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Microsoft IT

Microsoft Unveils "Elevate America" 325

nandemoari writes "In response to the current economic crisis, Microsoft Corp. has come out with a stimulus plan of their own. Their goal is to help a large group of individuals use their computers to land employment in ways other than to generate a compelling resume. The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."
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Microsoft Unveils "Elevate America"

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  • Clearly, (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ixtl ( 1022043 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:17PM (#26962725)
    It's a trap.
    • Re:Clearly, (Score:5, Funny)

      by debrain ( 29228 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:20PM (#26962751) Journal

      It's a trick. Get an axe.

    • Re:Clearly, (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) * <seebert42@gmail.com> on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:24PM (#26962823) Homepage Journal

      Yep, they claim to be training Americans, but they're training them for jobs that are disappearing [nytimes.com] forever. [digg.com]

      • by rlp ( 11898 )

        Come one, it's clear Microsoft really cares [slashdot.org] about the American worker.

      • Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:40PM (#26963025)
        First off, of course computer sales are in a slump. They were in a slump during the last big economic downturn, too. (Remember the "bubble"?) That doesn't mean much of anything.

        Second: Microsoft's slump is probably due more to peoples' general (and increasing) dissatisfaction with Microsoft than anything else. But the economy will hurt them, too. Maybe a lot. After all, a 5-year-old PC can run Linux just fine. But try Vista on it. Nope, didn't think so.

        I would be willing to bet that Microsoft's slump lasts longer than any slump for Intel or AMD or Google.

        And IBM? Who cares? When was the last time YOU bought something from IBM?
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          First off, of course computer sales are in a slump. They were in a slump during the last big economic downturn, too. (Remember the "bubble"?) That doesn't mean much of anything.

          And the jobs never did come back to America- it took 7 years for the number of jobs to be EQUAL to that before the crash, and during that time we imported just about as many workers as we gained jobs.

          Second: Microsoft's slump is probably due more to peoples' general (and increasing) dissatisfaction with Micr

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            And the jobs never did come back to America- it took 7 years for the number of jobs to be EQUAL to that before the crash, and during that time we imported just about as many workers as we gained jobs.

            Most of those jobs didn't leave the country, exactly - they vanished because they were never real in the first place. You can only continue employment on speculative investment for so long. Like right up until the bubble bursts.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            "And the jobs never did come back to America- it took 7 years for the number of jobs to be EQUAL to that before the crash, and during that time we imported just about as many workers as we gained jobs."

            I don't think you can show causation here. Outsourcing had already begun; it wasn't caused by the "dot-com bubble".

            I did look at the second link, which by the way was not a link to a story, but a link to a link to a story, which is very bad form. Regardless, quote: "Whose last big processor, the Nehalem
          • goodbye Silicon Valley.

            And good riddance. Have you tried to buy a house in Silicone Valley lately? Worse, have you tried to sell that 1 bedroom bungalow you bought in Silicone Valley two years ago for 2.5 million dollars lately? Have you seen the news about California's budget problems and tax increases?

            I'm sad to see jobs move away from the US too, but there are certain areas of the US that have been popular with tech companies that have become quite hostile to workers.

            Shit, at 10.5 percent sales tax her

        • Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)

          by JasterBobaMereel ( 1102861 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @03:54AM (#26967081)

          XBox 360 - Chipset made by IBM
          Playstation 3 - Chipset made by IBM
          Wii - Chipset made by IBM

          I think most gamers care .....

      • Yep, they claim to be training Americans, but they're training them for jobs that are disappearing forever.

        The service economy is labor intensive.

        Which means that it generates countless supporting documents and records, to be printed or filed.

        The clerical worker is not about to disappear.

        The geek whose livelihood depends on the expensive and now dispensable gadget - like the TiVO or the iPhone - seems to me rather more exposed.

    • by syousef ( 465911 )

      "Elevate America". Is the icon for the program a hangman's noose?

  • That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by qoncept ( 599709 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:18PM (#26962739) Homepage
    That's great, but aren't there already more people equipped with computer skills than the market needs? America doesn't need more job-qualified people (at least, that's not the big problem), it needs jobs to put those people in to.
    • Re:That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:24PM (#26962827) Homepage

      SHHHH!!! You are going to mess up their plans! They are very large users of the H1-B visa program and they would like to justify their continued [ab]use of the program! After all, the firing of thousands in the US while claiming the are needs to expand the H1-B program in today's situation is a pretty questionable move on the surface. Now they have to do something to appease congress and fast!

      • Re:That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by IgLou ( 732042 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @06:21PM (#26963445)
        Wait... IIRC isn't this phrase:

        They are very large users of the H1-B visa program

        Supposed to say this?

        They are the largest user of the H1-B visa program

        I'm being cheeky about it. But, I remember when they opened the office here in Vancouver how excited everyone was and then no one was being hired here but there was a lot of people coming in from abroad to work here. The problem is on paper it always looks better to move things offshore because the "operating effeciencies" but look what happens when things are moved, poorer quality, poorer service and no one cares. I'm inclined to blame the "Walmart/everything's disposable and cheaper to replace mentality".

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Amen. This was confirmed in a Slashdot discussion a month or so ago when a poster said they once recruited for Microsoft. He said that the H-1B program essentially allowed Microsoft to find a larger pool of candidates fitting MS's exacting standards.

        I then said something like, "Do you know the H-1B program was sold to the American people as a tool to solve an alleged "shortage" of technical workers, and not a tool to replace or bypass "C" citizens for "A" guest workers?"

        His reply was that he really didn't f

        • There is no "shortage", only a desire to be picky for less.

          From what you've said, he wasn't talking about a discount, he was merely talking about quality, and anyone who has half a brain can tell you that good programmers are hard to find. Are you saying that terrible American programmers deserve the job over great foreign programmers because they're American?

    • Maybe they're training them to Move to Brazil or India [digg.com].

      • You mean teaching them to speak Portuguese or English?
    • aren't there already more people equipped with computer skills than the market needs?

      There surely seems to be too many MCSEs around. But I think there are jobs available for setting up and running Linux servers. Perhaps that's Microsoft's plan?

    • by Trepidity ( 597 ) <delirium-slashdotNO@SPAMhackish.org> on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:44PM (#26963061)

      Some areas have large surpluses, others have large deficits. One area I'm familiar with with a deficit is anything to do with data analysis, due to the huge piles of data companies like Google and Facebook are building up that they don't do nearly as much with as they could. If you can convince a company that you're both technically competent when it comes to data mining, machine learning, etc., and have knowledge in some area that relates to something to do with it (marketing/customer stuff, artificial intelligence, even just information visualization), there are plenty of jobs.

      Actually, in general, the best bet seems to be to have two useful skill areas that intersect in some reasonable way; really cuts down the competition as compared to going up against people in one area or the other in isolation.

      • If you can convince a company that you're both technically competent when it comes to data mining, machine learning, etc., and have knowledge in some area that relates to something to do with it (marketing/customer stuff, artificial intelligence, even just information visualization), there are plenty of jobs.

        And if you can convince a company that you can change lead into gold, you could probably find a good job right now, too.

        Otherwise, faghettaboudit.

    • Re:That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:46PM (#26963083)
      Actually, no, there are not more people with computer skills than the market needs. Yet, anyway. Unless by "computer skills" you are counting the ability to send an email or fill in a pre-made Excel spreadsheet.

      There is still high demand for people with REAL computer skills: programmers, back-end Web Developers, and good front-end Web Developers, for that matter. Not to mention the hardware end of things (although I am not necessarily referring to the "classical" IT position).

      And for the latest-and-greatest software tech, like Ruby and Python (and I will reluctantly include .NET, just because)??? The demand is still very high.
    • In economics labour is considered scarce, in general. Sure, the unemployment rate may be alarming and suggests otherwise, but if you've ever been on the hiring side and had to sift through applications and interview person after person you'll find that finding qualified people is quite difficult. Sometimes the company's expectations may be unreasonable, and they'll have to offer higher wages, perks and/or expect fewer hours. But the point is that there is never a surplus of people who are "right for the job

      • ...and I'll show you a man no one wants to work for. Multiply the offer by a factor of ten and you'll have the absolutely perfect people banging down your door. If you're having trouble finding someone in this economy, then either your offer is ridiculously low or your reputation precedes you.

        Gee, Frank told me he can't find anyone to sell him a BMW for $500 with a credit score of 310. Clearly, the government needs to intervene to force those lazy Germans to sell the product of their labor to Frank...

    • That's great, but aren't there already more people equipped with computer skills than the market needs?

      That depends on what you mean by computer skills.

      Take a look at the fine print in the help wanted adds. Count how many employers expect you to be productive when working with MS Office.

      You can move higher up the food chain and still see adds like this:

      Contract Administrator. Minimum 5 years experience. Must have extensive computer skills with speed and accuracy in MS Word, Excel, Access and Outlook. E

  • Come on.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by panoptical2 ( 1344319 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:21PM (#26962757)
    Microsoft is just grabbing the opportunity to train more devs and IT in advanced Microsoft products. After all, this is what ensures that companies use these products; that way, the companies don't have to pay for training.

    They also use this tactic with student/academia discounts, also.... (MSDNAA, anyone?)
    • Hey, don't knock MSDNAA. After I gave my mother my Windows machine and switched to OS X and FreeBSD, I realised I needed a Windows license to play some of my old games. MSDNAA provided me with an XP license, which I squeezed into a small partition on my ThinkPad.

      WINE has now got to the state where it supports the features that were in Windows last time I bought a Windows-only game, but the XP license was useful for a few years.

    • They were even giving away Visual Studio 2008 for free to students under that Dreamspark program a while ago. Not sure if they're still doing that.
      • They are. Server 2003 and Server 2008, too.

        It's actually a pretty nice program. For some tasks, .NET is nice to work with, and a free copy of the full version of VS2008 is pretty handy. (I'd rather they fix ASP.NET first, but that's never going to happen.)

      • of course they are. The catch, of course, is that once you graduate you don't get to keep the tools. At that point, you expect to walk into a job that has purchased them, or you purchase them yourself.

        Pretty profitable, this philanthropy lark!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 )

      Microsoft is just grabbing the opportunity to train more devs and IT in advanced Microsoft products.

      Yeah, my first thought when I read the summary was, "So Microsoft is teaching 'the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology,' huh? Does that include Linux administration?" Because seriously, that's a pretty important skill.

      No, I'm not just being snarky or karma whoring. That's a really useful skill.

  • by iYk6 ( 1425255 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:21PM (#26962759)

    As it is, the problem isn't a lack of qualified individuals, but rather a lack of jobs for them. On the face of it, this looks like a complete failure of an idea. But they have a secret. You see, they will teach people to use only Microsoft technologies, and if everything goes right, these people will be unemployable in an IT environment. When the number of qualified IT people is lowered to the number of jobs, success!

  • by Onaga ( 1369777 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:21PM (#26962765)

    At first, I was going to post about not berating Microsoft blindly. Then I RTFA... They have basic courses for free online, but anything past that is an advertisement for MS certs.

  • MS needs people that can understand how to help foreigners fill out H1B Visas.

    No point in getting skilled up in regular skills if they're just going to replace you with cheaper emplyees later.

    • by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @06:14PM (#26963365) Homepage

      If you're going to be a xenophobe, you might as well come out and say it, rather than blaming all of our economic woes on foreigners.

      The number of H1B workers is a drop in the bucket in the context of the national economy.

      The number of H1-B visas that can be issued in a given year is limited [wikipedia.org] to 65,000 by law.

      According [bls.gov] to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the total size of the American workforce was approximately 153.7 million last month (with unemployment at a troubling 11.6 million).

      An H1B worker is typically limited to a 6-year stay, unless the worker is applying for permanent residency. Assuming that all 65,000 workers stay each year, we have 390,000 H1B workers in the country at the present (I'd guess the actual number is somewhat less than that).

      At the very worst, H1-Bs might represent 0.25% of the national workforce.

      Microsoft employs 3,517 H1-B workers (the 3rd most of any American firm), out of 89,809 total employees, or just about 4%. This number might be a little high, although 4 percent doesn't strike me as being particularly alarming.

      Microsoft's recent round of layoffs (the first in the company's history) let go about 5,000 workers. Although I suppose these could have largely been avoided by eliminating all of the H1-B workers, that still leaves 1,500 workers, and assumes that every single H1-B worker was worthless to the company (which is somewhat doubtful).

      To summarize: Stop complaining about the H1-B workers. Although it's not a good idea to begin hiring foreign workers during a recession, the current crop of H1-B workers is simply too small to be having any substantial effect on the economy.

  • 2 million more MCSE's.

  • by blhack ( 921171 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:22PM (#26962789)

    Can step #1 be teaching everybody in my office that Caps lock is not the same as shift?
    Also that you need to turn on num-lock to use the numpad?

    Seriously...what ever happened to requiring basic computer skills to get an office job?

    • I would say rigorous interview process is to blame. It is more important to know how to get through interviews, lying or otherwise, than to have any actual knowledge.
  • by Rhone ( 220519 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:23PM (#26962793) Homepage

    Will Microsoft also be relocating those 2 million people to India so they can actually find jobs with their new skills?

  • its only MS Training (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:23PM (#26962795)

    i see no Cisco training, Apache, MySql, etc
    but i do see training on Server2008 (woopee do)

    this is just a fluff/feelgood PR initative, when really they want 2 millon mcse's/advocates/salespeople who only know about a single vendors product and are therefore ill equipped for the modern diverse IT industry.

    there is more to IT than MS and a Mcse

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      I agree 100%. Of course on the flip side, it would be nice for other vendors to jump on the bandwagon and start offering free training. Cisco and Oracle can start. Some *nix vendors would be welcome too, maybe NetApp and EMC. With some diversity in the education, it might be worthwhile.
      • Completely off-topic: am I the only one who has ever had the thought that companies selling products and then also selling training/certifications for use of those products is a weird conflict of interest?

        On one level, of course, it makes a lot of sense. Who better to provide training than those who make the product? On the other hand, how much of a motive do you have to make your product truly easy to use if you're also making tons of money selling training and certificates? If anything, it's all the m

        • by grcumb ( 781340 )

          Completely off-topic: am I the only one who has ever had the thought that companies selling products and then also selling training/certifications for use of those products is a weird conflict of interest?

          It's not at all off-topic, and no, you're not the only one who writhes whenever some vendor announces their new certification scheme.

          No matter how 'neutrally' they dress it up, product-specific training is more about product sales than it is about education. Not only that, but cookie-cutter certs also degr

  • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:24PM (#26962815)
    Nigerian "Princes" have been using their computers to generate income for themselves for years now...
    • by dmomo ( 256005 )

      Generating income? This is income that is rightfully theirs. And you know what? They need our help. So let's take these Microsoft classes so we can get the basic computer skills necessary to help them transfer the funds out of their Human-Rights-Abusing nation.

  • by 45mm ( 970995 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:24PM (#26962819)

    ... and install SilverLight!

  • by NotBornYesterday ( 1093817 ) * on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:26PM (#26962843) Journal
    I'm glad that I'm not the only one who reads this as "brace yourself for 2 million more unemployed MSCE's to dilute the IT field within the next 3 years". Sorry for the cynicism, but I see this as Microsoft trying to raise a generation of tech users and admins who know nothing of the tech world beyond Windows.
  • by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:26PM (#26962855) Homepage Journal

    Cause I'm having a hard time justifying a $200 OS for my $300 laptop ... at least in the Real America that most of us live in.

    Oh, and no takebacks on the Elevation, like they did with the firings of their staff and the pay they "overpaid" ...

    • BS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @07:04PM (#26963851)
      Cause I'm having a hard time justifying a $200 OS for my $300 laptop

      It's time the geek stopped wallowing in his own FUD.

      The Acer XP laptop [walmart.com] with an Atom CPU, a 9" screen, 1 GB RAM and a 160 GB HDD is $298 at Walmart.com.

      In six months to a year the OS will be Win 7, the specs significantly better, and the price will still be cheaper than OEM Linux.

      The lone Linux netbook?

      A Dell Inspiron with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of Flash for $350.

      "Not sold in stores."

  • Want to help more Americans become employed? How about you stop being such a vocal advocate for expanding H-1B visas?!?
  • by llamalad ( 12917 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:28PM (#26962875)

    Oh, so they'll be teaching them how to manage systems running real operating systems like AIX, Solaris, *BSD, and various flavors of Linux. Neat.

  • Good strategy for MS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:29PM (#26962893)

    This is a good strategy for MS, much like what Apple had with school districts - teach as many people in ways that make them dependent on your proprietary technology as you can, and call it a public service.

    In my opinion, the underlying problem in this economy is thus: The rich portion of the populace owns about as much as is possible before the economy collapses. Our market is based on speculation and expectation setting - on growth of money making schemes. But what happens when the players looking to take more resources run out of easy resources to grab? Collapse.

    The poorer 3/4 of the country have spent about all they are going to spend, and have gone in about as deep a debt as is plasible. It no longer makes sense to lend more money, or leverage more resources in hopes of getting return from that process. The owning class already has already extracted as many resources as they easily can, and it would take death on the part of the poorest folks to free any more resources to grab.

    The only way left to continue the desired cycle and free up credit would be to take resources from the rich, and give it to folks who would actually spend those resources in the process of just living day to day, which would open up the credit markets again, increase demand for products, and so on.

    But we've seen what outrage occurs when that happens - the whole point of the market for the larger players is to extract more resources, not give money to the "undeserving!" So, we get schemes like those from Microsoft - push for further ownership of mindshare, and call it charity.

    Ryan Fenton

  • by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:31PM (#26962903)

    "...The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."

    This would have been better and on point:

    "...The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in using Microsoft technologies to perpetuate their proliferation while increasing dependence on such technologies at the same time."

  • The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."

    That's what I'd call a broad curriculum.

  • Correction (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:33PM (#26962933)
    It should read, "... is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of Microsoft technology."
  • Hilarious (Score:3, Informative)

    by Luscious868 ( 679143 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:42PM (#26963041)

    So they wan to help laid off workers, just not their own laid off workers?

    Microsoft Bungles Severance, Asks Laid Off Workers for Money Back [eweek.com]

    How Microsoft-esque

    • They don't want to help laid-off workers, though. They say they do, but what they really want is to entrench themselves into the minds of "technologists" so that they have a viable business through the downturn of the economy.

      Problem is that people are starting to realize you don't have to pay for a lot of good software, and in a down economy that's very important, more important than what's familiar. When someones time to learn Linux starts costing less than the Microsoft stuff they're used to, we'll sta
  • Stupid UAC, look what it's come to. Now we have to elevate the entire COUNTRY just to make Vista usable.

  • by vonWoland ( 615992 ) <dmitri@nOSpAM.momus.net> on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:50PM (#26963129)
    The really brilliant part:

    Elevate America has two main offerings, one available immediately and one that will be provided in partnership with state governments

    Translation: MS will get money earmarked for retraining programs in order to flood the market with MS trained workers, depressing the wages of the latter and making their "TCO" so much more attractive.

    You have to admire a company that is able to screw us coming and going.

    • It's better than outsourcing. Every time outsourcing comes up, people say, "Oh, these bastard firms are too cheap to actually train American workers!".

      Well now an American firm is going to train American workers and everyone accuses them of trying to flood the market with cheap labor. Nice going. Microsoft is wrong when they fail to meet your demands, and when they do meet them.

      • Well now an American firm is going to train American workers and everyone accuses them of trying to flood the market with cheap labor.

        Uh, Microsoft isn't going to train American workers in any generally-applicable sense. It is going to train people to use its products specifically (partially with its own money, partially "in cooperation with state governments" -- i.e., via public subsidies) as a way of improving its competitive position vis-a-vis other technology firms. Its essentially a PR stunt trying to

      • It's better than outsourcing. Every time outsourcing comes up, people say, "Oh, these bastard firms are too cheap to actually train American workers!".

        You might want to go back and re-read those complaints. Usually the complaint is that the "bastard firms" are too cheap to HIRE American workers.

  • by jeko ( 179919 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:50PM (#26963135)
    Don't worry! Our MCSA will solve all your problems!
  • Am I wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mnemen ( 1054896 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @06:01PM (#26963217)

    But didn't Microsoft just cut their workforce? http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11561 [zdnet.com]

      I am sure it wasn't all in the US, but still one hand saying hey lets help American workers get the skills they need to get a job, and then cutting thousands of workers seems to be a bit conflicting in their messaging...

  • I think some /.ers miss the point when they suggest this is about selling MS software. This is not about increasing MS revenue by selling more software, this is about increasing MS revenue by selling courses and certifications.

    I am so pissed with MS lately, after Bill left they switched over from "certifying qualified people to support their products" to "selling certifications". Red Hat and Cisco certs are the way to go, they do a better job of testing real world experience, Red Hat being the best.
  • by jonaskoelker ( 922170 ) <jonaskoelker@ y a h o o . c om> on Monday February 23, 2009 @06:29PM (#26963529)

    Several posters have mused that Microsoft's strategy is to flood the market with MSCEs and grow the market for themselves.

    My general impression is that we've been hearing about organizations switching to Open Source solutions during the economic downturn due to lower costs.

    Could this be Microsoft feeling threatened and reacting by counter-attacking?

    Microsoft *is* big and is not going to die soon, that much is certain. But what's important is whether the trend is going up or down, and by how much. Being big just helps you control that (to some extent).

  • Really stimulating the economy would mean freezing their overseas hiring and rehiring their workers in the US. You can't really "Elevate America" if all you're doing is elevating China.

    The bottom line about offshoring that employers still don't seem to be honest enough to admit is that it's all about money. It's not because they really want some amazingly skilled people overseas, so much so that they'd lay some guy in the US with the skills to currently deliver work off and pay him unemployment insuran
  • Yep, a stimulus package "of its own" is correct.

    Americans are to be stimulated to:

    • Install Microsoft Silverlight
    • Licence Microsoft software
    • Study Microsoft software
    • Acquire Microsoft certification
    • Install Microsoft Silverlight
    • Visit Microsoft websites
    • Install Microsoft Silverlight
    • State the obvious
    • provide products and services with vendor lock-in, many or most of them billable
    • ???
    • Profit

    Seriously, where is the novelty in this list:

    • Expanded access to basic technology literacy and skills training
    • Basic-level information technology training resources through Microsoft Unlimited Potential and Digital Literacy curricula
    • Intermediate technology skills training courses, online and instructor-led, plus selected certification exams
    • Vouchers for eLearning course collections offered by Microsoft
    • V
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Just what I need, more competition for the inadequate number of jobs available to me.

  • by blamanj ( 253811 ) on Monday February 23, 2009 @08:11PM (#26964433)

    Gates: Elevate me!
    Ballmer: Now? Right here?

Most public domain software is free, at least at first glance.

Working...