<p>I have a long list of gripes against Microsoft technology too.</p>
<p>But let’s not forget the big impact the MS products have on corporate America. Up to now there is no company that can provide many productivity tools for the industries like MS and its partners.</p>
<p>I used to work on Unix and participate in the effort to bring Unix and X-Windows to normal daily usage in the workplace. There was an alliance among Sun Microsystems, DEC, HP in the 1990’s to quash Microsoft but the alliance terribly failed because the participants could not agree on anything. Does anyone remember the war between the Open Look Window Manager created by Sun Microsystems and the Motif Window Manager supported by HP, DEC, and others for X-Windows?</p>
<p>I used to hate BG but now I really admire him.</p>
<p>Interesting. The University of Chicago has no Latin honors, and doesn’t publish any figures on mean or median GPA’s, but my son told me that about 50% of his class graduated with general honors in June, and that the GPA cutoff for graduating with general honors was about a 3.2. The only other “honors” awarded are departmental honors, for which each department sets its own requirements (for Art History, it was a very high GPA in the major plus a contribution to scholarship “beyond an A” on the senior B.A. thesis); a much smaller percentage received those. I’m pretty sure that Phi Beta Kappa was determined entirely on the basis of the top 10% of GPA’s, and that the cutoff was something above a 3.8 (my son just missed it, although I think he would have had around a 3.9 if only the first two terms of his first year didn’t count!). There were people who received Phi Beta Kappa but did not graduate with departmental honors, and people (like my son) for whom the converse was true.</p>
<p>I suspect that the quality of papers at the top colleges are better than they were a few decades ago (i.e., when I was there), because the kids who get into those colleges are more likely now to have done more writing in high school, in AP or IB classes, or in private schools. I don’t think the typical high school education is better now than it was then; to the contrary. However, I think it’s likely that the high school preparation for students with a shot at highly selective colleges is better. In addition to more writing, they are more likely to have calculus.</p>
<p>DonnaL: The Chicago GPA cut off for general honors is 3.25, and unless there has been a major. systematic grade-deflation effort in the last year substantially more than 50% of your son’s class got it. (It was about 60% in both 2009 and 2011. I counted. It’s a long ceremony.)</p>
<p>Phi Beta Kappa is indeed based purely on grades there.</p>
<p>It is very common for kids with high grades not to get departmental honors, because in a number of the largest departments (Economics, English, Biology too I think) there is no requirement for a senior thesis, but you can’t get departmental honors without one. So students with high grades and no intention of applying to PhD programs often choose not to do the thesis.</p>
<p>It is interesting to think about how word processing and the internet may have changed the quality of high school and college writing. Hasn’t the way people do scholarship changed significantly? And access is sometimes much greater? It is one way goodies do get spread around to the hoi polloi.</p>
<p>This quote reminded me of the other-Harvard-cheating thread where the question arose as to whether the gifted worked faster.</p>
<p>À la recherche du temps perdu/ - how long would it be if Proust had had word processing?</p>
<p>btw at a weekend party I managed to casually insert in a conversation with a classicist the question “what are the top schools in your field?” and the immediate response was “archaeology or philology?”</p>
<p>the senior thesis - we have very mixed feelings about this in my family. It is only useful as the writing sample for a graduate school application if it is completed during fall of senior year or the student doesn’t apply to graduate school as a college senior. right? So if the point of the thesis is to show something to a PhD program, the timing isn’t really great. imho unless there are lots of students out there pretty much completing the senior thesis junior year - and I just don’t know any of them. I know students who use earlier papers as a writing sample. I know students who rework the senior thesis into an MA thesis.</p>
<p>The above is mainly due to the following factors:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The prevalent corporate mentality in the '80s that “No one ever got fired by buying IBM/compatibles”. </p></li>
<li><p>Corporate pointy-haired bosses tended to have the common prejudice which favored IBM PC/PC compatibles as being “good for business” whereas they were turned off by their not totally unjustified prejudice that Apple was made by and for the “neo-hippie” artists, graphical designers, and educator/students. </p></li>
<li><p>Microsoft used its corporate and legal muscle to strongarm many smaller companies making competing operating systems or business productivity suites to limit competition for their own products as much as possible. </p></li>
<li><h1>1, 2, and 4 had a carryover effect as most non-technical people who want to learn computers tend to go for what’s commonly used in the corporate/business sector as such skills can increase chances of landing corporate office jobs.</h1></li>
</ol>
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</p>
<p>I’m not a BG hater by any means. However, I am disturbed by how much his PR driven charitable works has effectively hyped up his saintliness to the point his/Microsoft’s long history of legal strongarming smaller competitors and monopolistic behavior has been whitewashed from popular consciousness. A history which was widely reported up until the beginning of the 21st century.</p>
<p>cobrat - name one tech company which has gotten big and is not accused of what you are saying about microsoft?</p>
<p>Google’s motto used to be do no evil. They are storing so much personal data on everyone these days and hiding that information that they can be Big Brother aka Evil Inc.</p>
<p>Forget “tech companies”. If you see a large company with a strong market position, you are looking at a company that has strong-armed smaller competitors and engaged in monopolistic behavior. Or, if not, just be patient for a few years and it won’t be so large or have a market position so strong. (See, e.g., RIM, and of course IBM itself, at least after it cleaned up its act.)</p>
<p>Right JHS. Strong arming is the name of the game when the companies get bigger. </p>
<p>I was only pointing out Google because it started out as an anti-microsoft company and the motto was indirectly calling microsoft evil. Now we have to go petition googlemaps if we want privacy to pixelate the pictures of our homes.</p>
<p>Re Microsoft practices: I don’t think anyone has put it better than Nicholas Petreley, in a column in InfoWorld, back in 1994. The link is here:</p>
<p>JHS- I disagree. There are two companies here in town who are industry leaders and who have NOT strong-armed lesser competitors or engaged in monopolistic practices. One is a building products company (forest products) and one is the nation’s leading farm store retailer. Both companies have bought smaller companies, but it was to the benefit of the purchased companies.</p>