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Big Company on Campus
Daniel Dvorkin writes "MSNBC (oh, the irony) is running a scary article entitled Microsoft's big role on campus, detailing how Microsoft is working its way into academic computer science through a combination of bribery and propaganda. The aricle may be overstating the case, but it does make it sound as though MS products are displacing others at a disturbing rate in computer science departments. Given that academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software, this is a disturbing long-term trend."
IAALS.
If I'd known professors were that cheap, I'd have picked up a couple a long time ago.
Making stupid comments so you don't have to.
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.
Im glad
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?
It works for the U.S. tobacco companies, so why not?
--rc
Naming rights for the first two letters of XXNBC now up for bid...
Ceci n'est pas un post.
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It is unethical on so many levels.
...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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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!!
"Its too hot out for a Penguin to be just walking around. - Billy Madison"
C'mon slashdot, what is with this Microsoft fetish lately? Get with it and keep up the SCO bashing for goodness sake!
--
hecubas
Hecubas
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.
I, for one, welcome our new redmond overlords...
Oh wait! No, I don't!
The scary thing is, some kids are now being taught things like PowerPoint in middle school....
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
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?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
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.
(Damn, the phone rang. I could have had first post on a red-meat Micro$oft story!)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
DeVry University is going to begin teaching the intro programming classes using a UNIX-based (Linux more likely) system, instead of using Microsoft's Visual Studio as it is right now. At least that's the inside scoop I've heard from one of my professor's there recently.
/. elitists all think DeVry is a shitty school, but if this rumor is true, it just points to the fact that even a private university desperate for funds at every turn doesn't seem to think that being a Microsoft-centric university is necessarily a Good Thing these days. Perhaps industry is demanding a bit more of graduates than simply knowing how to program in Visual Basic these days???
And yes, I realize most of you
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!
Its a good thing MS already bought the legislature or they'd have somthing to worry about.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
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.
--------------------- Turn evil by smiling.
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.
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.'"
-agent oranje.
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.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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!"
BOO! TERRO
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
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.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
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.
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
Wow, I guess daily contact with RMS is enough to drive people to some truly extreme measures...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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.
Dictators do similar things to the minds of the youth.
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.
What are you selling for this this money?
:n tOp tion
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=CAStude
"
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.
Introspection is the key to understanding
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...
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
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.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
UT Austin does this. I will admit, it's nice getting software for really cheap. So far, our CS curriculum hasn't been influenced by the partnership -- there are no MS specific courses offered by the CS department, and I've yet to have a class that mandated that I use an MS product. (Most assignment must actually compile/run under Linux) However, I don't know about the Business school though -- I would suspect they play along and don't ask questions.
Interestingly enough, I was just reading some of Dijkstra's writings, where he comments on this very issue at UT.
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
That would explain why their media player rises from the dead every time I install a service pack...
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
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.
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
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.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
How much of that $100 million is in the form of MS software, which is free for Microsoft to give away?
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.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
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.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
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...
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
I just arrived back to the BGSU campus a few days ago, and when I went into the lab in the basement of the computer science building, I noticed that all the SGI X-terminals and Macintoshes had been replaced by brand new Dells. That was the only lab I used, since I'd rather do my programming assignments on Solaris/CDE than in Visual C++ or on the UNIX system over telnet. I complained to a lot of people, but no one so far has been able to tell me why they did this or what happened to the SGI's. They got new Dells for at least one other lab too, which were NOT needed, while raising everyone's tuition again. I guess I'll never know, but I really think Microsoft had something to do with it. Maybe that's why we can buy Windows and Office (Professional versions) for only ten dollars at the bookstore. I guess I'll be using KDevelop now.
The 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.
.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.
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
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
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
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......
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
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.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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?
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
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).
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
The guru's are correct, but ask them if they can tell you if they have encountered a real world case where gcc 3.3 wasn't good enough. Now ask the faculty if access to the source code is helpful in the advanced classes. I'll bet the answers will be .... ummmmm no and YES.
But, you are right - gcc needs to improve. And from the boost test results, I would say that gcc is improving rapidly. MS VC++ can compile clean on one platform, gcc is cross patform. Hats off to the gcc team for writing some great code.
See the boost regression tests
Think global, act loco
Recently I participated in a High School Programming contest at the University Of Maryland. Microsoft was a key sponsor of the event, and even shelled out the cash for the prizes. In addition to that, they had their on campus student rep come and give an informative presentation about their new Tablet PC. But it looks like the contest is going to need a new sponsor next year, as they're switching the language over from C++ to Java. On another note, my favorite sponsor was Papa John's, who donated the pizza.
At UC Berkeley (home of Unix!), around May 1999, I was a teaching assistant for CS 61B (Introduction to Data Structures). The course was taught in Java (and before that, C). The UC Berkeley CS labs for introductory undergrad courses are all Unix (Solaris x86, HP-UX, DEC OSF/1).
The lecturer received a letter from a Microsoft rep with a proposition to switch to Microsoft technologies, offering all of the software that we could possibly want. It was, of course, immediately tossed into the recycling bin with some sort of remark containing the word "slimey."
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.
dont forget Cisco.
their original product was the result of a university research project.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
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.
Minimum wage? Wow.
/. Typically, Professors were the top of their class (or near there) in their Undergraduate studies. Then they went on and gave up 4 - 6 years of their lives being Graduate Students getting paid peanuts for their long hours while their Undergrad. classmates were getting paid pretty well. Most likely, they were also near the top in their Grad. studies before finding an academic job. Then they went on and did a post-doc for not much money before joining the ranks at a school and working their way up the tenure ladder (while getting substantially less than their peers).
Let me remind you who these people are... I'll assume you're talking about Science or Engineering types since this is
What's my point? Becoming a Professor is definitely not about the money. Remember, these people are typically the top-of-the-top and could have gotten really great jobs but decided to stick around and teach for a living. Professors that have been around a while do pretty well for themselves -- but that's only after more than a decade of not.
You tell me... are you gonna work 60 - 80 hours a week for no money so that you can teach or would you accept that job with a company that would be more than happy to hire a world expert and would compensate accordingly? If we forced Professors to make minimum wage then only the worst are gonna teach because the others know they need to provide for their families. Don't say it's for the love of it... there are lots of things I love to do but I know I have to eat and so I don't do them for a living.
I have a very personal one:
Most of the technology used in autonomous disaster recovery robots (you know, the ones who go into earthquake zones and the like searching for survivors without any risk to humans?) where almost completely developed at the University level. It's involved NUMEROUS institutions who all contributed a certain piece (for example, I personally worked on flocking algorithms for controlling groups of these things while an undergrad).
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
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.
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.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
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.
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.
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 onMicrosoft 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.
Matt
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.
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.
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. =)