“What if the federal government were about to give away more than $400 billion in grants, but only people whose computers ran on Microsoft software could apply? That is the predicament that many scientists, scholars and others say they are in as the government enters the final phase of its five-year effort to streamline its grant-application process,” Rick Weiss reports for The Washington Post. “The new ‘Grants.gov’ system, under development at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, aims to replace paper applications with electronic forms. It is being phased in at the National Institutes of Health, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal agencies. All 26 grant-giving agencies are supposed to have their application processes fully online by 2007.”
“The problem: Although many U.S. scientists and others depend on graphics-friendly Macintosh computers, the software selected by the government is not Mac-compatible. And it is expected to remain so for at least a year,” Weiss reports. “Concerns about fairness during the transition have prompted angry humor on Mac-related listservs. ‘Uh, this would be the same government that spent a lot of time and money pursuing Microsoft for its anti-competitive behavior?’ one blogger wrote. ‘And they now offer a government site that mandates monopoly?'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Qka” for the heads up.]
[UPDATE: 4:06pm EST: IBM has purchased PureEdge, and now calls the product IBM Workplace Forms; IBM plans to add Mac support in the future and Grants.gov has committed to providing a cross-platform solution by November 2006. In the interim, Grants.gov, in conjunction with NIH, has created a Citrix server solution that allows Mac OS X users to complete their application packages using Mac OS X. The University of Wisconsin has created a single preconfigured package for Mac OS X users to access this solution. This is provided as a service to the community. More info and download link (2.7MB .dmg) here.]
It’s also the same government that has accessibility laws on the books and is not supposed to exclude millions of people from such application processes. This whole mess is typical, of course. Weiss reports that the reason it’s all happening is because of “a small Canadian company called PureEdge Solutions [that was given] the job of creating the electronic forms. The PureEdge solution, it turns out, works only with the Windows operating system. And that is especially galling, several scientists said, as at least one major grant-making agency, the National Science Foundation, has for many years been using a ‘platform-independent’ system that works seamlessly with all kinds of computers.”
Why does the U.S. government feel it’s okay to ghettoize millions of Mac users? Do you feel it’s okay?
Judging from the number of emails we have received already alerting us to this story and based on previous experiences, we can all definitely make an impact here (MacDailyNews was visited by 2.7 million unique visitors in January).
The most important action that you can take, which could actually result in some positive result, as your vote is the key to their having the job: U.S. House of Representatives contact information: http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml
Also contact: (1-800-518-4726)
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Ummmm, hey MDN, can we get an automatic spell checker built into this site?
That would help guys like me…
Like the saying goes,
“Bad spellers of the world, UNTIE!”
The only question that Mac users should write their congressmen/ is.
Are mac users black?
It’s much more inflammatory than suggesting that the government only write to open standards. But that won’t get press. And that is what the issue needs. Press. Nothing like a discrimination story for people to write about. And get angry about. It’s the only way America changes for the better.
just like the fscking government to spend billions on a WEBSITE!!!! WTF?? I get so pissed when I pay my taxes because they go to stupid shit like this.
Turd Ferguson,
Mac OS X offers system-wide spell checking:
Secrets to using Mac OS X Tiger’s built-in Dictionary with Safari
Judge Bork,
I know that, but unfortunately, I’m at work on a PC…using Firefox with the Safari look…bout as close to home as I can get!
Thanks, Shadowself. I have heard that NASA networks were easy to penetrate, now I know why.
NASA isn’t entirely Mac unfriendly. I work with a large number of people who work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD and they almost exclusively have Powerbooks. These are scientists, at GSFC there seems to a culture where the scientists have Macs (and some Linux) and the Engineers run Windows.
The main reason for the move to Macs for the scientists is that the majority of the software they run works until Unix based systems best, and poorly if at all under Windows (usually requiring Cygwin).
I haven’t seen such an asinine move in the treatment of a “minority group” since Katrina and New Orleans.
With over half the scientists and creatives using the Mac, and 90% of the computing world using peeshits and the site being Windoze only…maybe the govt doesn’t really want to give the money away
Third post which has been censored. Why is that?
MW-land, as in ‘land of the free’ Not!
I am a cancer researcher, a Mac user and my laboratory has been supported by NIH and the National Cancer Institute for 14 years. When I go to Washington DC to review grant applications for NIH, at least 25% to 50% of the scientists on those committees are using Macs. I am outraged that the NIH would develop an electronic grant submission system that is not Mac-compatible, especially when NSF and the Dept. of Defense (which funds breast cancer, prostate cancer and other biomedical research) have had electronic submissions systems in place for years that work with any computer.
Thanks, MDN, for posting this story and helping to make this issue more public. Contacting our elected officials is a great idea. You can also contact the following administrator at NIH who is in charge of this transition:
Megan Columbus <ColumbuM@OD.NIH.GOV>
“you guys drool over anything Mac or Apple related who cares. Let them use windows. I will use what works for me.”
What? The point is that this type of thing prevents people from choosing what works for them.
“Third post which has been censored. Why is that?
MW-land, as in ‘land of the free’ Not!”
Ron, babe, lay of the porn site contributions…didn’t you really mean “Hand of the free”?
I submit that all you dorks need to get laid.
Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit! Class Action Suit!
Isn’t Bush a Mac User?
This is yet another reason why Apple board member Al Gore should run in 2008!
This must be part of the military intelligence program. Besides it makes it easy for them to keep an eye on what you do with your doing.
And hey, that guy looked like a Quail.
I’d move to Iran!
Why is the U.S. using a company in some other country? Can’t they find someone here in the United States that could screw this up just as well?
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military intelligence: an oxymoron
cannon fodder: military job description
Of course this makes perfect sense. 99% of the entire world computing population uses windows so the site is developed to work with those. Who cares about the other 1 billion of 1% of the rest of the computing industry? Get used to the fact that sites only run on Microsoft based technogy which is far superior to anything anyone else comes up with. We know this to be a fact because that is what everyone uses and free market economies work on who has the best product. Apple has fallen flat on its face for years so it should not be surprising that people picked practically anything else to get away from them.
The internet would be a much better place if all websites were developed exclusively with Microsoft software and only worked with Internet Explorer. We would finally have every site work with every computer instead of dealing with people that don’t want to be compatible with the rest of the world.
microsoft users are basically lemmings: one jumps, they all jump; they don’t need to know why, its because eveyone else is doing it.
so much for ‘its better cause eveyone uses it’ , putz
i know a lot of people at nasa langley research center who use macs.