On Microsoft's Increased Sponsorship of FIRST // Was: Microsoft Regional

[dtengineering]

I would like to simply thank Microsoft for their support of FIRST. The new regional in Seattle brings FIRST three hours closer to Vancouver, and makes it easier for our team to get local sponsors and community leaders down to see the competition.

As for their alleged plans of global "domination" of robotics, consider that for all the rants (some valid, some less so) against Microsoft, by providing the world with a de-facto standard operating system and office suite it has made it possible to write programs and documents that can be executed/read on basically any computer on the planet. Many CD posters were perhaps not around for the pre-Microsoft era, where software had to be written for Commodores, Apples, Tandys, Ataris, and dozens of other smaller marques, none of which could share media, let alone software or document formats with the others. The computing world was not better off without Microsoft. Right now the robotics world is not so different from the PC world of 30 years ago. Perhaps some standardization might not be a bad thing, and if it is done by a company that has created tens of thousands of good jobs in the Pacific Northwest and around the world that is guided by a person who will eventually be recalled as the most generous philanthropist in history... well... it could be worse, couldn't it?

Thanks again to Microsoft, General Motors, and all the corporations without which FIRST (and many other constructive endeavours) simply would not happen.

See you in Seattle.

Jason

Edit: Just saw the Seattle date... dang... it clashes with the two Canadian regionals... it is the same weekend as Waterloo and just one weekend before Toronto (shipping and time off school may be an issue)... maybe we'll see you in Portland again instead. Which isn't a bad thing at all, really. It might even be fun to go to Seattle to volunteer or just watch a regional for a change.