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Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

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Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#371

Post by pmasson »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #267
dmos62 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And same goes for less technical disciplines too. Adobe, Autodesk, Archicad, etc. It's pretty bad software: expensive, very buggy, poor extensibility, poorly maintained, closed-source, rapid tech debt accumulation requires upgrading your pc every few years. If only a minor percentage of organizations licensing it would instead spend that budget financing an open source project, that would have a very positive effect…

But if students learn some open-source software that doesn’t get used in private industry, will they be able to land a job that’s asking Autodesk et al. knowledge as a requirement?

As a former medical and scientific illustrator, learning a software package (Photoshop or GIMP) really isn't as crucial as learning principles and practices of art, design, and graphics. Color theory, negative space, composition, etc., are critical to production and apply to any media one chooses to work in: oil on canvas, pen and ink, or computers.

The other issue is access. Again, from an art/graphics/design perspective, costs associated with proprietary software can limit some students from even participating in art/graphics/design programs. Adobe Creative Suite is US$69.99/mo or US$840/yr.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#372

Post by Balinares »

deaux wrote: post #318
Balinares wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By providing the software to be installed in clusters owned and operated by European companies. The sovereign cloud spec designed by the folks at France's ANSSI agency is tight .

Whoops, the European company just got bought out by a US entity. Tough luck! [1] Is this part of the spec? If not, it's as loose as a tent. And by "part of the spec" I mean "all your assets will be forcefully nationalized the second you or a parent company of yours becomes less than X% European owned", where X is well above 50. [1] https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/11/dutch-looking-into-conseque...

As a rule of thumb, I wouldn't assume that any scenario you came up with on the spot was overlooked by an agency whose job it is to not overlook complex scenarios, let alone trivially simple ones.

To start with... states can and will absolutely block the sale of strategic national companies to foreign actors. But I'm sure you knew that.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#373

Post by tester756 »

greatgib wrote: post #311
tester756 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Visual studio code sucks badly, just most common developers started with it and are used to it in the same way that Windows was "the os" for the same kind of developers at a specific point in the past. It is even worse know that vscode and all the clones are packed with llm agents that such devs can't live without. For one thing for example, the latency of the editor is crazy for someone that worked with native edito…

Visual Studio != Visual Studio Code

But tbf VS Code is decent at being editor tho

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#374

Post by pbreit »

Razengan wrote: post #254
pbreit wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gone without Microsoft products for many years now. It's SOOOOO much better.

I went for a decade without using any Microsoft products until they bought GitHub

Ah, GitHub, you're right. And I guess I do use LinkedIn and VSCode as well. Was thinking Office/Windows.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#376

Post by nxor »

machomaster wrote: post #344
nxor wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy makes no sense.

This was not an analogy. It was an additional example to add to the parent's observation. As well as to dispute that it had anything to do with people from countries with big land mass.

There are clueless people from many places, not just the US. Europeans refer to Asia as Asia. Is that a problem too?

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#377

Post by dghlsakjg »

ta20240528 wrote: post #367
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…

"In fairness, the US has a pretty good record when it comes to invading continental Europe." Only by using the UK as a staging post - and then invading a country that wanted to be liberated with an active partisan network. So, if China can't take Taiwan over a 150km stretch of littoral waters, a naval in invasion from over the Atlantic is impossible. There is also no way such a fleet would get past Gibraltar or the S…

> Only by using the UK as a staging post - and then invading a country that wanted to be liberated with an active partisan network.

Normandy wasn't even the first invasion of mainland Europe by Americans of that war, let alone the first cross Atlantic invasion that the US has undertaken. The US had full armies on the ground in Europe almost a full year before Normandy, without staging in the Kingdom, and in a fascist, hostile country.

Aside from the above point, the US actually has a long, long tradition of successful invasions across oceans, including across the Atlantic. Hell, the first time the US raised their flag on foreign soil was a cross-Atlantic war in 1801. They're astoundingly good at it. They sent floating ice cream factories for troop morale in WWII in the Pacific, three of them actually. Can you imagine fighting total war and your enemy from 10k KM away shows up towing an ice cream factory for the boys?

> So, if China can't take Taiwan over a 150km stretch of littoral waters, a naval in invasion from over the Atlantic is impossible.

China hasn't tried. You have NO clue if this is accurate, and neither does anyone else. Aside from that, China is just getting into the force projection at sea game. Comparing them to the US expeditionary capabilities is daft.

> There is also no way such a fleet would get past Gibraltar or the Suez canal, so the US would they'd have to stage in Morocco or possibly take Scandinavia then cross into Denmark.

Yes, there is no way that is happening because the route from Virginia, where they keep all the Atlantic invasion stuff, to Denmark does not go anywhere near the Suez or Gib. You can just steam from Virginia to Denmark.

> Back to licking batteries.

Dibs on the lithium!

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#378

Post by dghlsakjg »

ta20240528 wrote: post #368
dghlsakjg wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand the Mossad comment - unless its just "ooh they're so scary" fanboy stuff. Let's suppose Netanyahu is somehow arrested and held in a highly secure government prison in The Netherlands awaiting his chance to clear his name at the ICC. What exactly do you suppose Mossad is going to do? - break him out? how? - openly assassinate politicians/judges until someone gives in? - blow up civilians? What?

This is - again, I can't emphasize enough - all a joke about a hypothetical situation.

Bibi has not been arrested, he won't be arrested anytime soon, and the US is not at the point where they are willing to invade Europe to save him.

What do I think Mossad would do in the made up, improbable, alternate universe where we are debating the US invading their European allies?

I think that Mossad/Israeli security would never be caught flatfooted enough to allow Israeli leaders to visit a country that was planning to arrest them. I thoroughly believe that it would be nigh impossible to maneuver an Israeli head of state into a position where they were arrested. If things change and he is no longer protected by Israeli security, that is different.

So in answer to your question, no Mossad is not going to be breaking him out of a maximum security prison. They are going to use their intelligence network to say "Hey Benji, stay out Canada. They are going to arrest you, and have you tried if you set foot on their soil". Or "Hey Bibs, this state visit is mildly risky, we have an extraction plan in place if shit goes sideways."

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#379

Post by Closi »

mbreese wrote: post #260
Closi wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 too…

Collaboration with Sharepoint is I think the biggest issue with M365. It’s impossible to figure out where a file is stored… on your hard drive? One drive? Teams? Sharepoint? And the biggest problem I have is managing revisions with multiple editors. If I were talking to Microsoft about strategy, this would be the thing I’d suggest. I know it’s common to use Sharepoint for collaboration, but it’s such a Frankenstein’d…

It's still better than anything else and the de-facto standard so you need it.

Clients will send you their PowerPoint template and want you to use it. They will send you their complex spreadsheets riddled with VBA macros and you will need to fix them. They will invite you to a Teams site because that's where their project updates go. I just don't see how you can avoid it as a consulting company!

For things like Excel - We can say it's 'bad' but I've not seen anything do the job it does better. And besides, even if it was bad, it doesn't matter - as a consultant you need to use it because your clients probably want your workings as part of the deliverables, and if it's on Google Sheets they often won't want that.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#380

Post by solid_fuel »

mr_mitm wrote: post #222
solid_fuel wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to set up network file sharing with NFS the other day and it was like pulling teeth. You need Kerberos if you want to map user names instead of user ids and still have some security. Ultimately I gave up and used samba instead, but it does seem like there's a big gap in linux offerings for "home/small business network file sharing" with shared auth

sshfs doesn't work for you?

It's for a drive holding primarily media files, my experiences with sshfs have been that it is slow. My goal here was to have a network drive mounted on login for two different accounts on my linux desktop, and the same users (my partner and I) on different accounts (because apple) on two different macbooks. It's a typical home network, with a firewall, so the extra security of ssh would be nice but isn't really critical for us - any malware on the computers we use would already have network access and our ssh keys.

I also want to share the home printer/scanner, which I believe samba can do, but obviously sshfs won't. Side note - I would love to see a standard protocol and server for a 3d printer. We have a Bambu and the software is... alright... but doesn't play nice sharing an account between computers.

Ultimately I set up samba on the server, with mapped users, and a line in fstab on the desktop. Plain old NFS might have worked for the desktop but the users don't have the same UIDs between the desktop and the server and... reconciling that seemed painful.

I did try to make kerberos work with NFS for a few days but the experience was akin to staring into the sun.

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