A College Without Microsoft? 1257
An anonymous reader asks: "My grandfather is the president of a well-known undergraduate-only college of about 7,000 students. He tells me that an alumnus has agreed to donate $2.4 million initially (and up to $800,000 each succeeding year for 10 years) to the school for computer equipment and staff if the school agrees not to renew any contract and to buy no products or services (either directly or through an intermediary like Gateway) from Microsoft. I'm told that this isn't the enormous amount of money that it sounds like and that a change-over to non-Microsoft products would be costly. I think it'd be great for college students to use computers apart from Microsoft, but I'm told that the board will look at the decision in terms of cost, not for benefit to the students. Does the Slashdot community have any points that I can give my grandfather to present to the Board next month?"
Cost over Students? (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps though, Your grandfather is in a position to change this trend where the dollar comes before the student.
Perhaps, it would even be a good PR tool to boost enrollment in the future, bringing in more money and students.
Just a though.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft donated a lab full of computers (with Windows NT installed) to my university for an operating systems class. They erased off NT from all those computers and replaced it with FreeBSD. Microsoft wanted the computers back, but it was too late. What, did they think they were going to teach an operating systems class using Windows NT??
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. You want to study the file system or memory manager of an operating system? With an open source OS, just look at the source code. Certainly can't do that with NT. The point of an operating systems class is to learn the internal workings and design of operating systems (not how to use them), and Windows NT simply doesn't allow for this.
In the operating systems class I took, we studied and made modifications to the source code of Minix. Adding features to the OS gave quite a bit of insight as to how things actually work. You'll never come close to that with Windows or any other closed source OS, no matter how much you read about it.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the end, this guy's grandfather would be restricting CHOICE! Which is something that this group should be firmly against. He would also be hurting student's education by not including these products, which are widely used in the real world. He should walk away, or get the guy to agree that just THAT money won't be used for Microsoft products, which would be a reasonable request. If the grandfather takes this deal, he is doing the exact thing that Microsoft competitors complain about, i.e. pay OEMs to only use their products.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:4, Insightful)
And how is this different than when I was in college and presented with rows and rows of PS/2s? Looking for a Macintosh? Not a single one to be found. Sorry, but in many cases the student never HAD a choice. All they are doing in this case is changing the lack of choice from one mandate to another.
However, I agree with some of your other points. Microsoft is definitely not despised by everybody.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Funny)
What college did you go to? I thought every college had a Mac lab?!
Chris
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Funny)
They sure do, buried on the third floor of the arts building.
Re:another 'liberal' pro-choice contradiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows will never be suitable for the average desktop user, because to install it they have to know about things like partitioning hard disks, and formatting and stuff. It's too hard for the average non-geek to understand how to install Windows. Guess what though? It doesn't matter. Non-geeks *don't* install Windows, just as non-geeks don't install Linux. They use it, and it works. It took my incredibly non-techie mother something like 30 minutes to realise she wasn't using Windows when she came round to my house. Didn't stop her using Galeon though.
Re:another 'liberal' pro-choice contradiction (Score:5, Funny)
Do you have a blue desktop picture that says; "Page fault in kernel32.dll"?
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is an additional $450 per student per year not enough to finance a migration away from not all proprietary software but just from MS?
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Funny)
Believe it or not, in a university setting as well as the industry many of us are employed in, MS products are looked down upon. I know this will be hard for MS apologists to grasp.
Remember, CS/CEN/EE professors at universities and people who are looking to hire you, are the IT/Geek community. We teach your classes, we write the software you run. We provide you with jobs. We keep your servers running. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Interesting)
But we're talking here about 7000 undergraduates, and from the sound of it, most of them probably enrolled in a humanities/liberal arts programs. When the poster mentioned the publics general willingness to use MS products, outside of "subgroups of the IT/Geek community", I'm pretty sure he felt that "CS/CEN/EE professors" fell into that group, regardless of their university affiliation.
We're the ones always carping about choice. I'm willing to make the choice for linux, but forcing Linux onto 7000 students, who might just want to use hotmail in the library, or catch a quicktime CNN news clip, is extreme enough to merit contention.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a country full of schools and colleges using MS Word, you have the gall to claim that anyone not doing so is restricting choice?! Anyone bothered by their decision can GO ELSEWHERE, or use MS products themselves. Nobody is mandating non-Microsoft products; they're just trying to get the college not to pay for them. Microsoft is free to donate them, and students are free to use their own.
The donor isn't seeking to force anyone to buy his products. He's seeking to force them *not* to buy certain products. Sort of like people protesting fur.
Your average computer user has a hard enough time telling the difference between Word, IE, and Windows, let alone between Staroffice and Word. Your argument that learning anything other than Word and Excel is harming someone is pure bullshit. There are more differences between WordXP and earlier versions than there are between WordXP and OO, so the idea that you're training someone wrong doesn't hold water. Most people don't do more than type and underline, which is pretty much the same you'll have to admit, between any two word processors.
You're wrong on your last point too - Microsoft doesn't pay OEMs to use their product. They license the product in such a way that if the OEM wants to sell *any* MS software, it has to sell *only* MS software.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Funny)
You don't get around much, do you?
option 3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I guess this will probably send you into an apoplectic fit but please understand that that is not my intent.
I would advise this student to recommend to his/her grandfather to actually go one step further and deploy free software for the university but I won't support my reasoning with a "just because" argument.
In an educational environment, students should not only be able to learn from source code, but they should be encouraged to play with it, modify it, and be able to give the product of their endeavors away. That way, their modifications can played with, modified, and shared by others to the benefit of everyone. Everyone has the opportunity to scrutinize, modify, and (most importantly) share with everyone else. I find it hard to imagine an environment more conducive to the sharing of information...aka education.
While I believe that promoting free software primarily on the campus is a worthy goal, I do not think that prohibiting the teaching or usage of alternatives should be prohibited (even if the maker of the software is Microsoft). As others have noted, there is some great software that is not free or even open-source. Much can be learned from this software so it should not be banned completely. But beware the effects of embrace-and-extend business practices.
The primary goal of any learning institution should be to teach its students. The instructors can not do that if their hands are tied by political or philosophical agendas. I recommend encouraging free software for its open nature and the ability to share (especially for the CS majors), but don't lock anything out unilaterally...especially for the faculty. As anathema as it might be to say here on
--K.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Insightful)
bingo. I dont like M$, I dont like their business practices, and I dont like many (not all, but just many) of their systems and programs. Does this meen that just because I believe that OSS has a better fundimental (and in many programming cases, better) grasp on what is right and better, doesnt meen that the real world operates that way. Personal guessing, but I'm going to say that 80+% of the business world operates on windows in some form or another (even at the server level, but not nearly as much), so when one of the objects of a computer program at a uni is to prepare students to work in the business world, why would you alienate them from the very systems that they most likely will be working on? Not very smart if you ask me.
Ever try to cook Chinese food? Compare it to Western cooking...
When my mom taught me how to cook, all she taught me was how to make a few things. Scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, and my dad taught me how to cook a steak on the grill. Then they both spent some time showing me how to follow a recipe under the reasoning that as long as I could follow a recipe I'd always be able to cook something tasty. Then I moved out onto my own without a cookbook. Luckily I went to work in the food service industry and learned how to cook. ANyway, this is typical of passing on cooking traditions and skills in the Western world from one generation to the next.
Now, I've been learning about Chinese food lately. In the last two years I've spent a lot of time getting recipes and cooking them, and failing. Failing? Why? Because I was applying Western cooking techniques (focus on measurement and explicit instructions) to Chinese cooking. It doesn't work well going that direction.
What I've learned recently about Chinese cooking (since I bought a cookbook that was written to bridge the gap that I had already run into) is that Chinese cooks pass down cooking methods. They teach how to stir-fry and choose spices, how to make the sauce. Rather than teach specific recipes. The food is actually very simple to cook, but you have to learn how to cook it. You don't follow a set of instructions, there's too many factors that can change. Instead you learn how to manage the heat, how to stir, how to steam, etc. Then, with this foundation, you learn about complimentary spices and how to make the sauces. The recipe might say "1 tablespoon of soy sauce" but what it really means is "jigger some soy sauce in there". I imagine that the actual chinese recipes say something like "put sauce of soy until sauce is the color of crow feathers".
What's the point?
If you know Chinese cooking techniques, you can easily and quickly learn how to cook anything that uses Western cooking techniques. Since Western cooking focusses on measurement and explicit instructions, whereas Chinese cooking focusses on method.
So, if a university wants to teach people in the Western style, they will focus on rote memorization and having the kids learn the tools that are currently used in business. If a university wants to teach people in the Chinese style, they'll teach method first, knowledge later. Combine the two and you have Wisdom.
So I ask, what is more valuable? Is it better to memorize the multiplication tables, or learn multiplication?
With that in mind, your entire argument (as well as the head of the program you were talking about) crumbles. If the reason you use MS products in an educational setting is so that people will know how to use MS products in the real world, you haven't taught them method. You've taught them rote. If you teach them instead the methods of word processing, spreadsheets, acounting, and so forth, then you give them the skills to adapt to any new situation they should encounter professionally.
In the end, it's all irrelevant. All that matters is that I'm finally serving kickin-ass Chinese food in my own kitchen. :)
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, I do agree with that my argument crumbles a bit when you think of it that way, but would it be better to use no Microsoft products while teaching concepts such as spreadsheet analysis and other computer skills that could have a different layout?
Indeed, this is true. In fact, what sort of machines should be used outside a CS college? I don't really know. The software should be as close as possible to bleeding-edge industry-standard software for the industry that's being taught, but should also be affordable.
It's not unreasonable to conceive of using low-cost PCs with GNU/Linux (or another low-priced OS) for day-to-day work, open formats for term papers and other homework, and a single Windows lab for labwork, where they can use the actual software currently used in business. Realistically, the class wouldn't need to spend a lot of time in the windows lab, since they'd be learning method the rest of the time, and they would only need a fraction of the time to learn application-specific stuff (applying the method) in the Windows lab. Then you could have 30 machines or so to service 3000 students (with a scheduling nightmare!). Very low cost, that way.
Also, the article only says that they've got a $2.4M grant that they can't use on any MS product, but must be used for IT. Is that going to be the sum total IT budget for the year? Do they have other money? It can be arranged where the grant is used for stuff they need, and their regular budget is used to maintain MS licensing only.
I'm just generally sick of hearing about how colleges and universities need to be teaching people how to use current applications in the business world. I learned how to program on a 10-year-old Alpha Micro, because the school didn't have money to buy a newer computer. What's the big deal? I learned the concepts, right? Just because it couldn't play sound and do fancy graphics? Irrelevant. I learned about modular programming (this was before c++ took off like it has), dynamic data structures, looping, syntax, and so forth. You know, basics. My brother-in-law got his CS degree without ever touching a Windows machine. He had to go learn all about MSVC++ in the workplace, and the people hiring him had no qualms about it. That's because they knew he could program, and that's what they were hiring him to do. If I need an accountant, I'm gonna hire someone to be an accountant, and I'm going to look to see that they can do accounting. I don't give a shit if the only accounting software they've ever used is old VMS stuff. Accounting as a trade isn't any different in a computer than it is on paper, it's just a different medium. If a guy can't adapt to how my company keeps its records, then he can't work here. The methods involved in bookkeeping are the same.
sorry about the rant, and I'm sorry you didn't get to do your project as completely as you wanted to. The basic problem I'm having, though, can't be solved just by throwing different computers at people. It's a problem in the educational system in general that needs to be addressed by the entire system, and not just the IT guys. For that reason, it's likely not to be addressed. Hell, it hasn't been addressed anytime in the last 30 years, why should we think it'll change anytime in the next 30 years? The best we can do is to do better when we're the decision-makers, and encourage the existing ones to do better. Without that, change won't happen.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's ridiculous. They didn't have such a thing as Internet Explorer when I went to school. Did that hurt my education?
As a matter of fact, I recently took some beginner level Microsoft Office classes from a University (they were required for entrance into the program). I supposedly was taught to use Word and Excel, but I don't own Word and Excel, and didn't once go to the lab to use Word or Excel. Gnumeric is such a clone of Excel that even the options were in the same places, and Star Writer was close enough to Word that I had no problems acing the class.
Anyone that can pick out functional differences between these programs is so ridiculously advanced in their use that they almost certainly can use either one.
Re:Cost over Students? (Score:5, Funny)
No problem. [kazaalite.de]
Cost over Students? (Score:4, Interesting)
First off a university is a university when graduate programs are offered, colleges only offer undergraduate programs -- though there are exceptions, this is the general rule.
I work at a college and we use Microsoft software extensively. We correspond with institutions of all sizes daily and Word and Excel are the default formats.
Apart from this you should know that Microsoft offers many incentives to higher education. One is the Academic Alliance which has a subscription fee of $799/year per department. There is no restriction to the number of machines or users (including student machines) where you can load and use the software as long as it is specific to the courses being taught. The software included in this:
Microsoft Visual Studio
Visual Basic
Visual C++
Visual C#
Windows 2000 Server
SQL Server
Exchange Server
Commerce Server 2000
BizTalk Server 2000
Host Integration Server 2000
Application Center 2000
Systems Management Server 2.0
Mobile Information 2001 Server
SharePoint Portal Server 2001
Content Management Server 2002
Microsoft operating systems, SDKs and DDKs:
Windows XP Professional
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Windows 2000 Small Business Server
Windows ME
Windows NT Embedded
Windows CE
Visio Professional 2002
Microsoft® Project Professional 2002
MSDN Library
Microsoft Windows CE Toolkits
Visual FoxPro 6.0
Visual InterDev 6.0
Visual J++ 6.0
Not a bad deal!
NMSU (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's very nice. It gets us out of programming for just the Microsoft world, but a lot of students are upset because we're learning nothing about VisualStudio and stuff, which is what "we'll be using in the real world"
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Insightful)
The fellow would be better off spending the $2.4 million on developing methods of teaching students how MS and *nix are related to each other, how BOTH are used in the real world, and familiarizing students with both.
The idea of a contract to remove MS products may help promote OSS, and help fight off monopolies, but it would be very, very bad for the students' futures.
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows coding (Score:4, Funny)
Hell, I went to a mostly M$ endowed CS program (at the time), and when I have to code against the win32api, or MFC, I spend about that amount of time in the books too.
It's not entirely about API either (Score:4, Insightful)
Dont get me wrong - it's perfectly fine to have bugs in any code, including the OS, but the inability to fully investigate the problem forces developer to stay as independent from the system API as possible and be constantly ready for the weirdest induced f*ckups possible. Sure, there are tons of people who write the code tightly coupled with Windows, but with this often means creating a lot of work for support and deployment departments.
My general impression is that a good (as in "geeky professional") windows developer does not have much trouble moving to the *nix, while the move in the opposite direction is quite likely to be painful. Scroll the this very thread and see what I'm talking about - *nixoids complaining about Windows, and not the other way around
Re:NMSU (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux/Unix - both system programming and system administration experience. Show us how you would automate various features, and integrate different systems together to get real work done quickly.
VOIP and Telephony - convergence is not just a buzz word.
Java/CGI/XML - web enabled application development is a must. No one I am talking to is considering
A plus is experience using Perl/Tk, TCL/Tk, C++ (gcc), emacs, vi, awk, sed, and shell scripting.
Things that will not get you hired:
Primary Microsoft experience; Microsoft certifications mean nothing in our space. I've lost count of how many microsofties come in looking for work, and are totally lost in the datacentre.
MBA - you would be surprised at how many folks think 'system administrator' means 'managing people'; if you don't have a technical background, forget it.
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Insightful)
So true. When I was in college our small CS dept ran all its servers on linux and had a even split of NT and linux workstations. In addition we also had some old alpha boxes, macs, sgis, etc... that and CS students could log into and use. This allowed the students to experience a multitude of OSs and hardware, which IMO is one of the important reasons to go to college. To learn and think about things you wouldn't normally learn and think about in the real world.
Now, if I were to argue against using MS in a school I would avoid arguing the cost issue. MS generally gives all of its software(except games) for free(or close to it) to schools and students. Also keep in mind that supporting some lit edu major who can't seem to transfer their powerpoint presentation between their laptop and computers in the lab is also not cheap.
Re:NMSU (Score:3, Insightful)
-Ben
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Informative)
Many CS and engineering programs have gone down the slippery path of Trade School were specifics are taught instead of general concepts. This has been discussed many many times on slashdot.
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Insightful)
Learning programming under Linux/UNIX will make you a better Visual Studio programmer, but not vice versa.
Visual Studio leaves too much temptation to not learn the fundamentals, and it isn't good enough to really allow this. In other words, VS will burn its users; it's only a matter of time, and, by then, it's probably too late.
Re:NMSU (Score:4, Informative)
I spent two years at Microsoft so I can lay down that disclaimer now, I'm not a MS basher, i.e. always have been, always will be.
What you fail to realize is that a lot of software gets written without Visual Studio - it does NOT represent the end all be all of software development.
IDEs got their start when "resource editors" became in vogue around 1990. A resource editor being a program that allowed you to draw dialogs, bitmaps, icons and the various other entities that Windows UI calls a "resource." The Macintosh, the old platform has a very similar notion. Visual Studio and the IDEs that preceded were born out of this. Eventually people stopped knowing how to create makefile much less use them and the idea of clicking a few buttons and having a boilerplate project has been well established in the developers Microsoft courts.
But what many people do NOT know and are surprised is that Microsoft does NOT use its own tools to build its own products. At least not GUI tools. When you have a codebase that is 50 million lines of code, the Windows NT OS, believe me, you won't be building from Visual Studio.
In the various product groups at Microsoft makefiles and building from the command line is par for the course. Which is by the way, par for the cours in *NIX-land. Sure I had Visual Studio, but I used it because that is what constitued my debugger. I never bothered with it as far as editing went. I prefered and still do the much more powerful EMACS editor. The Win32 version has been stable years. When I was at Microsoft I used to do my builds from inside of it. Yes "Meta-Shell" works fine on Windows.
As for non MS envionments, believe me, son, they'are as much a part of the "real world" as what you think solely consists of the real world.
Newbie CS students have a very naive view of software development... this is just a symptom of it, i.e. all software development is done inside IDEs.
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a nit -- IDEs got their start significantly earlier than this. Turbo-PASCAL and Turbo-C provided DOS IDEs much earlier(the former was released in 1983, the latter in 86 or 87). I'm sure one of the true old timers-- older than me, anyway -- here can come up with earlier examples. These were some of the first affordable compilers for x86 based machines, and spurred MS to develop Quick-C and it's later VC descendants.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:NMSU (Score:5, Funny)
When I was in college, students were clamoring for "real world" education in MSDOS, BASIC and WordStar.
History repeats itself (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in my day, my college CS program was based on VAX/VMS, using languages like Pascal, Assembler, C, and Ada. VMS wasn't all that popular in 1982 aside from the niches of higher education and scientific research. Everybody KNEW that real businesses used COBOL, specifically IBM COBOL on 3270 terminals. The nearby insurance companies were all IBM "big iron" shops at the time.
As students, we all wondered how we would ever get jobs in the "real world".
Interesting things happened:
I have been continuously employed in progressively more responsible positions for the past 18 years. I never learned COBOL, but I adapted to each new technology as it came along.
If your CS program were centered on today's technology (VisualStudio?), you would be ideally positioned to graduate just in time to be slaughtered in the job market by people who have real world experience. Plan on getting a job working with relatively NEW technology -- something that is not so popular now but will be peaking as you graduate. As a corporate IT manager, I can tell you that Linux has great potential -- if for no other reason because of the global backlash against Microsoft licensing tactics. IMHO, VisualStudio is the COBOL of the new millenium. Just because it's big now, that doesn't mean it will be useful for new grads when they hit the streets in a few years.
I think Linux is a pretty good choice for a college CS program. And I actually hire people, so my opinion matters.
why to use Linux of Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Those people that would have trouble with Linux probably don't know Windows. Despite layman opinion Linux can work in such a way that clicking on pictures causes stuff to happen.
3. $2.4 million - $1/Debian floppies = $2,399,999 cash.
4. The 8 grand a year will go toward buying winshit licenses for the school board.
5. A professor or CS class could admin the servers.
Re:why to use Linux of Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone paid to admin linux machines at a university, I can't recommend -AGAINST- this enough.
Professors and students are users of the University computing facilities. Period. The labs are provided by the university, as are the copmuters themselves. If they want to play at being an admin, do it at home or in their dorm room. That, or get a job with information/computer services.
With that said, I fully agree that there should be -some- course time spent on teaching folks the basics of linux/unix administration, especially if that's what the prevalent platform on campus is.
However, I don't care -how- good the professors or students think they are (or how good they may actually be, unless they are actually working for the university/college as an admin, they shouldn't be permitted administrative privs on the machines.
(The -only- reason the prof I report to has the root password is in case I call in dead, and even in that case, it's in a sealed envelope, and he doesn't know what it is without cracking it).
You'd be doing your students a disservice (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus, imagine all the chaos as non-computer science majors try to struggle with Linux on the desktop in computer labs and so on. It will indeed probably cost a lot more than $2.4 million in the end.
This post might sound pro-M$, but it's not. I'm just trying to give the reality of the situation. Oh well, there goes my karma.
Classic logic mistake (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Classic logic mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You'd be doing your students a disservice (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, why not Macs? I agree that getting a bunch of liberal arts majors to happily use Linux might be a bit of a nightmare, but Macs are very friendly, and one *could* argue that they are also used in "real world"
Re:You'd be doing your students a disservice (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, before everyone gets all huffy, I'm not saying a university must not have Microsoft tools. You want to teach programming using Visual Studio? Go ahead. My point is simply that universities shouldn't be concerned with teaching Microsoft tools, rather they should be concerned with teaching how to solve the problems.
Re:You'd be doing your students a disservice (Score:5, Informative)
Universities (i.e. locations where you get Bachelor degrees, not sure if they are called that in the U.S.)
An American I know told me that is the U.S., an institution is a college if it just offers Bachelor's degrees, and a university if it has Masters' programs.
Re:You'd be doing your students a disservice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You'd be doing your students a disservice (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is, the kids are going to need to know how to use Microsoft tools once they graduate in order to be successful in the real world.
Um, just because MS is the dominant system at the moment doesn't mean it will be in 5, 10, 20 years time. If we followed that logic we'd all still be programming for IBM/360's in Cobol & Fortran
CS should not be about programming! Programming is a tool and, with no disrespect to the hard core coders it is a minor part of a CS. If they are learning project management, design, testing, formal specifications, AI, etc these will stand them in better stead in their careers than "just" knowing all the C++/Java/Perl ... libraries. So why worry about learning all about MS when its likely to be out of date when they graduate anyway. Teach the basics and let them adapt to change.
Plus, imagine all the chaos as non-computer science majors try to struggle with Linux on the desktop in computer labs and so on. It will indeed probably cost a lot more than $2.4 million in the end.
Why? Most students need to learn new packages when they get to college anyway - is there really a huge difference between learning OpenOffice vs MSOffice? Is Gnome or KDE really harder to figure out than the windows desktop? And these are students. If they're not smart enough to figure out how to use a software package what are they doing there in the first place?
Re:You'd be doing your students a disservice (Score:5, Informative)
I'll bite. And start thinking like a PHB.
If I use Microsoft products (which are surprisingly stable as of late.), I can save myself thousands of dollars in human ressource since an MCSE is cheaper then an RHCE. If the RHCE tops out in the 6-figure realm I can theoretically hire me 3 MCSE to do the job to my servers, which by the way came equipped with the OS, thanks to the MS-TAX.
Now now, I know that linux is way more stable, allows me to do more with less, and that my RHCE will not have half the problems my MCSE have, but still. In PHB-land, the winner would be MS.
Now mod me into oblivion, and I'll go wash my hands after having typed so much pro-ms material.
Tell your grandpa (Score:5, Insightful)
never decline - renegotiate (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, the University's counteroffer should be that they will not spend even one penny of the Alumnus' gift on Microsoft software, or on any computers or hardware that are "tainted" by MS software. Any MS-centric purchases will have to go via a completely different appropriations process.
To sweeten the pot a little, they might offer to match the Alumnus' contributions to the "Non-MS" funding pool at some rate, say 50% of his buy-in. That way, the Alumnus knows that the gift is not just "freeing up" more money, elsewhere, for MS purchases (money being fungible, after all).
There ought to be a middle ground here where everyone is happy. Personally, I can't imagine being the President who tells all his faculty they are no longer allowed to use MS software on their University-provided personal computers. Ugh!
-renard
Need more money (Score:3, Insightful)
No Way (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention all of the administrative people in the Uni system who had a hard enough time learning excel, word, and outlook.
Cire
Re:No Way (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Way (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrary to yours and popular belief, microsoft software doesnt magically explode when you dont buy the next version. Existing W2K and office and other iems can easily be used for another 3-4 years during which a gradual transition from MS to linux or Mac OSX can easily be preformed.
your spreading tons of fud by making it sound like "you have to burn all MS software NOW and make everyone SUFFER!!!!!"
it's not the case at all, and would in no way increase costs.
tell them... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is, one that doesn't show any bias towards or against any one company's products. An education that includes zero microsoft products could be just as harmful as one that includes 100% microsoft products.
Fast forward to the first interviewer saying to a kid "What do you mean you've never heard of Visual Basic?"
Re:tell them... (Score:4, Insightful)
And let's be honest here, any CS major who knows C++ well should have no problem learning VC++, VB, C#, or even Java from one of those dummies books in no time at all.
Mac and Linux is all a college needs (Score:3, Interesting)
Two points.. (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Taking all MS products off the campus would be a dis-service to the students. Do some of us like non-MS products? Sure. But when those students graduate and go to work, are they going to see a lot of MS in the workplace? You bet. To hide them from MS products for 4 years would be harming their education.
Chuck
Re:Two points.. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept. It isn't right for someone else to do the same thing.
A campus of 7,000 hardly qualifies as an abusive and predatory monopoly on American university students.
Re:Two points.. (Score:3, Insightful)
'don't buy new ones'
that wouldn't preclude continuing to use those MS products in place, or buying products that run only on windows
Nor did I read 'no $$ to be spent on supporting existing windows'
Basically, it looks like 'I'll give you a bunch of money, but don't give Bill any'
Re:Two points.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was MS, they would be clearly abusing of their power to extend their monopoly, fair enough to contact the US Justice Dept (well, these days it wouldn't work anyway). In the present case, however, someone is donating money to encourage the University to use FREE software, free as in libre, instead of a monopolistic product. You don't see the difference ? Really ?
I just can't believe how some people try to put MS in the same standpoint as free software in these discussions. It is one huge monopolistic megacorporation that they are comparing with a movement fighting for people's freedom in the use of their computers.
By the way, the donor would be better off stating his point in a slightly different way: I make the donation if the University makes a commitment to use free software only. That's good enough. MS can in principle produce free (as in the GPL) software and offer it to the University ;-)
How about Apple? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple and OpenOffice would fill the void nicely in my opinion. It won't be as cheap as x86 by any means, but it could be easier to support and teach.
btw, this isn't a flame. I'm using Linux right now and I love it, but distributing it to total novices can be frustrating.
How much linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
I say prepare them for MS, it's the world uses, like it or not.
Settle for a small victory rather than a loss (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not going to get an entire university to drop MS completely from the school for measly 2.4 million. Instead, try for a more narrow target. Something like "funds for the engineer school, if no engineering classes use MS products for classwork." Substitute for "engineering school" and "classwork" until you get a balance that is acceptable to both the donor and the school.
Don't mandate (Score:5, Interesting)
TCO in People Terms (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Qualified (i.e. not test taking wonders) MCSE can physically manage about 14 MS Servers... However, a qualified Linux Admin can handle (depending upon variations in OS release) from 50-75. Much lower people cost.
2) The Admin time saved can be either be converted to cash (fewer employee admins), used to increase support of University Departments and Staff, or a combination of the two.
3) No BSA audits, papertrails, etc. which does not mean that inventory isn't maintained, it's just that it doesn't have to be a resource and legal liability issue (read, cheaper to operate).
4) I promise to send my son to this institution when he's ready for College (about 17 years from now).
Unmitigated Horseshit (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an entire student body, not just the CS dept we're talking about here.
The kids are going to need their MS Office with its Word, Powerpoint and Excell apps. No crappy Open/StarOffice need apply.
Not to mention all the apps they won't be able to use since they won't have Windows as their OS.
They are also going to have to use Windows in the workplace after graduation so they would acutually be BEHIND the rest of their generation once school is over. No thanks. No way. No how. Keep the GNU stuff where it belongs, on the server.
All in all, lets keep software politics out of college purchasing decisions. Buy the best practical, not idealogical, tool for the job.
WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, this is not about what's good for the students? Ok, so this is partisan, anti-Micrsoftism, at it's best then, yes? Looking at base of cost alone might be ok but perhaps they're not aware that MS does provide huge discounts to educational institutions (educational institutions get special pricing from MS.) If a University is so hell-bent to not assist their students, to not do that which is in the best interest of the students, then clearly this is a University I'm glad I did not choose to attend.
Discrimination... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets just ignore for a moment that certain software is only available from microsoft - or at least that there are no comparible products from other supplilers.
By having no microsoft you are forcing everyone into the same mindset. Microsoft is the predominant software supplier, but that does not make their products necesarily bad.
University's are there to broaden knowledge, not to stifle it. This seems to me like a great way to stifle knowledge, and restrict achademic freedom.
I have been in the Linux community since the MINIX days, so I am not a Microsoft lover. I just feel that diversity is needed, rather than uniformity
Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)
My college mostly used Sun equipment in the CS arena, and had labs of Macs and Win machines. The x86 hardware can always run Linux or BSD. For people who just need to type a paper up, there are lots of alternatives to MS Word on the Mac (Appleworks, Thinkfree, etc).
Cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, the learning potiential is definatly greater, because if any student wants to find out how a certain program works in terms of code, said student can almost always look and find out.
I really dont see how it would be costly to stop paying for software and switch to a free operating system.
With the donated money they could easily pay a whole team of lab techs etc to install and admin the *nix OS's.
You could even have different labs with different operating systems to give students a wide view on how things COULD be done.
Just my 2c.
Real World Training? (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, the Microsoft products are just better to use for most people as well. They have features that everyone else is trying to catch up with, and keep innovating more than anyone else. Not teaching Visual Studio to programmers is one thing, but not using Microsoft products is a totally different one.
I didn't learn any MS programming in school...i'm (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a very good idea anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
First, there is a public Windows NT computer pool for the students which is used for several things courses which depend on Windows Software. Chip design comes to my mind. We use the Altera Max circuit design software and the corresponding PGA chips to develop 4 bit processors in the 2nd year. It is free for students to use at home.
Second, try to find a good secretary who knows how to write a text with anything else but Word. I guess you will have troubles doing so. Professors (and students likewise) depend on the secretaries
Third, of course students should have access to as many different platforms as possible. We also have a public Mac pool with a couple of PowerMacs.
Last but not least, many other departments than the CS people will have to learn how to do stuff on Windows because in fact that is what they'll have to use later anyway. For CS people it's not a big deal if you have never seen Visual Studio in your courses. If you know what a compiler is and how to debug (and what a stack is
Economics or business students just learn how to use Excel and Powerpoint. You can laugh about it, I do so too at times, but in fact, that's what suits them best. They will simply not have a choice when they start at any company.
question == troll (Score:5, Funny)
Geek #1: I'll bet you ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS that you can't post an Ask Slashdot question that will get regular Slashdot constituents to propose a non-Linux solution.
Geek #2: One hundred dollars, eh? JUST WATCH ME.
And so we have today's Ask Slashdot.
'Tis true.
Baloney on the need to "know windows" (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, we used NT workstations, but that's mighty quick to learn and most people know that anyway. Furthermore, with cygwin, it's as easy as extending your knowledge about X.
However, we used Java, and C, and other languages that were either free (beer) or free (libre).
The problem is a little more disconcerting for MIS students. However, how many programs do you know that teach troubleshooting skills, anyway? Usually, it's more business-oriented.
What I would suggest is asking the alum to further describe his vision, and how hee feels it can be accomplished without sacrificing the general quality of education.
___
That said, The cost depends on your current licensing structure. Assuming you don't have any renewable licenses, that all can be slowly transitioned.
The methodology you need is
1. The cost of new servers to avoid licensing issues.
2. the cost of training. (Faculty, student)
Macs or *ix/X servers?
3. If you plan on an *ix/X based technology, the cost of customizing a distribution and making an X desktop that minimizes transition anxieties will pay for itself.
The real answer is to engage the alum and have him help with the vision.
Gotta love the audacity. (Score:5, Informative)
cost-benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
To have no Windows anywhere is going to cost the college a lot of prospective students who are told, "We have weird computers in our labs with Linux and they won't allow us to have normal computers with Windows because the college gets more money that way." And the prospective students are going to run away, confused.
Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
tell your grandfather... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your grandfather should tell the board that students that don't know how to use Microsoft products are useless in the workplace, and that therefore it is the college's duty to make sure their students are familiar with Microsoft products. Completely ridding the place of all things Microsoft is not the way to do that.
University == vocational school? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the risk of sounding like a Linux zealot, I must ask - what is the goal here, education or training?
I guess I always imagined, (and my Lit professors consistently agreed) that education was an experience that was supposed to transcend job skills and give you something you couldn't get from a technical guide, training bootcamp, etc.
If you are any sort of computer professional, you are training all the time. If you can't handle changing gears in terms of the development platform you use, you are already behind the game before you've even gotten started. If, on the other hand, you've gotten some real Computer Science with emphasis on theory, you are going to have a framework of knowledge which I personally understand to be education.
If one were to recognize the need to get into the nuts and bolts of a system, free from constraints of filtering the information to remove marketing intent, and free from anticompetitive obfuscation and outright deceit, which would be the best option to look at if one wanted an education?
What benefit to students? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's little difficulty in getting them to interoperate. But that the support resources -- help desks, IT staff, trainers -- would have to switch to linux/OSS. And that means that the necessary knowledge base isn't there to help people out. If a student is using MS Word on his laptop, and doesn't know how to do something, you'd have to tell him "we don't support Windows because it's too costly." A very patriotic phrase. But it doesn't help the student. Which means it doesn't help the school.
I'm not saying "don't use linux in schools." I'm saying don't put all your eggs in ANY basket. The college I went to had about 600 Windows machines, 200 Macintoshes, 100 Sun stations and about an equal number of RedHat machines. A lot of savvy students used the Sun and RedHat machines, and I don't mean just engineers. My wife, who wouldn't know open source from cold sores, used to use the $9000 Ultras to check her email, because they had these huge trinitron monitors and didn't have lines around them like the Windows machines.
The hodge podge of machines meant that we each had our own preferences and our own specialties. I think that's the best situation for a school; a technical equivalent to a "liberal arts" education.
Not with a ten foot pole. (Score:5, Insightful)
Decisions about what software are used in teaching and administrative tasks should be left to the people who actually use the software. Making sweeping decisions based on the whims of a wealthy patron is not in the best interests of any institution.
I think it'd be great for college students to use computers apart from Microsoft, but I'm told that the board will look at the decision in terms of cost, not for benefit to the students.
What benefit to students is that, exactly?There's nothing to prevent the college from using open source or non-MS products wherever they want to, if they think it would benefit the students or the instutition as a whole.
Not even remotely enough money (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Linux free, M$ expensiveblah blah blah. But it's not true.
First, what critical systems run under Windows? I work at a small liberal arts college. Our student registration and billing systems are Windows. There are no Unix versions of the software we use. Comparable Unix products cost, quite literally, millions of dollars. (Price Banner recently? Our IT director did: it's buy Banner or renovate the library.)
Oh, did I mention that we'd lose all the extensive customizations, support documentation and the like we've made to those products? Let's redo a few man-years of effort.
Then there's all the costs to switch the Windows software over to Unix. What various professors use *isn't* free. Rebuying SPSS alone would run a small fortune. Forget all the econometrics programs the Econ folks have, the CAD programs, the quantum chemistry codes...
Of course, some software simply isn't available, period. I'd lose Chime, a great plug-in that I can do all sorts of neat chemistry tricks with. There is no comparable Unix program.
Next, you've probably got close to 1000 computer using staff and faculty on that campus. How much will it cost to retrain all of them? Oh, and finding secretaries and office workers that know StarOffice is damn hard. We can hire MS Office-knowing temps cheap.
At least double the size of the Help Desk, to handle the increased volume of calls. You're going to need a full-time person just to handle the inevitable complaints about losing formatting on all of those Word documents the profs get mailed.
Now, how many of your current IT staff can handle the changes to Linux? We've got some good network admins, server gurus and programmers here, but they're Windows folks. Do you fire those staff or switch them to Unix, where their 10+ years of experience is suddenly null?
It's not enough money. Not even close.
Advantages, disadvantages (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The university gets millions of dollars from an unnamed donor. A lot of the rougher parts of the transition could be smoothed over by this money. The other points will focus on the transition itself.
2) The university saves a bundle on licensing fees. This may be especially important since Microsoft is trying to move towards a subscription model.
3) While open source solutions aren't drop-in replacements for Microsoft products, the end user apps are similar enough to minimize the need for retraining. If someone knows their way around a Windows desktop, Gnome and KDE are pretty easy to grasp. The same goes for Office vs. OpenOffice and IE vs. Mozilla. With power users, its sometimes trickier, since they may have come to rely on certain obscure features.
4) With OSS, you don't need to rely on Microsoft for technical support. The fact is, Microsoft is the only company capable of adding features and fixing bugs in Microsoft products. So if you have a problem with those products, and MS isn't interested in fixing them, you're out of luck. Open source is more flexible in this regard.
5) A better CS program. If we assume that dropping MS will substantially increase the use of open source software, then it's very likely that CS students will have reasons to explore the code of the products they use every day. So they're being exposed to non-trivial implementations of structures, algorithms, software design decisions, and everything else that comes along with it.
I realize that Microsoft's "Shared Source Initiative" also allows some level of access to the code. But the barriers are much higher (NDAs), and the rewards are much lower (can't recompile, bugfix, or experiment).
Cons:
1) Ten years is a long time. You don't know what new products and services Microsoft will be coming out with over that time, or how useful they might be to the campus. Think about how the computing world has changed since 1993, and ask if the school really should be making such long term decisions about their IT infrastructure.
2) You lose the option to buy Microsoft products. By itself, this fact is too obvious to mention. But what are the ramifications?
3) You lose compatability with important Windows-only software (like certain CAD products). The university may be able to hobble along with the licenses they already own, but that's going to be more and more difficult.
4) People don't like change. Such a transition could make for an ugly political brawl.
[note: Five pros, four cons! Obviously, this means they should take it.]
I'm not sure this is a good idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would be more apt to sympathize with the strings attached to this donation if it weren't so clearly going to dictate the educational doctrine of my school.
Am I missing the obvious?
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Happens all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
One reason is that too many donors are only willing to give money with strings attached. You want to build a Science building, so you ask the Keck or Broad foundation to give you money. No problem. You need to raise an extra 100K here, another 100K there for general maintenance and repair, and nobody wants to give.
If you're in the position to donate a significant amount of money to a university, please consider giving it with no strings attached. I understand that sometimes it's nice to have your name on a building, but don't forget about all of the programs that get neglected because all of the school's money is already earmarked for other projects.
Best Practices (Score:5, Informative)
How this looks to non-slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
What does restricting your car choice have to do with education? Absolutley nothing! What does restricting your vendor choice have to do with education? Absolutley nothing! While I dislike Microsoft as much as any of you (I am currently unemployed, despite knowing I could get hired by MS if I wanted that), how stupid does this make the University look? You can only decide that something sucks if you actually get to see what it is. Remember how much we laugh at those religious organizations that boycott movies without actually seeing them? Censorship is bad, mkay?
What I would propose to the donor is that the University use their money to use for the purchase of Microsoft-free technology: Linux, Mac, Solaris, whatever. These purchases would not affect the normal purchasing of such systems, so that if they were going to spend $1 Million on linux boxes, this year they'll now be spending $3.4 million. And since Linux is largely free / low-cost, those millions can go quite a way.
Often what is needed in a situation like this is a beach head... if the board sees that they can get 10 Linux boxes for the price of one MS-equiped box, and that people aren't seeing any other major differences, which do you think they'll buy in the future?
Definately, should take it (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Upgrades are free ($).
2. Initial acquirement is free ($).
3. Support can be purchased on a competitive basis among competing companies, thus producing superior support. How many times have you called up inept technical support guys who obviously don't know what the fuck they're talking about, can't speak English, know less about the system than you do, and are obviously reading from a TO-DO cookbook, which ends in "if all else fails, tell them to wipe the hard-drive and reinstall everything"? The simple fact is, there's a reasonable solution for the vast majority of problems you run into, which doesn't involve reinstalling everything from scratch.
Call up a windows support guy and complain that your computer won't start up due to a corrupted IO.sys file. What will he tell you? He'll take you through the usual motions, and then -- invariably -- tell you there's nothing else you can do, back up your data, and reinstall the OS (conveniently ignoring the fact that it's difficult if not impossible to back up one's data when one can only boot into DOS and has no access to the CD-writer). He will tell you this despite the fact that there is a much simpler solution, which is simply to replace the corrupt IO.sys file with a valid working one. Why can't he tell you that, or send you the file that would allow you to do that? Because the technical support contract doesn't support that. Don't like your technical support contract options? Too fucking bad, there's no alternative.
Not so with GNU/Linux. First of all, such problems are rarely encountered, even in the rare case where a power failure occurs, due to journaling file-systems. Secondly, technical support can be purchased at a competitive price -- which means, ultimately, cheaper for you if you section out the tech-support aspect of your bill from a proprietary vendor. It also means better service.
GNU/Linux also provides the benefit of being able to run on much older hardware than does Windows, allowing the university to upgrade their hardware less frequently. Microsoft apparently thinks that it needs to provide hardware developers with motivation to produce better hardware by continually increasing requirements that it's software need to run acceptably. Though this is true with regards to some modern bloat-ware in GNU/Linux, there are always non-bloatware alternatives which are usually just as functional, if not more so. KDE and GNOME can be replaced with the lighter Xfce. The bloated WM's that come with them can be replaced by the streamlined and elegant WindowMaker.
Let's not forget some of the obvious benefits. Universities are big organizations, which can afford to fix their own problems if given the means. Because GNU/Linux uses FS and OSS software, universities can fix their own problems. Indeed, they need not even pay for the solution -- they can simply throw a problem at CS students to solve, making it a mandatory part of the course.
Let's not pretend that the university would be denying students choice by not buying MS products. These students could use whatever they want on their own computers. Exposing them to Linux at the libraries and other public areas would expose them to an operating system which is more likely than not the direction of the future. MS may be the dominant force, but it has no-where to go but down, and it's insistence on making crappy products, illegally using it's monopoly power, and depriving consumers of their rights will certainly accelerate its downfall. On the contrary, GNU/Linux is gaining more and more support. It is growing extremely quickly, and is a fertile ground for new ideas and innovation.
Finally, exposing students to Linux exposes them to the way computer's really work. Linux -- though it now has easy-to-use inte
Campus Agreement (Score:4, Informative)
Compromise ... (Score:4, Insightful)
7 years is an eternity for the computer industry -- if Linux cannot be able to hold its own accross the board in 7 years, then there's little point. It gives the school two possible outs -- forfeiture or just wait out the 7 year time limit before returning to MS.
Not only CS (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does this happen? Because people become homoginized on MS software, and dont REALLY learn how to use a computer. I made a web kiosk with only mozilla. It took a few tries, as people would fight tooth and nail to not use mozilla. The point of this, is the average user is brainwashed.
So, money aside, i think the point of this "gift" is to force people, no matter how they will use it, to learn the computer beyond the microsoft microcosm. To learn there IS a world w/o MS, you CAN use mozilla, etc. You are only doing students a diservice by having a computing platform where they dont have to think (since they all "know" how to use it already) and wont know wht to do if presented with anythign outside the teeny scope of that.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that old hardware is staying useable longer and longer. A 1ghz PC will IMHO do everytyhing you could do day to day 10 years from now. You could make all of these dual boot, and do a slow changeover from your current licenses.
I say go for it, change the face of university computing, be a pioneer. This is like a free ride to try something new.
Don't forget the golden rule (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a world of difference between bullying and shaking down your customers and putting stipulations on how money you are going to donate will be used. He could specify that all computers bought must have emerald green cases with a little gold statue of himeself glued to the top of the monitor if he wanted to. And tell the college to take the offer or leave it. He's not forcing them to do anything.
BG sees your 2.4mil and raises you 10mil (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not enough money.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only that, but what is the big difference between the save option in Word, and the save option in OpenOffice.org? If the programs do the same, and look the same, and the only difference is that one is completely free, and easily turned into a thin client/server solution while the other is insanely expensive and requires massive ammounts of hardware just to run on one computer, let alone several, what's the big deal about going with the free solution?
Re:My father is a provost for a technology college (Score:3, Informative)
The rest of campus, though, is another story. Since most other majors don't need to do anything CS-related, they don't need to interact with the systems, and so they're happy to run the school-provided Win2K/XP on their (school-provided) laptops.
Re:What are the terms? (Score:5, Interesting)
The extra cost savings over the 10-year period (not renewing/upgrading Windows, Office, no Windows viruses, etc) should also be factored in.
Not only will they have a lower TCO, but they're getting paid $$$ on top if it.
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's a point (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, not allowing your students to learn to operate a computer and its applications (as opposed to learning to operate Windows and Office), is an equal disservice. People must be taught concepts, not products, or we'll have a generation of grads who panic and break out into a cold sweat when they don't see a Start menu on the screen.
Teaching only what is prevalent is a pretty brain-dead way to approach education. Do medical schools only teach how to treat the most prevalent ailments? Do you ever hear, "Hey, sorry I can't help you with that hemophilia, but you come back when you need stitches or a broken bone set!"?
Going out into the world ONLY knowing Microsoft stuff became a bad idea the day "Become an MCSE!" commercials started replacing "Learn to drive 18-wheelers!" commercials on daytime TV.
~Philly