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Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

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Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#241

Post by makeitdouble »

arianvanp wrote: post #194

I studied at Utrecht University and all the programming classes in the Bachelor were C#, Visual Studio, XNA, DirectX. Windows. Database class i had to learn in Proprietary Microsoft tools too. All Microsoft stuff. Sure nobody would complain if you did stuff on Linux but all the support by TAs and teachers was on Microsoft platforms only.. The Master was much better but the Bachelor basically was grooming people to be…

> if the rot starts at the core of your education curriculum there is no saving your dependence on Microsoft.

TBF, the curriculum being MS based can mean very little if the concepts taught in are valuable enough. I've briefly looked at the project linked in your user description, and they don't look nice and absolutely not tinted by MS influence.

It is indeed dancing with the devil, but if MS forks the money to renew the whole university's computer park, clear all the licensing issues and train part of the staff, it can be a boon for the university.

My uni had a deal with Sun (RIP), many basic courses were in Java, all our system programming course we're Solaris targeted, all servers were Solaris anyway so our code had to run there. It's a pretty basic arrangement IMHO.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#242

Post by dghlsakjg »

nebula8804 wrote: post #218
dghlsakjg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, the US has a pretty good record when it comes to invading continental Europe. They already have troops and nukes on the ground in the Netherlands... And they didn't exactly struggle with the invasion parts of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor in the getting of high status targets in those theaters. Arguably, the ICJ in the Hague is actually a result of one of those successful deployments of US forces on the cont…

>And they didn't exactly struggle with the invasion parts of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor in the getting of high status targets in those theaters. That was post 9/11. The mentality and motivation was different back then. Im not saying the US Military is anything less than a top tier orderly organization, its just that morale is generally low now among not only ranks but the entire country that supports them. You can't j…

My comment was in fun. I hoped that the reference to licking car batteries would signal that.

No one is sending in the troops to rescue Bibi from the Hague for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is that he is not currently under arrest, and the chances of him being arrested are effectively nil. Also, Mossad.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#243

Post by taurath »

tester756 wrote: post #237
arianvanp wrote: post #194

I studied at Utrecht University and all the programming classes in the Bachelor were C#, Visual Studio, XNA, DirectX. Windows. Database class i had to learn in Proprietary Microsoft tools too. All Microsoft stuff. Sure nobody would complain if you did stuff on Linux but all the support by TAs and teachers was on Microsoft platforms only.. The Master was much better but the Bachelor basically was grooming people to be…

Visual Studio is world class IDE, C# is one of the better designed languages and ecosystems, Windows is everywhere - from home, to enterprise.

Looks like your education was well received if you went to those uni's!

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#245

Post by denimnerd42 »

nxm wrote: post #63
denimnerd42 wrote: post #38

at work I don't need MS at all. It's just used because the IT department prefers it to manage things. I wish we could just use Fedora or Ubuntu.

IT has to cover much less technical users than someone who would prefer to use Linux

Nah it's a skill issue. They don't know how and don't want to learn.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#246

Post by Closi »

tfourb wrote: post #225
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because outside of a handful of nerdy tech companies, all small businesses need to use Microsoft Office. From there, it’s a no brainer to stay in the MS ecosystem and use Sharepoint etc… For a small business without a dedicated IT team, simply hire a IT contractor to harden the tenant (MFA etc…), have them review every six months and be done with it and focus your resources on running your business.

My father’s decidedly non-nerdy logistics consulting business with roughly 20 employees ran (and runs) on Mac OS since the founding of the company in the mid 1990s with my mom being the „IT team“. There are some situations where companies rely on certain compatibilities requiring windows. But most could do completely fine without, especially nowadays.

You can run a logistics consulting business without windows, but you will struggle without Excel and PowerPoint, and 365 with SharePoint is basically needed for collaboration in any consulting business.

Im also a logistics consultant… try to parse a multi-million line orderlines extract in Google Sheets compared to excel.

I’m also on Mac but to be honest it’s a challenge - there are still enough industry specific tools that are windows only so I have to run a parallels VM to get by.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#247

Post by Telaneo »

Europe can do without Microsoft, however it will require a kick in the rear to get there.

I was kind of hoping that the GDPR would be that kick, as it's clear to anyone that Microsoft, or really any other major US corporation, can't actually satisfy that completely as long as they have their tendrils in its European subsidiaries and that the US can compel them give up the information they care about. But this is a rather large elephant the EU has elected to ignore since that's the path of least resistance.

The EU actually realising the using Microsoft as your foundation does break the GDPR and fining the relevant institutions (and fixing itself on that same front!), or relevant institutions being embargoed to the point of not being able to use Microsoft products, as is apparently now the case with the ICC, will probably kick Europe into gear, but it needs to be a solid kick, and not just an institution here and there.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#248

Post by AniseAbyss »

arianvanp wrote: post #194

I studied at Utrecht University and all the programming classes in the Bachelor were C#, Visual Studio, XNA, DirectX. Windows. Database class i had to learn in Proprietary Microsoft tools too. All Microsoft stuff. Sure nobody would complain if you did stuff on Linux but all the support by TAs and teachers was on Microsoft platforms only.. The Master was much better but the Bachelor basically was grooming people to be…

[dead]

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#249

Post by Spooky23 »

seanieb wrote: post #21

I spent the past year working for a company that relies heavily on Microsoft for email, productivity tools, and identity management. After that experience, I can say with confidence: never again. The support is astonishingly poor, and user experience feels like an afterthought. More importantly, using Microsoft at scale can leave your organization fundamentally insecure. The obscure, insecure defaults are, at best, d…

Even if you do, you’re still going to get breached. They drop features all of the time that open potential vulnerabilities.

I used to run a Microsoft productivity ops team. Email/SharePoint/etc. Our headcount was about 20-24. O365 dropped that to ~8. Now? I’m told it’s about 60, much of it relating to security.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#250

Post by bodeadly »

cyberax wrote: post #121
project2501a wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do I find money to fund my rewrite of Kerberos 5 in Rust, removing the dumb options and Kerberos 4 compatibility and eventually create Kerberos 6 + AD that will solve a metric buttload of issues in Linux and knock a major peg of MS off?

Ask IBM/RedHat. They did a lot of foundational work with SSSD (aka "too many 'S' D"). Kerberos is not a great protocol, though.

Ultimately Kerberos is used to authenticated basically everything in a Windows on-prem environment and in a way that is largely transparent to the user. Silent SSO is a very nice feature. Even if you're doing OIDC or SAML, those protocols do not define what is actually performing authentication at the IdP which, again, ultimately ends up being Kerberos if you're people are on-prem. So whatever your feelings are about Kerberos as a protocol, it doesn't matter if that's what Windows uses. And again, it cannot be obsoleted by other protocols. Even if you're using a newer fido thing like passkeys or client certs or whatever, ultimately the device has to be authenticated to get that passkey or cert or whatever it is installed into the authenticator app of the device. So Kerberos is king on prem. MIT Kerberos on Linux is not really compatible with Windows Kerberos in ways that cause problems that are not solved by re-writing Kerberos in another language. More important issues have to do with sharing credentials and getting trust info and other such things.
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