Re: Software Tax deductions

["Kendall G. Clark" <kclark@computek.net>]

  On Tue, 11 Nov 1997, Jordan Pollack wrote:
  
  >CS departments are one of the prime religious training grounds for
  >unix lovers. Now that Pentium pro's are faster than SGIs, linux is
  >invading. But rumors are floating in the computer science community that
  >MS trying to stem the Unix addition in CS professionals by donating
  >HARDWARE - Pentium Pro workstations - to top depts, like Berkeley, as
  >long as they run NT, not linux.
  >
  >No Gates building for my department, ever, after this:)
  
  Jordan (or should it be Dr. Pollack <g>),
  
  I had suspected as much due to my involvement with Linux. Linux has kind of
  reinvigorated the Unix tradition among CS departments and students by its
  sheer affordability, its strong use of commodity and even low-end hardware,
  and by the wealth of educational material it provides in the form of (1)
  source code and (2) programming languages.
  
  It doesn't surprise me that MS would want to, as Kramer puts it, ``get some of
  that sweet action.'' It also just proves my point: MS isn't donating anything
  out of altruism. They're trying to influence tomorrow's decision makers today.
  
  Oy vey, they make me sick. Billions of dollars in a war chest, and they're
  worried about a little thing like Linux? It's the power of freedom they're
  afraid of, I think.
  
  It's fun to look through the web stats of my Linux user group's web site and
  see all the hits from `microsoft.com'--I wonder what they find so interesting?
  
  Best,
  
  	Kendall Clark