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Brendan <mailinglist at endosquid.com> wrote: > Great post. I couldn't have said it any more succinctly (obviously). Thanks... I wanted to amplify one of my earlier points-- "in my opinion, the money would have been better spent on professors' salaries instead of soon-to-be-obsolete computers." Just to give a more specific idea, my college was spending about $10-12 million (in 1970s dollars, figure closer to $40 million in today's devalued currency) per year on computer facilities. One year, in fact, I was asked (as a Work-Study part-timer) to come up with some input on a $2 million section of the budget on short notice: we had a day or two to come up with specific proposals for software purchases. I don't recall the amounts or other specifics of my own suggestions, but I do remember the shock which came a few weeks later: our ill-conceived budget had been *approved* and now we had to figure out what we *really* wanted to buy with it. I look back at my alma mater years later and wonder what its reputation would be if it had spent, say, a mere $2 million a year attracting the 10 to 15 best & brightest scholars into its then-emerging computer science department? It did in fact author a handful of the standards which define today's Internet RFC's. But it could have done *so* much more if it had acted in those early pre-Microsoft days on a vision of academic excellence rather than a mere lust for hardware. -rich
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