The Graduate Standards Body, aka GSB, is having our inagural meeting
today at 5:30 pm in the 7th floor playroom.  To be discussed is the
current proposal for standardizing the AI lab's computing environment on
Microsoft products.  The hope is to have all students switched over by
February 2000, with faculty and staff soon to follow.  Details of the
proposal include:

- Replacement of primarily single-user Linux, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX,
  and other Unix installations with Microsoft Windows 98.  

- Replacement of multi-user and file server operating systems with
  Windows NT.

- Retiring of LaTeX abstract, AI Memo, thesis proposal, and thesis forms
  in favor of Microsoft Word templates.  Standard macro libraries are
  being ported to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

- Replacement of VM, Pine, and Elm mail user agents and the ical
  calendar with the security and point-and-click simplicity of Microsoft
  Outlook 2000.

- Replacement of costly Matlab licenses with Excel and the Microsoft
  Excel Signal Processing Toolkit (with over 30 pre-made spreadsheets
  covering such exciting areas as linear interpolation and ASCII image
  processing.)


For more information about Microsoft products, see http://www.microsoft.com
For more information about the GSB, see http://www.ai.mit.edu/gsb


Neil Weisenfeld
Change Management Coordinator


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G I R L   S C O U T   B E N E F I T
5:30.  7ai.  See you there.
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