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Microsoft and the U.S. School System
Posted by
michael
on Tue Jul 10, 2001 07:42 AM
from the give-us-your-lunch-money dept.
from the give-us-your-lunch-money dept.
4/3PI*R^3 has the dubious honor of being the first of dozens of submissions: "Salon has a story on how Microsoft is bullying cash strapped school districts into purchasing "compliant" licenses for Microsoft software. Best quote from the story concerning financial problems of education and the added burden that Microsft is placing on them: "It's kind of like AIDS in Africa and the drug companies," Kowalski says. "Can anyone expect a dying person to be concerned about the drug companies' profits?"" It seems silly to bitch about this - work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
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Microsoft and the U.S. School System
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Re:US Ph.D's (Score:3)
You're right about most of the PhD students being foreign and it's been that way since the early 70s. This has happened for a number of reasons. First, PhDs are overproduced. There simply isn't very much demand for them. Many take post-doctoral work because they can't find suitable positions. Most US PhDs seem to be underemployed. Second, a PhD is not necessary to do most technical work. Third, grad students typically don't make much money. So there isn't much incentive to get a PhD other than strong personal desire. An experienced plumber can make more money. Many of the foreign students get PhDs to gain a foothold in America.
Re:US Ph.D's (Score:3)
hey, some of us do
The J.D. and M.D. are professional degrees and not "real" doctoral degrees.
The J.D. is the same degree as the L.L.B. (Bachelor of Law), but in the U.S., requires a regular bachelor's degree for entry. There is also an L.L.M., most typically in a tax area, that can come after the J.D./L.L.B.. Finally there is the "real" doctor of laws, the L.L.D. (or J.S.D. [doctor of jursiprudence]), which *very* few people have.
The modern M.D. (As opposed to the classical M.D. of the doctors of the university, which matched the Ph.D., L.L.D., and Doctor of Divinity) was largely concoted in the nineteenth century for the specific purpose of borrowing the respect of the doctors of the university. At the time, getting medical treatment was *much* more likely to harm than help the patient. The A.M.A. deserves a *lot* of credit for this fundamental change in the quality of medical care, but for an M.D. to attepmpt to disparage the Ph.D. with the "I'm a *real* doctor" bit is the height of chutzpah--not only is the Ph.D. the eductation to which the M.D. pretends, but the typical M.D. has never done a scrap of researh to contribute to the knowledge base.
hawk, j.d., ph.d., a real doctor
What the world could do with: (Score:3)
This is exactly how many places got exposed to MS in the first place. A suit turning up, running a slick presentation, demonstrating how EASY it is to run, and giving a professional image.
After all, it's the exposure and image that gets the beancounters to spend the money.. Or not, in the case of open source.
Once the presentation is made, a small brochure can be given on where to get support for open source, what it's about, how easy it is to use, where to get the free apps that can drive the institution, and so on.
Also, have a team on standby to do a few installs, in case institutions want to 'try before they buy into it'.
This same team to provide basic training on installation to members from institutions (possibly for a small fee to cover the costs of placing someone at a site, possibly hosted by the institution itself). After all, it doesn't take much to teach someone how to install a Mandrake (or Debian, FreeBSD, Red Hat etc) distribution from a CD image.This will be a loss maker financially, but, given that you can call around and have talks with many schools in an area in a day, and take one day to get maximum exposure for a demo, the costs can be minimised.
As has been mentioned on posts here, the school system is a good place to raise awareness. And once that awareness is present, and people are used to using particular software, it can then slowly move out into the business arena.
After all, even the more clueless PHBs out there had to have used software at Uni, or somewhere previously (assuming they use it at all). If they KNOW that the Open Source apps work as efficiently for a user (at least) as stuff they pay for.. No prizes for guessing what option they're going to take.
But, the push needs to come in a slick, businesslike package, presented by the kind of people that are well versed in selling a concept
Hopefully, this is something already out there, or soon to come about...
Malk
Actually, it is their privelege, not their "right" (Score:3)
Stictly speaking, it isn't a "right," such as the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to not testify against yourself, etc. It is a privelege bestowed by law, for which the constitution explicitly allows but does not grant outright.
The mistake of calling such priveleges "rights" is a common one and an understandable one
It behooves us to, where possible, refrain from adopting their choice of language, as language does by in large define the parameters of our thoughts and to some degree the limits of what we can think. Certainly in this context it biases the conversation to the self-serving point of view the Copyright Cartels wish to promote and to some degree undermines our ability to discuss the topic with anything even remotely resembling an unbiased or criticial perspective.
Re:It IS silly (Score:3)
And yet, when you got out of HS, somehow you survived having been trained on Apples when the business world wasn't using them. Do you really think it's that much harder for kids today, who are more technically savvy than you or I in HS?
School is supposed to teach concepts, not what menu in Word to use to get the right fancy font. Students can write essays, do math homework, and research papers on any platform. If you can prepare a presentation in StarOffice, you can do it in PowerPoint, and vice versa. Office suite compatibility in schools is the worst reason to stick with Microsoft. And heck, Microsoft software is so easy to use, those kids shouldn't have any problems making the slight adjustment when they reach the world of business, should they? :)
Sure, there's some educational software that only runs on Windows, and in those cases the applications provide a good reason to keep some Windows machines around. But general-purpose productivity applications, which are probably what the kids will use most of the time, are not sufficient reason to remain tied to Microsoft.
Re:It IS silly (Score:3)
You're thinking of college. We need to acknowledge that there are two distinct tracks in HS. Those who will be continuing their education and those who won't. Concepts can be useful to those who are continuing on, but some students NEED to learn skills. And you may know that if someone knows one word processor, they can likely figure out another, but does the hiring authority for an entry level job know this? Maybe not. A lot of folks might shrug off someone who has no MS experience for someone who does.
What has to be realized is not all students are going into our professions, most won't. Also, not all students have the ability or desire to take concepts and apply them. The latter may be a failing of the educational system, or it may just be a fact of life, but that's certainly another debate. I am just of the mind that we need to provide students who are going to look for jobs right out of school with some skills they can use immediately.
And yet, when you got out of HS, somehow you survived having been trained on Apples when the business world wasn't using them. Do you really think it's that much harder for kids today, who are more technically savvy than you or I in HS?
I had apple ]['s in school. At home I had an 8088 , and later a 286 to play with. (I even had access to a server that allowed me to telnet) Which were machines that the buisiness world was using. I was a rather privlidged person. Most people that I went to school with didn't have these. Schools should allow less privlidged students access to what is being used in the "Real World"tm, because they are more likely to be in the group of people who will not continue their education.
Re:Bad Analogy (Score:3)
In many countries in Africa around 50% of the population has AIDS and its a horrible epidimic. These governments want to help their people (probably only so those people can stay there, if you don't have any people you don't have a government, but thats another discusion) by providing AIDS medications for them. But the medications are VERY expensive when bought from the people who created these medications so the countried have found suppliers who will supply generic versions of the medication even though its under patent. So these American drugs companies are litterly trying to drag these countries throught the mud with the UN's court system, declariing that they have violated International Patent laws. Anyways the point is there countries are too poor to afford the medicine and are finding it other way. And the US drug companies have no sympathy. This draws many parralles to the situation with MS and schools, though the MS situation is not nearly as serious.
Equally Silly, though... (Score:3)
The end result is that very little of our computer science work was done outside of Solaris. Perhaps none, even.
I mean, Solaris is a solid OS, but not only do I have no Windows knowledge from college whatsoever, I also don't really know Linux or MacOS or any other operating system... or any other flavors of Unix, pretty much. The CS department was also very inflexible about introducing anything into the cirriculum that would promote variety and not propriety. There was a LUG on campus, but it was strictly extra-cirricular and outside the scope of the CS program. But it was at least something.
It would have been NICE to have some variety thrown in there. It also would have been nice if they actually had a user group or any kind of initiative to TEACH us Solaris. Upon entering the CS program, it was assumed that you knew basic Unix commands. While this may not be too much to ask, they had little in the way of reference guides and decent user assistance. If a professor wanted you to do something, he told you what commands to type. Yes, there were MAN pages, but man pages are sometimes cryptic and not a very useful resource to someone who doesn't know they're even there. I fault the university AND Sun for this - their OS is not user-friendly, but it's not learner-friendly either.
I suppose the worst part was when a professor gave an assignment and left you hanging as a result - through incorrect permissions on class files, typos on command-lines for step-by-step instructions, misplaced binaries, etc. - and the solution was to ask a fellow classmate or computer site operator for assistance and receive many sneers, dirty looks, and belittlement in the process. "OH, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE CHMOD? *GRUNT* " Reading the FAQ was more like going on a search engine and reading endless pages of technical documents to find simple command references, help files, and troubleshooters. On certain projects, this took hours.
There was no use trying to learn to use Solaris as a user OS, either. Every student in the university had an e-mail account on the central servers (4 MB limit to files, limited user time) that served as our work environment for CS. Yes, we got extended user time (but you had to switch groups for it for EVERY CLASS, and professors had a funny habit of not mentioning the group number on the syllabus or in class), but as you can imagine our capabilities on the systems were somewhat limited - except for the glaring security holes, but that's another story. The "where" command was disabled, and few applications were installed or accessible to students. In essence, if you wanted to use Solaris as a user OS, you pretty much had to have your own computer to use for it.
In conclusion, I have little to no programming experience outside of Solaris (I kinda stopped going to the LUG after a while, mostly because I didn't have access to a Linux box), but I don't really know how to use Solaris either. Furthermore, I no longer have access to Solaris either. I'm poor, I can't afford another computer, I don't have enough HD space to dual boot, I've got a lot of cheezy hardware that I don't want to go to waste (webcam, digital speakers, obscure network card, TV tuner), and I'm not involved or interested in any projects at the moment. And unlike the days of MS-DOS, Solaris has little relevance as a desktop OS at the moment - and even if it did, I wouldn't know about it.
This is why I don't like Sun. They don't just want to beat MS, they want to BE MS. They try to force their own brand of uniformity into institutions as well. They suck just like MS does, but in different ways. I'm glad I didn't get the Bachelors of MFC in CS, but what I have is somewhat useless to me at the moment. After four years of college, I still can't write usable programs on my home computer. At least with some diversity in OSes, I could have had more choices to find something that interested me and that I would want to work with even after college. I think that's what we need to focus on for kids today - let them learn different things so they don't get stuck on one thing in the future. Then maybe people won't have to dual-boot in the future just to use proprietary software/hardware when needed.
Microsoft heavily discounts software for schools (Score:3)