hint, but I figured you might need it...)
  

...and that's just off the top of my head. I don't think you can swing a cat in the world of computers and not hit something that exists at least partly because of those pesky .edus.

Besides which, if you think that Microsoft ripping off Q-DOS to make MS-DOS and then copying Apple to make Windows is 'innovative' then I have a bridge that might be for sale... :)

Re:Yes because very

[Darth]

dont forget Cisco.

their original product was the result of a university research project.

Re:Yes because very

[enjo13]

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).

Re:Yes because very

[clarkc3]

also SUN, originally stood for Stanford University Network

that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[TWX]

...We're all aware that computers that can run Microsoft Windows are also capable of running Linux, many versions of BSD, and Solaris/x86. So, we end up with several free OSes, and a few commercial OSes (counting some of the commercial BSDs) that will run on the hardware. My favourite computer science professor had a computer at his desk that had a windows license sticker, but he never even booted into Redmond's OS before he wiped it and installed Linux.

Many large colleges have UNIX clusters of some form. ASU has the "general" cluster, on Solaris machines. U of A has the "U" cluster. I don't think that UNIX is going anywhere, these systems have thousands of simultaneous users and seem to be fairly stable considering all of the local accounts.

It could also be that maybe colleges are trying to keep their licensing in full compliance instead of getting sloppy about it, for fear of the retribution that could come later.

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[quantum bit]

Many large colleges have UNIX clusters of some form. ASU has the "general" cluster, on Solaris machines. U of A has the "U" cluster. I don't think that UNIX is going anywhere, these systems have thousands of simultaneous users and seem to be fairly stable considering all of the local accounts.

And Southwest Texas State (or whatever it's being called now) has several VMS servers... Scary.

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[runenfool]

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.

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[quantum bit]

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.

That does suck! Looks like it uses ActiveX too, so not even Konqueror's "lie about browser type" settings are able to fool it...

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[dan dan the dna man]

"We're all aware that computers that can run Microsoft Windows are also capable of running Linux"

Obviously haven't tried it on a Centrino laptop yet..

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[runenfool]

Indeed it does run Active X. The company that sells the initial system hasn't any plans to change, nor do they see anything wrong with this.

So yes, Microsoft definitely knows how to throw around influence at school.

Want to switch to Linux for your administrative systems? Good luck - you better have a copy of Windows somewhere to interface with this system.

Best bet is that the system won't work properly upon full deployment (its in its early stages right now). Thats probably pretty accurate - too bad they are blowing millions on its development.

Guess what? We aren't the only ones using this stuff. http://www.jhu.edu/isis/what_will_isis_do.htm - same product.

Here is the product: http://sct.com/Education/Products/Matrix/index.htm l. My favorite line? "Built on proven Microsoft(R) technologies, SCT Matrix is ready to leverage the power of Microsoft .NET and XML Web Services". Bye bye choice, hello platform lock in.

I probably should shut up, I don't need to lose my job :)

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[AstroDrabb]

Then don't buy a stupid marketing gimmick. All it is, is an Intell processor and a wireless card. Buy a regular Intel/AMD and a PCMCIA wireless card and your set. And you don't have to pay extra for the marketing crap or be locked into proprietary junk.

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[GlassUser]

I use windows/ie/office and it won't run on my system. Do I look like an idiot? I'm not letting a remote server run arbitrary binary code on my system over a web interface. Someone needs to slap them and hire an IT manager.

Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...

[TWX]

"Then don't buy a stupid marketing gimmick. All it is, is an Intell processor and a wireless card. Buy a regular Intel/AMD and a PCMCIA wireless card and your set. And you don't have to pay extra for the marketing crap or be locked into proprietary junk."

Wholeheartedly agreed. Remembering when the first winmodems came out, or the first all-in-one 486 and Pentium era boards came out, that stuff was crap. Decent hardware integrators either use real components or leave expansion available. A favorite of mine is Mini-PCI, since it's not locked into one vendor, is a standard, and allows me to customize my laptop slightly for long-duration use devices, which is Ethernet right now.

I have never seen a legitimate computer technology whose name ended in "o". They've all been marketting ploys.

My Biggest Fear

[mogh1701]

I come home from work and my kid comes running up to be dressed like the MSN butterfly and says "Where do you want to go today." (in a robotic like tone)

Brainwashing I tell ya!!

Re:My Biggest Fear

[pmz]

my kid comes running up to be dressed like the MSN butterfly

Geckos eat butterflies.

Microsoft Fetish

[Hecubas]

C'mon slashdot, what is with this Microsoft fetish lately? Get with it and keep up the SCO bashing for goodness sake!

--
hecubas

Re:Microsoft Fetish

[sharkey]

C'mon slashdot, what is with this Microsoft fetish lately? Get with it and keep up the SCO bashing for goodness sake!

It's more of a return to traditional Slashdot roots, rather than an abadonment of a life-giving mainstay. We've been bashing MS for years, SCO's a new target.

they give it out like candy

[dioscaido]

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.

Re:they give it out like candy

[dioscaido]

> can't you get all that shit for free on warez sites? Well yes, but I meant legitimately. The serial numbers are real licenses owned by me. Its the first time in 10 years I've run an MS OS on a legitimate license. :)

ObSimp:

[mcmonkey]

I, for one, welcome our new redmond overlords...

Oh wait! No, I don't!

Re:ObSimp:

[Omnifarious]

The first phrase could be said by half the people modded up for this article. I don't understand people at all.

Please, come over here and rape me again, I like it. Please, commit more felonies you bad boy! I so love it when you're being evil!

Perhaps that's it. Or maybe it's just a pathetic apathy. I can't tell.

Re:ObSimp:

[Luke Skyewalker]

seriously, just shut the fuck up. at least come up with *something* original if you're going to try karma whore for a funny post...

Not surprising

[AKAImBatman]

Unis are chucking out hundreds (thousands?) of BS and MS students per year that know exactly jack about programming, development and engineering and you are surprised that these same Unis are switching to M$ products?! Must be a slow news day or something...

Re:Not surprising

[AKAImBatman]

Here's a relevent thread I posted awhile back.

MSNBC

[Jucius Maximus]

MSNBC has published lots of MSFT-critical articles. It's nothing new. It's actually a good sign showing that they are not as biased as say, MSN Search, as a result of being affifiliated with Microsoft.

much better!

[devphaeton]

Given that academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software, this is a disturbing long-term trend."



Indeed.

However, i almost hope that opensource and true computing innovation is so entrenched in colleges (i.e. MIT for instance) that it would be impossible for MS to get any kind of a footing.

I can only hope.

Re:much better!

[WinterSolstice]

MS is not anti-innovation. MS is not evilly corrupting students any more than Apple is.

However, I have a flyer here that says "80% discount off Academic Pricing on Any MS Office Product".
I also have one that says "50% discount off Any MS Office Product".

They are from different campuses (UCD, SCC). Hmmmm

-WS

Why are people surprised?

[deanj]

Why are people surprised by this? Microsoft has been doing this for years now, and even as part of a recent settlement in a court case. "No monopoly....ok! Sure! ...and as a settlement, we'll let you have all this free software!"

The scary thing is, some kids are now being taught things like PowerPoint in middle school....

Re:Why are people surprised?

[scottl]

Umm... my kids are learning PowerPoint in elementary school as well as Word etc. I'm the bad guy because I've only put OpenOffice on their computer at home. Two can play at that brainwashing game!

Re:Why are people surprised?

[0-9a-f]

This article in Wired magazine points out the false economies of PowerPoint, whereby slide presentations are being overused to sex-up a dull presentation to the extent that no effort is put into the data, and the "show" is everything.

MIT using tones of M$ software?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that school isn't as good as I though. Glad I didn't apply.

Re:MIT using tones of M$ software?

[mdupont]

Your tone is very nasty cant you be a little nicer?

No apples for the teacher

[Dog135]

What happened to the good old days when the teachers got Apples? Now they get PCs?

There goes Apple's monopoly. Oh wait, that died a few years ago.

I got to UTDallas

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Project 42

[civilengineer]

This is just more proof that the rats built the earth to find the ultimate question. Microsoft is their lead implementer on earth.

no surprise here

[514x0r]

i know at my school, not only is everything run on windows, whereas there used to be several HPUX boxes, but also anyone who takes the .NET classes gets a copy of visual studio.

this is par for the course from the company who bundled free browsers and cd recorders in their bloated overpriced OS.

Re:no surprise here

[mdupont]

Did you have to sign away your rights to get these copies?

http://www.redhat.com/archives/open-source-now-l is t/2003-August/msg00014.html

MS on Egyptian campuses

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Round here at the big state-run universities (Cairo U, etc.) you can get legal copies of Windows, Office, and Visual Studio for the total of around 25 egyptian pounds, or around 4 or 5 US dollars.

That is, of course, breathtakingly shocking. But then, it is common knowledge that the IT ministry is in cahoots with MS.

Offtopic, but is 'campuses' the right plural for campus, or would that be campii, or something?

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[Anonymous Coward]

is 'campuses' the right plural for campus

Yes. "campus" is an English word, and that is how we do plurals.

or would that be campii

No. Even were it Latin, the plural would be "campi" -- where did you get that extra i?

In any case, the English "campus", though descended from the Latin "campus", is not the same word. Pluralizing it as if it were Latin would be misleading and pretentious, and pluralizing it with a double i just makes you look like a total idiot.

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[Anonymous Coward]

According to MS Word, "campuses" is the correct plurality of campus.

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Pluralizing it as if it were Latin would be misleading and pretentious, and pluralizing it with a double i just makes you look like a total idiot.

Or perhaps it would make me look like a non-native english speaker? (which is the case)

OH well, don't let me ruin a perfectly good jump to a conclusion. :)

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[ImpTech]

Man, you're getting ripped off. At my university Windows and Visual Studio were free, as was most other Microsoft software (Project, SQL Server, etc.).

Of course, they still charged $80 or so for Office, so I guess maybe we weren't that well off.

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[danila]

Hey, but how they can afford it?! They told me will be out of business soon if they sold their products so cheaply!

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[willjohnson]

My old university has a campus agreement with Microsoft. The school pays a reduced rate for a license for every student. They then charge the student $10 for the media. The student doesn't get any support from Microsoft through this agreement. The university recently implemented a policy where to purchase a product (which your tuition dollars already paid for) you have to pay a $50 fee for them to install it. If it is an operating system they will charge you an additional $30 for each CD worth of backup. There is no way to purchase this software without paying that extortion.

The school is probably making back the cost of the license plus more.

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[Zemran]

The plural of campus is campera. Although if you used this no one would know what you are saying.

Re:MS on Egyptian campuses

[cvd6262]

Mish Ma'uul!

At UW

[scotiab]

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.

Re:At UW

[scotiab]

Underfunding is definately an issue. Our tuition is already sky-high, perhaps we should blame the province for the lack of funds. Rise up!

Re:At UW

[zx75]

But they do provide subsidized copies of Windows XP (home edition) if you want to get one from CHiP for about 6 bucks I think it was?

I'm student at UW taking CS.

Re:At UW

[Lyrrad]

It's actually free, as long as you return the CD within 24 hours.

Is Office available at a similar discount? CHIP didn't seem to have it when I was there.

Re:At UW

[HiThere]

Yes, it does matter. And neither C# nor Java is a good choice.

Good choices include:
Smalltalk: Everything is an object
Eiffel: Everything at least pretends to be an object, but overloading is ... strange.
Python: Everything is an object, but it might not look like it. A bit too much magic.
Ruby: I like Ruby. I can't be objective.
Ada95: You need to understand objects to do OO programming in Ada, but if you do you really can
and Lisp: Well, this is mainly here because everyone should be exposed to Lisp, but you can do OO programming in Lisp. Inheritance is quite interesting.

I don't know objective C, it might be a good choice, or maybe not. C++ has too many special cases and complex rules. (Ada is a bit that way, it's a more "advanced" language than most of the others. But at least it's well designed and not full of exceptional cases.)

Another good choice would be C. Plain old vanilla C. (Look at the Gnome project, and see how they did object oriented stuff in C. They seem to have it all.)

The point of a course in computer science is that you are supposed to come out of it understanding how things work. With the *.NET stuff everything is hidden behind various curtains. Bad idea. Perhaps good for development, though I doubt it, but definitely a bad choice for an academic CS program. And Java isn't that much better.

Re:At UW

[csbruce]

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.

I though that the administrators had merely promised to be much more sneaky about being bought off by Microsoft in the future. Is the MS purchase truly dead or just being snuck in through the back door?

Re:At UW

[Laxitive]

Well, MS wouldn't have to do much to topple our CS deparment's Unix environment, considering how sadly outdated it is.

I get depressed every time I log into bacon ;)

The administration is doing a pretty good job of selling out the CS program there even without Microsoft's help (e.g. Faculty of Computer Science "Let's not bother with all of this hard 'math' stuff for our poor CS students").

Anyway, what can you say, it's still probably one of the few halfway decent CS programs in the country.

Yeah, I'm a student there :) Currently on work term, but heading back on Sept 1. What program are you in btw?

-Laxitive

Re:At UW

[Anonymous Coward]

And, for all of the alternatives you've mentioned, all of these languages are available FOR FREE, unlike .NET.

There are GNU equivalents for all of the above. You can get a great academic Smalltalk called Smalltalk/X (free for non-commercial use), or even better, Squeak (www.squeak.org) which has been designed specifically for educational use.

There is NO REASON to sell out to microsoft at all.

Of course, you'll get the argument that you should be learning "real world" skills in university, and therefore you should learn all Microsoft software...BUT--this is the realm of college, not university. College has traditionally been for specific training, and university for the more theoretical aspects. Only the School of Business idiots believe otherwise, and their course is more college-like than they'd like to admit (YES WLU, I'm looking RIGHT AT YOU).

Re:At UW

[mdblake]

Apparently the University of Waterloo sold half it's soul to the devil. If you read the article . . .

"The university ultimately backed down this spring, saying for now the classes will be "multilingual."

Can we assume that "multilingual" is the university's code for "C# by default and C++ with those with the know how and the temperament to make a fuss"?

It will be interesting to see if this dance with the devil results in "Canada's MIT" becoming Canada's Waterloo.

Re:At UW

[zx75]

I don't know, I haven't gone to get it, I've got a copy of XP Pro acquired elsewhere as well as Office. I only knew about the CHiP offer second-hand from when I spent some time working for the Math Faculty.

zx75

Re:At UW

[Luke Skyewalker]

sorry, UW is not - nor will ever be - the 'MIT of Canada'. UW isn't even in the same fuckin ballpark as MIT...

Re:At UW

[tb3]

Huh? Can you give me a reference to this? Last I heard, they had sold their collective soul. As an alumnus, I was going to withhold my donations until the policy changed. Hell, if they're getting $zillions from Microsoft, why would they need my $500?

Re:At UW

[scotiab]

I did not mean that UW was on the same level as MIT. I stickly liken it that MIT is to the states as Waterloo is to Canada.

Top in their field, not neccesarily of the same calibre.

Re:At UW

[scotiab]

I am in SE. (Software Engineering)

Re:At UW

[scotiab]

Agree with you 100%

Re:At UW

[eniu!uine]

"Ruby: I like Ruby. I can't be objective."

But can *it* be objective?

Re:At UW

[Aerog]

At the University of Saskatchewan, somebody managed to sign up some strange contract with Microsoft that created a "software library" of sorts. You sign out the CD online, then wander down to the lab to pick it up. In about a day or so, you bring it back. If you want to make copies (as they suggest you do), then go right ahead. Cost to student: $Blank CD

Fiendish, yes. Evil, yes. Free software, yes. Will I be buying MS software in the future? Likely not. Are most students just enjoying free software and learning Linux anyway? Yes.

I, for one, will be enjoying my free software.

Re:At UW

[jpmorgan]

That's right, we usually beat them. ;)

Re:At UW

[Sepper]

You forgot Assembly.

I have WAY more respect for languages since i started to learn x86 Assembly...

and A LOT of respect for compilers... GCC (or Intel's) does so much job optimizing code...

In perspective

[Otter]

I'm not thrilled about this, but -- realistically, Microsoft has an overwhelming share of desktop operating systems and applications, and a large share of servers, programming tools and databases. Is it that shocking that universities are mixing Visual C++ in with the Scheme and Eiffel and whatever the hell else you old-school CS guys have such fond memories of?

(Damn, the phone rang. I could have had first post on a red-meat Micro$oft story!)

Re:In perspective

[krmt]

Because they're not really winning their way in to the curriculum based on merit, but on donations. Does that seem right to you?

Re:In perspective

[HiThere]

It's not shocking. But it's rather like the Pepsi machine in the room where they teach nutrition.

Sad.

Re:In perspective

[archen]

Try to explain OS concepts with Microsoft as an example. You can sort of guess what's going on, but you could never say for sure because the code is closed. I wasn't exactly hardcore into Linux when I was in college, but any professor that wanted to explain wat an OS was doing could use Linux as an example, and you could go look at the code yourself if you wanted to see how it really worked (yeah right). Pretty much every Linux distro comes with gcc, and you can look up functions and such in man pages if you need help. I'd say that generally Linux is pretty good for beginning programmers. As for Visual C++, I've had so many problems with Visual Studio f'ing up my computer that I just avoid it like the plague.

When I went to college they taught C++, and it was pretty standard stuff so you could use whatever machine you wanted (no gui or whatnot) - which is what CS departments should be doing anyway. After that they moved to Java which I thought was a mistake for various reasons, but at least you could compile it on whatever you want. It's supposed to be about the concepts anyway, right?

Re:In perspective

[Otter]

I was going to argue and then looked down at the Diet Coke in my hand...at least I'm coding on a Mac right now...

Re:In perspective

[shaitand]

Visual C++ is hardly the only C++ development app. They aren't supposed to be pushing software vendors (MS Visual C++ code only works with *gasp* visual c++ and generally windows).

Non microsoft doesn't equate old and obsolete. This mentality sickens me.

Re:In perspective

[pmz]

But it's rather like the Pepsi machine in the room where they teach nutrition.

I once saw a hospital with a McDonalds in their cafeteria.

Inspires confidence, it does.

Heh, not at my university

[cavemanf16]

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.

And yes, I realize most of you /. 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???

Re:Heh, not at my university

[514x0r]

Perhaps industry is demanding a bit more of graduates than simply knowing how to program in Visual Basic these days???

yep, they're looking for graduates that can probram VB in India.

Re:Heh, not at my university

[karnal]

Maybe part of the problem is that 90% of my classmates at DeVry (graduated 1996) were only in it to change careers...

Myself, I thought about transferring out after a year into my stint there, and decided quickly against it. Why? Well, the businesses around here don't mind the degree, and I really didn't want to go to a real college.

Hear that? I didn't want to go to a real college.

So, to each his own. Yes, I'm pissed that when I graduated, I worked with a few classmates that didn't know anything about anything it seemed.... but, I seem to be doing well, and am doing a job that I like.

And if I ever meet one of those people in the commercials, I will slap them silly....(with apologies to the onion!)

Simple solution

[StefanJ]

Put a lifelike effigy of a MS rep at each major entrance to campus.

Effigies made up to look like they've suffered the Death of a Thousand Cuts, only using sharpened slivers of Linux distribution CD-ROMs.

Also, encouraging grad students working in the IT offices to wear pirate costumes might help, Arrrr!

Disturbing?

[Meat Blaster]

I know that when I was in academia, it was extremely inexpensive to pick up Microsoft software (in my case, Visual C++ Professional). But I don't know what the problem is.

They know the biggest amount of piracy goes on in college campuses, so they make it cheap to be legit. They know they're competing with open source, so they lower their prices to get rid of the 'but it's free' reason for using less-than-compatible free software. They're aware that if students use their free time with Microsoft software they're going to build their skills in that area and be more likely to carry them to work with them later.

I think that Microsoft is very charitable in this regard, and this doesn't even include when they donate fully-loaded computers to communities. In my mind, this is a win-win for students, and I'd be ashamed if I was trying to put pressure on them to stop this. Not very good advocacy to lock somebody into software via politics no matter who is doing it.

In return

[OneIsNotPrime]

When accessing msnbc.com, IE has been set to issue a security warning "May contain false and disgracefully unresearched claims."

Seriously, though... My friend registered for a required computer class at her local community college. She told me the syllabus said all students needed Office XP. Another student asked the teacher if Office 2000 would do and the teacher said it wouldn't. I told her to ignore what the teacher said, he didn't know what he was talking about, any word processing needs she had could be fulfilled by Word 2000 or OSS. Then she told me she didn't need it just for word processing, the book for their class was called "Learning to Use Office XP."

Ohhhh.... I feel sick just remembering it.

Bah

[warnerve]

I hated not having MS-empowered machines on my campus. The linux / Sun machines were never set up right so most of the functionality was crippled. Plus, when I graduated I came to the real world only to realize the place I worked at used Microsoft products for *everything*, not apps like VI.

Re:Bah

[bongoras]

"The linux / Sun machines were never set up right so most of the functionality was crippled"

puh-leeze.

and this is the fault of linux how?

moron.

Good Thing

[N8F8]

Its a good thing MS already bought the legislature or they'd have somthing to worry about.

happened to me.

[PrometheuSx11]

a few years a go while i attened the university of southern california, i was surprised to find out that the UI design class in java i signed up for was now a introduction to MFC programming class.

the announcement my professor made show'ed she wasnt terribly happy with this. In addition every student in the class recieved a copy of windows NT professional and Visual Studio. This really stank for me, as a linux user, it meant that I had to work in the computer labs on campus.

In addition to the cut throat competition style bribes to the students, they also gave the computer department thousands and thousands of dollars that year. of course, one third of the sun machines were then replaced with dells...

the article is not over-reacting. How can we stop this? I think universities are lured by money, but are even more scared of losing cred. We as a developer community should loudly and publicly question the academic virtue of schools who whore themselves and their students out like this.

Re:happened to me.

[Cytotoxic]

We as a developer community should loudly and publicly question the academic virtue of schools who whore themselves and their students out like this.

Although it seems obvious that this "take over the classroom" strategy will work, I feel compelled to point out that I have never developed anything for the Apple IIe, or in Fortran, (which is what classes were taught in back in my day...), and I've never developed anything for Sun/Sparc, although that's where I learned C++. Nope, everything I've ever gotten paid to do was for what my customers/employers were using, Windows.

Re:happened to me.

[stratjakt]

one third of the sun machines were then replaced with dells

The Sun machines all got there the same way, I can assure you.

The humanities/social studies depts probably have a few banks of macs. They didnt pay for them.

This is another case where everyone plays the exact same game, but cries foul on MSFT for winning.

Re:happened to me.

[badboy_tw2002]

Not to rain on your parade, but I seriously doubt anyone will take "the [Linux/Os] developer community" seriously. If you really care, you should start where you can actually make a difference: at your respective institution's alumni organization. In this case, as all others, money talks, bullshit (however righteous and well-meaning) walks.

Re:happened to me.

[lowe0]

Why hire only Unix fanatics? Why not just hire people who have the skills you need and let them worry about the particulars of the platform?

One shouldn't let personal bias affect management decisions. If Windows is the best tool for the job, use it. If Linux is, use that instead.

Re:happened to me.

[MalleusEBHC]

If it makes you feel any better, the class you are talking about (CS201 with Bono I'm assuming) is no longer taught using MFC. The GUI section of the course is taught using Swing in Java, and everything is required to compile on Solaris using gcc or the Sun java compiler.

Of course, the CS department still whores copies of Win2k/VisualStudio to the students, so there is still room to get better.

Re:happened to me.

[Lysol]

Yah, except there's a huge difference between Apple, Sun, and M$:

* None of them, except M$, have $40bil in the bank
- this is of course, due to monopoly activities
* None of them, except M$, have monopolies
* All of them, except M$, make very reliable software
* All of them, except M$, have made innovative contributions to the computer industry
* All of them, except M$, embrace - NOT EXTEND - open standards

I actually would have little problem with M$ if things in the computer industry were somewhat level and fair. But we're so far beyond that that it's very hard for me to see anything the M$ does as good, impartial, or for the good of humanity/country/industry/individual. There's always a string attached and somewhere down the line you will pay. And in the end, that's all they want is your money and nothing else.

Re:happened to me.

[Lysol]

I somewhat agree and disagree. You probably don't want a fanatic from any side.

However, I have to question someone who would just put just MFC or just Swing in their curriculum. It would probably be a much more interesting class to do both. And possibly some GTK as well. I mean, I would probably find a class much more interesting and useful in life if I was shown the concepts and how they differed and how they were similar. Issues you might actually have to consider in the real world.

But, maybe this is not the goal of the course and it probably falls to what the Professor/Instructor deems appropriate. Which is an entirely different issue in itself.

Dear Future Professors...

[unsinged int]

If you do not want this pattern to continue, simply do not apply for research funding from Microsoft. Furthermore, reject all donations from Microsoft and never do any consulting work for them or their research division. That has been my plan for quite some time.

Re:Dear Future Professors...

[the_2nd_coming]

and also realise that you will be

1)putting off that nice lincoln navigator to keep driving that 10 year old GEO metro.

2)have to wear those crappy target clothes with holes in them to work.

3)look like a fool in the eyes of your peers as they turn a huge research grant from MS into a successful book writing career.

but at least you will have your dignity

Software Eng.

[Apathetic1]

The (accredited) Software Engineering program at my school requires students to have access to at least one computer running some form of Unix. Typically this is Mandrake or RedHat on the student's home computer but there are also Solaris and Linux labs on campus for student use.

Typically the only Engineering students who use the MS labs for programming are students in the first year software design class.

Were'd them IT jobs go?

[tarquin_fim_bim]

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.

No surprise that there is so much outsourcing to India and former Eastern Bloc countries then.

No only US

[jarda]

They're hardly doing this only in the US. In country where I live, about a year ago, there was a big show with Bill Gates coming and being portrayed as such a nice guy for giving away lot of computers with MS software on it for free or very low cost to high schools

Come on, they're big corporation, with lots of many to spare, and this is pretty smart thing on their part

Nice of microsoft to give...

[John Seminal]

The software giant's donations have allowed universities to follow through on projects they could not have otherwise dreamed of, given their limited research budgets. The collaborations have not only led to new products on store shelves but work dominating academic journals focused on high-tech innovation.

The corporation, however, has also directly or indirectly influenced curriculums and research priorities, drawing an outcry from critics who say the donations are turning computer science departments into vocational schools where mastery of proprietary computer programs are valued over the study of theory

Does this mean that colleges and universities have to change the curriculum to get the donnations? I was reading about the Waterloo school in the article which wanted to change intro to programming from using C++ to C#. I would say that if Miscrosoft wants to give, that is good, but if they want to influance for what purpose their products are used, then I think schools should not accept their giveaways.

I think schools should also ensure they have diversity of products. If they have a computer lab, they should try and include many different kinds of machines, not just PC's. I would like to see labs with Mac's, Suns, and other brands. Maybe because Microsoft is giving, other manufacturers will follow.

What's the Problem?

[Zardoz44]

Isn't the point of free software like, say, Linux, that it is free? Even if MS incorporates itself into the University systems, there's nothing stopping individual professors and students from picking up their own tools to do their work.

At worst, this allows students to have exposure to a little more than they might otherwise have. You'll have a difficult time brainwashing everyone when there's a free alternative to try.

Yeah well...

[ERJ]

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.

No news for Italy too

[nemorino]

This unfortunately is no news for some italian universities. One of the largest CS universities in Milan (http://www.unimib.it) is totally running on MS software, with just a small PC running Linux machine being sneaked in for the poor student to do as little Unix as possible. Funnily, though, the language of choice is Java. :-)

Guess who bought MIT a new comp sci building...?

[agent oranje]

The "William H. Gates" building at MIT, part of their new computer science complex, was paid for by a certain individual whose name appears on the building. Additionally, Microsoft funds a great amount of "research" around campus, giving undergrads the opportunity to work for Microsoft at $7.50/hour.

Don't feel like paying an employee? Pay a school and get students to do it instead!

Needless to say, I'm bitter about "Microsoft presents 'College Education.'"

They're good at it, but others help their demise

[edremy]

In my first "real" job at USC back in the ~1996 era, we had a department system that ran on OS/2. The sysadmin was a big OS/2 fan, and all the local machines ran it.

So I walk down to the bookstore. I can get a Blue Box OS/2 3.0 CD for $199. The C compiler was some outrageous expense- ~$500 if I remember. Everything else was a fortune: the sysadmin ran a beautiful editor (forget the name) that was ~$300/copy.

Sitting next to this was a copy of VisualC++. $99 In the box as extras were full copies of J++ and NT4.0. It also ran some nice chemistry visualization stuff that OS/2 wouldn't. For that price, why not give it a try? So I started running NT4. (Linux was out: too new and didn't run a fraction of the software I needed.)

I can't have been the only one. Apple learned this lesson ages ago: stuff the schools and people will use your system for years to come.

Take the Money, but be Careful

[4of12]

at a question-and-answer session between the academics and Gates, one professor asked the Microsoft founder about his views about the study of information technology, a part of computer science that emphasizes on how documents, spreadsheets and other data should be handled. What kinds of technologies should students majoring in this subject be taught?
Gates replied quickly and with a smile: "Microsoft Office."

Yes, MSFT will try to benefit itself by attaching strings to money.

It is incumbent upon universities that call themselves places of learning, open-minded, bastions of science, to refuse money that comes attached with any strings.

If MS funds general research into CS, great.

If the money is contingent upon the university replacing standard infrastructure with MS proprietary infrastructure, the decision to change infrastructure should be made completely independent of the money.

Otherwise, it looks as if the univesity can be bought by the highest bidder.

Re:Take the Money, but be Careful

[Loundry]

It is incumbent upon universities that call themselves places of learning, open-minded, bastions of science, to refuse money that comes attached with any strings.

Universities can call themselves whatever they want. It will not change two inherent facts about universities:

1. Universities are businesses with bottom lines.
2. Universities are run by fallible humans who are subject to the temptations of money and power.

I don't think it is reasonable to ask or expect that University officials be any more moral or principled than the average corporation or labor union.

ObSimp II:

[mcmonkey]

effigy, huh?

Nothing burns like an effigy.

Re:Oh yeah, it's only MS doing this...

[tdemark]

At least with MS, you can always format and install Linux

What makes you think you can't do this with Apple's proprietary hardware?

- Tony

Baloney

[OneIsNotPrime]

I learned to ignore dubious claims such as this in Marketing 312: The Benefits of Monopolies and the Lies of the CommonFolk (TM Microsoft 1999)

Free Software is a cult - MS just a corp

[Eric Ass Raymond]

my kid comes running up to be dressed like the MSN butterfly and says "Where do you want to go today." (in a robotic like tone)

As opposed to wearing a poncho, playing a flute and chanting: "All software must be free - free as in beer and free as in speech! The prophet Richard M. Stallman said so and we'll happily give our lives to the Church of Emacs!"

Re:Free Software is a cult - MS just a corp

[mogh1701]

"All software must be free - free as in beer and free as in speech!"

Man Free Beer and Free Software go together like Free Porn and P2P sharing. Sounds like heaven to me.

In fact I declare that all distros of M$ software should now be free and come with a beer cozy.

Re:Free Software is a cult - MS just a corp

[Eric Ass Raymond]

Man Free Beer and Free Software go together like Free Porn and P2P sharing.

Except that the freedom in Free Software is on RMS' terms. Just watch the next version of GPL so that it does not include a clause about free blowjobs to the Free Software leadership.

MS weilds both carrot and stick

[Rasputin]

A friend who works at a local university said that Microsoft was willing to give them discounts - but only in exchange for a list of the people in their department who used Linux. His deparment refused. Golly, I wonder what they planned on doing with that list?

Free hardware?

[TCM]

Bearing gifts of cash, software and computers worth $25 million [...]

Can't they just say like "Hey, thanks for the hardware!", dump the Windows crap and install BSD/Linux/..?

Why am I sure that they actually have to use the OS they are given as a "gift"?

I noticed it on campus

[ducomputergeek]

I went to a small liberal arts school and considered majoring in CIS or CS, however all the school had on campus were NT machines, except for the AS/400 that handled grades and payroll. About three years ago when I was a Junior the math/cs department got their first and to this date only Linux box to play with. Now some of the geekier students [sarcasm]which of course does not include me ;)[/sarcasm] were playing around with linux by their jr/sr years, however by that time I was on to the BSD family of products.

Also, I noticed they switched from borland to visual C++ to teach programming courses during my stay at the college. Instead I went on to get a double major in German and International business and taught myself PERL, PHP, MySQL, Linux, FreeBSD, DNS/BIND. It was scary that I knew more about databases than the CIS majors in the database programming class. I would ask simple questions about joins and other things and get a blank stare in return. The instructor was teaching them how to use Access for 90% of their work and had about one chapter over MSSQL. Most didn't even know what SQL even was let alone why it may just be important to know in the business world. I mean every other database package, except for Access, can use "SELECT * FROM table_name". Is SQL that hard to learn if one understands the theory of programming? No, not really, but I had already learned enough to be dangous. Did I know all the absolute nitty, gritty details of what queries would run the fastest and all that, no, but neither did the CIS students.

With my International Business degree and German I ended up working for a great little start-up firm that now is making about $500k in revenue and growing and hold the title of VP/IT Director and trying to get Linux on more than just our webservers and suceeding and my pay is proably more than what most are making as jr. level coders.

One thing I did notice when I spent a semester in Germany was that the German fochhochschule had two computer labs, one with XP, the other SuSE Linux. People were becoming familar with both MS Office and Star/Open Office.

Personal Experiences

[inphinity]

At the university I attend, I'm on a committee assigned to develop an undergraduate lab that tutors and provides software support to entry level IT students (I'm a student myself).

When we finally acquisitioned all the machines, we had a pow-wow to decide what software to put on the machines. Most of the group voted open source, because of the low cost (free!) and wide avilability of programs. However, the administration felt otherwise. Since they had recently gotten a VIP "visit" from MS, they told us that we had to meet with them (the administration) to decide what platforms to use.

In the end, the "discussion" led to our adoption of .NET in all the machines in the lab. We reluctantly agreed, thinking that it would cost us very little through the university, and we could get free support. So, we begrudgingly agreed.

However, when classtime rolled around, the students that came in needed help with *nix and compiling using the command line!! Apparently nobody told the professors they were supposed to use MS software.

In the end, we decided to wipe all the machines and install Suse. When word about our actions got out, the administration had a cow. Needless to say, I am no longer decision-maker for the lab, and the same goes for the other open-source advocates.

So much for University freedom of speech...

Stop with the groupthink already, PLEASE.

[PseudoThink]

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.

WTF. Seriously. Why the hell is it disturbing that MS products are gaining market share on campuses (or anywhere, in general)? Perhaps...just maybe...it's because they actually make some fairly decent, reasonably functional, well designed software? But wait, -GASP- they are closed source and evil, so it MUST be disturbing! They release software to the public that ISN'T PERFECTLY FLAWLESS!!! OMG!!11!

I know there are lots of people like me, who read Slashdot (and like it), use Microsoft (and like it), and just chuckle at all the self-righteous open-source trolls that refuse to consider that maybe MS isn't totally evil and maybe their products are useful. But like any joke, these trolls and their mass groupthink become old after a while.

Open source is good. Microsoft can be too. Deal.

Re:Stop with the groupthink already, PLEASE.

[MS_is_the_best]

I run linux only, but see no real problems with the quality of Windows 2000 when I have to work with it. Sometimes (small) problems arise, just as with my favourite linux distro. I run linux, because it works and has better tools for me, but I thinks Microsoft have also usable software.

However, I am against the methods described in this article. Microsoft is leveraging their wealth (and thus their monopoly), which is unfair competition. That is the real problem here, not the quality or whatever.

Re:Stop with the groupthink already, PLEASE.

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Perhaps...just maybe...it's because they actually make some fairly decent, reasonably functional, well designed software? "

Or perhaps it has to do with the fact that MS is giving the school a boatload of money and free software to do it? This is MS we're talking about, do you honestly think they DON'T have an agenda with this? Don't be so naive. There's a reason many people on Slashdot bash MS and its not because they're closed source. Its because they make poor software, and use monopolistic practices to make sure it remains dominant in the marketplace, as opposed to other software developers who try to do something called "compete". Maybe you should take Business 101 instead of trolling.

Get Better Quality First

[dunelin]

After what I've experienced the last 3 days, I would not recommend any university to heavily rely on Microsoft as a vendor. When students came back to school starting a few days ago, enough were infected with MS.Blaster to jam up the entire campus network with worm traffic. Typing this message is the first thing I've been able to do online since Saturday. Fix your software first, Microsoft! Until then, you can't be trusted to run my college's software.

MS business plan

[Dark Lord Seth]

General:

1. Offer MS products at cheapo prices.
2. Get students hooked on MS products.
3. Wait untill they aren't students anymore and cough up the full price.
4. PROFIT!

Alternative:

1. Offer MS products at cheapo prices.
2. Get students hooked on MS products.
3. Wait untill they aren't students anymore and copy stuff instead.
4. Send former registration info to the BSA.
5. PROFIT!

Microsoft and Redhat are buying students rights!

[mdupont]

The FSEDU Project has been been founded to protect the students rights from predatory companies and universities.

We have developed a students bill of rights
here

1. You have the right to use free software instead of proprietary software for all school-related tasks. The school shall not impede this right in any way.

2. You have the right to demand open file formats:

2.1. Allow sincere choice of software/operating system

2.2. Openly specified and freely implementable

2.3. Work with completely Free systems

3. You have the right to publish your homework assignments as you see fit, for profit or gratis.

4. You have the right to publish what you learn, in your own words, for profit or gratis.

Not only Microsoft is taking away students rights, but also our beloved REDHAT as well

See my open letter to REDHAT here REDHATLETTER

and HERE

Little do people know but the Microsoft licenses
have clauses in them that require the schools to monitor the student and report them to microsoft if they suspect them of violating the EULA. This is probably illegal in Europe.

Here are some selections from the MS Student License Aggreement :
http://www.microsoft.com/education/?ID=CAStuden tOp tion
"
Perpetual Student Use Rights
Upon graduation, students licensed under the Student Option are granted
perpetual use rights for the selected Campus Agreement products.

All other students are only licensed to use the software for the
subscription term. These licenses are non-perpetual (meaning the
student does not own the license). Upon leaving the institution
(besides graduation) or expiration of the subscription term, students
are required to remove the software. Your institution is responsible
for communicating the appropriate use rights to students when
distributing the software. Guidelines for facilitating compliance are
outlined in the Master Campus Agreement Terms and Conditions. To the
extent that your institution follows these guidelines, you will not be
held responsible for students' failure to remove the software.
"
>
THis is the kernel of the problem. Now the university is the henchman
of microsoft.

The worst thing is that taxpayer money is being spent on taking the basic rights of the students way.

I beg to differ

[GillBates0]

"Universities have become much more open to corporate donations even when they have strings attached, and they are less likely today to assess the long-term impact of these donations on academic freedom,"

I think corporation donations are a boon to colleges. True, they may have strings attached, and in most cases they do, but the school also benefits from them. At a major engineering school at which I study, we have dedicated Intel and Apple labs, which were built using academic donations from the respective companies.

Just because we got a new Mac lab does not mean, the department did away with the UNIX machines. A new lab was built to accomodate the new machines, and as a result, students ended up with *more* choice and Freedom to choose the OS of their liking.

Setting up UNIX labs does not require a big investment from schools.Infact, any open source software can be set up without any major monetary investment.It's the proprietary software (Matlab for example) which costs a lot of money. If companies donate hardware and software required to run their proprietary software, they may be promoting their product, but the students surely end up with more freedom to choose the software they like, as long as the department is sensible about it, and not merely being sold out to the corporation.

ADA is the future!

[mabu]

Colleges have always been the battleground for special interests, often at the expense of the education they offer.

When I was in college, midway into the program, the CS department made a deal with the government to supply them with shiny new PCs. All they had to do was convert their CS program from C/Pascal over to ADA. The government touted ADA as the future of all programming. The school immediately did so and I found myself having to audit low-level ADA classes in order to pick up the remaining credits I needed to graduate. Totally bunk, and I had no desire to design missile guidance systems when I graduated so the whole program was a waste of time, but hey, the school got a bunch of new PCs, and now I can talk tech with the waiter/CS grad at the local O'Henry's. So everything turned out happily ever after.

Re:ADA is the future!

[HiThere]

Ada (not ADA, it's a person's name, not an acronym) would have been a much better choice than C++ ended up being. Simpler, too.

Check it out. It's a part of gcc. I don't use it because it's too static, but so is C++. (Actually, Eiffel would probably have been a better choice than either, except B. Meyers doesn't believe in overloading names, doesn't have a smooth personality, and needs better exception handling. Also it was a slight bit more different from C than C++ started out being.) Unfortunately, Eiffel is nearly stillborn. I've used it on occasion, and I vastly prefer it to C or C++, but it's a lot more ridgid. Too much so. (OTOH, it was the first language since Snobol with a built-in garbage collector. That's an important feature for an OO language.)

Re:ADA is the future!

[mabu]

Yes you're right. I am sorry for not responding sooner. I was overwhelmed by the stampede of corporate head hunters coming after me because of my l33t Ada skilz.

MS heavily subsidizing major publishers

[johnjay]

A friend of mine works for a major, highly-respected publisher of computer texts. She mentioned a while back that Microsoft is giving them so much money to write and publish their .NET line of books that the publisher has no financial risk when adding .NET books to it's list of titles. These new titles are both general consumption .NET books and CS texts for universities. They can be produced at a higher quality and sold at a lower price than books on non-MS subjects. Just another part of the general strategy to choke off Linux and Java's air supply by having CS graduates coming out of schools trained in Windows/.NET instead of Linux/Java.

Re:MS heavily subsidizing major publishers

[IM6100]

An official Java VM wasn't available for Linux for ages and ages. I think you're wrong to act like a Linux/Java connection has ever been strong. Sun avoided Linux as long as they could. Some would say it hurt Java quite a bit.

targeting youngters

[maliabu]

i think it is a wise move for MS to target young people, maybe uni is a bit too old, they should really try penetrating primary schools etc.

although flawed and insecure by nature, MS is very user friendly, and young children will be drawn to it and eventually hooked. this should naturally lead to more (comfy and familiar) usages in their adulthood.

at the moment, is linux friendly enough for young, innocent learning children?

Re:targeting youngters

[Laplace]

I just downloaded an Apple ][ emulator so I could play the original Lode Runner of my youth that sucked so many hours out of my life.

Yeah, habits learned early die hard.

Institutional Reasons

[cybermage]

Many colleges, especially community colleges, take significant funding from government to operate. They, in turn, establish programs and curriculum to meet what they perceive (or are told are) the needs of the community.

For example, our local community college requires that every student take a course entitled "Intro to Information Management Systems." This course, with such a lofty title, teaches students the following:

• Computer Hardware - difference between hard drive and floppy drive, etc.
  
• MS Windows
  
• MS Word
  
• MS Excel
  
• MS Power Point
  
• Internet
  

I asked the professor why they require everyone to take this stuff. The reason he gave is that they were asked to do so by the local business community (Chamber of Commerce and the like.)

You can blame Microsoft for infesting CS departments, but schools like to believe they provide a service to the community, and the community asks for Microsoft. Don't like it, send a letter to your local schools from your business asking them to use the tools your business uses in teaching their students.

Re:Institutional Reasons

[kscd]

While I can see where they're coming from, there's still part of me that longs for those days when education was about learning. Not churning out worker bees.

Re:Institutional Reasons

[kscd]

Yep, it's redundant. AC's post wasn't on the static page when I posted. Oh well.

Re:Institutional Reasons

[STFU donnie]

The computer club at Caltech is heavily influenced by Microsoft. My friend actually got kicked out of it by trying to give away linux cds. Its really pretty amazing because a very large percentage of people at Caltech use linux on their desktops (not 50 but close).

Irony?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

I think not. \

You should be _happy_ that MSNBC is running this story, thankfully, they are being at least a little bit independent of the people that have invested in them.

John.

Buying off students as well

[joncarwash]

Microsoft has been buying off students as well as the universities and departments for a while now. Check out the MSDNAA where Microsoft provides free development tools to certain educational institutions. At my university any student who takes at least one CS course is eligible. They may download ANY Microsoft operating system as well as any number of Microsoft development tools.

Also, within the past year Microsoft began selling their current desktop operating system and office suites to all students at significantly reduced prices - at $70 and below. Both of these methods of obtaining software will greatly increase the proliferation of Microsoft in academia.

All of this is discounting the huge amount of "pirated" software, particularly new versions of Microsoft operating systems and office suites, that are installed on students computers in college. A few students who know the tricks of the trade ("pirating") distribute copies to a huge amount of people on campus, especially since students hardly want to pay for music, let alone software.

Re:Buying off students as well

[Mr. No Skills]

All of this is discounting the huge amount of "pirated" software, particularly new versions of Microsoft operating systems and office suites, that are installed on students computers in college.

Another perk is you can hang outside a University book store and slip some kid beer money to get a full install disk with documentation!

Re:Buying off students as well

[noelp]

This is not flamebait.

If Microsoft was not offering software discounts and free downloads to students, you can bet your bottom dollar that the MS bashing crowd would be up in arms.

Whether they charge for software, or offer it for free to students. Whether they donate money to academic institutions, or whether they dont. They cannot win here at slashdot. Not everything they do is the work of the devil. A lot, yes, not everything.

Programming principles are in the main, generic. Learn to program in Java, C++, C# whatever, your OO methodologies will be there, ready to be applied to almost any other language. The most important thing is the train of thought that is required to write good code. Not the language.

If people (CS students esp.) are downloading Windows over Linux when both are 'free', maybe there is a small, tiny, miniscule chance that in the main the Windows desktop does a better job than the Linux desktop. I dont mean it is more secure, or more stable (although I find XP a rock). Just that it is easier to do 'stuff' on. Day-to-day stuff. Playing music, games, ripping CDs, writing docs, email, internet.

I write software for Linux, I run enterprise databases on Linux...it is usually my first port of call for doing back-end stuff that doesnt insist on MS. I sure as hell do not run it on my desktop.

Let the flaming begin...I can take it....I think....

Re:Buying off students as well

[noah_fense]

As a student at umass-amherst, we have MSDNAA. All OS's and development tools are FREE. Just need to pirate MS office, which is usually hanging around our LAN anyway.

check our webpage out: http://msdnaa.oit.umass.edu
Also, it is not FORCED upon us. we have a linux server available on campus that hosts just about every distro under the sun.

-n

Re:CU Boulder

[Eric Ass Raymond]

In essence they are not even teach them how to compile from the command line.

Goddamn. What if they'll stop teaching people how to code in ix86 assembly! Oh wait...

MIT?

[jcr]

Wow, I guess daily contact with RMS is enough to drive people to some truly extreme measures...

-jcr

Shame

[dachshund]

It's a shame. As much as people like to point out that CS is about "concepts, not specific implementations", it is easier to learn those concepts using certain implementations. More of the inner workings are accessable in *nixes than they are in Windows, and the development tools are often a lot more flexible (once you learn them.) On top of that, it just feels cooler to realize you've got the proverbial hood open and are touching the actual guts of the OS, rather than (by necessity) playing around with simulations in Windows.

For instance, I never would have understood Operating Systems as well if we hadn't been using *nix systems; it made the difference between actually writing real code for class assignments and "pretending" to write code.

The next year after I finished my basic classes, the department began a transition from Linux/BSD/GCC to Windows/Java. Tutoring those kids, I noticed that they were having a hard time, and displayed a lot less interest. There's just something compelling about doing "real stuff" at a low-level, as opposed to working in a much higher-level environment.

www.microsoft.edu

[gearmonger]

Sign up now for Fall classes:
- Geography (required materials: Streets & Trips 2004)
- Calculus (required materials: install Solver and Equation Editor in Microsoft Office)
- History (required materials: "How Microsoft Invented the Internet" by William Gates - on CD-ROM)
- English#
- Basketweaving.net

reminds me of ibm

[Potor]

When i was at Univ. of Waterloo in 1988, I had to write essays on a vm/cms machine with BookMaster because that`s what ibm wrote its manuals on. Let me tell you, that sucked, esp. since wysiwyg text editors were already popular then. My degree program was more or less a feeder program for their IT dept. in Toronto.

Microsoft's university outreach

[dtfinch]

Gave me full, free, legal copies of WinXP Professional and Visual Studio.NET.

On the bright side though, the university had Redhat Linux on more computers last year than the year before, and they were new computers this time. And many of the upper division programming classes expect you to use Linux.

Be consistent

[tmark]

What's the big deal. If people learn how to use Word, or Excel, or VisualBlahBlah, they've still learned how to use computer software, or they've learned how to program in at least one environment, and this learning should transfer to some other environment. At least, that's what OSS advocates are always saying when asked about students are being done a disservice by training them on, say, OpenOffice instead of Word, even when Word is dominant in the workplace. Does teaching students Word mean it would be harder for them to use an alternative later ? If so, one could well argue we should ONLY EVER teach students Word because presumably teaching them something else would make it harder for them to use the standard Word.

Taken to an extreme, one could argue about whether or not students ought to be taught on OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, or Debian/RedHat/Mandrake - after all, they're all different to some extent. The question is, how much difference makes a material difference to the student ?

When someone makes a convincing argument that teaching kids on Windows software hurts them, that's when I'll kiss away the subsidies and grants that MS is giving away by the bushel.

Re:Be consistent

[themanwhoknowsmostth]

At my university, we've been migrating from Windows boxes to *nix for about a year or so because we wanted easy-to-administrate stuff. The problem, though, is that it's hard to find students who have the skillz for these boxes because mostly they know Windows administration. To me, that's kinda/sorta a big deal.

Re:Be consistent

[KlausBreuer]

I don't get it. What's this about "training people on word processors"?
Surely a word processor is not difficult to use? Definitively not difficult enough to actually teach at a university, instead of throwing the handbook at the students and telling them to read it.

No, you want to teach the CS students exactly that - CS. What is a compiler? What makes it tick? How do you write one? How do data structures work? What's a microkernel, and is it a good idea?

You need to teach basic concepts. Teaching people how to use certain software will be perfectly worthless in ten years.

Teaching them "How to use Word/Access/PowerPoint/whatever" is not something a university should do. Leave this to some or other trainer found in the yellow pages, if you honestly think you can't learn it from a book instead.

In a perfect world

[mao che minh]

your post would be sensible and correct. However, we live in a capatilist world. If Microsoft is allowed to influence budding young minds to use their products, develop for their products, and learn their proprietary languages, then they will succeed at the expense of their competitors (and education in general).

Dictators do similar things to the minds of the youth.

Re:In a perfect world

[tealover]

Nothing is stopping Microsoft's competitors from doing the same. Nothing is stopping the schools from accepting Microsoft's offers.

I see nothing wrong with what Microsoft is doing.

Re:In a perfect world

[Trelane]

Nothing is stopping Microsoft's competitors from doing the same. Nothing is stopping the schools from accepting Microsoft's offers.

Actually, there is. You have to have marketshare to get money, and you have to have money to give away money. Most of the tech sector is in no condition to be throwing around money on things they won't see returns for in the near future, since they would likely not have a future! The only one really making enough money to do this is Microsoft, and Microsoft monopoly and continued monopolization of old and new markets via means such as this is what's keeping competitors from doing the same.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, the Linux ones do. You can get Red Hat or SuSE or Mandrake or OpenBSD or NetBSD for free. Look at it as a campus licensing agreement that people don't seem to know or care about.

As a case in point, I've offered several times to give out copies of Linux to the bookstore for people to get. No go. They don't even want to get the free CDs to give out.

So, yes. Microsoft's monopoly is what is keeping competitors back.

Re:In a perfect world

[tealover]

Lacking marketshare is just an excuse for not giving or not being creative enough to sway the people who make the decisions at the Unis. Maybe that's why these companies lack marketshare in the first place.

I'm not defending Microsoft or denigrating their competitors but business is tough. I'm a firm believer in corporate Darwinism. You either survive or you provide sustenance for those stronger.

Re:In a perfect world

[bmajik]

get over it. if microsoft had any talents in the mind control department, would slashdot even exist ? it seems that the mind control experts are clearly on the other side of the microsoft debate...

I learned Motif and awk in two of my university classes. I also taught myself to do all of my reports and math homework using LaTeX.

None of this prevented me from learning how to use .NET, SQL, and Word to do similar programming, data processing, and document preparation tasks once I left college.

Re:In a perfect world

[shaitand]

I won't argue the point of whether or not a monopoly is bad... it's been argued to death and society in general agree's it's a bad thing.

Microsoft has a monopoly... hence they lose the right to do anything which shuts out the competition, like using thier vast reserves of cash and desktop monopoly to bribe professors.

Re:In a perfect world

[Trelane]

Lacking marketshare is just an excuse for not giving or not being creative enough to sway the people who make the decisions at the Unis. Maybe that's why these companies lack marketshare in the first place.

No, but it leads not not having enough money to donate lots of goods and services. You have to make ends meet. Microsoft is one of a very few, if not the only tech company making money right now. Sun and others are laying off staff. While it's short-sighted, you have to have a long-term future in order to reap the benefits of long-term strategies. The companies are just struggling to get by, and they're being blocked by a lack of money and Microsoft's strangle hold on the industry.

I'm a firm believer in corporate Darwinism. You either survive or you provide sustenance for those stronger.

Sometimes superpredators can evolve and decimate the ecosystem. Prime example is humans. How many species have we and will we yet make extinct? How many are being forced to change due to our changing of the environment (e.g. sea turtles getting hit on the highway since they mistake the lights for the moon)? But the analogy doesn't hold exactly anyway. It's not a simple survival-of-the-fittest, especially in the tech market, although definite parallels are there.

Innovation and CS departments

[mumblestheclown]

"Given that academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software...

LMAO.

Just because it isn't Linux, doesn't mean its evil

[mattgreen]

Enough with the "OMG M$ SUX" replies. Here at VT I was under the impression students started out learning C++ on the Visual Studio compiler because the IDE is easy, the compiler is good enough to learn on, debugging is great (something that royally sucks on Linux) and they don't have to install another operating system. As much as people want to point me to open source tools, you cannot beat MS's developer tools. All of the OSS ones simply try to emulate VS as close as possible. In addition, students don't want to switch operating systems just to take a class, especially if they're not sure its for them. And they shouldn't have to change operating systems.

I have encountered this

[DaveJay]

I recently explored the possibility of going back to school for a technology degree from a local college.

One of the most disappointing things that I discovered was the huge number of Microsoft-specific classes (Visual Basic on up), the small number of Java classes (no pun intended), and most miserably of all, a single class focusing on Linux -- not mandatory, and worth only a single credit hour.

It wasn't a big school, granted, but the idea that most of the kids who go to this school to get a technology degree do so without ever having to lay a hand on a Unix machine...it just seems so wrong somehow.

Then Again...

[Pro_Piracy_Guy]

As a student you can get Visual Studio for a discounted price (about 100 bucks), and office XP pro for around 50, not to mention windows 2K, XP, or 2003 for around 30 bucks. The best thing is, all the worms, security flaws, poor code, blue screens, slowdowns, and general moral wrongness are free for your enjoyment.

I think I'll stick with debian, open office, and all the lovely free software that came with my distro.

Thanks anyway... I prefer software that works.

Cost of new windows OS and software: about 300 dollars (Student discount rate)

Cost of lost term papers and other data due to windows blue screens: several months!

Cost of converting to linux and discovering I am no longer part of the hive mind: PRICELESS!

Don't think different, just think for yourself.

Sheesh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I got $15 an hour as a UROP.

On the topic at hand, I only
wish that the new Gates building
were "Building 666". I know they
would be skipping a few numbers,
but it would be well worth it.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

What are you selling for this this money?
Are you selling your rights away? Subjecting yourself to possibly illegal observation?

Here are some selections from the MS Student License Aggreement :
http://www.microsoft.com/education/?ID=CAStuden tOp tion
"
Perpetual Student Use Rights
Upon graduation, students licensed under the Student Option are granted
perpetual use rights for the selected Campus Agreement products.

All other students are only licensed to use the software for the
subscription term. These licenses are non-perpetual (meaning the
student does not own the license). Upon leaving the institution
(besides graduation) or expiration of the subscription term, students
are required to remove the software. Your institution is responsible
for communicating the appropriate use rights to students when
distributing the software. Guidelines for facilitating compliance are
outlined in the Master Campus Agreement Terms and Conditions. To the
extent that your institution follows these guidelines, you will not be
held responsible for students' failure to remove the software.
"

>
THis is the kernel of the problem. Now the university is the henchman
of microsoft.

Um, not exactly.

[jdreed1024]

The "William H. Gates" building at MIT, part of their new computer science complex, was paid for by a certain individual whose name appears on the building.

Nope. He paid for a part of the building. The building in question is the Stata Center, named for Ray and Maria Stata. Ray Stata is an MIT alum who founded Analog Devices, and he's the one shelling out much of the dough. Gates only paid for one tower of the building (cheapskate), so that's all he gets. No one calls it the Gates building - it's called the Stata Center. Or, alternatively "that pile of iron on Vassar street", since it's designed by "renowned" "architect" Fran Gehry, which means it looks like it was a very nice building that got hit by an earthquake...

Re:Um, not exactly.

[agent oranje]

My point remains the same - one of the picasso-esque towers of the Stata Center is dubbed "The William H. Gates" building, and there's the "Gates Entry." Not like the name means anything, and it'll be stripped as soon as the building is opened to students. But somewhere in there, there'll be a plaque thanking good ole Billy for his delightful contribution to the institute.

I'm all for new buildings, and I couldn't care less who actually funds them. However, Microsoft has and will continue to influence the research being done at LCS, the material in courses, and certainly the operating systems commonly used on department-owned machines. The graphics lab has upgraded many old SGI machines to sparkly-new Windows machines... what, for their speed, stability, or security?

Re:Um, not exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was recently at Stanford, I walked into _their_ William H. Gates building. Notwithstanding the appalling amount of corporate sellout in Palo Alto, the first thing you see when you enter is a touchscreen terminal with a big X11 "X" on it.

Re:Um, not exactly.

[Chris Pimlott]

one of the picasso-esque towers of the Stata Center is dubbed "The William H. Gates" building, and there's the "Gates Entry."

I can't help but wonder if someday a distraught CS student will attempt to commit suicide by jumping out the Gates Window...

Visa Commercial

[jared_hanson]

Flaming Microsoft: +5, Funny
Flaming Linux: 0, Flamebait

Unbiased moderation on Slashdot:
There are somethings money can't buy, and others that will simply never happen.

Re:Visa Commercial

[shaitand]

Give me a break, the windows loving mods will mod you into oblivion most of the time simply for mentioning linux.

giving it away...

[bigbigbison]

I had heard about microsoft's selling their software to college students at drasticly reduced prices before. however, I am currently going through orientation in a PHD program at a certain University in Indiana and they have Microsft office available for FREE to students via download. And certain students can get acess to their OS's for free as well. Now certainly what has happened is that my university has probably included the cost of these in tuition.

During orientation I mentioned that you could download Openoffice and its open source. Their responce was, "But microsoft office is free, why not use it?" I could not get these people to understand why they shouldn't download a microsoft product.

If we can't get phd students who claim to be active in social causes to understand why microsoft is evil, it will be very long time before we get the typical apathetic person to understand.

Re:giving it away...

[digrieze]

So what's the big deal? Most of the Phd candidates have little to no interest in computer technology, don't want to learn a new system simply to be "cool", and have a keen understanding of the need to get their dissertation past their committee. If they can't do that then everything else they do is worthless.

On the other side of that is the cardinal rule of doctoral candidates: make your profs happy! If they're using Word, use Word; if they're using WordPerfect, use Wordperfect; if they want freakin' wax on a stone tablet BUY CANDLES! The last thing they want to do is try to explain why they can't do something EXACTLY AND PRECISELY the way a prof wants because they're using a 99.999% compatible system.

I suspect your compatriots may be less competant on the technical side than you, but they might give you tips on the political side of life.

By the way, when I got mine I wrote mine on an APPLE IIc just so I could turn in one copy in applewriter and four copies typewritten (on two different shades of white paper), not printed (I used a BROTHER typewriter with an interface module) (different profs). I had 5 happy profs, another stripe on my cowl, and a lot of extra money from the folks with the newer IBM XTs after their first few submissions were rejected and I redid their papers on that ancient little suitcase I got out of a used computer shop. Actually paid for a new system I wanted, a COMPAQ 386 I had seen on the cover of BYTE magazine (I still can't believe that thing was called a "blazing server".)

Sounds about right

[gazuga]

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.

What is the problem?

[corgicorgi]

When Apple donated Macs to school, we loved it. And many of those benefitted became loyal Apple fans.

So why criticize Microsoft's actions?

They were both trying to do the same thing: grow interests and innovations for their product by having students learn about their product. Helping community is good PR, but that's not what most companies go for when they donate. Company executes are investors. They constantly face the challenge of where to put their money on. Many of them invests in school for their company's future as their main interest.

In fact, I feel it is the school's responsibility to decide whether the amount of donation being offered justifies the impact on the students. A business's best interest is always money, I won't blame them for that. A educational institute, on the other hand, should look out for their students.

Re:MS has Egyptian curses???

[neonfrog]

That would explain why their media player rises from the dead every time I install a service pack...

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

see my post here :
http://www.redhat.com/archives/open-source-now- lis t/2003-August/msg00014.html

I forgot the best quote :
Here is an HTML version of the googlecache :
http://www.google.de/search?q=cache:TM2QXwgnzgE J:p lanet.tvi.cc.nm.us/cit/helpdesk/Microsoft_Campus_A greement.pdf+%22Master+Campus+Agreement+Terms+and+ Conditions%22&hl=de&ie=UTF-8

"
3. All the institution owned or leased machines that are running the
software
You do not necessarily need to keep records on all users who access the
software on institution owned or leased machines unless there is a
possibility that unauthorized (non-academic) users may have access. If
that's a possibility, the institution should keep records on all users
who access institution owned or leased machines.
Proper record keeping of your licensed users is important and required
per your agreement with Microsoft. You will need to determine the best
method for record keeping. You may keep hard-copy records or an
electronic database. Most institutions maintain a database of faculty
and staff users as well as a separate student database, which is
tracked via a Student Identification number, if they have the Student
Option.
"

So big brother is now watching you.

So, the college now has to watch the student even more, and turn them
in to microsoft to save themselvs legal fees :

"You must keep all usual and proper records relating to the running of
the software by your users. We reserve the right to audit you during
the licensed period and for a period of one year thereafter, provided
that such audit(s) will be conducted during normal business hours and
in such a manner as not to interfere unreasonably with your operations.
Additionally, you must use reasonable efforts to make your users aware
of the terms and conditions upon which they are allowed to run the
Software.

Accordingly, you must:
a. Notify all users in advance of running the software that: (i) their
use of the software is subject to the terms of your agreement,
including but not limited to limitations of liability, disclaimer of
warranties and exclusion of remedies; (ii) they are allowed to run
the software only during the licensed period; and (iii) if your
agreement is terminated,
you do not submit a subscription order form prior to the expiration of
the licensed
period, or if you purchase perpetual licenses for the software, then
all software run
under your agreement must be deleted when the licensed period expires
or is
otherwise earlier terminated, whichever is first; and,
b. Periodically publish in an institution-wide publication and
applicable web sites either
the then current license rights or a reference to the location (either
physical or on a
computer network) where the they can be reviewed; and
c. Notify us immediately if you are aware of any actual or potential
violation of your
agreement; and,
d. Provide all reasonable assistance and cooperation as requested by us
to investigate and remedy any unauthorized use of the software by your
users.
If you comply with this section, you will not be held responsible of
your students' failure to comply with the terms of your agreement."

>>

So all these long haired linux users have to be reported to the
microsoft police to save on the lawyer bill.

Break it down...

[moody834]

For those who don't wish to read the article, please allow me to break it down for you:

Da pimp shows up and offers some free smack to da bitches, a few of whom don't want it. Most of da bitches take it, and da pimp says, "It's all good, yo! No strizzles attizzled!" Then, da bitches get hooked and become hoes, and start working for da pimp turning tricks. Da pimp just smiles and makes jokes only da pimp's cronies would ever find funny. Da Big Daddy Pimp says, "It must be da money!" and flashes dat bling bling all around.

This easy to understand break down was brought to you by a truckload of money, eMTV, and Bill Gates. Music provided by The Roots.

CS101 At SSC

[Deanasc]

Salem State College requires all incoming freshmen to be proficient in MS Windows Apps. The textbook series was published by Microsoft and included a CD that would only run on Windows containing weekly quizzes programmed in Macromedia. It made me sick.

Microsoft and Campus Academic Computing

[sglider]

Being a college student at a small private college you wouldn't think that Microsoft's grasp would reach this far -- think again. In our Computer Information Systems department, we get a discounted rate for the MSDN alliance, which in turn gives me the oppurtunity to code in Visual Studio.NET for free -- the same as any linux alternative. Secondly, with this much exposure to the Windows way of doing things (e.g. the campus is entirely wired in windows, and the internships involve Windows-based solutions) we can't help but to use Microsoft solutions in everything we study. CIS itself is about Concepts, but at the end of the day, students will end up using what they are brought up around, and like it or not, Microsoft has that ability as a corporation. This isn't something you see from Linux -- not until the Desktop medium breaksthrough, then your Red Hats, SCOs and other Linux Corporations will start to try to win college campus' back over -- they must, if they want to gain acceptance for the 60,000+ graduates each year.

and VAX/VMS was better?

[Quixadhal]

I have to side against all the anti-M$ people on this one. You're missing the point, and if you're out of college, you missed the point. There are two things you should be learning in college (besides how to drink), and those are how to think, and how to work.

As much as they might like to, Microsoft can't control how we think about abstract problems. If you learn about linked lists using Visual C++, vi and gcc, or pascal and EDT, you are STILL learning about linked lists.

However, it DOES matter what you get exposed to while you're learning the concepts. At my university, programming classes were taught on a VAX/VMS cluster, and on Sun workstations. Learning to code on the Suns gave me skills I use today in my job, where I program under linux. Using the VMS cluster gave me nightmares that will take decades to fade.

I worked for a little while doing Visual BASIC programming, and it wasn't that bad. I tried to learn Visual C++ while I was there, and it stumped me. I know C++. I don't know how to effectively use the interface for that beast, nor all the API calls that I'd use if I coded with it every day. Had I been able to do some of that at university, I'd have a better chance in the Real World (TM).

What most slashdotters forget in their rabid anti-Microsoft raving, is the ancient quote "Know thine enemy". I'd much rather know how to use all the "evil" M$ products, so I can clearly make cases for and against them when the opportunity arises, than to just chant "They're EVIL!" and hope they go away.

Besides, creativity will find a way. If you don't think there are pretty clever windows programmers out there, you haven't looked very hard. And linux would NEVER have become this popular without the M$-Empire to make it stand out.

Re:and VAX/VMS was better?

[dubiousdave]

"What most slashdotters forget in their rabid anti-Microsoft raving, is the ancient quote "Know thine enemy". I'd much rather know how to use all the "evil" M$ products, so I can clearly make cases for and against them when the opportunity arises, than to just chant "They're EVIL!" and hope they go away."

That's true. The problem is where they will learn about the alternatives. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of MS products is a good thing, whether you like them or hate them. If students are exposed to nothing but MS, the MS way is the only way they will know. Having MS and non-MS side-by-side for unbiased comparison would be great, but it seems that some of those contracts are replacing other platforms, rather than augmenting them. When a school allows MS to become the offical end-to-end platform of that school, they are whoring themselves, to the detriment of their students' education.

Other companies have bought their way in before with limited success. Apple did it before and so did Sun. Sun isn't the dominant commercial UNIX vendor because their machines and OS are better than all the others. They achieved that by practically giving away equipment to universities, and by being better at sales and marketing. Unfortunately, MS is at least an order of magnitude better at sales and marketing than Sun or anyone else, so their influence is likely to be much greater. The other difference is that most of what you learn on a Sun is applicable to Tru64, HP-UX, Linux, or any of their other competitors, while MFC and other MS tech is applicable mostly on that one platform.

BTW, UNIX vendors are still struggling to achieve the level of clustering DEC had in VAX/VMS. They've told me so in vendor meetings. :) I never tried writing code for them, and I aliased VMS commands to more familiar UNIX commands, so I can't comment much on that.

Re:and VAX/VMS was better?

[mattite]

>And linux would NEVER have become this popular without the M$-Empire to make it stand out.

I disagree. I believe Open Source has come this far on its own merits. The concept of openness is appealing to some. The price of openness is also very appealing :)

Re:and VAX/VMS was better?

[eniu!uine]

"What most slashdotters forget in their rabid anti-Microsoft raving, is the ancient quote "Know thine enemy". I'd much rather know how to use all the "evil" M$ products, so I can clearly make cases for and against them when the opportunity arises, than to just chant "They're EVIL!" and hope they go away."

I think we should take a balanced approach. You learn their products and make reasonable arguments and I'll change "They're EVIL!" and hope they'll go away.

Re:and VAX/VMS was better?

[hughk]

Using the VMS cluster gave me nightmares that will take decades to fade.

The Digital VMS cluster technology was the best. It has been around in one form another since '81 so they had a lot of practice. This is why the technology lives on in high reliability message processing applications like SWIFT and stock exchanges. There are many cluster implementations out there now, but I wish the programmers had learned under VMS so they can surpass the technology.

You are right about "know thine enemy" but the problem is that it is easier to know Linux as a CS student because you can alway open up and have a look. In the same way, if I were hiring for Microsoft, I would look for people who have some knowledge of MS tools, but they must have a very good knowledge of other technologies such as Linux.

Re:and VAX/VMS was better?

[twaltari]

I worked for a little while doing Visual BASIC programming, and it wasn't that bad.

Apparently you didn't do it for long enough to realise it actully is very bad. It's just horrible. I could see nigthmares how VB continues to screw up its automatic variant typecasts, COM binary compatibility etc. The debugger never worked on anything more complex than a simple dialog based application. VB is worst that ever happened to me as a programmer. I've also been there developing software in a VMS cluster, compiling the code as batch processing and stuff. VMS is a pleasure compared to illogical, behind the scenes screw up piece of crap called Visual Basic. The product is inferior even in Microsoft standards and they have discontinued it in favor of C# and the other .Net stuff.

Re:and VAX/VMS was better?

[Pitawg]

Two things gave you away.....watch your step people.

1. VAX/VMS never caused nightmares, and give a wonderful sideview of software/OS with hardware.

2. It was not the "M$-Empire" that made linux stand out, it was the lack of any other decent OS for the common hardware of the age. Especially one with features based on need, and not based on greed.

Your siding against the anti-M$ crowd still shows you've already given in to the same thing you are preaching against. You gave up at a certain level of knowledge.

Programming is not the base being lost in society by MS relations with schools. Computer Science as a whole is being lost. MS goals are to produce and distribute non-CS software (including programming software) to be supported by MS. They win when students start from halfway up the education ladder.

where i come from...

[stames]

In the CS department at UCLA, Microsoft has been around for a long time. On the first day of "Intro to Programming," every student got a brand-spankin-new, still shrink-wrapped box of MS Visual Studio 6.0.

Frankly this is brilliant marketing on Microsoft's part. When these students learn to program, they are now familiar and comfortable within VS. So what are they going to use later in life?

On the other hand, Microsoft is anything but pervasive in the CS labs. Probably about 50% of the machines have Windows only (but they all have Exceed on them also). About another 30% are Solaris, and the rest are Linux. Also, Microsoft products are free for engineering students, from Windows XP to BizTalk server. Even so, professors don't encourage Windows use--in fact most projects once you're out of the intro level are required to be done on UNIX or Linux.

I don't see this as as big a problem as it's being made out to be here. Windows will be shoved down everyone's throats no matter where they are. Smart people will still investigate all their options and made an educated decision.

--j

Some donations without strings

[SirLanse]

The dealer says 'the first hit is free'.
Windows - OK but keep the C-pound out.
Do not use powerpoint and claim that the community can access your content.

finally cayching on to Sun and Apple?

[austegard]

Could it be that MS is finally catching on to what Sun and Apple have been doing for years? At least MS doesn't lock you into hardware as well, like Sun and Apple did/do...

M$ on the USC campus

[citizen6350]

In the CS department at the University of Southern California- 4 years ago, M$ handed our department a bunch of copies of Win NT and Visual Studio to hand out to the programming students. At the same time (im not sure of the EXACT correspondance, but there is one), our CS201 class (basically advanced datastructures and the event-loop model) switched over to MFC *gag* from Java. I now use MS Visual Studio .NET, and while its a good IDE, I can honestly say I would be using gcc right now if this shinnaniganry hadn't happened.

Re:M$ on the USC campus

[zurmikopa]

201 was actually more a "beat you until you have good style" and a "let's teach you how to use a framework" class than advanced data structures.

When I was the grader for the class I asked the instructor if the Microsoft donation was the reason that the change to MFC was made. She claimed it wasn't. She was not the one responsible for getting the donation, it was handled by someone else. I think the reason we got the donation, however, was because that someone else *asked* for the donation through a contact they had at Microsoft.

Of course, I don't know for sure.

Re:M$ on the USC campus

[citizen6350]

I assume you mean |30n0, in which case, she knew jack about it. She didnt even know it was happening until the first semester she taught it and they handed her an MFC text book. (She is a Mac person) I remember having to tell her all the windows shortcuts in class because she was taking 15 minutes to do a 10 second thing each day.

It Doesn't Matter

[krmt]

Any serious CS student will find out about Linux anyway, and any serious CS student will try it out. If they like it, they'll keep using it, and if not, they'll go back to Windows. If they like it enough to contribute, then they'll learn to program it, and if they don't then they'll just program what they learned in class.

Now how is this any different than the way things already were?

What this really means:

[fishbowl]

People who consider technical issues over making a quick buck do not rise to levels of significant decision making authority, neither in business nor in academia.

How much is Microsoft really giving?

[cookie_cutter]

Each year, Microsoft gives away about $100 million of that to universities

How much of that $100 million is in the form of MS software, which is free for Microsoft to give away?

Ethics are ethics

[IthnkImParanoid]

Accepting a "donation" in exchange for using Windows is a conflict of interest. The job of the faculty and administration is to choose the best educational tools. You are right that good progamming principles are platform/OS independent, but that does not preclude the possibility that one platform/OS facilitates education better than others. I am not making the case that Windows is an inferior tool here, as it would likely be a long and controversial argument; however, I will say that accepting money in this way prevents the school from deciding which is the best choice.

Re:Ethics are ethics

[pmz]

Accepting a "donation" in exchange for using Windows is a conflict of interest.

Nike :: Football Team

Microsoft :: Computer Science Department

I wanna be like Bill...er, Mike...oh, I meant Bill...ah crap I just don't know anymore.

Microsoft's Agenda...

[tds67]

...is to get Microsoft Bob a professorship and Clippy the paperclip a job as team mascot.

Video games

[jargoone]

From the article:
Video games, hardly an MIT priority but a strong commercial interest of Microsoft's, have suddenly become a subject of scholarly inquiry.

Several points:

• Games are one interest of Microsoft, but that's not where they make the money.
  
• If games aren't a priority at MIT, they should be. Games are what drive the newest hardware and software technologies to the consumer. There is a lot to be learned in that area.
• If Red Hat had swept in and done the same thing and Linux games were being touted, I bet the author would change his tune.

I know MS bashing is the tune here, but at least they're giving money to education. What should they do, give away SPARC workstations? At least it's less money for Billy to spend on champagne and whores.

like a drug dealer

[b17bmbr]

i am a public school teacher and am finishing up a masters' in technology. you have no idea how microsoft makes it presence felt. they throw freebies to our district IT people. in college, our professors require work in either .doc or .ppt, and we get office for like $20.

Re:like a drug dealer

[buck-yar]

At least a drug dealer makes you feel good for a short while.

Give our academics some credit !!!

[BillsPetMonkey]

Remember what Linux was and how it got here? It was always grass roots and whilst academic institutions are suckers for funding, academics are not stupid (that's why they are employed to teach us dumber folk).

They'll take the funding, sponsor the course, give out the free software and happily give you extra marks for using Linux and teach OSS approaches alongside.

This article gives the OSS community little to worry about. Move along there ...

Re:Give our academics some credit !!!

[Gandalf21]

I agree that this is the case I have seen at many schools. It doesn't matter that Microsoft software is given away for free, as long as the important computer science classes and professors continue to use Linux and/or Unix.

Funding is important but not so much as to change even something so fundamental as an OS course to using Windows, where students can't look at any of the working parts. Perhaps this is something that will impact Intro. To Computers classes (computer skills for non-CS people), but I can't say that I have ever even seen one of those courses not using Powerpoint, Word, Excel, ... It might be nice to see them use free software equivalents, but let's allow businesses to start using free software for the workplace first. Then academia can come completely around and teach free software tools to CS students and Non-CS students alike.

Wah

[Grieveq]

Microsoft gives all our engineers (4000+) free Windows, Visual Studio, Visio, and much more. They gave our CS department free licenses for VS. Giving students free stuff! Wooo, bad company there!

Re:Wah

[MS_is_the_best]

Yup, that is bad. If I came to your country and gave away free bread for a few years, until all bakers were become butchers and after that I was going to sell very expensive breads, would that be ethical (or even legal)?

Good for us all

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is doing what is legal and is good for its best interest.

RMS does the same just in a much more hysterically loud yelling tone. /. readers should appreciate competition.

Those unix ivory tower types have been running unxi toooooo long on vaxes, at&t system v machines, sun workstations, and hpux machines.

If the unversities were such altruistic places, the professors would work for minimum wage so that everyone could afford an eductation.

hmmmmm.....that's not the case....greedy greedy faculty members

Re:Good for us all

[RLW]

You're right, that's not the case. The *point* is a homogenous environment limits the variety of systems to which students may experience. The very best developers are those which have worked on a variety of systems. This allows them to think in more abstract terms and not just in the solution space of a single system. Both adaptive-ness and creativity are enhance by knowledge of many systems and languages too. If M$aFT gets it's way we'll all be limited to C#.NET and some blue screening version of windows forever. yick. it's enough to make one want to go Amish.

Haha.. you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders.
The most famous is: Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Only slightly less well know is this: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
- Vezzini

Re:Good for us all

[Cromac]

Yeah, b/c we all know its the faculty members and all of the adjuncts that steal our money away...interesting that my books cost more than half of what my tution did this fall...

How many of those books were written by faculty members?

Re:Good for us all

[andy666]

guess what ? you're big tuition dollars don't go into the professor's pockets. it's the administration that sets the costs, and the professors have zero control over it.

Re:Good for us all

[vsprintf]

How many of those books were written by faculty members?

If memory serves, most of my text books were written by faculty members somewhere. Just a thought.

Re:Good for us all

[blugu64]

Actually in my History class last semester a few of the textbooks were written by a professor @ a university just a few miles down the road.....coincidence.....could be.....but I'm not convinced

Re:Good for us all

[purdue_thor]

Minimum wage? Wow.

Let me remind you who these people are... I'll assume you're talking about Science or Engineering types since this is /. 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).

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.

Re:Good for us all

[tsa]

You are absolutely right. The only thing I want to add is that most professors I know are in it because thay can do interesting research.

Re:Good for us all

[Sri Lumpa]

If memory serves, most of my text books were written by faculty members somewhere

Well, d'uh! Of course they were written somewhere. The author wasn't going to step out of space and time just to write his book nowhere.

Re:Good for us all

[Cromac]

If memory serves, most of my text books were written by faculty members somewhere. Just a thought.

And today they just happen to be written by the professor teaching the class, requiring a new version nearly every year forcing students to purchase grossly overpriced new books instead of the meerly overpriced used books.

University of Toronto Hit Hard

[carb]

Microsoft hires more than a few student representatives at the University of Toronto (read: Canada) to maintain a "Microsoft Student Research Group" ... Basically, they hold meetings every month and push .NET and tablet PCs (at least, at the one meeting I went to), whilst bribing you with free merch and pizza. They occasionally organize projects built by students done on a volunteer basis using .NET technology ... which no doubt finds its way back to the peeps at Microsoft. Free labour under the guise of "research". Fabulous.

This just happened here

[KillerHamster]

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.

Re:This just happened here

[vegetablespork]

BGSU is a public institution, and is required to dispose of property in a manner that retrieves value for the taxpayer. You may check the surplus auction schedule--if you're not too late, you could become the proud owner of a gently used SGI on the cheap.

If you wanted to be a pain and couldn't find it, you could formally request information on the disposition of the old machines, which is public record.

Oracle, too. Re:Why are people surprised?

[MattRog]

Oracle does it, too. Most college-level database courses learn SQL - in particular Oracle's version of SQL.

Re:Oracle, too. Re:Why are people surprised?

[shaitand]

oracle isn't a monopoly.

GNU vs. MS: C++ Compilers

[ansak]

The best way to combat MS' penetration of the Universities is with quality and features + appropriate publicity. On one of the issues near and dear to academics, MS may actually be ahead of the OSS tools.

Currently, the word-among-the-gurus here where I work is that the level of compliance on Win32 to the C++ standard is in the latest .NET C++ compiler, not in GCC. Rather than complaining that MS-FUD is working, we should be making sure that things like GCC stays ahead. That's a harder task, but a more satisfying one in the long haul.

And if the local gurus are wrong about standards compliance and DevStudio 7 vs. GCC, then let me hear it -- and I'll be more than willing to trumpet it within my sphere of influence at least. I think we'd be happy to use the same compiler on all platforms: our software is on several for all of which GCC is available yet we don't use it on any. Spec compliance is only one issue, but it is an issue.

cheers...ank

Re:GNU vs. MS: C++ Compilers

[ansak]

You wrote: "The fact that GCC has rewritten the meaning of several libc functions so that they to [sic] not act in the standard behavior and can possibly break code."

Could you elaborate on this, please? I was unaware of it.

In other tech news....

[Trelane]

Free and Open Source Software developers, friends, and associated companies give away hundreds of billions of dollars in software and services to schools, neighbors, businesses, and the world in general without requring a change of curricula or Non-Disclosure Agreement. And only the Podunk Times-Chronicle-Gazette carried the story (hint: it's in small print, buried under the "New Fat Burning Breathrough!" article on page 7).

Hmm. Hey!

We need a Free and Open Source Software Appreciation Day! Send $10 to your favorite project or something. Spend an hour translating that page to Swahili. Hug your local Linux or BSD geek!

Re:Just because it isn't Linux, doesn't mean its e

[Mr. No Skills]

you cannot beat MS's developer tools.

Unless, of course, you're developing for other operating systems ;-)

Back in the old days when I was in school, IBM completely dominated the computer business. Yet, in four years of an engineering degree I never saw IBM hardware until the original PC came out. I used DEC PDPs, DEC VAX, CDC Cyber, HP 3000s, DG something or others, under a variety of operating systems and different development tools. Some of the classes required different things because they were optimized for the course topic at hand, structured programming, scientific programming, graphics, etc. The point at my school (and probably many other schools) was that the tool wasn't important, the process was. And, no one expected us to buy these things, we used University equipment.

As "studying computers" has shifted from computer science to the somewhat vocational training we see a lot today, I think some of us hoped that Universities (especially the elite like MIT) would abstain from the corporate handouts. At least when those handouts came with an influence on actual class content. After all, its the art of the hack we love, not necessarily the money the hack brings us. Whether Microsoft is great or not, it is increasingly using its war chest of Windows and Office monopoly money to win the war of attrition regardless of Microsoft functionality or appropriateness for the job at hand.

So, the increasing concern is all those young minds at VT enter the work force without a broad base of experience. And, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like MFC.

But, Long term

[big-giant-head]

MS will get the 150K + interest back when the University has to upgrade x1000 pc and servers every 2 years.

You would think University professors would think a bit more about the big picture .....

Never mind I take that back, having known a few, I can see how this might work......

Re:But, Long term

[vsprintf]

MS will get the 150K + interest back when the University has to upgrade x1000 pc and servers every 2 years.
You would think University professors would think a bit more about the big picture .....
Never mind I take that back, having known a few, I can see how this might work......

Agreed, but this has already been happening for years, so why is it suddenly news on Slashdot? Six or seven years ago, my old alma mater switched the networks and course material to mostly Microsoft-specific. *Unix* became a single 300-level class with a lab. In the so-called computer labs, the MS machines had to be completely restored with each login because of the constant viruses, but they called it progress. (And I love your sig -- ain't it the truth!)

Re:But, Long term

[JimFromJersey]

Why should they think about it? It isn't their money afterall.

ugh, teaching UI design with MFC is just cruel

[Vicegrip]

Now, if I was teaching a course on "how to make your hair go grey trying to implement your UI design with a toolkit", I'd choose MFC.

Completely true.

[SenatorTreason]

The article is completely true. Here at the University of Georgia, there are people hired by Microsoft to give CS "presentations" highlighting new technologies. These people are called "student ambassadors". These "presentations" are pretty much advertisements for Microsoft products. Afterwards, raffles are held in which the prizes are copies of Windows XP Home Edition, a student version of .Net, or some other crap. I went to one, thinking it was legit, only to have to sit through a half hour presentation of how to make a useless web app with XML and Visual Studio .Net. It did draw quite a crowd, and all were soaking it up. In my experience with some of the CS majors, most have little to no experience with non-Microsoft tools and programs and no interest in gaining any, so I doubt, upon hitting the job market, that they will give up those tools and programs and learn something different. *sigh*

Re:Just because it isn't Linux, doesn't mean its e

[Interruach]

So Screw the mac users, screw the linux users. To go to university you need a PC with Windows.
What kind of university doesn't provide labs so that students can access the computers for private study? If you ran LTSP or vncserver you could provide people with portable logons whatever machine they were on, and whatever OS. No need to install anythig but a client.
Why assume things are all equal, when you can be sure and make them all equal? Lucky person who has the joy of setting up terminal services so that the poor mac users don't have to switch OS's. Royally Sucks just isn't how I'd describe it.

Seriously Though

[Hecubas]

I have no issue about Microsoft being involved in schools as long as the administrators and faculty keep MS in check. That is, don't let MS start dictating course content or convincing the sys admins to convert all their administration systems to MS software. I think it is good for the students to have exposure to MS's technology, as long as they are exposed to other systems as well. Of course this is true for any university dealing with a vendor.

The article mentions students at one university protesting the requirement of C# as a first year programming language. The school decided to offer a multi-lingual course instead. That's the right way to deal with MS. Students should always be shown the alternatives in a fair and balanced view. Computer Science should be about methodology and theory first, implementations and tools later. It's reassuring to see that the next generation of technical people are recognizing MS's marketing BS as BS.

--
hecubas

Re:oh great

[tealover]

Yeah, it doesn't have the mindless panache of:

"I've just poured a bowl of hot grits down my pants!"

Sigh....the good ol' days.

Stupid question

[Raul654]

Can someone recommend a graphical IDE for *nix? A prof of mine demonstrated DDD and I would have killed for it (compared to the horrible, horrible time I had in my data structs class doing it 100% from the command line), but getting it to work well is another matter entirely.

Re:Stupid question

[sn4ip3r]

Anjuta and KDevelop are the two that I know of.

Re:Stupid question

[Mongoose]

XEmacs and GNU emacs both are great 'IDEs' to learn to use -- they work on every platform. Hell, even OS X *ships with GNU emacs.

Also there are a million template/macro/etc bundles out there to use for dozens of languages and it's easy to make your own in arch independent elisp.

Does MSVC++ generate Singleton classes for you in C++ given a class name and a click? Yeah, MSVC++ is pretty crippling after having a truely open development system.

Btw, if you screw around with any of my cheap templates send me comments. I need to release some more C++ templates/template generators. =)

Re:Stupid question

[twaltari]

Java IDE Eclipse makes also a promising C/C++ IDE with CDT plugin.

Sounds the same to me

[siskbc]

At least the tobacco companies products work.

I don't know, I'd say M$ware works at least as well as tobacco. Both give decent results in the short term, but eventually result in a fatal process crash. And hey, at least you can reboot your computer. I suppose if you're Hindu you believe you can reboot yourself, as well.

Re:Sounds the same to me

[kfg]

In the next year 9 or 10 cigarette smokers out of 100,000 will get lung cancer. ( 1 or 2 nonsmokers will as well, go figure). That translates into about 98% of lifetime smokers not getting lung cancer, ever.

I don't know about you but if 98% of Windows installs could be expected to go for over half a century without crashing even once I'd be a much happier camper.

KFG

Re:Sounds the same to me

[Unregistered]

Except one product destroys your body slowly over time without fully disclosing the dangers, and the other's a dried plant.

Re:Sounds the same to me

[Delphiki]

But everyone knows Tobacco is bad for you.

Re:Sounds the same to me

[pmz]

I suppose if you're Hindu you believe you can reboot yourself, as well.

I heard Microsoft employees come back in the form of a mold slime. Chlorox to the rescue!

You mean I'm supposed to schmooze?

[Daniel Zappala]

You mean to tell me there's something in this for me when I pick textbooks for my CS classes? All along I've been trying to choose the textbooks that I felt covered the material the best. And in many cases I've missed out on any kind of opportunity by forgoing a textbook and taking the time to select relevant research papers. What else am I missing out on?

Re:You mean I'm supposed to schmooze?

[vsprintf]

You mean to tell me there's something in this for me when I pick textbooks for my CS classes? All along I've been trying to choose the textbooks that I felt covered the material the best. . .

Okay, you seem to be one of the good guys. One of my old CS profs (one who looked for relevant material that was affordable) told me he had to jump (and high) to get the campus book store to carry his choices. In one class he taught, he offered handouts for the first week until students could find a source for the cheap paperback textbook that the campus bookstore wouldn't carry. I still have that book, and it's far more useful than the texts I *rented* from the campus bookstore.

Re:You mean I'm supposed to schmooze?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Well you know those cute thight young girls that are asking you if there is anyway they could increase their grades? Guess what? They are not asking for study tips.

Re:You mean I'm supposed to schmooze?

[pmz]

What else am I missing out on?

Hookers. Lots and lots of hookers. Oh, and free beer. Lots of beer. Actually, a professor without hookers and beer is sort of like a bird without a beak. Are you sure you are in the right line of work?

Just say no!

[ferreth]

This really strikes a chord on a similar front -my campus (University of Calgary) took X$ from Pepsi in return to be the exclusive supplier of soda beverages on campus. Protests made no difference nor did pulling my donation, nor would the administration provide an explanation exactly as to what Pepsi was providing in return for restricting my freedom of choice on campus.

The point is: I DON'T BLAME PEPSI. My University signed a shitty contract that (according to them) does not even allow them to divulge the terms of their agreement to the general student body.

Same thing goes for Microsoft. I expect them to offer big dollars with big strings attached, and small dollars with small or no strings. I also expect the university to turn down deals that violate the principles of freedom of choice, be they cola, or OS. A University is NOT a business where simple cost/benifit analysis decides the day. Certain principles should NEVER be crossed no matter how many dollars get thrown in your face. The reality is that principles are being erroded in small and big ways every day, to the point that Universities becoming just another business school catering to business needs - that is bad for both students AND business.

Yeah, you're right...

[PseudoThink]

I may have misinterpreted the submitter's remarks as being stereotypical anti-MS trolling, whereas he may have only been commenting on the disturbingly effective monopolistic practices MS uses to market its software.

It seems pretty true

[arctuniol]

At my college there were 5 or 6 night classes offered based on microsoft, one for cisco, and none for unix or linux. Then there was a handful of programming courses but It seems pretty obvious that schools are becoming more Microsoft Centric in their teaching. While there is a trend with corporations to migrate from Microsoft to Linux. Well I guess we are back to the same problem as before, the students graduating are not up to the task, since their training will be irrelevant.

Sam Experience

[davidbrummy]

A couple of years ago when the company I worked for started in the wireless space we looked for investment. One company who wanted to look at investing in us was Micorsoft. Strangely enough the offer conisted of primarly 0% cash and mostly free licenses and consultancy. It was a classic attempt to get us completely reliant on them so if we were succesful then we would owe them $$ big time in license fees. Thankfully the offer was turned down and we are a J2EE/Linux development shop :-).

A Problem

[Llywelyn]

Except that programming is also about the tools that you use to create those programs.

A kid who learned on the Visual C++ IDE and nothing else and who has been thrown into a unix environment is going to freak. Why? Because even if he was only taught how to program ANSI C++ and could pick up a new language in his sleep, he still is not prepared to use the tools required to compile those languages.

Things like makefiles, gcc, VisualAge, etc. From experience its a hell of a lot easier to go from a command line to an IDE than it is to go from an IDE to a command line.

Once you are familiar with the class of tools then you can move on just fine and be expected to pick up other tools of that nature relatively quickly (e.g., once you know how to use gcc its not hard to get used to VisualAge; if you can use ProjectBuilder you can probably pick up the differences for Metrowerks or the Visual C++ IDE relatively quickly; debuggers all do similar things; etc).

How about the Internet browser?

[EyeSavedLatin]

Do you think you might be capable of reading this because of NCSA Mosaic? From the "About" field of IE(I know - I'm at work) Based on NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Had to give a shout out to my Alma Mater!

I for one...

[Stuntmonkey]

do not welcome our Microsoft overlords.

look at the boost results

[shis-ka-bob]

The only 100% is for MSVC++ version 7.1 (up from 86% in version 7.0). The next highest score is gcc 3.3.1 on linux (99%). These are both excellent scores - the boost tests are heavy into templates, which are about the nastiest thing a compiler will see.

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

One solution...

[IdleTime]

There is only one solution to this issue.
All universities must be funded by the government and not by students, gifts etc. There should be no battle in order to get money for research, nor should a University have to sell it's soul to the devil in order to survive. This is just another example of the failed educational policy in the US (and some other countries). A university that bends over backwards and drop their pants and take a firm grip around the ankles is not worthy of any adimartion. They are most likely willing to (as quite a few companies have already demonstrated) to sign on to whatever the money says. Makes me wanna puke!

Re:oh great

[Enonu]

Slashdot needs to add a "-2 cliche". That'll serve as a sharp warning.

Yay for tuition hikes

[Laxitive]

Fucking tories :(

-Laxitive

This is true

[bdsesq]

I work for a college and the Academic Computing staff want nohing to do with anything but Microsoft. Under threat of an audit they bought a campus wide license and now use that as cost justification for everything else "After all we already have the software".

I work in the internal IT department. We run the "business" on linux and HPUX. But the future, the students, are all being taught on Microsoft stuff.

athena?

[trillian42]

And here I was sitting in one of the big MIT computer labs the other day and admiring how MS-free it was...

Microsoft may have taken over aero-astro's flight simulators, but the average MIT student still spends an awful lot of time on MIT's very own special linux / unix distro -- athena. It's in all the main computer labs, all the dorms, and scattered around campus at "quick-stations" for 10-minute log-ins to check your mail or find your new class or get your slashdot fix.

MS-money may have shifted a few department-specific labs, but I don't think MIT is going to be completely MS-ified anytime soon. The article makes it sound as if everyone's stopped paying attention to the iCampus initiative because everyone's been brainwashed into using MS. I think it's more likely ignored because it's taken over a few niches where it performs better and otherwise it hasn't made any impact on the way people work.

Cry me a big, fat river

[bratmobile]

Companies have been buying their way into schools for a long, long time. When Apple did it, it was considered philanthropy. When Sun did it, it was considered cool. When Microsoft does it, /. whines about Bill roasting babies over barbecue pits.

Big, fat deal. Universities have a responsibility to 1) teach the science of computing, and 2) teach the real world of computer engineering. Whether YOU like it or not that Microsoft has a prominent role in the real world, universities have a responsibility to equip their students for the real world.

Universities have a responsibility to prepare students to use, choose, and extend the hardware and software technologies that exist. They must educate people about the qualities (good and bad) about existing designs and implementations, so that the students can make good decisions, and understand what is going on.

Linux is NOT always the best solution, although these days it is almost always at least a *good* solution. Microsoft is NOT always a bad choice. Universities MUST teach people to make decisions themselves, and not to blindly accept a position. It doesn't matter if the position is "[Linux|Microsoft|Cheese] is pure [evil|delight|cheddar]!" or whatever.

UNIX license holders have long enforced their view of the world at universities. As a professional software developer, I had to watch many UNIX weenies un-weenify after they left college, in order to get some real-world perspective. Yes, UNIX/Linux has its virtues. It also has its problems. Learning how to honestly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a design/product/whatever is part of GROWING UP. Microsoft finally has some technology that is at least usable in a real university CS program -- namely NT. I'm GLAD that universities are finally beginning to teach UNIX and NT, not as something holy and pure, but as real-world instances of the ideas that they teach.

Also, one final note -- UNIVERSITIES NEED MONEY/EQUIPMENT/ETC. It's a GOOD THING if Microsoft gives millions in hardware, etc. to universities. Sure, there may be strings attached, and this should always be scrutinized. But there are always strings attached when someone donates a one and six zeroes to a university. This is just how universities work.

MSNBC

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

At PU

[Hari_Seldon]

Okay, so this is more typical than what you would have thought. Personally, I'm not surprised due to the ways of capitalism and the fact that it took M$ this long to realize the benefits. Remember how Apple gave the primary and secondary schools Macintoshes for their computer labs before the Internet became popular.

Now what happened over at my university (Purdue to be exact), the Dean of CS signed an agreement with Microsoft, and then left just before I started in 2000, which at that time, was running Solaris. It's somewhat ironic that the M% software we got would no longer be supported due to the Java lawsuit.

MS on UMD

[Sklein382]

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.

Another Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask yourself this: is the purpose of university to explore new ideas, or to teach a trade? And if you think the former, then what the hell are the colleges for?

I firmly believe that if you want to learn a specific trade--say Microsoft-specific crap--that's the realm of college. University is the prime exploratory ground for new ideas and experimental stuff, which means Scheme and Eiffel are the natural choices.

Do you think the MIT Media Lab would have become what it is now if it were subject to a Microsoft-only regimine?

You may say "well times change!" but if that's true, then the colleges serve no purpose at all any more.

Re:Another Perspective

[hesiod]

> You may say "well times change!" but if that's true, then the colleges serve no purpose at all any more.

In the U.S., "College" and "University" are almost interchangeable terms.

Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having read the comments (Well...most of them...) I have to ask: what's the problem?

I know, I know...we want to piss and moan because M$ is stealing perfectly bright students away from "us" (that is, the Open Source people) by giving out software. However...being a Uni. student, I can comment.

The agreements Microsoft makes are not evil, as we would all like to believe. It's a decent way for kids (that is, anyone in college at this point) to become familiar with multi-thousand dollar pieces of software.

As it is, I can walk out of college in a year saying "I can use Product X", at least to some extent. Without the campus agreements, I could use Word. And that because it is installed in the labs by default. Wow...that's really great marketability.

Do I want to waste my life working exclusively on Windows-based software? No. Is there a good chance I'll be using Windows-based software at least part of my programming life? Yes.

I say more power to them, and maybe some other organizations (for example, those that cater to Linux users) should pick up on the M$ system: give students access to the software. It costs a little (a very little, in M$'s case) now, but the payoff (already-trained users) is worth it. Get some already-trained Linux people used to enterprise-level software, and who knows what could happen...

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[PhoenixFlare]

So big brother is now watching you.

So, the college now has to watch the student even more, and turn them
in to microsoft to save themselvs legal fees :

Oh, please. If you really believe anywhere but (and even then, it's a stretch) dinky community colleges are obsessively watching student PCs for pirated software...You're seriously deluding yourself.

You don't seem to have an idea of the size and complexity of networks at most decent-sized schools, and you vastly over-estimate the motivation level of most network admins towards such monitoring.

It happened at UC Berkeley

[200_success]

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."

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

It is not the issue if they are execercizing this, but the fact that your rights are being sold.

Are you *sure*?

[Junta]

Where do you get the stuff from? If downloaded from 'eacademy' or some such, then it isn't a gift, it was paid for by the budgets of the respective departments, so it essentially is hidden away in your tuition. When I went to college, so many people went around saying 'woah, MS is giving the students all this stuff for free download', never realizing that behind the scenes MS was getting paid for everything, just not in any way directly visible to the students..

Anti-MS bigotry getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

If MS wants to donate money and licenses to univerisites, why is that suddenly bribery and propaganda? Apple was doing this long before MS. No one's pointing a gun at the schools and saying they need to say yes. MS has an agenda to develop and sell software. If they want to partner with universities, that's their right. If you think it's not in a university's best interest, blame the university, not MS. The MS bigotry is getting old.

Re:Anti-MS bigotry getting old

[ozborn]

How can you say that "MS has an agenda to develop and sell software" and then wonder why the donation of money/licenses to universities is bribery?!@ Is MS some sort of charity with a new agenda to give away things for free? No, it is an organization which exists to make money for its shareholders. It is donating to make money in the long term, taking advantage of the fact that higher education is cash poor and MS is cash rich. Keep in mind that this is an organization has been convicted of serious criminal charges so a little "bigotry" (I would call it well warranted suspiscion) is certainly in order.

How is this worse than IBM, DEC, or Apple?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

How is this worse than IBM, DEC, or Apple?

All three of 'em (and a lot more) gave universities equipment, software, documentation, and/or what-have-you, for free or at steep discounts, in return for both a tax deduction and several years of graduating classes trained on THEIR systems.

Re:How is this worse than IBM, DEC, or Apple?

[metamatic]

IBM's developer tools are based on Eclipse, downloadable in free open-source form from eclipse.org.

Apple's developer tools are based on GNU tools.

Happy to explain.

Scary Statistics

[brandido]

I think the scariest statistic from the article is:

Microsoft's total research and development budget -- $4.7 billion in 2003, $4.3 billion in 2002 and $4.4 billion in 2001 -- is estimated to be more than all the rest of the software industry spends together. Each year, Microsoft gives away about $100 million of that to universities.

In comparison, according to the National Science Foundation, computer science department expenditures at all universities and colleges from all sources for 2001 was less than $1 billion.

Basically, 10 percent of all computer science department expenditures at all universities and colleges from all sources for 2001 was funded by Microsoft. This is corporate sponsorship, and, presumably, influence on a major scale that is shocking. I don't see how this could be over-stated enough.

Some facts for you...

[jared_hanson]

A Java run-time and compiler can be downloaded for free from Sun's website. There are also open source Java implementations. In no way will tuition be raised by using Java instead of some hacked-up-monopolistic-language-polluting-knock-of f.

In fact, the only way to get a free J++ compiler is to have one donated. Otherwise you're legally bound to play for it.

Academia isn't a software source any more

[Animats]

Once, academia was a big source for software, because government funding was available for its development. BSD UNIX was a DoD funded project. So was Mach. So was Kerberos. Mosaic was government-funded. But all of those are at least a decade old.

But now, not much comes out of US academia in terms of usable software. The funding isn't there, it isn't perceived as research, and academic computer science departments represent a tiny fraction of computing today.

So, schools that train what are basically Microsoft Certified Software Engineers are probably inevitable.

MS probably works on Campus

[iramkumar]

Although my opinion is probably "unslashdotical" campuses are inhabited by people from medicine, arts , social sciences who may have only tertiary interest in computers. Not everyone is enthused by operating systems.

The installed base of software is higher and the learning curve for MS technologies is much smaller for people from a non-technical background. Its much easier for a person majoring in psychology or statistics (although it may be a generalisation) to use Windows and get research software for Windows than depend on Linux.

The gap between thinking and visualization is much smaller for Microsoft products than Linux. For researchers who are busy and dont want to hunt for information or software (dont know what is rpm, what is a kernel) its much easier to use Windows. Also comments like "Windows crashes more often" are heard more often with heavy computer users. For users who just want to use the occasional word processor, browse the occasional web page and work on some specific software MS holds more appeal.

Go on Mod me down :)

hold on, wait a sec

[rutledjw]

you mean to tell me that schools are taking free software and hardware!?!

Inconceivable

Look, the article was vague and wasn't purely about the technical topics. The first 2 are Office apps! There are .NET courses mentioned, but those are mentioned as though they are the first of their kind at the school. Heck, my first class used VB. After that it was c/c++ until Java came out my Sr. year.

Even in an MSNBC article, there are NUMEROUS examples of students and faculty fighting the move.

My point is that I don't think people should get too excited about this. MS has been doing this kind of thing for years. Linux is a topic of much greater interest and it doesn't have a marketing budget near what MS does. Examples, the main reason WinServer 2003 gets any attention is the insanely expensive marketing campaign and MS press releases talking about how well it's selling.

That's quite a suprise given their licensing program...

As NERDS you all should remember SOMETHING about school. Professors and students are fickle, snobby, and distrustful of large corporations. They are particularly distrustful of large corps that act in the manner of a MS...

Let 'em give stuff and money away. I didn't dislike MS until I had to deal with their product on a technical level. MS-haters aren't born, we're made.

Heck, I think all first years should be restricted to only MS products, they can't even say Linux, kinda like initiation. Then, CS 201 is a technology comparison - from architecture to implementation: Linux vs. Windows, Java vs. C# vs. Python vs. Perl. THat'll take care of it!

Re:hold on, wait a sec

[Geek of Tech]

MS-haters aren't born, we're made.

Tell me about it. I was the geek at our high school. The only geek. All we operated was Microsoft on Desktops. I never used Linux until the county computer guy introduced me to it. I made several failed attempts at using Linux then found a distro I really liked.

But what caused me to want to learn Linux?

1) Microsoft's EULA and licensing system.
2) The price of a copy of Windows
3) The Blue Screen of Death
4) Product Activation
5) Microsoft's changing file formats with every version of office.

I do not, however hate Microsoft. I use Windows when I have to. I don't mind. Given the choice I would instantly choose Linux Mandrake, though. I do try and persuade people to use Linux, but I help these same people on their Windows box (probably why I try and switch them over).

Re:Guess who bought MIT a new comp sci building...

[Quixote]

The "William H. Gates" building at MIT,

Err.. you're thinking of the Gates Building at Stanford, maybe?

Actually it really is good for us all

[argoff]

One of the main purposes' for the University system is to dissamate general knowledge that the private sector could never provide becuase it was too locked up in propriatory knowledge and R&D. Now, with Linux - things are switching back to the private sector, and that is a good thing, becuase people will no longer half to choose between an "education" and "work" - they will come hand in hand, and the knowledge you learn in one place will be useable everywhere.

Let the universities destroy themselves, they cost too much anyhow.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

Also, Please consider this :

Many schools have policies that effectivly prevent you from being able to study only using free software. They are forcing you to sign away your rights.

It is not only the monitoring clause, but the fact that you are being forced to accept file formats that have been designed to supports microsofts illegal practices.

education...

[sniggly]

Most if not all of the well known universities in Europe are funded by tax money and cases such as these would create a serious outrage. It is not uncommon for a university to cooperate with a corporation but it is rather unusual for a professor to be this corrupted.

It is appalling how a convicted monopolist can use the profit it is continuing to make out of its monopoly to buy out the educational system the world over. What a disgrace.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[PhoenixFlare]

Rights to what?

From all appearances, it appears your main problem is with the tracking provided for in the agreement....I'm guessing you're not an American, but it probably still applies in some way- we're already being tracked through Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, student ID's, grade records...Nobody gives a damn if Microsoft knows they have a copy of Windows installed.

If you don't want them to do a headcount on you, don't use their products. If you're using Linux exclusively, you are invisible to Microsoft for all intents and purposes.

Trade Schools and Research Schools

[jbottero]

Well, truthfully, Community Colleges are trade schools, so it makes more sense for them to cater to the needs of the local chamber of commerce. 4 year and graduate schools are an entirely different animal, and are supposed to teach skills that relate to the application of theory and the innovation of ideas.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[PhoenixFlare]

Then, frankly, find a different school or become more flexible. As I said to someone else below, are you going to school to concentrate on learning or worry about religious debates over platforms?

Personally, the school I go to supports Linux, Solaris machines, a few VMS clusters, along with Macs and Windows.

That aside, people just use what works. Like it or not, Microsoft file formats are the standard, and they're going to be used until a completely compelling reason to change is found.

Sigh...

[raw-sewage]

I've got to hand it to Microsoft, they're pretty smart in the marketing department. I just mentored an intern who's only a couple years behind me (from the same school). He said that Microsoft is giving away .Net for CS majors and I think even giving away Office for students in general.

I'd applaud Microsoft if closed/proprietary data formats weren't their game. It just infuriates me that Microsoft is working so hard to make their products incompatible with other products. Sorry to echo what is already a chant, but they are exploiting their monopoly. If they didn't have a monopoly, they couldn't get away with this extreme incompatibility with non-MS products.

My Microsoft-loving, open source-hating co-worker loves to say that proprietary data formats are just good business---it's intellectual property, and un-American and anti-comptetetive to say otherwise. WTF! How do MS Office's cryptic file formats offer Microsoft any competetive advantage other than keeping competetors out of the market?

I'm convinced that if there were three or even two office software suits with relatively even market share, they'd all do a pretty darn good job of reading each other's formats. I'm sure they'd also be a few generations ahead of MS Office---not just "little" features, but hugely useful stuff, like voice dictation, character recognition, integrated document database management, instant Internet publication, inherent crypto, authentication, security, etc.

The fact that Microsoft tries so hard to break compatability with non-MS products is proof enough that they do not compete on innovation. If their products are really so good, why hide the APIs?

Another thing that blows my mind is that people have become brainwashed to accept this as status quo. I work for a Fortune 100 company, and our IT director has actually said, "We can't do business without Microsoft." Man, that's a sweet deal for Microsoft! How many multi-billion dollar companies are saying they need Microsoft? Congratulations, Microsoft, on creating a drug-like dependancy!

It's hilarious, really.

MICROSOFT BUYS STANFORD

[kupci]

1.6 million for the Soul of a New Machine ? That's pretty cheap.

and now, a few years later, I really cant remember which was which. Can't really remember your ethics class either, or is that not offered these days?

This controversy is no different from giant drug companies piling money into schools, beefing up their biotechnology programs etc, or Bush's 200 million USD campaign warchest. IMO, this is a *big* issue, and in the end dilutes the integrity, purpose and freedom of the university.

And at the University of Waterloo last year, administrators announced a $1.6 million donation from Microsoft. At the same time they announced they would change the curriculum to introduce Microsoft's C# programming language into the first-year programming course instead of the more popular and long-established C++ they were currently using.

What a coincidence.

Senators Feingold and McCain say that campaign financing contributes to the public's belief that the political system is corrupt. Same with universities. I'm not saying funding should be disallowed, however, it's one thing to pay for a new building, quite another to be dictating to the universities. This article sums it up pretty well. Scary when books like those by Philip K. Dick and newspapers like the Onion are our reality.

What happens if Microsoft dies?

[ReyTFox]

It's common for /.er's to root for open-source and Linux vs. Microsoft and their various products. But when you take an article like this into consideration, it's hard not to notice that if Microsoft loses the war, all the people they pushed into using their products will suddenly have skills they can't use. The job market will probably go through a period of turmoil, as there may not be enough of the "new skills" to go around and the MS-trained workers have to relearn a new environment.

And of course, the funding would disappear.

But all sorts of strange things seem to happen, these days, so perhaps this will come about...

Me, I'm trying to learn things non-MS.

Re:What happens if Microsoft dies?

[IM6100]

Conversely, 'what happens if Unix dies?'

An equally inane question.

Re:What happens if Microsoft dies?

[sashang]

MS products will never die. If the worst comes (i.e. MS goes broke) I reckon they'll opensource their code.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

Your right to choose to use only free software.

Your rights to fair use of the software, to look inside the binaries, to build compatible software.

I am an American, what does that have to do with it.

I dont want to use their Products. Unfortunally they have corrupted so many schools that it is impossible for students to avoid using their product or other non-free software.

It's Not Just Microsoft

[fupeg]

Sun gives away a lot of its softwar to students, for free.

And MIT is certainly not the Microsoft Institute of Technology. The Harvard-MIT Data Center is an all Java project, whose faculty are contributors to some of the Apache Jakarta open source projects.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

Microsft has been found guilty of abusing this so called standard. The proposal from the justice department was to publish the file format.

The issue is the license that prevents you from reverse engineering these files, you are signing your rights away with the EULA. The schools are being corrupted and turned into the pushers and enforcers of this license that is designed to take away your rights.

You might not care about your rights that you are losing, because it does not affect you personally. But when you look at the macro level of the total effect you will see there is large effect.

Which company was that again?

[mschuyler]

I seem to remember when Apple did exactly the same thing, donating hardware and software to schools. It was a 'good thing' and ever so clever marketing (Remember the Black Apple for education?) From about 1978 or so an entire generation of elementary and secondary school children were inundated with Apple this and Apple that. The educational market, at least in my state, was absolutely and completely dominated by Apple--no question. You couldn't walk into a school without encountering Apple, Viscalc, and even Zardax (Does ANYONE but me remember Zardax (Australian word processor)?

But those kids are now in their twenties and thirties and Apple now has what? 3% of the market? Somehow Apple invested in this sure thing and it didn't work out.

Re:Which company was that again?

[westlake]

You couldn't walk into a school without encountering Apple

But did you ever see an Apple outside the classroom? Windows in the classroom simply reinforces the impression that Windows is everywhere, and that is an infinitely more subtle and powerful marketing tool.

Re:Which company was that again?

[mikefoley]

Not to mention that this fosters the continuance of a monopoly position.

I'd love to see the FTC in on this one.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

>> Then, frankly, find a different school or become >>more flexible
What if your school is high school? What if taypayer money is being spent on your rights being taken away.

>>Religious debates of platforms?
You are used to talking to much stupider people if you bring in arguments like that.

PhoenixFlare--

I am sorry dude,but you are making yourself look pretty silly with stupid stuff like that.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[PhoenixFlare]

Your right to choose to use only free software.

Your rights to fair use of the software, to look inside the binaries, to build compatible software.

It sounds like you have issues more with the concept of non-free software, not Microsoft's license agreement specifcally. Plain and simple, you can only do certain things with certain software, and that's just the way the world works now.

I am an American, what does that have to do with it.

It seemed like you might not be an American. Some countries have different policies than the US does. That's all.

I dont want to use their Products. Unfortunally they have corrupted so many schools that it is impossible for students to avoid using their product or other non-free software.

Until (perhaps) the day monetary systems are abolished, there will always be non-free software. Even if they have to use non-free software, there's absolutely nothing preventing them for using free software themselves as well.

Also, would it really be fair to have students use only free programs while in school, and then be thrust into environments using products they've never touched before?

Let's Not Get Carried Away

[reallocate]

>> ...academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software.

Is this true? "A" source, and "a" stronghold" maybem but "the" source and stronghold of innovation? I wonder...

Sure, lots of college geeks have played around with Unix, and written some useful programs. But, Unix itself was developed by a corporation. And, didn't IBM invent the hard drive (the Winchester)? And, what was all that noise about Xerox and interfaces? The mouse, too.

Let's not get carried away about academia's contributions.

Very Disappointing

[kmsigel]

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.

A LIBERTARIAN WOULD SAY

[fupeg]

it does not matter if MS gives away software to college students. As soon as they have to start paying for it (or as soon as their needs outpace its capabilities) then they will make a choice that has nothing to do with what software they used in college.

Of course libertarians also don't think Microsoft is a monopoly...

Master devious plan

[UnknowingFool]

It's brilliant. Get universities to use your software by offering money and discounted prices. Then in a few years hit them with an "audit" with full retail prices.

Re:Master devious plan

[IM6100]

Do you have an actual cite of Microsoft doing that?

Re:Master devious plan

[UnknowingFool]

Not with a university but they did it with the city of Houston when Houston was contemplating using Linux. It turns out some of the "missing" licenses came from a chunk that MS donated.

MS: "Well, you use X licenses in this department but you only bought Y. You're going to have to pay SA6 prices for those missing licenses."
Houston: "You gave us Z licenses as part of a donation. That helps explain some of the discrepancy."

The problem with Universities and governments is that sometimes their IT purchasing has been somewhat fragmented. Departments will buy a license and not keep good records. Sometimes departments will use fewer than they have bought but with no one really auditing them so they have no idea. There is no real good way to know when IT is de-centralized like that.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[PhoenixFlare]

What if your school is high school?

Then you should worry about getting ready for life after high school, learning as much as you can, and using Linux on your own time if the school doesn't provide for it.

What if taypayer money is being spent on your rights being taken away.

If you're in high school, you're either not paying taxes at all, or paying an extremely small amount, which would give you almost zero grounds to complain on that point.

You are used to talking to much stupider people if you bring in arguments like that.

My point was that the zealous worrying about what platform your school supports is really secondary to what you should be doing- getting an education. Believe or not, Windows use does not preclude learning. Sorry if you couldn't understand that.

I am sorry dude,but you are making yourself look pretty silly with stupid stuff like that.

I'm sorry too, "dude", but your apparent inability to use proper puncuation or spacing in simple sentences makes up for it.

It just

[mormop]

Sounds like good old fashioned bribery to me or at least contrary to the behaviour you'd expect of a convicted monopoly.

What amazes me is that MIT are stupid enough to accept. Who said having letters after your name = intelligence

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[4of12]

If you really believe anywhere but (and even then, it's a stretch) dinky community colleges are obsessively watching student PCs for pirated software...

You're absolutely correct. There's no way that the typical network admin at a DCC is going to bother with the additional overhead of becoming Big Brother. They've got too much on their plates already.

But realize, too, that a typical DCC is going to do triple back-flips should a BSA audit come in and show the DCC lawyer this clause that says their balls are resting lightly on the spring trigger of a bear trap. Like, how much would we be liable for?

DCC's lawyer will advise DCC's provost or president to do Whatever It Takes to make the BSA or MS happy at that point.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

>It sounds like you have issues more with the >concept of non-free software, not Microsoft's >license agreement specifcally. Plain and simple, >you can only do certain things with certain >software, and that's just the way the world works >now.

I have problems with the way that microsoft is turning the schools into henchmen under the guise of giving you cheap software.

>It seemed like you might not be an American. >Some countries have different policies than the >US does. That's all.
Yes, I live in Germany, but am an American.

I wrote
>>>I dont want to use their Products. Unfortunally >>>they have corrupted so many schools that it is >>>impossible for students to avoid using their >>>product or other non-free software.

You Wrote :
>Until (perhaps) the day monetary systems are >abolished, there will always be non-free >software. Even if they have to use non-free >software, there's absolutely nothing preventing >them for using free software themselves as well.

What is preventing them are the EULA on the software and file format. Basically there are some non-free applications like flash, java, powerpoint etc where the EULA coupled with the non-free licenses make taking part in a course that requires them very difficult if not impossible.

Students have the right to not use non-free software. Tax money should not be spent on taking that right away.

This is how the world works

[blunte]

Nothing new here...

You scratch my balls, I'll scratch yours. Hmm no that's not exactly how it goes, but you get the idea.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

>>My point was that the zealous worrying about what >>platform your school supports is really secondary >>to what you should be doing- getting an education.

Supports? We are talking about what platforms are being Excluded here.

The issue is that the schools are *selling* the basic rights that you by nature, before they are taking from you.

Bad spellers of the world : UNTIE!!

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[PhoenixFlare]

Quite true.....True for anyone/anywhere, really.

I guess we can be thankful that sort of situation isn't common enough to be a real issue for the time being.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

I wrote :
>>What if taypayer money is being spent on your >>rights being taken away.

PhoenixFlare Wrote :
>If you're in high school, you're either not paying >taxes at all, or paying an extremely small amount, >which would give you almost zero grounds to >complain on that point.

Again, you are looking at it on the micro level. Please take a step back and look at it on the Macro level.

Think about the equasion :

The basic Rights of millions of people sold,
Millions of tax dollars go to microsoft,
May schools benefit on the short term,
long term result is that free software does not have a chance to gain foothold with the EULA and Fileformats protected by licenses.

Who is losing? the students, the society.
Who is gaining? microsoft, and the few people in the government and schools who are getting lobbied or payed off.

The department of justice found microsoft guilty for abusing their office software and file formats for good reason.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[PhoenixFlare]

Supports? We are talking about what platforms are being Excluded here.

No, we're talking about what platforms are supported via technical resources and teaching. You are being excluded from nothing. If you want to use Linux, and the school doesn't give you anywhere to do so, install it on a personal system and go nuts. They have no obligation to provide it on their hardware just because you think they should. If you want it to be mandated, better go into politics.

The issue is that the schools are *selling* the basic rights that you by nature, before they are taking from you.

Please go back and try again with correct grammar. I won't venture a rebuttal until you say it coherently.

Re:University of Limerick

[themanwhoknowsmostth]

I bet you get a lot of rhyming jokes from people in Nantucket.....

Re:Huh? Cirriculum to include Ergonomic Keyboard?

[Solitonjoy]

Schools -should- teach TeX and HTML and possibly UML, but in middle school. They should teach autodidactic repair and where to get a 32V supply too, but it so happens that's one of the weed-out courses they don't list on the College Catalog, along with the electives 'Would piercings do anything for the relish in my sex life?' and 'How can I maintain my intuition for P-Chem?'

GLOOOOM AND DOOOOM!!!!!!

[Captain McCrank]

"...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."

Really? Is this truly disturbing? Personally, I have yet to experience an IDE that is as helpful as that of Visual Studio. Combining intellisense functionality with MSDN makes it for a powerful resource and development tool. I have not done a great deal of c++ coding in the unix world, but I have done my share of shell scripting and PERL. If you can give me an example of an IDE that is AS useful as Visual Studio, I will be willing to check it out. But until then, vi, vim and emacs are not tools for coding. They're merely scratch paper! Comparing Visual Studio to these environments is not fair- They're not IDE's- But what IDE's exist in the unix world that compete? I'm ignorant of them. Enlighten me.

The .NET framework has been nothing but helpful to me. I don't understand why so many are so opposed to Microsoft even when the solutions they're sharing are getting better and better. No more dll hell, a kick ass interface to the OS (.net framework) and an object library that by default handles much of the database/xml interaction I'm interested in. Why reinvent the wheel? Do you not see that using these standard interfaces not only makes your job easier, but makes coding with dev teams better by minimizing the opportunity for multiple devs to implement their own custom interfaces for these kinds of things?

Plus, MS does occasionally provide truly innovative solutions to very difficult problems. Are you telling me that help from MS is a ride on the short bus for academia? This is not Elitism. It is Ignorance. All operating systems, business solutions and programming languages have their advantages and disadvantages. This decision of Microsoft's is not brainwashing- it's an investment in it's future. Why shouldn't MS try to get more academics involved with it's software? Is submitter honestly suggesting that MS products will simply retard all future growth in the Computer Science field? Are you even reading what you are posting? Do you know what the definition of Disturbing is? Personally, I find the methodical killing of the Holocaust disturbing. As in, holy shit, I-crapped-my-pants-because-that-is-so-evil disturbing. Water that churns uncomfortably in it's cup disturbing. Seriously... Has the english language lost it's capacity for meaningful expression? Or have you forgotten where you put your dictionary?

MS's investments in academia are natural and helpful. It's easier to get a job in the real world using MS products- College graduates will be far better off with a higher awareness of MS solutions than they will with none at all. Unix/Macintosh/Windows can all coexist. Each have strengths and weaknesses. College students who are less exposed to the dominant tools will not be as successful as their competitors.

Plus, I'd rather see them giving away software there than squeezing the universities out of every penny they can like they did in the Ernie Ball case.

Rant about another MSFT technique

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if my post will get past the /. thresholds...with my posting so late in the game.

There was this article written about 4 months ago on an Indian website about another technique that Microsoft uses to get leverage in universities by using so called Student Ambassadors. The gist of the article is that they get insider info about profs from students, and then send a marketing crew bearing "gifts" such as class presentations, textbooks, notes, exams, and of course software! Though it seems kind of slanted towards .NET, the writeup has interesting points. The article also has a short interview with a student ambassador (the student seems pro-Microsoft.) Check out http://www.sulekha.com/column.asp?cid=305808 for the entire article.

If you are too lazy to go there, here's the text (hopefully, the author doesn't mind...besides, that website is probably grateful not to get /. traffic!)

---

Robbing The Cradle

Most of you've heard of the tiny and flaccid Redmond beast. Yes, I'm referring to Microsoft, the scapegoat that gets trashed on a daily basis -- by software cognoscenti, open-source zealots, the federal government, and on occasion even by third-rate start-ups. But this public, private, and federal outrage at Microsoft is only a manifestation of that ingrained human sentiment characterized as "rooting for the underdog." And it's gone too far -- the underdog now seems to be anybody with an axe to grind against Softie. Like Gates says -- it has become fashionable to pick on Microsoft. Here's a company that has dramatically changed the face of the corporate world, mostly for the better, yet everybody is out to get them. At least, this is how I felt about Microsoft until a few weeks ago.

I'm a rabid sports fanatic. I enjoy watching a bone-crunching haymaker in the boxing ring as much as the next red-blooded male. When a boxer fights for keeps, tooth and nail, and benefits from the occasional "dirty" hit, I do not object. This is boxing, damnit; the game isn't meant for the faint of heart. So when the loser whines about the refereeing or low blows -- in my book, he is a sore loser. But here's where my blood lust stops. If the boxer punches out his girlfriend at home, I'm the first one in line clamoring to castrate the bugger. My reasoning is sound. Hitting (clean or otherwise) belongs only within the confines of a boxing ring. To me, the business world is like a boxing ring. By all means, use any and all winning techniques -- but only within the confines of business. Do not cross over into sanctified areas. As I found out, Microsoft is now neck deep in muck -- innovatively engaged in corrupting academia, tearing apart the world of learning like never before. Read on.

How many people know of Microsoft's latest Student Ambassador (SA) thrust? This is a relatively new (18-months young) program that is entirely different from the 3-month internships that Microsoft has traditionally offered college students. The Microsoft SA is a currently enrolled Engineering or Computer Science major in charge of pushing Microsoft technologies on their college campus. For instance, one of their responsibilities is to deliver upwards of 6 on-campus talks per year promoting Microsoft products. Microsoft, in return, provides the SA with resources including books, presentation materials, and onsite (at Redmond) training. Microsoft has seeded almost 200 universities in the US and Europe to date with these zealous "ambassadors". It shouldn't be too long before the program gets underway in Asia (India in particular) as well.

A more ominous (and recent) development is the direct assault on universities by Microsoft's own. Armed with the email address of a SA, they descend on campus with the explicit objective of capturing the curriculum. The SA provides Microsoft visitors with market research -- including information that identifies professors hostile to Microsoft, and those that are not. The Redmond boys then go to work

Innovation

[diersing]

And why can't innovation take place on Windows based systems?

To me innovation is new and exciting ideas. Regardless of platform it seems to me innovation is a seperate beast. I've seen some really innovative software for both MS and Linux bases systems. If you wanna talk about programming languages, lets talk about that, but I don't see the validity is blaming the OS in lack of new ideas of software.

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[mdupont]

>No, we're talking about what platforms are >supported via technical resources and teaching.

What about distance learning?
What about courseware? What about video files? What about the teachers who require you to submit your papers in word format? What about the powerpoint slides that dont render on any viewer other that microsoft.

>>You are being excluded from nothing.
You are, I was. Some schools have the requirement of having windows to take part in at all.

>>They have no obligation to provide it on their >>hardware just because you think they should.

of course not.

>>If you want it to be mandated, better go into >>politics.
Yes of course. The www.fsedu.org project will get politically active some day.

The issue is that the schools are *selling* the basic rights that you *have* by nature, before they are *taken* from you by the EULA.

If you want to defeat the Empire...

[Erik_the_Awful]

... then you got to know how to hack the DeathStar. Teach me more Billy!

How to get someone to speak your language

[Bruha]

If you wanted to get the whole of the united states to speak say spanish then you'd begin a the preshcool level and work your way up.

This is exactly why MicroSoft and Apple for years have fought a battle over schools. I learned to type on a Apple system. But in tech ed and computer science we used MicroSoft x86 based systems.

So if someone who's using a Mac all their life it can be their parents used it before but more than likely they used it during school.

I've got friends that were in yearbook for the highschool and they exclusively used Mac's to do all publishing becuase that's what Mac's have always been strong at. And to this day I'd say about 80% of them have stuck with Mac's though I do know several that went and got com sci degrees and work on *nix based systems.

Now that a good number (At least in the Linux case) of schools have moved to running Linux more students will be (Hate to use this word) Indoctrinated* into using Linux over say Windows. Though them using it after schools is dependent on how the person develops to use a computer. If it's for email, basic games, and other light home tasks then they'll be find.

HC Gamers that like MMO's and other DirectX based games will either go all Windows or Dual boot if so inclined.

What innovation?

[lww]

"Given that academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software, this is a disturbing long-term trend."

Seriously folks, what killer apps have we seen from academia lately? I'm not saying there aren't, just that none come quickly to mind. Most of the software innovators jumped out from both the corporate and academic worlds and into the dot-com space during the boom. Remember all those Business2.0 stories about how dot-coms were going to be the R&D centers of the future? Well, the collapse of the bubble has eliminated that particular theory, but corporate and academia have been slow to reinvest and support true innovation.

Cheap research with tax payer matching funds

[Mybrid]

Over the years UNIX has benefited greatly from the fact that Universities like Berkeley, MIT and Stanford published research because BSD was wide open. In 1996, when I was a grad student at Berkeley in CS, Microsoft approached the Profs at Berkeley with the source code for NT. The idea was that Berkeley would do research on NT. Amazingly enough the proposal was considered. Rumor was, and I don't know this for a fact, that the only reason the deal fell through is that while Microsoft was willing to release 100% of the source, they weren't willing to relenquish copyright. Derived worked would be owned by Microsoft, even when published. Berkeley said no.

It is interesting then that Microsoft wants research done on .NET.

"The company concluded that to make .Net a success, it had to get academics involved. Not only would their imprimatur lend credibility to the technology, Microsoft would benefit from their technical expertise."

This is just euphumism for buying cheap research. While $500 million dollars may seem a lot, its nothing compared to the 4 billion of internal expenditure. What are they getting for that 4 billion? My bet would be that if University profs and students start innovating on .NET then that $500 million will pay out much more rewards then the 4 billion of internal dollars. Microsoft is just wanting cheap yet better research with tax payer matching funds.

This isn't news

[Tuross]

Microsoft has been doing this for decades.
I am not interested in returning to University to get a degree when that degree is nothing more than an MCSE. I've seen the kind of so-called computer engineers the current courses put out, and it makes me sick. Take away MS Paint^H^H^H^H^H^HVisual Basic and these people cannot create "hello world", let alone anything worthy of engineering.
A tertiary qualification should be something that is challenging, giving a good grounding in current knowledge (with complete history) on the topic of the degree while also encouraging new thoughts, generating a person capable of tackling any task in any environment.
It should not be, as it currently is, the training of mindless zombies with whatever the latest version is of a single vendors product(s). It sickens me to think the government encourages its citizens to partake in the criminal activity of a criminal organisation, using academic institutions so they can be the scapegoat should there be any fallout later.

computer science includes systems research

[penguin7of9]

Systems research is a big part of computer science. user interfaces, file systems, metadata, servers, toolkits, etc. You can bet it makes a huge difference when students learn on a platform that (a) is basically 20 year old technology and (b) has Microsoft making all the decisions for them.

It was irrelevant, I wasnt learning computers, or even how to program in C, I was learning concepts.

Well, it was irrelevant to you because you have basically assimilated the view that systems research doesn't matter. In different words, you got deprived of a large chunk of your CS education, and you don't even know what you missed.

Slow on the uptake,

[salesgeek]

Universities are rarely on the cutting edge when it comes to teaching languages. They were teaching pascal back when C was cool, C when VisualBasic was tearing it up, C++ when Java was the thing, and now, Microsoft languages when open source is clearly the cutting edge.

What I learned that was of great value wasn't the languages anyway. It was the conceptual stuff. Language then becomes a tool of implementation of a concept.

Re:Just because it isn't Linux, doesn't mean its e

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

What ... let's check the biggest complaints about ms :

-> non-conforming compiler (you are teaching ms C++, not C++) (I was actually given the advise "not to use templates for ..." because the compiler cannot handle it)
-> ide design, I now know how it is done for qt/kde, and it royally beats ms
-> scriptability, have you ever tried to modify the environment ?
-> debugging : it may be nearly as good as emacs+gdb but it is nowhere near ddd
-> ever explained to someone how to program a parallel/serial port in windows ? I now know how to do it in pure assembly from a bootloader, and trust me, that's easier than doing it in windows. (in linux : PrivoxyWindowOpen("/dev/ttyS0"); )
-> MFC, dear god, what a monster
-> tools, in ms environments there are no tools available (you can have tools for $25 each, generally finding that they are crap)

(I did program 2 years in delphi from borland, and it is a LOT better, I believe it is actually easier than linux, but few people use it, and so tools are hard to find)

granted, you need someone to get you through the first few hours of linux, but it's well worth it (and with knoppix, you don't need that either)

Ambivalent I am

[theolein]

On the one hand, since higher education is so desperately dependant on business handouts as funding is being cut, it is good that MS is at least helping out, and since MS products are used in so many areas in modern businesses, if we like it or not, at least the students have a chance to learn what they will be working with later.

On the other hand it is pretty obvious that MS is not doing this soley out of good will. They want research being fed back to MS and PR opportunities.

So while it seems benign, it can also turn out to be a huge pain later on. Things like BSA audits, MS threatening to turn off the tap on hearing some bad PR, and the market being fully controlled by MS in yet another attempt to coopt the market.

I truly wonder what Microsoft would do if it controlled 100% of all computers and digital devices? Would Bill wet himself and start frothing at the mouth claiming that he ownz the world and that everybody should call him "your majesty"? Would he suddenly jack up prices enormously simply because he felt so, or would he try to carry on further until everything and everyone was owned by him, from the vegetables on your plate to the car your drive?

Some MS is good for you.

[cookiepus]

I once took a transactions system taught by a guy who had a hand in establishing the SQL99 standard. He was talking about the way DBSs store related records adjacently on storage media so you only have to seek once, when I piped in suggesting (for the benefit of my dozing classmates) that this is kind of like what defrag does. The professor literally yelled "WHAT?!" He thought I said something about fagots. Upon explanation, he said he has absolutely no idea what defrag is and that he's never used windows.

Take this anecdote as you wish. To me it is an obvious example that you can be all about computer science, but if you don't know what some windows concepts are about, you're not really familiar with a major paradigm that exists in the industry. Which is fine for the academic world but since most CS grads are going into the work force, they should expect to use windows and MS products one way or another (plenty of banks, insurance companies, and other such places that hire programmers but don't sell software, are Windows shops and you may end up working in one.)

Now that being said, there wasn't much that I did in school that involved MS products (other than using the Windows workstations, and making a flightsum using VC++ and OpenGL) and my situation at work is very much similar. But I am sure that part-time job where I developed for IIS / MS-SQL helped broaden my skillset as much as any of my classes did.

So basically what I am trying to say is that a lot of things like Java are used because they're great for teaching, but chances are that once you're out of school you're not going to be coding in Java. Would it hurt someone to learn .NET instead of Java at school, if they're just as likely to program in c on Unix once they graduate. I don't think so.

If you graduate and you don't know how to use the Start button, on the other hand, you're almost certainly in trouble,

SFSU and C Programming

[erik umenhofer]

I was really looking forward to taking C++ this year but when i went to add the class, it's name was changed to C#. I guess now C++ isn't taught and C# is the only programming class with a C in it's name now. It's lame.

Re:Just like at Yale

[LionMage]

Wasn't there a huge outcry at Yale, followed by a retraction of this idiotic policy decision?

MS is VERY Aggressive!

[Maul]

Microsoft is extremely aggressive on campuses. MS employs very aggressive student reps who will give out freebies if he needs to if it means one less person using non-MS products or dev tools. It is also hard to compete with Microsoft's handouts. They can continue to throw free food, prizes (X-Boxen and what not), and software. Open Source advocates on campus can hand out copies of Linux on CD-R, and that's about it.

Why MS needs the soon to be educated.

[ratfynk]

This is a site which has an approach very similar to Microsofts attude to the educational system http://www.crossroad.to/charts/soviet-us-ed.htm
I wander who it was that said (loose quote) "To rule the people one needs to first have the minds and hearts of the children" I think it might have been Lenin, I remember seeing the quote somewhere.
Alowing our educational system to be bought by the highest bidder will kill innovation and real science. We will spawn a generation of gui dependant Inet and game coding morons. Scientific computing will suffer big time. The fact that MS already controls all the private 'business tech schools' and that if need to be certification at one of these so called business colleges to get work is scarry. No the Microsoft monopoly has become unbreakable, soon we will all have to pay tribute to Redmond, or face censure!

How'd they buy off Hal Abelson?

[LionMage]

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.

Re:How'd they buy off Hal Abelson?

[Pinball Wizard]

Will SCHEME be replaced by C# as the language of choice for entry level CS classes?

Perhaps it will be Scheme.NET (sadly, not a joke)

Re:How'd they buy off Hal Abelson?

[metamatic]

I was horrified when my university took Microsoft's thirty pieces of silver too.

I suggest you do what I do: when they call up asking for money, tell them they won't get a penny, tell them you're disgusted at them, and tell them why.

My experiance

[jonwil]

At my school (Murdoch University, Perth, Australia) they use windows for most labs simply because thats what everyone knows how to use. They do have linux labs that are used for units on unix and security and so on. (in fact, the security unit I am doing right now uses that security book mentioned on the front page as a text book)

And generally there hasnt been any "over-use" of M$ products. JAVA has been used for some units. There was one unit that used VB but that was optional and I only did it because it was so laughingly easy.
Most of the units use things like HTML, Javascript, PHP, Perl, XML and other open stuff.
C & C++ has been used in some units (at the time they used Borland C++ 5 or something, may be using MS now) but it was all vanila coding and wasnt relyant on any propriatory stuff provided by the compiler.
They are using Access in the databases unit but they are also using Oracle running on a SUN machine (as opposed to e.g. SQL server on a windows box).

Some other units have used non-MS propriatory stuff (like Matlab in the maths unit).

I think there is some kind of site-licence/academic deal for MS software on campus but I think the uni actually had to pay for it.

So at least one campus hasnt been assimilated by the M$ borg.

How else u gonna lern to write viruses?

[gelfling]

Seriously though.

@ UNC Greesboro the ratio of school owned PCs to school owned Macs is about 5:1 if not higher. Why is that? Because owning a computer is not a requirement and students still have to be able to work more or less transparently with the rest of the world. If schools want to buy all their students Mac or subsidize them then fine, let's all use Macs (or Sun machines for that matter) Until then the $400 PC I just bought blows the wheels off any Mac, price performance wise plus its no big if/when it gets stolen or broken.

Nothing New

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a story a few years back about a uni in Louisiana where MS came in and replaced all the Unix boxes with 2K boxes and then fouled up completely. They tried streaming video for a football game and parts of the Bell South backbone came down, and the mayor had to go on TV to apologise, claiming it was a "glitch". When MS come to town, things get really screwed up.

Here's the news link - as you can see, that's almost three years ago. MS has been doing this for quite some time.

The reduction of objectivity

[jesterzog]

As much as they might like to, Microsoft can't control how we think about abstract problems. If you learn about linked lists using Visual C++, vi and gcc, or pascal and EDT, you are STILL learning about linked lists.

I agree with you about the main point of what's learned in computer science. In my comp-sci degree, I also consider the abstract concepts that I learned as much more important than the day-to-day software that we were using to learn it. I disagree with your post as a whole, however, since I think the software and tools used can and do have an impact on the learning environment.

By paying out large sums of money and heavily subsidising courses, Microsoft is hampering the independence of the university staff to make the best possible choice of tools for teaching a quality course.

There's certainly an argument that because Microsoft is giving lots of money for its software to be used, it's lowering the fees that I might have to pay and somehow increasing quality in other areas. On the other hand, this is penalising potential makers of higher quality academic software simply because they can't afford to bribe with larger amounts than Microsoft can, and it's penalising students who might not get as useful-a-learning-environment because of it.

Vicious circle: used books drive up price of new

[AHumbleOpinion]

Yeah I remember my High School Biology teacher telling me that text book companies updated their books uneccessarily frequently to cut down on the resale market. $100 for a book is ridiculous, especially for impoverished students.

It's not unnecessary, it's how they stay in business. It's not ridiculous, that's what it costs when the upfront costs have to be recouped in a year rather than over several years. It's a vicious circle, used book sales drive up the price of new books. Students are not merely getting f'd by the publisher, they are also f'ing themselves.

Linux Advocates get Windows NT into CS Dept/Labs

[AHumbleOpinion]

On top of that, our CS department just got rid of our solaris lab for a microsoft ".net" lab. It's irritating how much force microsoft is exerting

Was it forced or just a cost saving? In my old CS department the local Linux advocates successfully made the argument that the department could save a lot of money replacing Sun boxes with generic PC's running Linux. Few students or professors needed the performance or Sun specific software, they just needed a general purpose Unix box. The ironic thing is that once the decision was made to switch from Sun to PC hardware someone suggested having the machines dual boot Windows NT and Linux. The Linux advocates brought Windows into the department and labs.

Programming Competition

[MulluskO]

I placed third in a microsoft - sponsored programming competition here last semester, I walked away with free copies of Windows XP, Age of Mythology, and Visual Studio .Net. Now, I still like Linux, but I can't ignore generocity like that, and they are, but for the game, all great tools.

What you used in college is largely irrelevant

[AHumbleOpinion]

None CS students will be exposed only to MS solutions and when they enter the business world (as our wonderful managers) they will request/require solutions based upon what they already know.

Apple disproved that theory.

Recent CS graduates will not be decision makers. By the time they have enough business experience to make decisions what they used in college will be largely irrelevant.

Microsoft is well aware that controlling education ...

Microsoft's hypothetical control is highly overrated. I graduated CS in '96. Most of the coursework was done on Unix. Most of my fellow students complained that they were not getting enough Windows experience at the annual feedback session with the department heads. The profs responded that they were not there to teach specific technologies like Windows, MFC, etc. but to teach principles that will outlast this year's OS and development environment. Most students didn't buy it. Sigh.

Re:What you used in college is largely irrelevant

[hesiod]

> students complained that they were not getting enough Windows experience

The profs should just say "If you can't figure out Windows at this point, maybe you shouldn't be trying for a CS degree."

Re:What you used in college is largely irrelevant

[AHumbleOpinion]

The profs should just say "If you can't figure out Windows at this point, maybe you shouldn't be trying for a CS degree."

They had no problem figuring out Windows. They just wanted homework and lab assignments to be developed under Windows rather than Unix. They basically wanted to put some Windows/DevStudio/MFC time on their job applications. Heaven forbid that if someone wanted to learn a new technology they, *gasp*, *choke*, write a bit of code on their own rather than wait for a professor or boss to assign it.

Sadly the same thing happens in the real world. I've seen otherwise reasonable engineers express a desire to get assinged to a small short term project because it will use a language or technology they want to learn, i.e. the language or tech will be used on the "next big thing" project they really want to be assinged to next year. When I point out that the language or tech is freely available for their PC at home and they could learn it on their own they stare at me like I just offered some crack and then say "The company should pay me to learn it".

Better for CS academic environment

[megazoid81]

Academics wouldn't have touched legacy MS-platform programming products (COM, DCOM, MFC) with a ten-foot pole, because they were so complex and ugly. However, the new .NET Framework actually serves as a really good example of compiler and runtime design. It incorporates some of the best ideas in the industry (ripped off Java in many cases) and adds a lot of cool stuff, like metadata, single object-rooted design and automatic memory management. All of these are great topics for study in a classic compiler/OS class. Google for SSCLI (Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure) and browse the source -- it's an interesting study. Adoption of .NET in academia is a lot more than in industry, because the industry is still suspicious of this latest and greatest Microsoft venture.

Tis true..

[LilGuy]

I can attest to this... MS practically bought our school. It is under the behemoth's iron fist when it comes to anything computer related at the school.

I didn't have too many qualms about the computers running windows being as how they all had the latest development software for free. Where I drew the line was when they told me that in order to hook my OWN computer up to the network I HAD to be running a Microsoft OS or face permanent termination.

WTF!? Dakota State University = OWNED!

iNBC

[GQuon]

XXNBC
X-NBC
NBC2003
NBC Online
iNBC
eNBC
NBC X
NBC XP
NBCOne

Re:iNBC

[hesiod]

What about NBC.Net?

It doesn't do anything useful, but it's flashier than ever!

You are smoking crack. This article M$ friendly.

[twitter]

Someone put this crap on my lug mailing list. This is what I had to say about it, read and enjoy:

The M$NBC article claims, "Today, four years into the five-year partnership, the protests are over and Microsoft technology is firmly entrenched at MIT." Irony? Looks like an outright lie to me and an implicit endorsement I doubt any University, especially MIT, would make or will be happy about. It misrepresents the original 1999 initiative, the extent of penetration and M$ influence.

MIT has it's own private computer system, Athena What else would you expect from the people who developed X, kerbos and many other awesome packages while M$ was putzing around with Windoze 3.1? Athena finished in 1991, where did M$ want to go at that time? MIT is more likely to take credit for being an early haven for RMS.

Here is an informative PDF about Athena and kerbos usage at MIT With 96% of the students using Athena, I'd say that M$ hardly has a toe in the door. Indeed, it's hard to imagine serious scientific computing with Microsoft, though there are some interesting and expensive toys available on that platform, Athena seems to have them all and their betters. Here is an old list of software available to Athena users

"The university?s educational computer network is being overhauled to use Microsoft?s .Net architecture." Is a particularly rich lie considering the Company's ambition of 1999, expressed in this NYT article, to be set the tone for MIT and 36 other companies and thereby pervert everyone's standards and lock up all publishing in M$ DRM. The above article also claimed that M$ had become the "de facto standard" at Universities. It seems strange that M$ feels the need to restate the case four years later. Slashdot covered that move and the student comments are cutting.

Some things remain the same, however. The few M$ boxes seem to be the same headache at MIT as they are everywhere:

1. 750 boxes infected with sobig and blaster, presumably student owned, remedy is rebuild.
2. Problems with mail directories:
3. Problems with different versions of M$ office (another old page)

I can hardly believe that I read half of that nauseating piece of BS. Microsoft has tried to make policy at Universities and they have bought a few whores at some of them. This article is typical Microsoft, "we've already won" when the battle is far from over, "smart people use us" when the truth is far from it and "look how generous we are to be giving away Millions of dollars worth of binaries" as if an M$ CD was worth any more than an AOL CD. NBC should be ashamed to publish such rubbish, someone is asleep at the wheel.

Punching holes in this article for the last 30 minutes has been fun. Microsoft polute a LUG mailing list? No way. Come here, pig, I'm going to eat you alive. Bang, pow, bite, squeel, squeel, smash crash thud. /* - Big Grin full of exposed teeth - */ Only someone completely immersed in M$ BS and completely ignorant of scientific computing and campus life in general would think M$NBC was being critical of M$.

I now return you to news that matters and reality, which have nothing to do with M$ press releases.

M$ on campuses sucks

[deadgoon42]

I'd say there is a fair amount of bribery going on on my former campus. I took a beginning CS course on C++ and the instructor only released assignments as Word documents. I asked him if he could use a more portable format (such as PDF, HTML, or RTF) for those of us who didn't have Word. He said that several students had requested this in the past, but that it would be too time consuming for him to go back and reformat the assignments. Under my breath I said BS! I talked to several students that had been in the department for a while and they all said that things were going strictly towards M$ and away from Unix/Linux/Mac. It seems that all they are concerned with now is whether or not you can copy and paste code in Visual Studio .Net

"Donations" that cost nothing.

[SgtChaireBourne]

... and others are laying off staff.

Microsoft is too, except it's called outsourcing to India. Giving away free software is no guarantee that there's enough money in the bank to keep MS operating through the end of the year.

How much of the donations are real I-could-buy-a-Macintosh cash? How much of the donations are real hardware? And how much are just licenses and software?

The last bit doesn't cost MS a thing, any incidental costs are offset by the bite they take out of competitors. The University would have bought already if it was going to, so no sale is lost. So, depending on how the donations are composed, it could actually cost very little.

Lost productivity is the big cost for the universities. For server-side product, there's the overhead of trying to get the products to work as advertised and an additional overhead of trying to keep them working. In the last two years, Microsoft has probably caused more economic damage than Al Quaida.

I think the editors just felt a need to plug their sponsor. Please, next time at least link to the original Washington Post article.

Re:"Donations" that cost nothing.

[Trelane]

Microsoft is too, except it's called outsourcing to India.

True, and other companies are doing it too, except that many actually are experiencing a net decrease in labor force, not just a labor force displacement.

Giving away free software is no guarantee that there's enough money in the bank to keep MS operating through the end of the year.

True, although the $3 or $4 billion profit per quarter and 80+% profit margins in the Office and Windows sections (with the current donations, "super deals" to the OEMs, academic versions, etc., mind!) sure do.

How much of the donations are real I-could-buy-a-Macintosh cash? How much of the donations are real hardware? And how much are just licenses and software?

Although you make a very good point about the benefits of donating software (note that many do; I just took advantage of our campus agreements in StarOffice and a calendaring client for Linux), they still can't give out actual cash in grants, stipends, awards, etc. And the school actually has to break away on the desktop from their established Microsoft standard (I don't know of any that don't at least unofficially have one (peer, professor, and administrator pressure to use Microsoft formats and software; try getting help on Linux from the campus helldesk), and many have a stated one). Apple has double the problem, since you can't just install MacOS X on some old lab machine; you have to go buy an Apple.

But I think we're pretty much on the same page. I think.

Let your voice be heard.

[twitter]

a few years a go while i attened the university of southern california, i was surprised to find out that the UI design class in java i signed up for was now a introduction to MFC programming class.

Too late for you, I suppose.

My advice to anyone who finds themselves learning a product like that, when you thought you would be learning priciples, is to drop the class pronto. Unless you are looking to pad your GPA, don't waste your time and money on junk. The MFC, besides being non-portable and worthless, is trivial and anyone can pick it up in a few weeks. A course teaching that would be mostly filler. Tcl/Tk might fill a course and be worthwhile, but you know, it's not really university material so much as more fundamental non-product specific concepts is. Classes without students die, and this is the best way of all to voice your oppion as well as spare your faculty the indignity of teaching a bogus class.

When faced with a Dinky Dell workstation that won't see your SUN, fix it with Knoppix or Suse live CD.

This is news?

[Macgoon]

The Computer Science faculty at my alma mater (University of Alberta) was in Microsoft's pocket in the '90's. Unix held out in the academic infrastructure, but it was PCs all the way on the desktops that we Artsies could access. Macs were pretty well purged by '93, except for Education. I have no idea how it is now - probably more of the same.

Who said this shit is true?

[twitter]

Wow, I guess daily contact with RMS is enough to drive people to some truly extreme measures...

What makes you think M$ has made any real inroads at MIT? It's no more true than the silly namecalling you just stooped to.

Re:Vicious circle: used books drive up price of ne

[khallow]

It's a vicious circle, used book sales drive up the price of new books. Students are not merely getting f'd by the publisher, they are also f'ing themselves.

I don't see that. Ie, if you have a fixed demand and an increasing supply of books, then naturally the price goes down. And what are the "upfront" costs on a slightly modified next edition?

Re:Vicious circle: used books drive up price of ne

[AHumbleOpinion]

I don't see that. Ie, if you have a fixed demand and an increasing supply of books, then naturally the price goes down. And what are the "upfront" costs on a slightly modified next edition?

The publisher and author get nothing from used book sales. Grossly simplified: The upfront costs are what it takes to get the book written in the first place. With a strong used book market the publisher has a much shorter window of time, a smaller number of new books, to recoup these costs and make a profit. This inflates the price. With a weak used book market the publisher could spread these costs over a longer period of time, a greater number of books. With a weaker used book market and a greater number of new books manufactured we also have some savings due to scale, mass prodcution if you wish.

UW and MS Canada

[ShadowFlair]

Wow, didn't know there are so many UW people here.

From what I understand, MS signed a deal with Engineering and they are required to do .NET and what-not. I didn't realize the deal fell through.

Microsoft Canada does have an academic alliance with UW, that's how the students get free copies of Windows XP and such MS products.

Apparently, this is a subscription for universities, so part of our money goes there. I think this does benefit both sides of the deal because (1) over half the people in the University (artsies, etc) need the Windows liscences because they are not UNIX-compatible, so the University is getting a good deal on getting what the students need and (2) Microsoft gets to expand its territory in terms of user-base (it always sickens me how upper-year CS people -- who are required to use UNIX because the University no longer gives them a windows account -- take up a UNIX terminal only to start up WinCenter, a Windows emulation for UNIX).

IMO, Microsoft Canada has been VERY active in trying to get future software engineers to learn .NET. I have gone to a MS seminar geared towards undergrads that can be summed up as propaganda on how great .NET is (3 hours long, includes a free dinner), then at the end they give you a free copy of VS.NET as well as some pamphlets. They followed up with a free online .NET course which I went through as well; this comes with a free .NET textbook (hardcover, weighs a ton; probably cost about $100, CAD), a free copy of Windows XP Pro and a free copy of VS.NET (again). The strategy makes sense because it potentially builds up Gates's Army, and there will be more MS products in the future, which means more people will be (forced) to use Windows and related products. For us students, this is a deal that is hard to resist since Windows programming is mainstream. and we get the free software (which we always try and pay for, of course).

All in all, as much as I support the open source movement, I have to give it to Microsoft for keeping an eye on the long-term future. Well, I guess they just have enough money to put aside for that purpose unlike others...

Stories from within

[Mikey-San]

Let me give you an example of just how well this is working across the country:

My girlfriend, after meeting me, discovered that Windows was /not/ the end-all, be-all of OSes, and after finding viruses all over the machine, as well as Windows Cruft(tm) slowing it to a crawl, she decided it was time to entertain the idea of something else.

In this case, that something else was(is) Linux. I was all ready to start switching her over, when she brought home her Math 151 materials:

CDs and a book.

Hrm.

Yup, the CDs are Windows apps. That's not surprising, but I was, of course, hoping they'd just be some kind of Web-browser-based material supplements. They're not. Turns out, the course's quizzes, among other things, are all administered through the software. If you don't run Windows, you can't pass the course.

Now she's not too excited about Linux anymore, even though she'll be more stable, more secure, and virus-free. (And won't have to pay the MS tax.) I'm going to see if the app behaves itself in Wine, but nothing's really guaranteed, as always, with such adventures.

Microsoft knows that universities--the financial decision makers, specifically--are too dumb to consider anything other than Microsoft.

Devil's Advocate

[varjag]

There is nothing new in such get-them-early tactics, and it certainly wasn't invented by Microsoft. UNIX gained its acceptance in 1970s-80s pretty much the same way: its copies were distributed across the universities free of charge. Very much due to that it became widespread and won the workstations market of that time, despite that there were technically superior alternatives.

A note for trigger-happy mods: I run GNU/Linux and hold no Windows partitions on my machines since 1999.

They should have asked ...

[mkosmul]

From the article:

> At a question-and-answer session between the academics and Gates, one professor asked the
> Microsoft founder about his views about the study of information technology, a part of
> computer science that emphasizes on how documents, spreadsheets and other data should be
> handled. What kinds of technologies should students majoring in this subject be taught?
> Gates replied quickly and with a smile: "Microsoft Office."

They should have asked him to provide them with a full specification of Word .DOC format for those classes.

We don't want no education....

[hughk]

Obligatory Pink Floyd quote here because it seams that your director wants to offer training rather than education. Ask him if you are teaching a batchelor's/masters degree or are you just training up Minesweeper Consultants and Solitaire Experts (MCSEs).

Cite the CAIB Columbia Report

[hughk]

In one of the chapters (7 page 191), they lay into Microsoft's Powerpoint being a totally inappropriate tool for non-marketing activities such as engineering. The formats used and the clunky support for equations impedes understanding.

You'd think

[Cackmobile]

Microsoft's total research and development budget -- $4.7 billion in 2003, $4.3 billion in 2002 and $4.4 billion in 2001 -- is estimated to be more than all the rest of the software industry spends together

You'd think with all that money going into R & D they'd be able to produce a secure and stable OS.

I wonder if its ever been said

[Cackmobile]

I for one welcome our new Microsoft overlords. And I would like to remind them that as a professor of CS I would be invaluable in rounding up Linux users!

Northeastern

[f0rtytw0]

Many of the professors I've had tell us that we can write our code on any platform we want using whatever IDE we want as long as it can compile and run on the sun boxes that the graders are using. Only in my freshman year did I use Visual C++. When we learned more we were expected to go code on the unix machines.

And where did it take us today? E-Failure!

[Anonymous Coward]

The university I go to has been offline for a few days now, email and all web access. They use only cheapo-M$ products, the dean of CS told me why - M$ charges only a couple of dollars a copy of most software.

We have been trying to get the administration to switch to something reliable, but no dice. School started Monday, and nobody has had email or web since the previous Friday.

MSCE and a degree

[chrisdouce]

I've heard of some colleges (rather than universities) running MCSE qualifications as a part of the courses they offer... (Semester 1: Microsoft Office, Semester 2: Microsoft Windows NT/2000 and XP, Semester 3: How to patch your system). A systems admin guy at my university said something to me that stuck with me. I was proclaiming my love to a mac II and he sadly shook his head. "To be in IT, you need to know about all systems, not only one, whether it's Macs, PC's or Solaris" (or whatever). He had a point... Universities should teach about M$ systems and the software that they use - it's a part of their job. But also it's a part of their job to be platform neutral. One way to become a good computer 'scientist' is the observe and understand the works of good masters. OSS allows you to do this, whilst M$ does not.

Hal Abelson's website

[bg25343]

Hal Abelson, a computer science professor who co-directs the MIT-Microsoft partnership...

Did anyone notice Hal Abelson's homepage contains an archive of an old Microsoft anti-Linux ad? Translation, anyone?

Re:Hal Abelson's website

[NotInTheBox]

Aproximation of the german is "A open operating system has not only advantages". And I believe is point to the fact that where are many distibutions of Linux. Which is a good thing as far as I care.

I use Freebsd for the gateway, fileservers and other servers, Openbsd for the tranparent bridging firewalls, MacOSX for the Desktops en, soon, Linux for the settops (pvr/jukebox).

Now that's just sad.

[asbestos_lead]

Today, four years into the five-year
partnership, the protests are over and
Microsoft technology is firmly entrenched at MIT.

Aeronautical design classes now use
Microsoft's Flight Simulator computer program.

Whatever happened to X-Plane?

You have to ask yourself this question -...

[gosand]

Fundings funding. If they want to give my alma mater 1.6 million to use Windows, I think that's just great. Computer Science isnt "how to use your computer". The concepts and techniques you learn are beyond any operating system. Good algorithm design and analysis transcends linux vs windows vs mac osx.

I agree with you, in principle. But you have to ask yourself this question - if it doesn't make a difference, then why does Microsoft spend the money to get Windows into schools?

MS at my school

[knailz]

I attended my first class last night... data structures. I was told that .net 2003 was the compiler to be used and that limited copies were available though the school via MSDNAA. Later in the class the "features" of this compiler were discussed. Such as this managed code thing that does not allow the use of pointers.... because they sometimes give programmers trouble..... The good news is we were then told that we would be learning standard C++ and using the STL. We will not be conforming to the .NET standard. So even though we are trapt in this MS thing, its not so bad. East Tennessee State University .... BTW

Sun & Cisco (& others)

[Tsar Ivan IV]

This is no new phenomenon. Sun & Cisco, in particular, owe much of their growth in the 90's to their, hm, generosity towards various universities. The business logic behind their "generosity" is simple. After college days, all those students are going to have jobs. And if those former students learned IOS or Solaris in their college days and are familiar with it, wouldn't that give Cisco & Sun an advantage in their minds over, say, Juniper or HP?

Re:You are smoking crack. This article M$ friendly

[Jucius Maximus]

You have made a false assumption. You assumed that I actually did RTFA ;-)

Irony?

[dswan69]

MSNBC (oh, the irony)

Where's the irony?

Re:Huh? What is the cost?

[hesiod]

> Supports? We are talking about what platforms are being Excluded here.

So you expect every High School in the U.S. to support Linux? Hardly.

Creative accounting

[SgtChaireBourne]

True, although the $3 or $4 billion profit per quarter and 80+% profit margins in the Office and Windows sections (with the current donations, "super deals" to the OEMs, academic versions, etc., mind!) sure do.

But book keeping can be tricky and is the $3-$4 bn the initial report or the quietly "corrected" version. Even if you accept the $3 - $4 bn figure, Microsoft just lost a lot of it's quarterly profit through fines for IP violations. And faces anti-trust fines and fines for lax security. I'm sure false advertising, liability for worms and other concerns will rear their ugly head.

Then there's the issue of Enron-style accounting. In 1998, Microsoft ran an $18 billion loss. Sure 1998 was a while ago, but it was also when the IT sector was gravy. Since then sales of new Intel boxes have plummeted and MS-Windows sales depend largely on OEMs. Now the prices for MS-Office are plummeting to near free-market prices. Microsoft depends on MS-Windows and MS-Office as it's only two cash cows and both look to be drying up.

I say again that there is no guarantee that there's enough money in the bank to keep MS operating through the end of the year.

The campus agreement you describe for StarOffice sounds interesting. I'd think more universities would be interested in it as a long term investment in electronic publishing as there are plans for it and OpenOffice.org to support the upcoming OASIS XML-based format. That'd increase the likelihood of parsable term papers, theses, and dissertations.

University [sic]

[pmz]

There's a better word than "university" for a university that employs Microsoft software in a Computer Science curriculum. That word is "trade school."

The ugly truth

[Lysol]

You seem to conviently forget/ignore the various monopoly and other similar lawsuits M$ has been involved in over the past decade.

I don't necessairly have a beef about the shottyness of M$ products. I'm much more against their monopoly and predatory business practices. For all those 'successes' inside Redmond over the likes of Netscape, Novell, etc, other, smaller companies and individuals have lost out big time and not on the merits of better products, but sheer market and money power. To me, that doesn't make a healthy company/ecosystem in any industry.

Of course, on the fluff, Windoze media player, server, os, word, excel, ppt, etc, allow people to do great things. But, on the fluff of so many things the world looks like a great place. It is only when those, who aren't satisfied with the status quo, peel away the fluff and uncover the stink and putrification that are so many unethical companies and governments nowadays.

M$ is not a ethical company. There is ample documentation and proof of this. I, for one, accept that and choose to speak out against this. Along the way, I also expect certain standards and concepts and ideals from the software that I take part in writing. When, INMO, M$ time and time again choose the almighty dollar over proven industry and scientific best practices (I won't even delve into the importance of open file formats and information sharing for the greater good of society), then I'm gonna speak up on that too. When I'm not allowed to do something with my machine and hardware that I own (think Xbox, and no I don't own one), then I'm gonna have an issue about that.

You conviently have bought into the lie, but it looks you you are ok with that and I'm not going to riduicule you for it. Hell, we all buy into various lies all the time. For me, though, M$ and my life with computers - something I've grown up with for the past 20 years - is something I cannot buy into and something I have to and will live with. I will continue to support people who like to think and program and buy products that let them do what we want to do with them - for the sake of ideas - and not what some untethical company thinks we should.

So therefore, I must expose the lie that M$ can be good to, because, like I said before, there is ample evidence that they are not. It is only when you turn off your critical thinking and start believing in slick (and not so) marketing campaigns that you will think otherwise.

Money can't give what the truth takes away..

MS on campus

[enbody]

I'm a professor on the front line of this at our school. We have a two-semester introductory programming sequence for majors in C++. We use VS.NET for the first semester, and use gcc on Sun Sparcs for the seoncd semester. When students have completed the two-course sequence they can program in both environments (in theory :-). Subsequent courses can then choose the appropriate platform.

Microsoft provides the software (VS, not Office) as part of an academic alliance for students to download so that can be counted as a huge donation, if you want to think of it that way. Microsoft did help with the transition of the first course from Unix/gcc to Windows/VS. Having an IDE for the first course seems to make the first steps easier for students.

Did we sell our souls to Microsoft? I don't think so, especially since our second semester is on another platform. Is it smart marketing and a good investment for Microsoft? I think so.

Professor own book

[yintercept]

The best classes I've had involved a professor who wrote their own textbook. (I have not had any where the professor required their text but did not use it.)

A professor teaching from their textbook is a different from pure graft as the class and book itself is a full creation of the professor.

You are correct, however, if the professor assigns a book that is not related to the class, then he is just using the system.

Univ Calif Irvine, and more

[strombrg]

Here at UCI, the ICS appears to be VERY pro microsoft. The curriculum is mostly microsoft based, and in their support group, the main linux guy just got layed off.

Needless to say, I find this disturbing. A CS department moving to all microsoft is a bit like a math department moving to all algebra, because "calculus is just too hard".

On a somewhat related note, out in industry, I heard that at a particular part of Connexant, they're laying off the windows guys and replacing the windows servers with linux boxes.

So CS departments are a bit out of synch with what industry wants. Just a bit. And my guess is that microsoft is using every bit of leverage it has to get all-microsoft curricula in CS departments everywhere.

very true

[golrien]

modded as funny, but as an example.. I grew up using really nothing but MS software (I think Wordperfect instead of Word, but it was just as unstable and just as inclined to do things you never asked it to). Nobody taught me to use linux/unix (shit, it would have been a task :), nobody even told me there were alternatives to the MS software.

So why do I use linux? It was mentioned somewhere, found out about it, and every time I had an MS program crash on me (several times a day, nobody's joking about what the programmers were smoking at work) I made a note to try out linux. I think originally I tried it in 1998, but thanks to several reasons (it hated my monitor, it did kind a suck back in 1998, and I was like 11 years old at the time :) I went back to windows. But no matter how many upgrades people went through (and I was never the one paying for the software, so price wasn't a selling point) it was still assfucked. to cut a long story.. kind of less long, some time I tried linux again. the point is, no matter the fact I was taught exclusively on MS systems (in fact, probably because I was always using them and they were always wanging themselves up), I now would rather die (or at least, write the paper by hand) than use MS Office and all that junk. this doesn't worry me much, as long as people are still aware that there's alternative software out there.. sure, it's not perfect, but there's no way it's inferior to MS's crud.

Re:very true

[mindriot]

Hmm, actually I hadn't intended my post to be funny... still got modded that way, oh well. It was actually very serious... my switch to Linux was strongly influenced by my exposure to Windows and the urge to have something better. Especially since I programmed a lot. Coding for DOS was OK with Turbo Pascal or Borland C, but coding for Windows is imo a real PITA. But once you sit at a Linux box and have everything you need to go hacking easily (and Freely) available (including good documentation), you can start coding and never look back.

Re:REDHAT is taking away students rights as well

[mdupont]

Flamebait?

I dont think so.

The politics of redhat when it comes to licensing are scary. We need to have more public awareness as to what is really going on.