[LINK] Dramatic rise in botnet-controlled PCs

[David Lochrin]

On Friday 05 September 2008 14:27, matthew at sorbs.net wrote:
> [...]
> <RANT>
>
> You have Australian Universities whose management (or general staff as
> is the case with UC) mandating that thou shalt not have access to
> anything but Microsoft products on any PC.  You have IT courses that
> only teach MSAccess as a business "Database" (yes my wife and a friend
> are both on these courses, my wife at CIT and my friend at UQ) and both
> failed modules when they used SQL99 statements as the answer and not
> MSAccess' SQL equivalent.  The UQ learning friend was even failed on a
> HTML course because she followed the standard for HTML 4.01 for
> embedding sound in webpages, and not using the M$ Propriety <BGSOUND>
> tag (or some such tag).  Sorry but whinge all you like about standards,
> but when the Universities of Australia fail students for following
> globally recognised standards and not M$ propriety crap, you only have
> yourselves to blame.
>
> </RANT>

   Sorry about the late reply, but I have to say I couldn't agree more.  I work at a certain Sydney university and expect my software engineering students to design using W3C HTML and other standards because standards are the glue which makes open communication possible.

   However the universities generally have been so starved of funds in recent years that many have resorted to industry funding.  Situations such as those you describe are a possible outcome but, at the very least, I think students tend to receive an "education" which focusses more on proprietary products than general principles to some degree.  And this, of course, is what the funding corporations are paying for.

David