news media

[Daniel R . Kilbourne]

FYI - to my knwledge (not that I am getting involved in this whole thing):

Union, Eppley, Brody (all G3), Erickson, wells, CC and comm arts all have macs.......

This is more than 5 years ago, when there was only (that I recall) union, bridy, wilson, erickson and most of them were ancient POS systems





On Sat, Aug 19, 2000 at 06:19:26PM -0400, Marcel Kunath spake:

> >
> > Accusing the University of not being diverse in their selection
> > of computers is ridiculous.  Yes, there are x86/Windows labs all
> > around campus, but:
> 
> No it's not ridiculous. Even though your examples are true they by far
> don't display what has happened over the past 2.5 years I have been here.
> EBH used to have some non-x86 machines in some labs on second floor.
> Removed and replaced with win. It used to have Mac platform as well. I
> think they also got replaced with win. Then CC had a room full of Macs on
> 2nd floor. The whole room got resturctured and now contains 3 Imacs. Union
> does have Macs but the machines nobody uses and I think they are old as dirt.
> Basically MSU is phasing out any non-windows stuff. I still feel I am right as
> probably 95% of the stuff on campus is win.
> 
> All the other examples basically affects servers and the main public usually
> doesn't even realize what is running there. I can only take so much
> Presidential coverage this Fall. I like to see a piece of writing on the fact
> that MSU's internals runs on FreeBSD, Unix but the desktops seem to be mostly
> Win and at the end we can ask: Why?
> 
> 
>   1. There are Mac
> labs.  I know of at least
> two (Union, >            Wells Hall) and there must be more; I don't frequent
> >            MSU labs any more than I must.
> >
> >     2. In .egr.msu.edu there are many kinds of computers:
> >            Sun, HP, SGI, you name it.  In one small room in the
> >            23xx wing that I have access to there are HP, Sun, and
> >            x86 boxes side-by-side.
> >
> >     3. I know for *damn* sure there's at least one lab of SGI
> >            boxen outside of .egr.msu.edu.
> >
> > Moving from clients to servers:
> >
> >     4. Pilot runs IBM AIX, if I recall correctly.
> >
> >     5. Important servers, including the DNS servers (serv1,
> >            serv2) run FreeBSD.
> >
> >     6. debian.egr.msu.edu is also one of the
> >            ftp.us.debian.org boxes.
> >
> >     7. I personally run two permanent Debian GNU/Linux
> >            servers on campus (server.hedlab.he.msu.edu,
> >            cscw.msu.edu).
> >
> > Besides, do you really think that lusers would be happy without
> > their Windows?  They get it shoved down their throats in ads.
> > They actually *believe* in this Windows stuff.
> 
> So I am confused if you agree with my money and others students money being
> spend on things which are not in my ideology? I know you got your education
> at MSU supported through funds but you have to think of here from the
> ideological standpoint, and the people who pay for education should have
> their money used how they see fit. Maybe I am the only one all I said was
> they should question if maybe there is something brewing here or we should
> continue to poor dollars towards proprietory things.
> 
> I don'
> t understand how you can draw a line between supporting free software for the
> home user but you don't support free software in the school? This is not a
> subject of happiness when people they use a lab computer. This is about are we
> having the right to ask if money is spend in the way it should be spend or
> should we proceed otherwise in the future? MSU is an educational facility and I
> have learned a lot from Linux and free software. Is it maybe more educational
> for us to use non-win stuff? Is MSU creators free thinkers or button pushing
> robots?
> 
> I was once a guy who believed into Windows. When I used a win95 computer in
> 1996 for the first time I thought it was the best thing ever created. well I
> think different today. People change their opinions and maybe, and that is
> all I am asking for, the university should just give me the respect and let me
> know if they have used time to weigh off themselves free software offers
> against commercial ones.
> 
> I am sure you never spend a minute on a win pc but you have to realize some of
> us are not that lucky and I have to go in every day to work and use
> proprietory software I don't condone with and from time to time take hits
> from co-workers repeating to me the usual FUD, and I have to live with the
> fact that we switched over to Outlook as mail system and nobody seems to like
> it but we still spend the money on it, and I have to live with the fact that I
> walk out on  a meeting where they mentioned InterDev 7 will be out in a year
> and they seem to be willing to buy it at any price offered and I ask "why are
> you so willing to make this upgrade without checking if we need any of the
> new features?"
> 
> I think we deserve a wider coverage of topics in the local news media and it
> surely can only help to gain additional interest from the community into
> subjects like ours. You can't really say Linux or the GLLUG or Postgres or
> Apache is famous around the people of East Lansing.
> 
> --
> Marcel Kunath
> _______________________________________________
> linux-user mailing list
> linux-user@egr.msu.edu
> http://www.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user

-- 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Daniel R. Kilbourne
daniel.kilbourne@voyager.net
Voyager.net Network Engineer

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^