Stanford Learns a Software Lesson

Nick Irelan writes "In 1994 Stanford set aside $60 million to aquire the latest financial and management software from PeopleSoft and Oracle. However, the upgrade that was planned years ago is still not complete. Stanford has even begun outsourcing! 'Those who can't do teach :)'."

Comments

or not

[Anonymous Coward]

'Those who can't do teach'

As if the computer science professors at stanford are the ones that set up the financial and human-resources systems.

Conflict of interest

[capt.Hij]

Three Stanford professors serve on Oracle's board of directors, and CEO Larry Ellison has pledged $10 million to the university as director of the Ellison Medical Foundation. Across San Francisco Bay behind a range of hills is PeopleSoft, which has been fighting Oracle's hostile takeover attempt for the last year.

Seems like there is a bit of a conflict of interest on all sides here. Big surprise that this is an expensive bust...

"Those who cant..."

[The Only Druid]

Nothing disgusts me more in normal conversation than this sort of bullshit parading as wit (its similar to 'kill all the lawyers' being invoked as the wisdom of Shakespeare, with everyone forgetting that the line is a description of the first step in installing a tyrant).

Those who can do, do. Those who teach are doing! You think you learned everything you know on your own? Go tell your parents, your teachers, your professors, your bosses, your friends, etc.

Pardon the vulgarity, but grow some fucking common sense.

'Those who can't do teach'

[jeffy124]

how dare you suggest that Don Knuth cant "do"

They should make their own open-source software

[Anonymous Writer]

Surely the same institution that came up with a distributed computing software project such as Folding@Home can handle a menial financial and record-keeping software project. If they made their own, using the GPL, then other universities could adopt it as well, and contribute to its development.

Let us not forget that WE LEARN FROM PROFESSORS

[nathansu]

Those who can't do teach...

I've read some ignorant things on /., but none as ignorant as this. Teaching is one of the most admirable things a person can do as it gives back to the community in every way, shape, and form. Those who 'do' learn from those who teach.

As a student I actually think that it is much more true that "those who cannot teach 'do'" rather than vica verca. Get some common sense before saying somthing extremely STUPID like that.

Re:Let us not forget that WE LEARN FROM PROFESSORS

[fermion]

The thing that students forget, or never knew, or refuse to realize, is that learning is a two way street, and as you advance in education the responsibility for learning fall more on the student and less on the teacher. It becomes merely whining to blame the teacher.

In Elementary school you spend the day with a teacher and might get 5-10 minutes of personlized attention from each teacher. By the time you get to highschool, you might get a few minutes of personalized attention from each teacher per week. You can make that more by being a more active student.

In college the students who just want to be told what to do get no personal time with the teacher. They also do not tend to get anything out of the class because the come in with the attitude that the professor do not care and do not want to explain. While this may be true in a limited sense, it is not a helpful philosophy.

In fact you did exactly what you should have done. Go to the books and get other points of view. If you were not connecting with the professor, then he or she did exactly what they should have done, which is to send to get other points of view. Unlike your teachers, professors are not trained to work the issue from every angle until the student understands. Now that the student is in college, they are expected to have the skills to find the answers themselves. A professor merely points out a useful direction.

Re:Those who can't do, teach

[quizteamer]

An even more accurate phrase is
Those that can do
Those that understand teach

we want to believe

[fermion]

I think is just another case of wanting to believe. I was involved with purchasing an ERP system in the mid 90's, and it was one of the reasons I was happy to leave. The purchasing decision was based more on bells and whistles than what it could do for the company. I saw no in depth analysis of how each piece of software would pay for itself, what would be required to get it running after initial installation, and or how a group of people who did not use computer would use this. Simplicity should have been the issue, but all I heard was 'Look at the pretty buttons' and 'Windows is always cheaper' and 'Thin nets are the wave of the future.'

One thing that was very clear to everyone who was thinking, even back then, was that an ERP would not pay for itself and therefore had to be bought on the basis on making life easier. Another thing that was clear was that you had to have a clear idea of how it would be used, and how much it would cost to use, otherwise it would never get used.

I saw the same blindness when i was working for a company that sold custom websites. Mostly we took a cut of advertising, and I suppose paid salesmen commission based on what we all now know is mark to market. At that time the advertising market was dying, and all the tech people, and even some of the managers, knew that the deals would result in no money. However that truth was not useful for the salesmen who wanted large commissions or the upper management that wanted large sales. So deals were put together that cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars to honor, with customers that made not commitments whatsoever. Of course all this came crashing down.

So, having worked in small business, corporate, and academia, I would say there is little difference in the ability to be blinded by greed and the smooth talking salesman.