More recently (and which has been the cause for quite some protest), all the EU countries signed an agreement to take up the Master/Bachelor system (Bologna Accords). As far as I know, this system is currently being introduced...
Yes, but the result of the <language="en-au">Bologna</language> accord is that a Bachelors is 3 years, a Masters is an additional 2 years, and a PhD is an additional 3 years. The Bachelors and PhD seem way to short. For the PhD, three years is to short to both teaching and research, especially if some preparation for the research is needed. For the bachelors degree, 1 year of choosing a major leave nly 2 to focus. Most humanities majors I knew from U.S. universities took 4-5 years, though could have focused and gotten through in 4. Nearly all engineering and comp sci needed 4.5 to 5 years.
Thus a U.S. associates degree looks to me like the equivalent of a European bachelors degree, a Europen masters degree becomes the equivalent of the U.S. bachelors degree, and the European PhD like a U.S. PhD candidate. Three years is also too short to have a year abroad as a junior and then integrate these experiences in your senior year.
On the flip side, I haven't heard that it's necessary to teach basic algebra or spelling / grammar to college freshmen and sophmores in Europe like is often the case in the U.S.
Ok. Grousing aside, I highly recommend studying overseas as an undergraduate. If you're in U.S. goto Europe. If you're in Europe, goto Australia / New Zealand. As a graduate, choose the best program / advisor.
Make a list of requirements on reliability, service, and self determination that you need. From there look and see if any datacenter can supply that for you.
That list of requirements is important and you may be surprised by the result, especially if all you need is IMAP and 100% availability.
Don't forget that you can look beyond you own ISP and can easily choose any within your own country. A friend of mine dropped her up-front costs about 60% by outsourcing IMAP to a local telco. Client support costs dropped from around an hour or two per week per client to nearly nothing by switching mail clients at the same time.
You could probably even go with an established, reputable center outside your own country if it meets your needs. (Last year I cut one cost by 95% by doing just that -- geographical proximity does not necessarily mean the prices will be close!)
buying something which works can often be a lot cheaper
Yes, going with something that works reduces the TCO. That's why there is a market for OS X, QNX, and Netware.
From my past few years, I've found that RedHat and SuSe are much easier to maintain than the MS offerings, and installation seems easier and faster. Debian and OS X still lead on ease of maintenance.
The letter is misleading, rife with out of context quotes, and misinformation. It appears to serve no other purpose than to harm the disrupt the strategic planing of business and organizations, its effect seems to be harm to the U.S. economy, at least the parts that use or create ICT.
Given the date and recent warnings, it could be that this tremendous cloud of FUD and BS eminating from SCO is the dreaded sabotage some have been expecting.
Since the same passwords are used each time, the possibility of keyboard sniffing negates any benefit of complex passwords. I'm sure you can thing of any number of trojan horses or worms that could be used to spread keyboard loggers, especially if the chump is using a notoriously insecure platform on the client side.
One time pads are a pain, so useage ought to be minimized. One way to minimize the usage is to combine one time pads with ticket granting services like kerberos (heimdal). KTH has done excellent work on Heimdal. Gothenburg has years of experience with similar systems in production. Combining Kerberos and one time pads would still allow for authentication in a quite compromised environment.
Many of the people and teams that gave Sweden the enormous lead in technology in the 1970's and 1980's are still there. You just have to look past all the dot-commers who have worked so hard to make knowledge unfashionable.
Yes, the former has been a scucessful marketing company, but rather than innovate. Innovation creating an actual new idea, not simply integrating multiple functions into a single product. Instead, that company has largely acquired other technoloies and businesses. Even outside of the IT sector, this is a failed medium and long term strategy.
As to the money in the bank, show it. Enron, Worldcom and others all had plenty up until they got an audit. As I see it their revenues are shrinking.
Even if the money is there it could easily disappear in security fines, anti-trust fines, and other penalties for making products that fail to live up to the marketing pitch, leaving nothing but a debt.
Apple, a company with an active history for innovation, in contrast, seems to have hit a home run with OS and with the new line of hardware - iBook, PowerBook, G5, and iMac.
The only folks stung by the size of the download are home users who must pay by the kB or by the minute. The people who stand the most to lose are businesses who handle confidential or personal data, not because of the enormous size of the patches, but because of the stealth payload.
Windows 2000 sp3 and Windows XP sp1 give Microsoft
full access to your data.
So for most bankers, doctors, insurance companies, and so on, if they run MS-Windows they get to choose from getting taken out by the worm of the week now or grabbing their ankles and waiting for the
lawyers to read the license.
There is a third option, which is cheaper and more practical: upgrade to linux, using your existing hardware. Or, next time it's time for new hardware, re-examine lower TCO options.
DRM won't affect secrecy, though it is likely to amount in lost productivity among legitimate users trying to open documents. This is for two reasons. First, Microsoft can do what they want with your data and they have the keys. Second, they have such a bad track record for security that it will pretty much be only legitimate users who will be affected.
What I really would like to see was, if they'd tested Microsoft Office as well. By that I mean, they should try opening the same documents in, say, Office 97 and test it the exact same way as the others.
Comparing forward and backward compatibility in the dozen or so MS-Word formats would really apply the wire brush of enlightenment to the foreskin of ignorance.
I used to use MS Word a lot, really a lot, and used and taught most features. A few times, there were flat out incompatibilities between formats for different versions which either required waiting for a patch / filter or else saving in an intermediate file format using the old program. Even when it was possible to open an older version in a newer version or vice-versa, small things like metadata, some layout, or language settings disappeared.
Missing the metadata give obvious problems. Missing the language settings, especially in a multi-lingual document, can really come back to bite you: it spell checks great, but still contains errors which either your client or your professor spot the first time they read your final draft.
Word 2.0c was the crossover. After that more things got worse than were getting better. For an easy to use word processor with room for improvement, OpenOffice.org already has MS-Office beat. XML compliance with a publicly documented schema is reason enough by itself.
When I did that sort of work, I used to run into people who have no idea what they want on a web site all the time. My solution was to have them give me all their printed literature and have them sort through it. Then as a prerequisited to starting, I'd have them deliver it in electronic form.
Stuff like this is an indication that for some reason(s) the tools can't compete and makes me more leery about any claims regarding performance, standards compliance or security. Until these issues are also addressed, there seems every reason to stick with the original Java.
It's hard to beat pre-installed. As we watch the OEM monopoly fade, the changes will speed up.
Well for the user, KDE is easy to use, at least relative to Windows XP. I think OS X still has both beat.
For the admin, I'd have to say RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSe have won hands down ease of installation and configuration. Especially after watching the trouble the co-located department has installing and configuring Windows XP. Again, OS X has them all beat, at least on the desktop. Debian seems to be the easiest on the server.
You're quite right about using Linux at work. I used it for a few years at work and then realized it was better than what was on my home computers (Windows) so I upgraded to Linux at home, too. At least on my ix86 machines. I've used Debian and Yellowdog nicely on PPC and G4 machines. Unfortunately, for the six months OS X has turned me into one of those smug mac fans.
Sounds useful. I see one big advantage over RSS in that there is more client side control over when the articles disappear. Also, for those that still wish to use e-mail, there are news-mail gateways.
And for all the talk about distributed, decentralized forums, Usenet seems to be it. Everything else, including this one, sit on a single service at more-or-less a single location.
RSS is in many ways very useful, but seems to pull down an unnecessary amount of useless information: the same lists get pulled whether or not they've been pulled before and whether or not they've been read before. A single UDP packet could be used for polling, it might be big enough to hold some kind of signature and state information. Could something be modeled (however vaguely) on how NTP spreads time data?
It's not the size, it's the message, that determines whether the protesters get belittled. I guess it ultimately depends on whether or not the press feel it's in their interests, or their owners interests, etc, to cover it.
I'd agree there. Things that are not in line with the owner's poitical or economic ideology seem not to make it onto the U.S. broadcasts.
But as time's progressed, the press seems to have gotten steadily worse, less and less rational and more and more ideologically bonkers. It's now almost as bad as the British press.
That's the beauty of it. You also see the same efffect in technical discussions -- the losing side segues away from fact into opinion and if the others don't catch it, the discussion then becomes one opinion versus another. Thus, anything can be turned into an emotional issue or an opinion, then the winner is the one holding the microphone. That and facts cost money.
I was forced to sit through some "news" broadcasts on my last visit to the U.S. and found them focussing exclusively on numbers of arrests or injuries and steering clear of the reasons of some protests. Only one of the broadcasts seemed to even indicate that there was a controversial issue, and even then it was framed to try to make the protesters look more like European Ghost Dancers.
It's not exclusive to the U.S. or Britain. AFP's presentation of issues can be quite amusing.
Perhaps, the European protests can directly or indirectly provide a positive example for the U.S., which needs to find a way around the 1 dollar == 1 vote problem.
Let the government talk with it's money and people will listen.
If it was found that lost productivity and staff time spent on repair and clean up makes Microsoft about as harmful to the economy as Al Quaida, it would hardly be a surprise. Especially since some of the Microsoft security problems causing recent trouble are quite old. Both old and new are due to innapropriate design or production defects. Tools need to work, those bought with Federal money, especially.
Being allowed to publish product reviews of products would allow a greater risk that tools be chosen based on technical merit rather than ideology. Also, it would help if news stopped refering to MSTDs as "Internet Worms" and "e-mail Viruses" and start talking about options.
It looks like we've reached a junction where it's time to start asking in all seriousness, "Is Windows ready for the Internet?"
Odds are that, despite the great admiration for Bill Gate's personal wealt, it is not. Now when sensitive government documents or personal financial or medical data start circulating (actually they already have), it is too late and will an issue for the courts: gross negligence, willful negligence or fraud. This will be a hard one for both Redmond and CTOs to wiggle out of.
Anyway, doesn't it ever occur to the press that Microsoft could actually be doing a better job researching into securifying their products *pre* release?
I think a lot of people are starting to realize that these problems are due to one company's faulty products. And that the solutions are go with what works rather than chase an ideology.
The obstical to progress is lack of discussion about solving the problem, and especially lack of discussion about selecting technology based on technical merits rather than admiration of Bill Gates' personal wealth.
It is very difficult for casual users to find a way off the Wintel hamster wheel. Not only do OEMs push only MS products, computer magazines do not publish real product reviews any more. It's like one big cult and discussion or critique of technical issues turns ad hominem.
e.g. "Oh, you just hate MS".
It's even harder for the non-technical, general public. Radio, television, and newspapers contribute to the problem by effectively providing spin / damage control for MS by omitting the obvious fact that all these worms and viruses are due to product defects either in design or implementation or both. Instead of refering to all MSTDs as "Interent Worms" or "E-mail Viruses, news sources could easily be pointing out the cause of the problem or replacement technologies. e.g. Point out mail clients like Eudora, Evolution, Mozilla, Opera, and even old pine are consistently higher quality, especially in regards to stability and security. Or, point out operating systems like Linux, BSD, Solaris, Netware, QNX, or OS X which are easier to maintain, more stable, and more secure. Now that KDE is as easy (or difficult) as WInXp, there's no excuse not to.
It's probably time to ask, "Is Windows ready for the Internet?" The answer is likely to be a resounding, "NO!"
When is somebody going to finally decide to call them on this and force Microsoft to do a security audit?
Or an accounting audit. Microsoft is a firm which has grown through acquiring other technolgies and companies. Growth-through-acquisiting firms tend to drop like a rock once they stop expanding.
There are still some serious unresolved issues with the way MS-Word 2003 handles XML and even with MS-Word 2003 itself.
First, it seems that only two of the 6 flavors of MS-Word 2003 get the XML as touted. Second, the schema is still proprietary. Third, the application uses DRM so earlier versions are not compatible and must buy upgrades. Fourth, the DRM is dependent on MS-Server 2003 with expensive per-seat client licenses.
So, at first glance to use MS-Word 2003's XML format it looks like you need at least one installation of MS-Server 2003 plus client licenses. Then you will need new copies of Office 2003 accross the board. Then to be allowed the privilege of accessing your data, you must keep paying the licensing fees. That allows single point of failure to take down your whole workplace at either of two points: the server or the licensing fees.
Making tools that go around all that would be in violation of copyright/DMCA, the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, a computer crime, at the very least.
So at first glance, it looks safer, more flexible, and less work to go with the Oasis format.
No, actually they are facing a uninformed public...
Yes, for right now. But people and businesses eventually start to ask themselves why they are running low on money. Or they ask themselves why they are spending so much time just trying to get/keep the MS machines running when all the others brands do just fine.
I supposed the prohibition on product reviews and general criticism are contributing to the problem by preventing informed decisions. Likewise when the media refer to the Microsoft Worm / Virus of the Week as an "E-mail Worm" or "Internet Virus", they are effectively providing spin/damage control for a single company's design and production defects by neglecting the scope of the problem.
If you want true ease of use and ease of maintenance, then just get it over with and get a Macintosh. That way you can also have your apps as well - Photoshop, Quark, Pagemaker, Filemaker, etc.
However in regards to Intel-based machines, as far as I can tell it's only OEMs that are keeping Windows alive. Least common denominator end users don't really care about any thing except how much they must shell out on the initial purchase. If all of a sudden it were possible to choose from any number of options pre-installed, only then would people start to wonder which one suits their needs better.
Yes, let's hope this will be a new trend. The last round of open standards (e.g. TCP/IP, HTTP + HTML) brought a lot of good, especially HTML. I'm curious to see where this step will lead.
I suspect that it is also a big step closer to electronic documents with a long shelf life. This may lead towards electronic publishing where well-formed and, possibly, valid documents become the norm. Even if the structures are rudimentary, this still will help portability and retrieval.
Right now, [X]HTML and PDF are only part way there. PDF is useful for rapid dissemination, but can more or less be thought of as a compact form of paper. Most HTML document are neither well-formed nor valid and often too dependent on transient constellations of technologies. So, a format like this will let organizations choose tools suited for their specific needs and tasks.
I interpret the actions of that individual OASIS member that is not participating has too much of an interest in not participating. Its word processor part of the two things not yet making a loss and has historically relied on lack of forward compatibility to drive a rack of new purchases - HW, OS, misc. apps.
Basically, that "other vendor" is facing irrelevancy.
Especially looking at the proposed changes with DRM, server lock-in, a proprietary XML schema and the software as subscription model.
The OASIS format supported by Koffice, StarOffice, and OpenOffice.org is not only cheaper and more flexible, but safer in the long run because it's open. That means you're not locked into one platform, one vendor, or even on package. Though the differences are not so dramatic in a word processor, package independence means that individuals can choose the tool that works best for their needs or work methods and still collaborate.
Being an open format means you don't have to depend on the goodwill of a monopoly to keep your format alive. Nor is there a risk of breaking the DMCA, EEA, commit a computer related crime and violate several patents when you try to read that 5 year old file.
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.
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.
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Thus a U.S. associates degree looks to me like the equivalent of a European bachelors degree, a Europen masters degree becomes the equivalent of the U.S. bachelors degree, and the European PhD like a U.S. PhD candidate. Three years is also too short to have a year abroad as a junior and then integrate these experiences in your senior year.
On the flip side, I haven't heard that it's necessary to teach basic algebra or spelling / grammar to college freshmen and sophmores in Europe like is often the case in the U.S.
Ok. Grousing aside, I highly recommend studying overseas as an undergraduate. If you're in U.S. goto Europe. If you're in Europe, goto Australia / New Zealand. As a graduate, choose the best program / advisor.
Don't forget that you can look beyond you own ISP and can easily choose any within your own country. A friend of mine dropped her up-front costs about 60% by outsourcing IMAP to a local telco. Client support costs dropped from around an hour or two per week per client to nearly nothing by switching mail clients at the same time.
You could probably even go with an established, reputable center outside your own country if it meets your needs. (Last year I cut one cost by 95% by doing just that -- geographical proximity does not necessarily mean the prices will be close!)
From my past few years, I've found that RedHat and SuSe are much easier to maintain than the MS offerings, and installation seems easier and faster. Debian and OS X still lead on ease of maintenance.
Given the date and recent warnings, it could be that this tremendous cloud of FUD and BS eminating from SCO is the dreaded sabotage some have been expecting.
One time pads are a pain, so useage ought to be minimized. One way to minimize the usage is to combine one time pads with ticket granting services like kerberos (heimdal). KTH has done excellent work on Heimdal. Gothenburg has years of experience with similar systems in production. Combining Kerberos and one time pads would still allow for authentication in a quite compromised environment.
Many of the people and teams that gave Sweden the enormous lead in technology in the 1970's and 1980's are still there. You just have to look past all the dot-commers who have worked so hard to make knowledge unfashionable.
As to the money in the bank, show it. Enron, Worldcom and others all had plenty up until they got an audit. As I see it their revenues are shrinking.
Even if the money is there it could easily disappear in security fines, anti-trust fines, and other penalties for making products that fail to live up to the marketing pitch, leaving nothing but a debt.
Apple, a company with an active history for innovation, in contrast, seems to have hit a home run with OS and with the new line of hardware - iBook, PowerBook, G5, and iMac.
Maybe he'll pop up everywhere like Bert did for a while.
Windows 2000 sp3 and Windows XP sp1 give Microsoft full access to your data. So for most bankers, doctors, insurance companies, and so on, if they run MS-Windows they get to choose from getting taken out by the worm of the week now or grabbing their ankles and waiting for the lawyers to read the license.
There is a third option, which is cheaper and more practical: upgrade to linux, using your existing hardware. Or, next time it's time for new hardware, re-examine lower TCO options.
DRM won't affect secrecy, though it is likely to amount in lost productivity among legitimate users trying to open documents. This is for two reasons. First, Microsoft can do what they want with your data and they have the keys. Second, they have such a bad track record for security that it will pretty much be only legitimate users who will be affected.
I used to use MS Word a lot, really a lot, and used and taught most features. A few times, there were flat out incompatibilities between formats for different versions which either required waiting for a patch / filter or else saving in an intermediate file format using the old program. Even when it was possible to open an older version in a newer version or vice-versa, small things like metadata, some layout, or language settings disappeared.
Missing the metadata give obvious problems. Missing the language settings, especially in a multi-lingual document, can really come back to bite you: it spell checks great, but still contains errors which either your client or your professor spot the first time they read your final draft.
Word 2.0c was the crossover. After that more things got worse than were getting better. For an easy to use word processor with room for improvement, OpenOffice.org already has MS-Office beat. XML compliance with a publicly documented schema is reason enough by itself.
When I did that sort of work, I used to run into people who have no idea what they want on a web site all the time. My solution was to have them give me all their printed literature and have them sort through it. Then as a prerequisited to starting, I'd have them deliver it in electronic form.
Well for the user, KDE is easy to use, at least relative to Windows XP. I think OS X still has both beat.
For the admin, I'd have to say RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSe have won hands down ease of installation and configuration. Especially after watching the trouble the co-located department has installing and configuring Windows XP. Again, OS X has them all beat, at least on the desktop. Debian seems to be the easiest on the server.
You're quite right about using Linux at work. I used it for a few years at work and then realized it was better than what was on my home computers (Windows) so I upgraded to Linux at home, too. At least on my ix86 machines. I've used Debian and Yellowdog nicely on PPC and G4 machines. Unfortunately, for the six months OS X has turned me into one of those smug mac fans.
And for all the talk about distributed, decentralized forums, Usenet seems to be it. Everything else, including this one, sit on a single service at more-or-less a single location.
RSS is in many ways very useful, but seems to pull down an unnecessary amount of useless information: the same lists get pulled whether or not they've been pulled before and whether or not they've been read before. A single UDP packet could be used for polling, it might be big enough to hold some kind of signature and state information. Could something be modeled (however vaguely) on how NTP spreads time data?
I was forced to sit through some "news" broadcasts on my last visit to the U.S. and found them focussing exclusively on numbers of arrests or injuries and steering clear of the reasons of some protests. Only one of the broadcasts seemed to even indicate that there was a controversial issue, and even then it was framed to try to make the protesters look more like European Ghost Dancers.
It's not exclusive to the U.S. or Britain. AFP's presentation of issues can be quite amusing.
Perhaps, the European protests can directly or indirectly provide a positive example for the U.S., which needs to find a way around the 1 dollar == 1 vote problem.
Being allowed to publish product reviews of products would allow a greater risk that tools be chosen based on technical merit rather than ideology. Also, it would help if news stopped refering to MSTDs as "Internet Worms" and "e-mail Viruses" and start talking about options.
It looks like we've reached a junction where it's time to start asking in all seriousness, "Is Windows ready for the Internet?"
Odds are that, despite the great admiration for Bill Gate's personal wealt, it is not. Now when sensitive government documents or personal financial or medical data start circulating (actually they already have), it is too late and will an issue for the courts: gross negligence, willful negligence or fraud. This will be a hard one for both Redmond and CTOs to wiggle out of.
The obstical to progress is lack of discussion about solving the problem, and especially lack of discussion about selecting technology based on technical merits rather than admiration of Bill Gates' personal wealth.
It is very difficult for casual users to find a way off the Wintel hamster wheel. Not only do OEMs push only MS products, computer magazines do not publish real product reviews any more. It's like one big cult and discussion or critique of technical issues turns ad hominem. e.g. "Oh, you just hate MS".
It's even harder for the non-technical, general public. Radio, television, and newspapers contribute to the problem by effectively providing spin / damage control for MS by omitting the obvious fact that all these worms and viruses are due to product defects either in design or implementation or both. Instead of refering to all MSTDs as "Interent Worms" or "E-mail Viruses, news sources could easily be pointing out the cause of the problem or replacement technologies. e.g. Point out mail clients like Eudora, Evolution, Mozilla, Opera, and even old pine are consistently higher quality, especially in regards to stability and security. Or, point out operating systems like Linux, BSD, Solaris, Netware, QNX, or OS X which are easier to maintain, more stable, and more secure. Now that KDE is as easy (or difficult) as WInXp, there's no excuse not to.
It's probably time to ask, "Is Windows ready for the Internet?" The answer is likely to be a resounding, "NO!"
Or an accounting audit. Microsoft is a firm which has grown through acquiring other technolgies and companies. Growth-through-acquisiting firms tend to drop like a rock once they stop expanding.First, it seems that only two of the 6 flavors of MS-Word 2003 get the XML as touted. Second, the schema is still proprietary. Third, the application uses DRM so earlier versions are not compatible and must buy upgrades. Fourth, the DRM is dependent on MS-Server 2003 with expensive per-seat client licenses.
So, at first glance to use MS-Word 2003's XML format it looks like you need at least one installation of MS-Server 2003 plus client licenses. Then you will need new copies of Office 2003 accross the board. Then to be allowed the privilege of accessing your data, you must keep paying the licensing fees. That allows single point of failure to take down your whole workplace at either of two points: the server or the licensing fees.
Making tools that go around all that would be in violation of copyright/DMCA, the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, a computer crime, at the very least.
So at first glance, it looks safer, more flexible, and less work to go with the Oasis format.
I supposed the prohibition on product reviews and general criticism are contributing to the problem by preventing informed decisions. Likewise when the media refer to the Microsoft Worm / Virus of the Week as an "E-mail Worm" or "Internet Virus", they are effectively providing spin/damage control for a single company's design and production defects by neglecting the scope of the problem.
However in regards to Intel-based machines, as far as I can tell it's only OEMs that are keeping Windows alive. Least common denominator end users don't really care about any thing except how much they must shell out on the initial purchase. If all of a sudden it were possible to choose from any number of options pre-installed, only then would people start to wonder which one suits their needs better.
I suspect that it is also a big step closer to electronic documents with a long shelf life. This may lead towards electronic publishing where well-formed and, possibly, valid documents become the norm. Even if the structures are rudimentary, this still will help portability and retrieval.
Right now, [X]HTML and PDF are only part way there. PDF is useful for rapid dissemination, but can more or less be thought of as a compact form of paper. Most HTML document are neither well-formed nor valid and often too dependent on transient constellations of technologies. So, a format like this will let organizations choose tools suited for their specific needs and tasks.
Basically, that "other vendor" is facing irrelevancy. Especially looking at the proposed changes with DRM, server lock-in, a proprietary XML schema and the software as subscription model.
The OASIS format supported by Koffice, StarOffice, and OpenOffice.org is not only cheaper and more flexible, but safer in the long run because it's open. That means you're not locked into one platform, one vendor, or even on package. Though the differences are not so dramatic in a word processor, package independence means that individuals can choose the tool that works best for their needs or work methods and still collaborate.
Being an open format means you don't have to depend on the goodwill of a monopoly to keep your format alive. Nor is there a risk of breaking the DMCA, EEA, commit a computer related crime and violate several patents when you try to read that 5 year old file.
Last year's discussion, Please Don't Ask Me About Windows On Christmas, had some good tips.
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.
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.