I agree with Will. The M$NBC article is pure propaganda. Please reread the article and see that it ends on a pro-M$ stance: ~"our research is benefitting from funding". This article is an attempt to sway the academic community to accept further M$ "donations" at other universities, and to believe that Linux has nothing monetarily to offer the universities.
We are lucky in that the battle between Linux and Microsoft is ultimately based on scientific principles: quality will win over quantity. M$ can spread its propaganda and FUD, but the truth is that M$ software is closed crap. Unless M$ can genetically engineer out the hacker gene, hackers will continually desire to tweak computers and software. You can only change your M$ Desktop themes so many times before you get bored. ;) There is no law against media outlets taking liberties with the truth to promote the agendas of their corporate owners. It happens all the time. In fact, during my 38 years here, I have seen it dramatically increase as media ownership has consolidated among fewer corporate owners. I strongly recommend that _all_ media news reports be treated as propaganda for the corporate owner's agendas. In the case of the M$NBC article in question, the agenda is easy to discern; the "M$" in M$NBC. In other cases, the agenda is not so easy to see. I recommend the following media analysis websites: http://www.fair.org http://www.adbusters.org (my favorite!) and there are more at: http://dmoz.org/News/Media/Analysis_and_Opinion/ If you want to do some serious study about propaganda, look up Noam Chomsky. But, these are just my opinions. Go find your own. ;) John Hebert -----Original Message----- From: will hill To: [email protected] Sent: 8/27/03 12:11 AM Subject: [brlug-general] Typical M$NBC bullshit. The M$NBC article claims, "Today, four years into the five-year partnership, the protests are over and Microsoft technology is firmly entrenched at MIT." Irony? Looks like an outright lie to me and an implicit endorsement I doubt any University, especially MIT, would make or will be happy about. It misrepresents the original 1999 initiative, the extent of penetration and M$ influence. MIT has it's own private computer system, Athena: http://web.mit.edu/olh/ What else would you expect from the people who developed X, kerbos and many other awesome packages while M$ was putzing around with Windoze 3.1? Athena finished in 1991, where did M$ want to go at that time? MIT is more likely to take credit for being an early haven for RMS. Here is an informative PDF about Athena and kerbos usage at MIT: http://www.engg.upd.edu.ph/~susan/cs293/cs293Jul17.pdf Here is an old list of software available to Athena users: http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:hMqs_JPJSqIJ:sfr.nms.lcs.mit.edu/17 5fb59a68597dc17aae1e0624692b53d9a61ea3+MIT+athena+Microsoft&hl=en&ie=UTF -8 with 96% of the students using Athena, I'd say that M$ hardly has a toe in the door. Indeed, it's hard to imagine serious scientific computing with Microsoft, though there are some interesting and expensive toys available on that platform, Athena seems to have them all and their betters. "The university?s educational computer network is being overhauled to use Microsoft?s .Net architecture." Is a particularly rich lie considering the Company's ambition of 1999, expressed in this NYT article, to be set the tone for MIT and 36 other companies and thereby pervert everyone's standards and lock up all publishing in M$ DRM: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/10/biztech/articles/05soft.html The above article also claimed that M$ had become the "de facto standard" at Universities. It seems strange that M$ feels the need to restate the case four years later. Slashdot covered that move and the student comments are cutting: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1740&cid=0&pid=0&startat=&threshold= 1&mode=flat&commentsort=3&op=Change Some things remain the same, however. The few M$ boxes seem to be the same headache at MIT as they are everywhere: 750 boxes infected with sobig and blaster, presumably student owned, remedy is rebuild. http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N34/34virus.34n.html Problems with mail directories: http://web.mit.edu/pismere/ldap.html Problems with different versions of M$ office (another old page): http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:UyPlDoMgwtcJ:gis.mit.edu/lab/webmai l.shtml+MIT+athena+Microsoft&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 I can hardly believe that I read half of that nauseating piece of BS. Microsoft has tried to make policy at Universities and they have bought a few whores at some of them. This article is typical Microsoft, "we've already won" when the battle is far from over, "smart people use us" when the truth is far from it and "look how generous we are to be giving away Millions of dollars worth of binaries" as if an M$ CD was worth any more than an AOL CD. NBC should be ashamed to publish such rubbish, someone is asleep at the wheel. Punching holes in this article for the last 30 minutes has been fun. Microsoft polute a LUG mailing list? No way. Come here, pig, I'm going to eat you alive. Bang, pow, bite, squeel, squeel, smash crash thud. /* - Big Grin full of exposed teeth - */ On 2003.08.26 21:02 Shannon Roddy wrote: > Hrmmm... I know most companies do this (Apple, Sun, etc) but it just > irritates the hell out of me that universities are choosing operating > systems because of perks and not merit/quality. I say the best tool for > the job, which for me is almost never Microsoft. > > http://www.msnbc.com/news/956800.asp?0cv=TB10&cp1=1 > > Oh yeah.... the irony of the article being on MSNBC's website! > > Shannon _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net
