MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is a remarkable story of an institution rallying around an ideal, and then delivering on the promise of that ideal. It is an ideal that flows from the MIT Faculty's passionate belief in the MIT mission, based on the conviction that the open dissemination of knowledge and information can open new doors to the powerful benefits of education for humanity around the world. In 1999, MIT Provost Robert A. Brown asked a committee of MIT faculty, students, and administrators to provide strategic guidance on how MIT should position itself in the distance/e-learning environment. The resulting recommendation -- the idea of MIT OCW -- is in line with MIT's mission (to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century) and is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership. Today, MIT OCW is a large-scale, Web-based publication of the educational materials from the MIT faculty's courses. This unique initiative enables the open sharing of the MIT faculty's teaching materials with educators, enrolled students, and self-learners around the world. MIT OCW provides users with open access to the syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists, even a selection of video lectures, from 1550 MIT courses representing 34 departments and all five of MIT's schools. The initiative will include materials from virtually all courses by the year 2008. Many people have contributed to the early success of the MIT OCW initiative, including the MIT OCW staff, our two advisory boards, and our many partners -- on MIT's campus and off campus. But most importantly, MIT OCW could not have published these courses, and will not succeed long-term, without the support of MIT's world-class faculty. Their remarkable dedication to education and MIT's mission is what will sustain MIT OCW long-term.

Lately, I have been finding myself feeling a little sorry for Vista.

What! You may be asking yourself. But, really, it's true.

What I am referring to is the way Vista is soo misunderstood! From one account, Vista is not selling well, Vista is too slow, Vista is nagging you to death, Vista has nothing new to offer, Vista is just strange.

Well, to expand on these, Vista is simply misunderstood!

Vista is a new type of technology that was designed from the start to be different. Vista is a more complex platform/technology, that is much more powerful & secure, yet more easily managed by the average consumer. Vista is a technology of tomorrow.

But it needs today's technology to make this bridge to tomorrow, not yesterday's wares. If you will purchase quality components, that are designed around the Vista Technologies, you will have a very fast & powerful machine that will be the most advanced computer in the world. And with this bragging right, will come the more preferred bragging right, as being the most secure operating system as well!

You see, Vista gets its gripes from users running it on older machines that were built with Windows 2000 or XP in mind. And, as a system designer, I can assure you that there is no comparison! XP is designed as an "extension" of Windows 2000, which is an extension of Windows 98, which is an extension of Windows 95, and so on, so it should make perfect sense that Vista would demand new motherboards, with faster pathways and more ram memory to open up and stretch.

If you are not ready to make this step up to new components, just give it a little time, and when your current machine needs replacing, make the step up to Vista! You will pay the same as a XP machine, and by then, you will have learned a little about Vista to make sense it. Not that you will need to, 'cause it is EASY to use and understand!

Microsoft went out of its way to make things easy and fun with Vista, and at the same time to offer much more. Microsoft hit the bullseye on this, with nowhere to go but up, with future updates and service packs that are sure to dazzle us with more.

Regardless of what you hear, Vista has out-paced every other operating system - in the number of copies sold by release dates, and it broke ALL EXPECTED sales forecasts by Microsoft for sales! Yes, Vista is a HUGE SUCCESS - in terms of software sales and operating systems as a whole. If Vista is not right for you today, it will be tomorrow!

In my opinion, Microsoft did us all a great deed by redesigning the code of Windows. The 95/2000/XP code was outdated and in need of replacement. Vista is the perfect bridge to carry us to the next generation of "space" computing and beyond!