96% of Google's money comes from search. They can try to get into other areas that MS occupies "directly and indirectly" but they don't make a profit off of it.
Google doesn't need to make a profit (much less any particular share of its overall corporate profits) from its office applications or its operating systems or its browser for those products to impact Microsoft's ability to make money with its office applications and operating systems, or to limit Microsoft's ability to leverage its web browser to increase its ability to make money with server-side products designed to tie in to its browser features.
often wonder why the likes of Dell, HP, Samsung, ASUS, Acer etc don't band together to produce and market a Linux distribution.
Uh. They did. Its called the Open Handset Alliance, which governs a Linux-based operating system. Well, okay, not HP, but Dell, Samsung, ASUS, Acer, and a number of other hardware manufacturers.
Acer and Samsung also partner with the same big-as-Microsoft company that does the heavy lifting in development for the Linux-based operating system marketed by the OHA on devices with a different Linux-based operating system.
They've let Microsoft push them around for long enough, and now that Microsoft what to start competing directly with them switching to an alternative operating system seems essential. If they continue to do nothing they'll find themselves increasingly marginalised.
That's probably why a number of major hardware makers are hedging their bets with an alternative operating system. OTOH, rather than trying to ramp up and do it in all in house, they've found a software-oriented company with an interest in providing them with an alternative operating system and teamed up with them.
Hey, Steve! Here's a clue: why don't you stick with what you [should] know: operating systems and office apps. [/quote]
Because then Microsoft would slip into irrelevance as services-based companies displace the pay-for-licensing operating systems and office apps, and device-centered companies further shrink the room for selling operating systems designed to run on "commodity" hardware.
Microsoft is talking about being a "devices and services" company because devices and services companies (like #1 tech company since 2010 Apple and #2 tech company since earlier this year Google) are destroying the market for traditional software-licensing companies, at least in the markets that are Microsoft's bread and butter, and if Microsoft once to continue to make money of its software properties, its going to need to do so via devices and/or services incorporating them.
Naturally; there is a difference between being able to read the writing on the wall and having run into the wall.
They still rake in an obscene amount of money from the enterprise half of the tech world, and that's where all the money is.
They do, but a lot of that is "default choice" inertia, which is great while it lasts, but once it drops below a certain point, well, you rapidly end up where IBM is now in the desktop PC market.
Microsoft is a software development and licensing company.
At least that's where all the money comes from. The Devices and Services aspects are huge money losing hobbies they've started.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, their ability to expect to continue making money of software licensing in the future is constrained by other "devices and services" companies (notably, Apple who started as devices and has been ramping up services, and Google who went the other way around) at commoditizing software in the areas on which Microsoft relies, directly and indirectly, for its software licensing revenue.
Even Ballmer can read the writing on the wall with Apple passing Microsoft in 2010 to be the biggest tech firm, and Google passing Microsoft this year in the #2 spot.
Whether Microsoft can reinvent themselves successfully remains to be seen, but that their past business model may not be viable much longer is pretty evident.
I hope this means the end is near.
I think the end of Microsoft-as-we've-come-to-know-it is quite near; whether the end of Microsoft as an independent major player in the tech industry is near is a different issue, though.
Other countries including Europe (you know, that magical perfect continent where nothing bad ever happens because it isn't the U.S. and that we should all just try to be like?) ALREADY USE FIRST TO FILE.
Whose ever said that Europe was magical that way? Certainly, some people have said some aspects of the European patent system (specifically, the fact that it doesn't recognize software patents) are superior, but that's pretty far from saying it is "magical" or "nothing bad ever happens", even in the narrow domain of the patent system.
And, as GP implied -- in what seems to have gone over the head of everyone responding -- the brand is irrelevant.
The 18mp RAW photos @ 24+ frames per second was the relevant part.
Not that they haven't contributed (some more than others) open source, but... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resource on open technologies?
Funny that you dropped the "web" out of open web technologies. The reason they are important is because they are the main implementors of the open web technologies at issue.
What will they provide by corporate committee that open source isn't providing now?
The intent is to provide quality documentation, not implementations. In many cases, the implementations are provided as open source (in some cases, by the same companies involved in this project for informational resources related to the technologies.)
or is this one of those redefinitions of 'open' that hasn't got anything to do with open source?
It has nothing to do with open source, but its not a redefinition, either. "Open" in "open web technologies" is used to mean "open specification" rather than "open source", which is a fairly common existing use, not a "redefinition."
As opposed to the advertiser-approved default of lying that the user has agreed to be tracked?
No, the standard differentiates the cases of "explicit preference for tracking" (DNT:0), "explicit preference against tracking" (DNT:1), and "no expressed preference" (DNT header not present).
It puts the user's interests above the advertisers'.
No, it doesn't. The user's interest is in having their expressed interest respected; IE10 -- by misrepresenting the absence of an active choice using the agreed-upon signal of an active opt-out -- assures that when IE10 is used, those receiving the signal -- knowing that that signal from IE10 means cannot be relied on to indicate an active choice to opt-out -- will treat it as no active choice.
If you want something that sources that provide support for active opt-outs are going to respect, you need to use something that isn't known to lie when it says you have actively opted out, so that people can trust that when it says you have opted out, that's what you did.
I seem to remember FDA was directly prohibited from doing any research on gen. modified crops immediately after one of ex monsanto execs was granted government position.
The FDA, as well as the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the EPA, all remain involved in the regulation of genetically modified food crops. In the case of the FDA, that's usually been through a voluntary pre-market consultation procedure so far because most of the things added through genetic engineering are either things that are generally recognized as safe in food or something for which the regulatory authority is expressly elsewhere, such as pesticides for which the EPA has regulatory authority over safe levels. The FDA retains the authority to require premarket clearance of specific additives (whether added through bioengineering or otherwise) and to take postmarket actions, as well.
Because if the Supreme Court says you can grow your own GMO seeds the entire industry disappears. Like them or not GMO crops are the future of agriculture.
While it might hurt the predatory aspects of Monsanto's business model, a ruling that a patent holder explicitly permitting GMO seeds to be sold intermixed with other seeds as "commodity seeds" allows purchasers of the commodity seeds to use them in the way they were used here, it wouldn't destroy the food crop industry, or even the GMO food crop industry.
Elena Kagan was Solicitor General in 2009 when, according to Truthout.org, "the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the previous ruling and placed a nationwide ban on Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa." Again from Truthout.org, "In March 2010, a month before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, the solicitor general's office released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case." This brief argued that "The judgment of the court of appeals should be reversed, and the case should be remanded with instructions to vacate the permanent injunction entered by the district court." However, as far as I can determine, Kagan never worked for Monsanto.
Its also worth noting that the Truthout.org claim that the Solicitor General "released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case" is a bald-faced lie. The US government was the original defendant in the case at the trial level, which was a challenge that various government entities, particularly the US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, had violated the federal law in the process of approving Round-Up Ready Alfalfa without an Environmental Impact Statement. Monsanto was not an original party to the case at trial level, but was an intervenor at trial after the decision and in the remedy phase. The U.S. briefs at the Supreme Court were not non-party amicus briefs, they were briefs "for federal respondents".
Documents relating to the case are available at SCOTUSblog.
Because it's legally required to trickle down perhaps?
Well, no, because it works in open source even outside of the copyleft world, and its only required in the copyleft world.
Copyleft probably was critical in establishing the benefits of big interests participating in the open source world rather than locking everything up, to be sure, but once it was established there's been quite a lot of stuff that has come down to the public in open source form even when no legal mandate existed.
We can safely assume the blacked-out information would hurt both the government and Google to varying degrees.
Not necessarily in any way that indicates something nefarious. Google likely has something at stake in the realm of business trade secrets which are frequently contained in information gathered in regulatory audits and are specifically exempted from FOIA requests.
The government has an interest, too, in business cooperating with regulatory audits, and them becoming an indirect tool of corporate espionage contradicts that interest, so the government is unlikely to casually ignore the trade secret exemption from the FOIA.
IMHO, the most effective personal strategy is to simply avoid using Google search and associated services. There ARE other services out there.
Other services which have had an external audit, based on the same criteria as the FTC-commissioned audit of Google, of their privacy practices which has been publicly released with no redactions? And, if not, how are they relevant to the immediate story?
Not quite. Microsoft clearly asks the user his preference, which is good. This means the user has explicitly stated a preference. That has a very important side effect in Europe, namely that websites are now in fact required to honor DNT (remember, the law is different in Europe and the USA). What does that mean? It means that all advertisers in Europe have to honor DNT.
As others have reported (I'm not really familiar with European law directly), European data protection laws already require an affirmative opt-in to tracking somewhere, so the only DNT value that should matter there in any case is "0" (opt-in), "1" (opt-out) and no preference should be equivalent. So ignoring DNT="1" from IE10 works in that environment, too.
No, it provides an opt-out standard. An opt-in standard would be sending a "Track-Me: Yes" header.
Actually, its an opt-both standard.
The DNT draft standard supports both a representation of an affirmative choice to opt-in to tracking ("0") value and to opt-out ("1") and the ability to express no preference (unset). It doesn't require a user-agent that supports the standard to offer the opt-in option, though (only the choice between "1" and unset is required, offering "0" is optional.)
If the industry effort is opt in to privacy then damn right I am against it.
The DNT header -- for which Microsoft is on the committee and hasn't requested changes to the meaning of the header -- communicates whether or not the user has made a non-default choice regarding tracking and what that choice is. If it is present, it means an affirmative choice has been made by the user to express a preference for enabling ("0") or disabling ("1") tracking.
How the absence of an express header is treated (whether equivalent to one of the others, or some third option -- i.e., the website offering a choice -- is up to the website.)
Now, DNT is quite useful. If "DNT: yes", then the website should disable tracking, no need to popup the window at all. If "DNT: no", then the user indicates that he would like to answer the popup window question directly, separately for each website he visits. That's perfectly logical.
It might be, if that's what the DNT standard -- for which Microsoft is on the workgroup and has not requested changes to relevant to the meaning of the header -- said the header meant. In the actual standard. DNT isn't "yes/no" its "1/0/null" with 1 representing an affirmative opt-out decision, 0 representing an affirmative opt-in decision, and null representing no affirmative choice.
MS has announced that IE10 will lie when sending the header, and send 1 in the conditions in which it should send null. Therefore, anyone receiving a DNT header from MS should either ignore it completely or, at a minimum, treat 1 as equivalent to null (assuming they treat 0 and null differently, they could still treat 0 as significant.)
For once I agree with Microsoft that WE DO NOT BENEFIT FROM TRACKING.
If you think we don't benefit from tracking, then you probably want a browser that people who have agreed to respect that decision on the part of the users will listen to when it says that the user has affirmatively chosen to opt-out of tracking (which is what the DNT flag is defined to mean in the standard, a standard for which Microsoft is on the workgroup and has not requested that the meaning be changed). Since Microsoft has announced that IE10 will lie about whether the user has made that decision (sending a "1" which means an affirmative choice has been made to opt-out, rather than a null which is correct for no choice), even many of the people that will take action based on the DNT flag in the general case will ignore it when it comes from IE10.
What Microsoft has done is not consistent with the idea that they are trying to serve the interests of consumers and think that tracking is harmful.
(It would be consistent with the idea that they think that tracking -- or at least tracking without user choice -- is harmful and are deliberately trying to harm consumers.)
Sounds more like a criminal move on Apache's part if it's ignoring what the program is set for.
The DNT flag, per the standard (which Microsoft is on the workgroup responsible for and has not requested a change to the standard) is to be sent to indicate that the user has made a non-default choice to opt-out of tracking. If a browser vendor has announced that their browser will not use it exclusively communicate what it is supposed to communicate, people who have made a choice to react in one way to the information the flag is supposed to communicate are perfectly justified in ignoring it when it is sent by that browser, since in that case it no longer communicates the same information.
DNT isn't a law, its a means of communicate a very specific decision on the part of the user -- and Microsoft has announced that it intends IE10 to lie about that decision.
Exactly how would this be a detriment to the users?
The fairly broad consensus, which includes lots of advertisers, on supporting and respecting DNT was around it being used the way the DNT standard says it would be -- for the user agent to communicate to a server that the user has made an affirmative, non-default choice to opt-out of tracking. IE10 DNT by default makes it quite likely that DNT adoption on the server side -- something that Microsoft hasn't done on their own sites and has announced no plans to ever do -- won't be as good as it would have been without that decision, and even moreso makes it likely that even those sites that support the DNT flag in general will ignore it when it comes from IE10 since IE10 is overtly not using it to communicate the information that it is intended to communicate and which forms the basis for respecting it.
Everyone out there that objects to 'not being tracked' for advertisement purposes please raise their hands....
And see all those people raising their hands? Those are the people that IE10's DNT deception doesn't hurt. DNT-by-default doesn't mean that advertisers won't track you. It means that advertisers that wouldn't have tracked you if IE10 didn't do that and you chose to use DNT will track you.
I don't really understand what people are crying about. Microsoft has said that they will try to make IE10 better for users and this is one of the features implemented to enable that.
Except that it doesn't. DNT doesn't make people not track you, it asks them to. It says that you've made an affirmative, non-default choice to opt-out of tracking, and the people who actually do tracking are only going to listen to it if they don't think that it's a lie. To quote Roy Fielding -- one of the authors of the DNT standard:
The only reason DNT exists is to express a non-default option. That's all it does. It does not protect anyone's privacy unless the recipients believe it was set by a real human being, with a real preference for privacy over personalization.
Microsoft deliberately violates the standard. They made a big deal about announcing that very fact. Microsoft are members of the Tracking Protection working group and are fully informed of these facts. They are fully capable of requesting a change to the standard, but have chosen not to do so. The decision to set DNT by default in IE10 has nothing to do with the user's privacy. Microsoft knows full well that the false signal will be ignored, and thus prevent their own users from having an effective option for DNT even if their users want one. You can figure out why they want that. If you have a problem with it, choose a better browser.
There's going to be push-back from corporations on this one unless they break it so it's insecure. Truly secure browser-to-server communication resistant to man in the middle attacks would mean IT can't record and document what information is being sent from employees' computers.
Untrue. MITM-proof communication doesn't protect you from someone who has control over either endpoint, so it doesn't prevent monitoring of corporate computers.
My son is a a senior in HS and has been thinking about a BS in Microbiology and a minor in CompSci.
I'm not in either field (but I know quite a few people who are quite well), but I get the impression that Biochemistry is both more valuable in the job market, and more relevant to bioinformatics, than Microbiology as a degree.
Is there a risk that 4 years from now there will be WAY too many bioinformatics grads?
Sure, there's a risk. But if you get a degree in bioinformatics rather than some weird and highly-improbable vo-tech certificate, you can probably do more with it than actually get a job in bioinformatics. And having way too many grads doesn't mean skilled and motivated people can't get a job in the field, it just means you can't coast through and get one. (Internships and networking being at least as important as the actual piece of paper here.)
Slashdot Mirror
Google doesn't need to make a profit (much less any particular share of its overall corporate profits) from its office applications or its operating systems or its browser for those products to impact Microsoft's ability to make money with its office applications and operating systems, or to limit Microsoft's ability to leverage its web browser to increase its ability to make money with server-side products designed to tie in to its browser features.
Uh. They did. Its called the Open Handset Alliance, which governs a Linux-based operating system. Well, okay, not HP, but Dell, Samsung, ASUS, Acer, and a number of other hardware manufacturers. Acer and Samsung also partner with the same big-as-Microsoft company that does the heavy lifting in development for the Linux-based operating system marketed by the OHA on devices with a different Linux-based operating system.
That's probably why a number of major hardware makers are hedging their bets with an alternative operating system. OTOH, rather than trying to ramp up and do it in all in house, they've found a software-oriented company with an interest in providing them with an alternative operating system and teamed up with them.
Naturally; there is a difference between being able to read the writing on the wall and having run into the wall.
They do, but a lot of that is "default choice" inertia, which is great while it lasts, but once it drops below a certain point, well, you rapidly end up where IBM is now in the desktop PC market.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, their ability to expect to continue making money of software licensing in the future is constrained by other "devices and services" companies (notably, Apple who started as devices and has been ramping up services, and Google who went the other way around) at commoditizing software in the areas on which Microsoft relies, directly and indirectly, for its software licensing revenue. Even Ballmer can read the writing on the wall with Apple passing Microsoft in 2010 to be the biggest tech firm, and Google passing Microsoft this year in the #2 spot. Whether Microsoft can reinvent themselves successfully remains to be seen, but that their past business model may not be viable much longer is pretty evident.
I think the end of Microsoft-as-we've-come-to-know-it is quite near; whether the end of Microsoft as an independent major player in the tech industry is near is a different issue, though.
Whose ever said that Europe was magical that way? Certainly, some people have said some aspects of the European patent system (specifically, the fact that it doesn't recognize software patents) are superior, but that's pretty far from saying it is "magical" or "nothing bad ever happens", even in the narrow domain of the patent system.
And, as GP implied -- in what seems to have gone over the head of everyone responding -- the brand is irrelevant. The 18mp RAW photos @ 24+ frames per second was the relevant part.
Funny that you dropped the "web" out of open web technologies. The reason they are important is because they are the main implementors of the open web technologies at issue.
The intent is to provide quality documentation, not implementations. In many cases, the implementations are provided as open source (in some cases, by the same companies involved in this project for informational resources related to the technologies.)
It has nothing to do with open source, but its not a redefinition, either. "Open" in "open web technologies" is used to mean "open specification" rather than "open source", which is a fairly common existing use, not a "redefinition."
I would think that the big box at the main Docs page explaining that the docs subsite was in alpha would have, you know, explained that.
No, the standard differentiates the cases of "explicit preference for tracking" (DNT:0), "explicit preference against tracking" (DNT:1), and "no expressed preference" (DNT header not present).
No, it doesn't. The user's interest is in having their expressed interest respected; IE10 -- by misrepresenting the absence of an active choice using the agreed-upon signal of an active opt-out -- assures that when IE10 is used, those receiving the signal -- knowing that that signal from IE10 means cannot be relied on to indicate an active choice to opt-out -- will treat it as no active choice. If you want something that sources that provide support for active opt-outs are going to respect, you need to use something that isn't known to lie when it says you have actively opted out, so that people can trust that when it says you have opted out, that's what you did.
The FDA, as well as the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the EPA, all remain involved in the regulation of genetically modified food crops. In the case of the FDA, that's usually been through a voluntary pre-market consultation procedure so far because most of the things added through genetic engineering are either things that are generally recognized as safe in food or something for which the regulatory authority is expressly elsewhere, such as pesticides for which the EPA has regulatory authority over safe levels. The FDA retains the authority to require premarket clearance of specific additives (whether added through bioengineering or otherwise) and to take postmarket actions, as well.
While it might hurt the predatory aspects of Monsanto's business model, a ruling that a patent holder explicitly permitting GMO seeds to be sold intermixed with other seeds as "commodity seeds" allows purchasers of the commodity seeds to use them in the way they were used here, it wouldn't destroy the food crop industry, or even the GMO food crop industry.
Its also worth noting that the Truthout.org claim that the Solicitor General "released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case" is a bald-faced lie. The US government was the original defendant in the case at the trial level, which was a challenge that various government entities, particularly the US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, had violated the federal law in the process of approving Round-Up Ready Alfalfa without an Environmental Impact Statement. Monsanto was not an original party to the case at trial level, but was an intervenor at trial after the decision and in the remedy phase. The U.S. briefs at the Supreme Court were not non-party amicus briefs, they were briefs "for federal respondents". Documents relating to the case are available at SCOTUSblog.
Well, no, because it works in open source even outside of the copyleft world, and its only required in the copyleft world.
Copyleft probably was critical in establishing the benefits of big interests participating in the open source world rather than locking everything up, to be sure, but once it was established there's been quite a lot of stuff that has come down to the public in open source form even when no legal mandate existed.
Not necessarily in any way that indicates something nefarious. Google likely has something at stake in the realm of business trade secrets which are frequently contained in information gathered in regulatory audits and are specifically exempted from FOIA requests.
The government has an interest, too, in business cooperating with regulatory audits, and them becoming an indirect tool of corporate espionage contradicts that interest, so the government is unlikely to casually ignore the trade secret exemption from the FOIA.
Other services which have had an external audit, based on the same criteria as the FTC-commissioned audit of Google, of their privacy practices which has been publicly released with no redactions? And, if not, how are they relevant to the immediate story?
As others have reported (I'm not really familiar with European law directly), European data protection laws already require an affirmative opt-in to tracking somewhere, so the only DNT value that should matter there in any case is "0" (opt-in), "1" (opt-out) and no preference should be equivalent. So ignoring DNT="1" from IE10 works in that environment, too.
Actually, its an opt-both standard.
The DNT draft standard supports both a representation of an affirmative choice to opt-in to tracking ("0") value and to opt-out ("1") and the ability to express no preference (unset). It doesn't require a user-agent that supports the standard to offer the opt-in option, though (only the choice between "1" and unset is required, offering "0" is optional.)
The DNT header -- for which Microsoft is on the committee and hasn't requested changes to the meaning of the header -- communicates whether or not the user has made a non-default choice regarding tracking and what that choice is. If it is present, it means an affirmative choice has been made by the user to express a preference for enabling ("0") or disabling ("1") tracking.
How the absence of an express header is treated (whether equivalent to one of the others, or some third option -- i.e., the website offering a choice -- is up to the website.)
It might be, if that's what the DNT standard -- for which Microsoft is on the workgroup and has not requested changes to relevant to the meaning of the header -- said the header meant. In the actual standard. DNT isn't "yes/no" its "1/0/null" with 1 representing an affirmative opt-out decision, 0 representing an affirmative opt-in decision, and null representing no affirmative choice.
MS has announced that IE10 will lie when sending the header, and send 1 in the conditions in which it should send null. Therefore, anyone receiving a DNT header from MS should either ignore it completely or, at a minimum, treat 1 as equivalent to null (assuming they treat 0 and null differently, they could still treat 0 as significant.)
If you think we don't benefit from tracking, then you probably want a browser that people who have agreed to respect that decision on the part of the users will listen to when it says that the user has affirmatively chosen to opt-out of tracking (which is what the DNT flag is defined to mean in the standard, a standard for which Microsoft is on the workgroup and has not requested that the meaning be changed). Since Microsoft has announced that IE10 will lie about whether the user has made that decision (sending a "1" which means an affirmative choice has been made to opt-out, rather than a null which is correct for no choice), even many of the people that will take action based on the DNT flag in the general case will ignore it when it comes from IE10.
What Microsoft has done is not consistent with the idea that they are trying to serve the interests of consumers and think that tracking is harmful.
(It would be consistent with the idea that they think that tracking -- or at least tracking without user choice -- is harmful and are deliberately trying to harm consumers.)
The DNT flag, per the standard (which Microsoft is on the workgroup responsible for and has not requested a change to the standard) is to be sent to indicate that the user has made a non-default choice to opt-out of tracking. If a browser vendor has announced that their browser will not use it exclusively communicate what it is supposed to communicate, people who have made a choice to react in one way to the information the flag is supposed to communicate are perfectly justified in ignoring it when it is sent by that browser, since in that case it no longer communicates the same information.
DNT isn't a law, its a means of communicate a very specific decision on the part of the user -- and Microsoft has announced that it intends IE10 to lie about that decision.
The fairly broad consensus, which includes lots of advertisers, on supporting and respecting DNT was around it being used the way the DNT standard says it would be -- for the user agent to communicate to a server that the user has made an affirmative, non-default choice to opt-out of tracking. IE10 DNT by default makes it quite likely that DNT adoption on the server side -- something that Microsoft hasn't done on their own sites and has announced no plans to ever do -- won't be as good as it would have been without that decision, and even moreso makes it likely that even those sites that support the DNT flag in general will ignore it when it comes from IE10 since IE10 is overtly not using it to communicate the information that it is intended to communicate and which forms the basis for respecting it.
And see all those people raising their hands? Those are the people that IE10's DNT deception doesn't hurt. DNT-by-default doesn't mean that advertisers won't track you. It means that advertisers that wouldn't have tracked you if IE10 didn't do that and you chose to use DNT will track you.
Except that it doesn't. DNT doesn't make people not track you, it asks them to. It says that you've made an affirmative, non-default choice to opt-out of tracking, and the people who actually do tracking are only going to listen to it if they don't think that it's a lie. To quote Roy Fielding -- one of the authors of the DNT standard:
Untrue. MITM-proof communication doesn't protect you from someone who has control over either endpoint, so it doesn't prevent monitoring of corporate computers.
I'm not in either field (but I know quite a few people who are quite well), but I get the impression that Biochemistry is both more valuable in the job market, and more relevant to bioinformatics, than Microbiology as a degree.
Sure, there's a risk. But if you get a degree in bioinformatics rather than some weird and highly-improbable vo-tech certificate, you can probably do more with it than actually get a job in bioinformatics. And having way too many grads doesn't mean skilled and motivated people can't get a job in the field, it just means you can't coast through and get one. (Internships and networking being at least as important as the actual piece of paper here.)