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Microsoft, Massachusetts, and IT
Andy Updegrove writes "A big story in Massachusetts last week was the announcement by Microsoft that it would give $30 million in software to Bay State high schools and universities. Less noticed was the fact that an important economic stimulus bill adopted by the legislature lacked the amendment that sought to gut the power of the State CIO to set any new IT policies that might require compliance with certain standards (like ODF) or favor open source software. Should these two dots be connected, and if so, how? After all, why would Microsoft reward Massachusetts for taking no action to curtail an IT policy that favored ODF and rejected Microsoft's own XML format, especially after Microsoft has by all accounts lobbied so aggressively to bring about a change? As it happens, the fact is that the game isn't over yet: I've learned that the IT policy language hasn't been permanently defeated — its just been shifted out of sight to an 'outside section' of the current budget bill."
Actually, yes. Unlike almost anyone else on line, I use my own name, so that people can tell when I (unlike, I'm sure, many others) offer their own writing. I've had c. 25 of my pieces taken by Slashdot, some submitted by me and some by others, presumably because the editors think I have something to say that other's would like to read - not just the news, but perspective on that news. Also, I have personally broken many of the most important stories in the ODF saga, such as Peter Quinn's resignation, the approval by ISO/IEC, and now the shifting of the public amendment to a budget bill, out of sight. - Andy (not "anonymous coward", not a pseudonym, and not with the "post anonymously block" checked)
It is a bad thing if you want your kid to suceed in life and not just with M$ software (diploma). Giving your kid the ability to manipulate software helps your kid learn more because learning isn't subjected to "the Microsoft way of doing things". Long term sucess requires the source code (knowing how someone did that in the past).
The motive is obviously a long-term strategy, to forestall any ideas schools may have of using anything but MS software.
Their schools are now going to have some money that would have been spent on software
Only if they were going to buy the software MS is now giving them. Very likely in the absence of the gift (which despite its stated value of "$30 million", costs MS a few dollars in CD replication charges) they would have struggled on with their current software (and how could htey install new MS software wihtout a significant hardware budget anyway?, or possibly rolled their own FOSS solution, or lobbied Apple, Sun or some other deep-pocketed company to fill the gap.
I do think he will still have a long way to go to shed the more tarnished aspects of his reputation (that may be impossible among the geek community, but MUCH more likely among the general public). But at least he deserves some credit for trying.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If it isn't done to the exclusion of learning anything else. More important to say, learn to read and write without the dubious aid of MS Word's squiggly lines first. I'd rate touch typing a much better skill to than knowing the vagaries of a particular word processor. The interface is constantly changing, but the important features are trivial to learn if you've used any alternative tool (since most mimic MS products now, as MS used to mimic Lotus and WordPerfect).
Correct.
I remember in my undergrad years, I had a module called "Computing Fundaments 3" or somthing similar (but in spanish) where the teacher was supposed to teach how to use Excel. He gave us "Computing Fundamets 2" where we programmed in Visual Basic 6 (nothing fancy) and after finishing the module I told him it would be better for the students to learn the "guts" of a spreadsheet instead of learning just how to use the spreadsheet, we had a small discussion about it.
At the beginning of the "C.F.3" module, he told the grups that instead of learning something he was sure everybody knew (excel formulas etc etc) we were going to learn how to *make* a spreadsheet, so there we were programming a spreadsheet in C/C++. It was a really cool experience, it was de 3 semester of the undergrad and none of us had any idea about function parsing mechanisms and the like, the teacher gave us some photocopies of a very easy (albeit not efficient) algorithm. At the end of the course the different teams had different spreadsheets with differnt capabilities, it was really cool.
All this blah blah means that it is up to the teacher what students learn, and after all it is up to the students, I do not know how is in USA but at least from my one time undergrad experience in Mexico, almost all the students just go to the school for the score and the paper, and they do not care what the teacher will give, the other half do not have a clue of what the teacher will teach, so, it is up to YOU (the student[s] that know) to convince the teacher to focus on certain specific areas. It worked for me in a lot of courses during undergrad (granted, not for EVERY course) thus usually the "end of year projects" requeriments where fulfilled with my own home projects.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The problem with OSS, as has been stated, is that it does not prepare students for what the vast majority of them are going to see in the real world.
I work at a school district. We use StarOffice for most of the PCs here because Texas' stupid "Robin Hood" law strips us of about $22,000,000 a year, forcing across-the-board budget cuts. We *wish* we could use MS Office, because that's what the students need to know when the enter the workforce. Yes, it'd be better if they knew both. Yes, it sucks that MS has such a stranglehold on the market that we have to think this way. No, I'm not going to compromise student education for the sake of my ideals.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
The other reason to target public schools is that they are essentially a second layer of local government and have the ability to act on certain things without much oversight. Specifically, I doubt that local school districts are accountable in any way to the state CIO.
So if you establish Microsoft XML as the "standard" for politically powerful public schools, you've basically done an end-run around the state CIO. And when it comes time to ditch ODF, the teachers unions and school board associations will push hard to adopt whatever Microsoft is pushing.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
For the record, here's a slightly less objective measure of the relative (perceived) corruption between countries:n _Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptio
Based on the assumption that perception and reality are correlated and the CPI measure accurately measures perceived corruption in a standardized way, the US is definitely far less corrupt than most countries of the world, but there are several countries that a significantly less corrupt than the US.
Back on topic, the "donation" might have a lot more to do with Google than ODF. The money seems to be geared towards web delevopment tools. One thing Microsoft has been pushing is XAML as a web standard to replace HTML. If Microsoft can succeed in getting children to be hooked on XAML and Microsoft specific tools instead of web standards, schools will pump out children without crossplatform skills. These children will bring their MS centric viewpoint into the workforce, and that may change company's intranet (or internet) policies. Let's face it, you can design much fancier applications in something like XAML or XUL with less headaches, but sacrifices have to be made if you want to be crossplatform, avoid vendor lock-in, and have added infrastructure flexibility. It's hard to convince with people with a "Microsoft is the only thing out there, they created web standards better than any crossplatform standard and everyone uses IE and MS is so big that it will last for ever and everyone else had better adapt or die out of being useless" view of the world that these things matter. That, IMO, is what Microsoft is counting on more than anything else.
Regardless of the reasons why Microsoft donated the software the end result is that the kids are the winners.... is that such a bad thing?
I don't know.... About three years ago I was living in Thailand and actively involved in the hot Linux uptake there. The government had a five year plan to move to Linux and was promoting it everywhere. The Thais in the gov't FLOSS program were even talking about "official government OS" for LinuxTLE (NECTEC's distro). People were talking about the empowerment of the local IT business and over half of the computers on display in Carrefour and Lotus were running locally produced Linux. Thailand even famously broke MS's "one price around the world" policy. It was like a revolution under colonial rule, I kid you not.
After a year of this, MS walked in and offered a "deal" which legitimized all the currently installed MS operating systems within the government and promised lots of software for schools. Since the schools were mostly without computers and the government had the same problem with copyright infringement that the rest of the country had / has. It cost MS nothing but the price of the plane ticket and maybe some money under the table -- I don't know about that.
The FLOSS movement died right there. Nobody talked about it anymore, and I can't even find Linux in the stores anymore. The revolutionaries were quieted and the unrest was quelled. Everyone went back to being the good little MS users they were "supposed" to be.
There's something truly evil about a deal like this. The kids in Thailand certainly didn't profit by losing their empowerment to a foreign company. The IT industry is again dependent on one.
Now that I'm in Korea, I keep hearing the same kind of talk here, but I've never even SEEN an installed Linux system outside my own.
Too much talking on my part.
Put identity in the browser.
Is this their new business model? Bribery and intimidation? Because it's not working.
Works for me...Bill Gates sent me an email saying he's gonna send me $50K if I reply to it.
i've heard that usa has been slower at oss adoption, though i don't remember any hard facts.
it is quite interesting here - a lot of companies, big and small, are starting to use more and more oss offerings. biggest drivers are firefox (which in't that huge as basic functionality is very, very similar for web browsers) and openoffice.org.
from the privately owned companis that i know almost all are using oo.org to some extent (though almost all have one or two msoffice copies for problematic files).
most users don't have big problems adapting, especially after they find out that they have to choose between slight wage increase and msoffice - suddenly there are almost no transition problems or loss of productivity.
there are employees who whine about loss of productivity or unability to adapt to oo.org, but after all their colleagues have sucesfully migrated decision makers start to look differently at the perceived inabilty to learn working with a new software - and not as a positive trait.
what's the main message ? surprisingly lot businesses have silently moved to oo.org, so that even i (using oo.org for some 4 years exclusively) am surprised.
Rich
I'm from MA, and the schools I went to all outfitted themselves with macs. Schools (other than colleges) don't have the budget necessary to get an IT team to set the school up in linux. During one of our shop's arguments with the dean (drafting, as the only windows shop we were under constant administrative fire) he actually showed us the budget charts; It would cost more to pay someone to set everything up with linux than it does to just buy something that doesn't need to be configured. The cost to train everyone to use command line interface instead of the gui they were used to would take too much time out of the computer literacy course. In reality, with linux you can't simply set it up and leave it. Each new class of kids has to be taught how to use it. The learning curve between windows and macs was deemed to be much smaller. My school decided that having all macintosh computers would be something they could boast about. Unfortunately, schools are required (some law, according to the dean) to pay an absolute premium for the macs. Schools get no mac discount in MA. My high school had 500+/- computers, and they paid $2200 for every one. A windows box would have cost them $500 each. With the limited budgets of schools it is hard to justify running anything except windows. Interestingly enough, the macs always gave the IT shop trouble. In the four years I was there, each machine had needed repairs of some sort done at least twice. My shop (Drafting) was the only shop that had all windows computers, and we never had any problems. Our prints were kept on an old novell server, that worked flawlessly every day.
Problem is, he has a good reputation. I know it's hard to believe, but among those whose opinions mean anything -- i. e. executives, board members, etc. -- his karma is definitely positive. In Sweden, he received an honour doctorate degree (link in Swedish) for his "valuable contributions for IT". I (and everybody else here) know it means nothing, but those who really ought to know, don't.
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
I agree that the donation helps the kids, but what gets to me is the choice of Massachussetts. It seems to me that any donation would be far more useful for states like New Mexico or Mississippi, which have consistently underperformed when compared to wealthy New England states, such as Massachussetts or Vermont.
Oh come on... Considering how long Microsoft's development cycle is that could have been years ago. If I remember correctly, XP's SP1 came out in '02 sometime. That's four years ago. A lot of experience can be gained in that amount of time.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Since the effective ownership of Massachusetts is well-entrenched in the east coast organized crime families and has been for more than 100 years, it should not be surprising at all that bribery of the state and local government agencies is not only commonplace, rather it's expected if you wish to do any business there. BTW, bribery is still technically against the law up there, on the books, but it is strictly taboo to enforce those laws against any of the "players" and any of their business associates.
Actually, a competitor did - Sun - when they bought StarOffice and spawned OpenOffice.
If we set the value of the two as being on par, then OpenOffice has donated more $$$ in termw of word processors, spread sheets, etc., than Microsoft. Also, this "donation" didn't cost Microsoft $30 million. I'd be surprised if the hard costs were over $30,000 (and that the costs of publicizing it are more than the "donaton" itself) - a cost that is a tax writeoff; ultimately, the taxpayers are helping fund it.
Also, you may have forgotten about this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/11/21/red_hat_tr umps_ms_poor/ and http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/computing_life /85518. The money that would have been "saved" on OS and Office would have gone towards 800,000 more computers. This wasn't a punishment - this was a great way for Microsoft to get into a lot of schools with the backing of the government, and get a $550,000,000 discount on their fine. What a screw-up.
This analogy reflects unduly harshly on the drug trade because once kids are addicted, they can go to *ANY* drug dealer and score a hit. Microsoft's game is much more insidious, because you can only score your next hit from them. Drug dealers sell a commodity item in an open and free market. Please consider this before insulting them by comparing their business practices to Microsoft's again!
Students are supposed to learn concepts, not specific commands (that's what vocational training is for).
OOo is a standard modern office suite. In fact, OOo is probably a better tool for learning the concepts because many features are available more cleanly and rationally in OOo than in MS Office. Furthermore, because OOo is so similar so MS Office, students actually do effectively learn MS Office as well.
Teaching MS Office is also a disservice because it basically puts students on a path where they will end up paying thousands of dollars over their lifetime to Microsoft, for functionality they could get for free.
Of course, heavy usage could be difficult.
On the other hand, I did all my Numeric Methods, and Numerical Methods for Differential Calculus homework on Octave.
I even used it lightly for Automated Learning, in order to solve QR systems within a Java program. No problems whatsoever. Of course, people who need Matlab, do need Matlab, for example for binary compatibility, or running existing programs, but Octave is worth a try, if you need a package for numerical stuff, and you know Matlab.
There a nice community at http://octave.sourceforge.net/ where you can find implementations of common algorithms, when you find the base package lacking.
I take that as a challenge. Imagine this:
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Engineers have a saying "Anybody can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an Engineer to build a bridge that barely stands"; so the question is how many public school students need accounting software with the functions and utilites to perform engineering calculations, when it's improbably that they will ever calculate double declining balance depreciation?
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