MIT and other institutions are increasingly looking to corporations to become "partners in research". Government funding is not what it used to be.
Personally, I don't see this MIT/Microsoft partnership as being bad. MIT, of all places, will not become a "Microsoft" campus very easily. There are people there still using LISP machines. The entire campus network is UNIX-based.
For the conspiracy minded, note that the head of LCS, Dertouzos(sp?) is a good friend of Bill Gates.
Slashdot Mirror
He has a really interesting point though.
Imagine if a recession occurred causing
all the overvalued web companies
to start having to make a profit to
survive.
Imagine the same recessiong making it hard to
get a startup off the ground.
Imagine AOL, Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, Lycos,
eBay, Amazon, and every other major web site
having to lay off 10 - 20% of the work force.
Imagine if the unemployment rate for web
engineers hit 10%.
The shortage would be over. Some of us would
be picking up pennies off the ground.
Business as usual in universities these days.
MIT and other institutions are increasingly
looking to corporations to become "partners in
research". Government funding is not what
it used to be.
Personally, I don't see this MIT/Microsoft
partnership as being bad. MIT, of all places,
will not become a "Microsoft" campus very easily.
There are people there still using LISP machines.
The entire campus network is UNIX-based.
For the conspiracy minded, note that the head
of LCS, Dertouzos(sp?) is a good friend
of Bill Gates.
Recently, it's hard to beat Stanford's reputation in graphics, but MIT is coming from behind with a lot of talent and interesting work. Watch out! :-)
I have to say that this public defamation of a
prior employer is an immature and unprofessional
act. It also seems to be a growing trend.
Professional disagreements occur. Grow up JWZ,
grow up Rasterman.
Please, I want FrameMaker for Linux... of to
Adobe to request it now.