Josef “Jeff” Sipek

Today was a very interesting day. My (almost former) school (yep, I’m transfering to Stony Brook University) was holding a High School programming competition. This was the 4th time I attended, but this time I was one of the people that made sure the competition went smoothly (which, for the most part, it did). That by itself would have been interesting, but there is more… The school invited an Academic Relations Manager from…you’ll never guess…Microsoft. Yes, the same Microsoft that sells Windows, Office, etcetera. This MS employee was quite interesting, first of all, he knew what he was talking about. And second of all, he was fun to get along with. Me, being the Linux enthusiast I am, had to poke fun at things MS related, and he “retaliated” with anti-Linux comments. Nothing evil, just fun.

Fairly early on, I made it clear that I like Linux. I didn’t say anything, I let Tux do all the talking…

Yes, I started creating that nametag before everyone in the room (some other students helping with things, professors, and the guest speaker.) I remember hearing one of the professors say something, about me liking Linux, to which the speaker replied with “That’s all right, he’ll grow out of it.” I couldn’t help but say that I used to like Windows a lot, but I grew out of it :-)

After I printed the nametag out, and some of the people dispersed, I had a very pleasant conversation with him about many things. A conversation laced with comments about MS and Linux.

There was even a suggestion of interning for Microsoft, to which I replied with a question about the ownership of any code I’d write. That was a bad question. And I don’t think I would mind interning for MS under the right conditions:

• I do not have to sign a NDA
• I get payed more than what I get at work

The plan would be to go there, and either have good time and learn something and use it on Linux, or be miserable and grow even fonder of Linux. Either way, I’d win. :-)

As I mentioned (or maybe only hinted) before, we talked about many things, including evil monopolies. We agreed on the fact that IBM is evil, and Google has a great potential of becoming evil. I didn’t go into a discussion about MS being a monopoly because the answer is simple and obvious: it is. Now, is that good or bad? That depends on your point of view. And I think it would be useless to argue about whether or not MS is an evil monopoly with someone who works there, just like it wouldn’t make sense for a MS employee to argue about it with a Linux geek.

For one of my anti-MS comments, I revealed the secret “plan” of Linux — to take over MS. When I made the analogy of Linux being brought to MS by one of its employees and then spreading like a plague, he said that it is a great analogy, that Linux is a plauge. :-) What I didn’t realize at the time is, people fear plagues :-D

During the conversation I couldn’t resist, and had to offer of a copy of Linux. :-) Overall, up to this point, I agreed with everything, except the obvious anti-Linux jokes.

A few hours passed, the programming part of the competition occured (I’ll post a link to the problems once they are up), and everyone assembled for diner, ate the diner, and prepared for the guest speaker’s talk. The title was, “The Future”. Before the talk, I saw the title and made a simple comment: “Belongs to Linux” that sparked a mini-demo of one of the nice TabletPCs with the screens that can rotate 180 degrees. He also showed how you can “draw” on the screen, by crossing out the title of the slideshow. I saw that there was “Microsoft” written there as well (no real surprised, after all, he works for MS). I couldn’t resist, but comment again: “The future isn’t Microsoft.” I’m not really sure if I am making myself clear, but I did really enjoy the conversations, because it is not always you meet a representative of the devil ;-) and it was fun throwing subtle anti-MS comments here and there, and listening to subtle anti-Linux comments as well.

The talk was targeted at the high school students, and could be sumed up in one question: “Why study Computer Science?” He talked about everything really, from offshoring to the idea that knowing how to program can help you in everyday life. One thing that drove me nuts was the word innovation. I know that the definition is positive (the act of starting something for the first time), but I just can’t forget the movie Antitrust, which gives the word a very negative conotation. I also think that it is a major buzz-word, used by marketing people to get people to trust, and buy the companies (this doesn’t apply only to MS) software.

Personally, I think that the greatest anti comment from him was a very well presented implication that academics/Linux users don’t want to get anything done.

Anyway, enough of me rambling, it was a fun experience. I know that I wasn’t objective, it’s hard to be, but I know that he wasn’t completely objective either — after all, his paychecks come from MS.

I am sure this will create a comment or two from the few readers of my blog. Please comment if you wish.