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USDOI Goes 100% Microsoft
SatanIsHere writes: "A memo (here, here, here, and here) dated September 19th, 2002 from the Department of the Interior's Acting CIO notes the new policy of a "Department-wide standard for computer operating systems (desktop and server)" Of course the good news is that this will herald a new era in government transparancy for the Department of the Interior.
SatanIsHere Continues: "On September 13, 2002, the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget signed the attached Findings and Determination establishing Microsoft Corporation's enterprise desktop and server software as the Department-wide standard for computer operating systems (desktop and server), office automation, and asset management software.... Benefits of establishing this new Department-wide standard include:
- Lower Total Cost of Ownership for the desktop, including lower user training costs.
- Centralized and efficient security policy administration
- Greater flexibility and management functionality from products that offer a broader range of management solutions that integrate with non-Microsoft environments
- Greater productivity and reliability attributed to less downtime.
- Extended support for a large base of software applications.
Business specific application software requirements (such as Sun/Solaris, IBM, AIX, etc.) outside the established Microsoft standard may be addressed through the OCIO waiver process."
This looks to freeze out an entire Federal Department (70,000+ employees) from non-Microsoft solutions, requiring a "waiver" to use anything non-MS. One more step to complete Microsoft World Domination. This is particularly ironic considering the problems DOI has had recently regarding IT security. If this isn't leveraging a desktop monopoly into other areas I don't know what is. :-P"
no comments on this story and the memo has allready been pulled by geocities..... outstanding.
and slashdotted!
Now they can blame MS for their abysmal performance!
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
...thanks to Bush and Bill, our tax dollars will now go towards his great-great-great grandchildren's education.
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http://www.geocities.com/satanishere66620
should they suddenly switch to Linux or some other system that doesn't fulfill their requirements just to satisfy some zealots?
I love how some armchair quarterbacks think they know whats best for other people.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Okay, I expect all those people complaining about the "open source must be considered" laws to start complaining about this "nothing but Windows is allowed to be considered" administrative policy.
Go ahead. I'm waiting.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Software is cheap, a few hundred bucks, much less then paying the employee for a few days.
I use linux at home, but at work I gladly use windows & MS Office, it is the best solution, or at least a decent one for many situations.
Hopefully the waiver process isn't so difficult that people can still select the best tool for the job.
Patriotism is the opium of the masses
Try this:
Go to google.com and enter "Go to hell" (With quotes)
Hit "I'm feeling lucky"
You will then find yourself on Satan's doorsteps.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
> [...]
> Centralized and efficient security policy administration
> [...]
> Greater productivity and reliability attributed to less downtime.
That are the Benefits of using M$? Funny, I never knew that widooze provides these features...
Telling about the early resignation of the author of the previous memo.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Of course, OCR'ing the images and serving HTML-only versions of a text document probably would have saved SatanIsHere some of Geoshitties' paltry bandwidth.
I'll be interested to read these, whenever someone manages to mirror them.
This is more or less exactly the policy implemented in my organisation five or six years ago, justified on TCO grounds. Since then, the TCO for all IT systems has increased by around a factor of ten while the amount of useful IT systems being run has perhaps doubled. Go figure. Perhaps the original TCO arguments were flawed. Smoke, mirrors, and marketing...
...surely?
That was classic intercourse!
No entry found for transparancy.
1 suggestion found:
transparency
Ok, lets cover them one by one:
* Lower Total Cost of Ownership for the desktop, including lower user training costs.
We've got problems at my work with people thinking that they are fully fledged programmers since they can record two macros and cut'n'paste the results into a super-macro. Of course users need to be educated, otherwise they will not be able to use the applications properly. (One example is people insisting on using spaces when they try to indent text, then go to the IT department and complain about the lines not being properly aligned...)
* Centralized and efficient security policy administration.
Oh, what? Surely one can pull the TP-cable out of *nix boxes too. Even the 'central' one in the basement... Security can not be a reason to use M$ software.
* Greater flexibility and management functionality from products that offer a broader range of management solutions that integrate with non-Microsoft environments.
This is M$ key to new markets. Take a standard, implement it, expand it in your solution in order to make your app 'integrate' with others, but not the other way around. A good application should be able both to import and export data properly. (M$ Word RTFs crash my FrameMaker... portable format - not).
* Greater productivity and reliability attributed to less downtime.
Again, you do not get less downtime by buying an expensive system with big flaws. They probably pay loads of $$$ to get a guaranteed time to support arrives and press the 'reset' button. *nix usually do not fail as ofter as Win*, thus no need to advertise that support will arrive in 2.3ms. The lack of service can be because it is not needed, not because it is an ingnored flaw.
* Extended support for a large base of software applications.
Since most advertised software is commersial, and they probably do not look for software them selves (just ask for it in a formal way and have companies make offers). Just use KDE as the German government intends to do. This does not only give a better quality of the software, but also save loads of license $$$.
But since Bill payed Bush's campain, Bush has to give the money back to Bill. As he doesn't fancy paying up at few $$$, he just takes the $$$ from the tax payers. Bomb the hell out of a few arabs and the software sums looks small in the contents.
Sure, Go 100% Microsoft. It'll make the drooling MCSE's on the site titter with glee at the thought of "unifying" everything in the Microsoft way.
But you know what 100% Microsoft translates to? 100% downtime when the next "melissa" or "nimda" hits. I've BEEN there. I've worked at companies like this. Just wait--they'll get tagged by the next Outlook script and the entire site will be down for a day or two while ONE MCSE pokes at the keyboard, surrounded by one or two other MCSEs standing and staring at the guy typing--all the while pulling in huge $$$ in overtime, on top of the huge $$$ they get just for having a 4-letter Microsoft-approved title. Everything is on hold until the next virus update to "fix" the problem, since goodness knows there isn't much in terms if diagnostics and repair you can do in WinNT by itself.
There's a reason why I gave up being a sysadmin--100% Microsoft is mostly why. Can anyone else stuck in 100% Microsoft/MCSE land corrorborate the above story? I'd be surprised if the exact same song-and-dance didn't happen at every Microsoft site.
The real story is about how government agencies are shooting themselves in the foot by NOT going with Microsoft, especially .Net. A good article on this can be found at AngryCoder.
What the head article fails to mention is that a Federal judge ordered the Department of the Interior to shut down all internet connections last year. With no from-the-outside network attacks, the Microsoft systems might stay up for days, even.
Is this really about Microsoft World domination, or rather about Microsoft Word domination?
Offtopic example.
Peter: "Why not cross the streams?"
Egon: "It would be bad."
Peter: "Define bad."
Egon: "Imagine all life as you know it stopping instantainiously, and every molocule in your body exploding at the speed of light."
Peter: "Ok that's bad. Important safety tip."
Ontopic example.
Hemos: "Don't post links to That server!"
chrisd: "Why?"
Hemos: "It would be bad."
chrisd: "Define bad."
Hemos: "Imagine all internet traffic as you know it stopping instantainiously, and every packet on the network bombarding the server at the speed of light." chrisd: "Ok, that's bad. Important safety tip."
Shut the -
And I hear on the grape vine, that the company I contract for (a very large retailer in Australia) is thinking of moving further *away* from M$. The reasoning was something along the lines of them giving so much money to them in the past, and getting practically zippo in return.
We currently have a standard desktop environment of windows 95/98 (and some NT workstations apparently), and probably 85% NT 4 server for the servers.
why is it such a terrible thing if a government office standardize on some license requirements (e.g. only buy free software) allowing any vendor to compete, but not a problem when a government office standardize on a single vendor, and accept whatever license that vendor provides?
Somehow the idea of a government office being unwilling to accept any license is soo evil that even some traditional free software advocates are against it, yet standardizing on a single vendor is so commonn that it rarely get mentioned.
That's the kind of sh*t that pisses me off, I don't pay taxes to have the government simply hand that money to a corp. I am morally opposed to. I wouldn't mind if they simply chose the best tool for the job and the tools they needed happened to be MS software, but this just reeks.
There is absolutely NO REASON why a waiver should be needed to use something other than M$ software, that's ludicrous and stinks of corporate pandering.
* i usually stay away from using $'s in M$, but in this case i thought it was appropriate
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
And this time they didnt boil the frog, the put it in hot water first!
On the other hand, all is there is something by satanishere, geocities is trashed. So no proof. Is this story true? And Mr.Editors you know too well not to post links to geocities.. dont you. Better aproach would have been to download the images and then put them on slashdot.Nobody here knows what that memo contains, what is there in it, so before this post goes to the HALL OF FAME maybe we can see the images please.
Another thing, apparently DOI has 70000 employees, are any of them on slashdot.. I really want to hear what they say about it. Or if none of them are there onMy Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I like how everyone here seems to be skirting the issue that linux isn't ready for desktop use, and that's probably what it came down to for the board. An os can be as stable as a mountain, but if it takes four months to train people to use it..
What good does linux do you when you've got a stable operating system that gets decent uptimes (yes kids, Win2k and XP can stay on for months without a reboot.. I know, it's about f'n time.) that your mom could use with ease? No good at all. Lets see. I could use free software, or pay money for Windows licenses so that my employees don't get paid for several days while sitting on their asses taking lessons from some long haired pot smoking hippie about how great and easy to use and configure gnu/linux is.
I do like the predictability of the news article though. Perhaps instead of improving the user interface and using sound design principles in user interfaces that have been written about ad nauseum since 1991 we can all continue spreading anti-ms fud. Because, honestly, who wants to give the end user what he wants when we're all happy using our archaic geek tools that Civil Servant Joe T. Smith will never be able to comprehend.
And by the way, talking about old worms and old virii is bad karma. Especially when holes exist in open source software as well (which are being activly exploited by the same crowd). Both OSes, when patched with the latest updates are just about as secure. The problem is most corporate users don't patch either OS. If you live in a glass house don't cast stones.. or something.
Much to my surprise, though, all I was able to mirror for you guys is this: http://home.centurytel.net/mraymer/sorry.gif
Never underestimate the power of a Slashdoting, I guess. ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't they have some responsibility to do something about this? Something in line with industry standard practices.
What qualifications do you need to be an editor, anyway?
Mouse, hand, arse to scratch, bannana to eat.
Perhaps they should employ google's news-bots.
The biggest joke is perhaps the part about lower costs from more reliable services. Sorry, but I don't know of anyone who has knowledge of Unix and Windows systems than can attest to better MS reliability, ever. It would seem that it would have been just as valid for the report (when naming reasons) to say, "MS has cool commercials" and "The trees around Redmond are really pretty this time of year."
Windows is definitely the solution in the case of desktops, especially with users already used to Windows. However, for backend reliability Windows has proven that it is only reliable in attracting exploiters and malicious code. This is just another example of blind bureacracy in action. The licensing costs alone will put the budget to a point that the equivelent agency that runs Linux backends would be able to buy 100's of more computers. I would like to see some detailed studies by the DOI as to backup their financial claims. However, they do have one point that is valid. If starting from scratch, it is indeed easier and cheaper to train administrators (at least to a partially competent technician level) in Windows than in any *nix. Call everyone monkeys if you wish, but the fact that a well organized GUI can be quickly adapted to by many will produce much more technicians than the unorganized mess (usually the fault of app/package and distro producers admittingly) that is *nix. Too many times, people trying to simply get the damn thing to work will ask, "where do I find out all the details on how to make X happen?" Often the answer is not there, or buried deep within a chaotic cavern of unorganized information and references. When asked about the silly redundancy (good example is Apache, where in writting to the httpd.conf you must often put certain definitions and features in multiple places) I can't answer except say, "Well I think someone just wanted it that way." (don't get me wrong, I love Apache... but that is an oft repeated question by many)
Department Of Injustice
Not the real thing, and of course, the easiest solution to any computing problem is "Buy what Msft has" - and if they don't use any Win9X/ME it'll be good enough. But they're sure to run into 'issues and limitations' that'll require regular payments to Msft in the future, but by then the ACTING CIO will likely be outta there. Remember that when you go to your favorite national park and have to pay $22 to get in, a fraction of that is guarenteed Msft income, and they own the digital rights to the sunset too.
My favorite stand in govt official is "Acting Assistant Deputy Secretary" - that actually exists!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I wonder at times, if Al Qaeda, doesn't lobby with middle men for USA to move more of their archetecture to MS. Bush says that he want a secured and cheap system, yet he moves to MS. I have no doubt that some of this is a payback, but I also wonder if it is possible to trace back to a lobbying group that appears to be neutral but is backed by Al Qaeda.
1. To hock your complete computer infrastructure to a single company.
2. To enhance a monopoly
3. A euphemism for being less than capable of chosing and maintaining a real infrastructure i.e. "They've gone completely Microsoft!!!"
4. Giving your shareholders profits now and forever to Microsoft.
5. Allowing BillG to become your sysadmin.
6. An unreasoning fondness for virii.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
This is the cabinet agency that encompasses the Bureau of Indian Affairs, among other bureaus. How poetic would it be for the Red man to exact his revenge in this environment of computer monoculture the Department is establishing.
Anybody know any computer-savvy Natives?
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq"
-- Paul Wolfowitz, 7/21/2003
Since Linux and open source in general is a grounds up movement its hard to fight for Microsoft. They target the big players instead. When the snowball starts and some big agency adopts linux and it falls out well there will be no way in h'll to stop it. Microsoft needs to fight general adoption of linux. The day linux get widespread is the day when all the other players curently developing for windows only will throw an eye onto linux too.
One thing i have hard to understand is how they can prise interoperability on one hand and not demand open standards at the same time.
HTTP/1.1 400
I guess this sort of thing needn't necessarily be bad...
As long as you get Microsoft to sign a clause specifying that they will pay for migration costs should the department wish to switch to another architecture at some time in the future....
Here is the contacts page from the DIO web site...
http://www.doi.gov/ocio/aboutus.html
Contains the names of the CIO and Deputy CIO.
No email contacts though....
Did they go through the appropriate bidding process that is needed whenever a substantial government contract is offered?
If you used all Sun, Linux, or Apple software/hardware, you'd have the same compatibility bonuses as you do with Microsoft. Compatibility is not unique, or even native, to Microsoft. Hell, they removed from Office XP the ability to open other office suites' documents with the default install; isn't that a step BACKWARDS for compatibility?
$8.95/mo web hosting
So linux is not ready for the desktop hey? Right now this very morning I have at least 100 + shop floor users running desktop linux being served from two servers. Now these guys are just your average joe blow's most who had never even operated a computer system. I would even venture to say that most are even lucky to have a high school education (not the brightest bunch). They where given a one hour instruction period covering the applications they would be using. I have never ever gotten a single problem call in the six months we have been running it. This can only mean that you run at a intelligence level close to a retard.
This means a Linux box will be allowed in the DOI if it's really necessary. All this really does is prevent the l337 h4x0r downstairs from running a Linux box he doesn't understand and can't make secure.
The "100% Open Source" policies would not allow anything Microsoft, even if it is the best tool (gasp!), based purely on ideological (read: impractical) reasoning.
I personally beleive the Federal Government should be banned for ten years from buying any NEW products or services from any company which has been found guilty of being an illegal monopoly, when there are alternatives available from other companies.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
I mean, think about it, we have a president, who doesn't give a rats ass about anything except corporations and the military. Look at the economy, it has to be every one else's fault but the administration's. Yell at Congress to lower spending, so we can raise military spending, and then keep pointing to Iraq as doing what they do, drawing attention away from the economy and from Isreal basically doing what Bush moans that Iraq might do in the future. What utter nonsense!
But we knew this would happen. With a pro-corp prez in place, MS would get off, and now it is being espoused by the government. Nice going, morons. We don't want to punish MS for being a monopoly, no, we want to have them continue to publish wonderless software, and we'll even use them!
If I could convince my gf and my ex (for the kids), I'd move to Canada already, or even Europe. Sure, freedoms and technology are not the same, but so what. These areas of the world are getting it (except Blair, what's he gonna get for his support?). Some Superpower....what's that saying? Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thanks Bushki!
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
All specialized applications are UNIX, and will be waived.
The major problem is with administrators. There arent enough qualified people here to run a multimode environment. They cant pay enough to get qualified Americans to work for them, and they cant contract out to H1Bs.
in short, I dont think this will have much of an effect.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
...this fake distinction really bugs me.
Then change the Constitution! We live in, by word and act, a REPUBLIC thank you!
Democracy and Republic are orthogonal descriptions. There are democratic republics and non-democratic republics. Ours is democratic.
All's true that is mistrusted
That site makes me even angrier. The banner says "Click here for the .NET source code!" ...after clicking, you get dumped on a storefront that says "Sure you can view the source...for US$25!"
Jeez. I can understand paying for a website engine, maybe...but at $25, it's quite obviously just for you to view (you could use it, but enterprise code would seemingly be a lot more than $25). Also, do they really think their e-zine could compete with Slash, Everything, LiveJournal, Blog, etc? Come on. And THOSE are all free.
--- What
I contracted for the Texas Dept of Human Services, they, like most government shops, had a policy standardizing on MS products. What the higher ups quietly ignore is their critical WAN infrastructure is mostly linux. A small insular group of network guys set it up (the DNS server had a 9 month uptime and was still running a 2.0 kernel). Most of them were not experts, just guys who had setup Linux early and then kicked back and relaxed (not an ideal system from a security standpoint).
Email went down for three days while they blamed the Exchange box, I had explain MX records to them and prove that it was disk overload on their primary MX (sendmail +Redhat 5.2). They couldn't even remember who had the root password.
What I discovered was that government is still the last big company around. The place where no one ever gets fired, or laid off. Where the new technology approval board is run entirely by people whose only IT training is in Cobol and Unisys 2200. The few really smart people are full of great ideas, but they are rendered inert by the great mass of "lifers".
In Texas, most of the real IT work gets done by big name consulting firms, at extraordinary costs and questionable quality.
Yes but this doesnt just concern linux, it concerns every other system or vendor out there. As stated in the memo nothing but MS is allowed.
Since there are other OS than MS and linux that has the potential to become big any policys like this is ludicrus and just stops up development. Today all development in the OS market is pretty much in a coma. Think about it for a second, if the only viable competitor to Windows is a free OS that is much better in some areas how well is that market really?
Today there arent anyone that seriously even considers making a new better OS from grounds up because of MS. Linux can perhaps take enough market to open up the competition again and i think thats what many would like to see.
I'm a sys-admin for a small school, and I'm familiar with the restrictions of a bidding process. Most likely the DOI will go through the appropriate bidding process by producing an RFP specifying a Microsoft solution, and then various vendors will bid on a systems solution centered on a Microsoft product.
By narrowing the systems specifications right down to the software vendor, a CIO can pretty much get what he/she wants. Sure, there are lots of MCSE's selling MS solutions, but if the RFP specifically requests a Microsoft product, that effectively excludes all other systems vendors.
-ted
I find it amazing that a government department should have an official policy of only purchasing from one particular vendor. I would have thought a fundamental factor in defining a purchasing policy in any large organisation would be making sure that there is competition amongst your suppliers. It's basic business sense, isn't it?
then you had to dig up the partisanship crap and make it into a republican conspiracy out to murder innocent arabs to cover shady business deals.
I know for a fact the contract with Microsoft is for $17 million dollars if they get both Active directory, desktop OS and Exchange. I have been fighting for Open Source Alternative for over three years. The Acting CIO is Hord Tipton so email him and his friend Billie Clark at US Office of Surface Mining. Tell them Why 100% Microsoft is a bad idea.
Government IT Worker
When a government department adopts a Unix-based solution, it's because they're far sighted and everyone gets a pat on the back.
When a government department adopts an MS-based solution, it's because Microsoft is in league with the Devil and are trying to take over the world.
How about some sense prevails and people realise that for some things, Microsoft may actually be better!
---- "I would be careful in separating your weirdness, a good quirky quantum weirdness, from the disturbed weirdnes
That's true if the machines aren't connected to the Internet, and if they're not heavily utilized workstations, etc.
In practice, a connected server needs to be rebooted more often than that, if only to apply the latest security patches.
Heavily utilized WinNT/2K/XP workstations need to be rebooted regularly to overcome kernel memory leaks and the like.
If you'd like to see this for yourself, try this test: load enough copies of IE that you run out of kernel memory or other resources. You'll know you've reached that point because it will silently refuse to open another window. Now close all the windows you've just opened. Carry on using the machine and see how long it is before you find that new applications can't be run, that menus don't drop down, etc. To get some sense of what's happening, monitor the numbers on the performance tab of the task manager while you're doing all this, particularly kernel memory - it goes up, but mostly doesn't come down. That might be fine if it was reusing the allocated memory, except that it doesn't - it ultimately cripples the machine.
The bottom line is that Win2K/XP is fine for light-duty use and applications not connected to the Internet. For serious computing, though, you need a real operating system.
I agree with you, in fact it probably would be better to say, "I formulate political and ideological ideals from analyzing facts"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, the announcement is probably going to be blatantly ignored by all the DOI Bureaus/Empires. They are all their own little fiefdoms. I retired from the DOI Office of the Secretary IT network/web team team about 3 years ago. At that time, the DOI "Webmaster" did not know HTML, much less CGI or anything else; he used Front Page to build a little office home-page. It had animation bouncy things on it. He had no *nix nor any web experience of any kind when he was hired. ?? The Office of the Secretary Webmaster (my boss) needed to spend most of his day developing and maintaining a COBOL-based personnel administration application. He did not know any *nix nor did he care to learn it. (To be fair, he didn't have the time.) Each of the Bureaus headquartered in the DOI Headquarters building in DC had (has?) a seperate LAN/WAN system and seperate Internet access points. The DOI web site was funded by the Public Affairs office, which was/is not really sure what to do with the web. After working at GSA and FEMA, two orgs. with outstanding IT teams, the DOI lack of interest in IT, lack of qualified IT leadership, and the resulting mediocrity was very disappointing. However, the idea to "invest" in M$ is not very surprising. They had already begun to move that way, years ago. It's what the contractors use. It's what the contractors told them to use. Their lack of IT expertise means they must trust the contractors to provide their IT leadersthip. Apparently, they picked the wrong contractors and are just getting ate up. I could go on and on (and probably already have). Don't place too much emphasis on this "announcement". The Bureaus won't. It's just a way for that office to get its name in lights for a little while. Sad, but true.
pfS.
[Ironically, when the DOI web site was heavily attacked by the Chinese after we accidentally blew up their embassy in Bosnia, our Unix-based Apache web site, a left-over from a previous webmaster (bless his unix-loving butt), administered by a new-to-unix admin.(me), faired pretty well while the Park Service's M$ IIS4-based web site was hammered through an anonymous ftp account and was down for weeks. (Everything was secure but the gifs. I thought I had everything buttoned up, but for some reason, when I uploaded files to the server via Hummingbird, the gifs (& only the gifs) permissions were set to 'w' for everyone. So we had little Chinese flags all over DOI Home page for about 12 hours. Coulda been worse. Oddly, the Chinese sent tons of XXX-rated mail to the webmaster email address. Ow, ow. ]
The government is adopting the most advanced OS on this planet. hey who coyuld be happier Im so glad microsoft is still ahead even after this recent witchhunt by the US DOJ and funded by Microsofts competition.
The rumor is that this was actually caused by someone blaming lack of standard email servers (Lotus Domino and Groupwise) for screwing up a email greeting/distribution from the Secretary. This problem was probably actually caused by network connectivity problems, rather than standardization issues. I got it fine from my Groupwise POP server.
Thus this unfunded mandate to move to some standard platform.
Given that there is no money behind it, and we're talking 40+ mill in LICENCES ALONE!!!
I don't see this happening anytime soon.
On the other hand, it is almost easier for Linux to interoperate with MS stuff than Novell, except Exchange/Outlook, which does have a non-free solution (Evolution).
Further, we have several pieces of Unix only software, and I don't see those being ported soon.
------ Nope, Not me, you can't prove I said that!
I use to run the web servers amongst others for Heriot-Watt University Students Association. On this box we run:
It has now been up for 4 and a half months and the last reboot was to install SP2. No version of *NIX can upgrade its core software (i.e. kernel) without rebooting. I do NOT to that it is fair to say that Microsoft software will only work on under-used workstations and when not connected to the Internet. This web server serves out > 410,000 hits a month on a P2-300 with 128 MB Ram. Please, people check your facts before you start accusing Microsoft software of being completely useless.
---- "I would be careful in separating your weirdness, a good quirky quantum weirdness, from the disturbed weirdnes
"Centralized security control"? Sure, Microsoft can do that. Until one of your domain servers gets 0wned.
Frankly, this doesn't come as a shock. Government agencies like the USDOI have always been of the attitude that if they pay more, and do less, it's better in the long run. But if they plan on running their entire networks on Microsoft servers, I plan on watching the news for hack reports.
I gotta remember not to drink pop when reading
The DOI is he same agency that was forced off the web by a court ruling in 2001 because it was easy to hack Indian royalty accounts. This turned off National Park Web site, earthquake data sites, etc. also in the DOI. What a mess at the time.
We don't need the Freedom of Information Act anymore... and I was worrying about our rights being taken away
What happens when a government organizaton decides to use Microsoft products and has to shut down all operations for N days because:
a) The authentication server at MS crashes or screws up so all the Windows XP desktops can't phone home to get Bill's permission to run?
b) One of those lovely IIS virii starts sending sensitive documents out to every pr0n vendor in anyone's mail spool?
c) The DRM system determines that a critical bit of multimedia presentation, which might decide the creation of a policy, can't be shown since it hasn't been authorized and therefore MIGHT be a violation of someone's copyright?
If you thought your Government was lazy before... man!
Here is a clue for you. The US constitution grants three powers to the federal government. Military is on there... social services and economic wrestling are not. While this is undoubtedly a bad decision for the DOI to make and their stated reasons are a bit ironic, it does not change the fact that we have yet to slip into a socialist state. However with the help of sheep like you, that is happening slowly over time.
Any economist (of any political spectrum) can prove that top down economic changes take several years to begin to show in the actual economy. Grassroots, which is very difficult to control can be instantanious. An example of a grassroots (or bottom up) issue would be if people (justified or not) began to believe that normal computers and monitors actually caused illness in 90% of humans. If people stopped wanting to use, trust or be near computers after that our economy would collapse very soon. Here it would be the duty of the government to first gather and present the relevant facts, then in the case that computers really were that bad, help organize (but not run) people together to work around the problem and reroute the economic shift (imagine how good paper companies would do for a short while).
If you realized how pathetic people like you sound, and how much people like you lend credibility to arguments that not everyone should be able to vote... it is people like you that put monsters like Hitler and Stalin into power. Microsoft got to where it is because of stupid sheep like you. I have a feeling that this reason alone is the major cause for animosity towards MS by meat puppets such as yourself. (clue: you see yourself in both MS and their supporters) If you want to help squash MS, then please start helping organize alternatives. There are plenty of hackers out there, what we need now are more engineers. We need more people that can organize information so as to make it very easy (yes I said easy, not just easier) for a newbie to pick up linux and start using it... not a hacker picking it apart and programming his own scripts and apps, but just Joe Enduser. The arrogance that has prevented this is exactly what is causing the problem. Stop depending on the government to fix your problems and carry you around. Our country was founded under the principle that mankind can govern and take care of themselves. If you go against that, then you are saying that people cannot survive without being told what to do and are unreliable for their own lives... that then justifies the grey hairs to control aspects of your life that you will not like too much. "When we seek to control our neighbors, we seek to empower them to control us"
Interesting, so you're saying that MS systems connected to the internet CAN'T stay up for days?
In the interests of transparency and to prove you are not just another MS Astroturfer perhaps you could prove this rather than just claiming it by supplying a Netcraft link.
As long as you choose Microsoft!
There are two types of people; those who divide people into two types of people, and those who don't.
So did they put the document there (where it instantly got slashdotted out of existance) on purpose? They can say: "hey we're open" but actually we can't read it and can't properly make comments?
Just a thought. Of course trying to figure out what someone who'll standardise on Windows will do is probably rather hard (random stupidity is hard to track).
Oh well I suppose Bill needs to sell it to someone, as fewer and fewer of us in Europe are buying it!
yet another /.ed site... Has anyone considered setting up temp pages with basic text for links posted, particularly when the links are to an obvious personal page site?
I swear, I think there are more 'bandwidth exceeded' notices here than there are content M$ users total.
When I was a young SW Engineer working on military systems, I frequently had "great" ideas involving hardware "shot-down" (pun intended) because the system requirements from the gvt. demanded components that had a "second source." This prevented the system from being dependent upon a sole provider of a component. So even if more technically advanced hardware was available, that did not matter because a single supplier placed the whole system at risk... the risk that we may not be able to replace that component in the future - rendering the whole system useless based upon the unavailability of one component.
I believe open source needs to be looked at the same way...and, in fact, many gvt's around the world are doing just that.
Stop saying that requiring open source EXCLUDES MS. It does NOT. The problem is that MS does not have any products which meet the customer's system requirement for multiple sources for system components.
MS (the company) is not excluded, their closed-source products are. If they wish to compete for systems that require multiply-sourced components,they should make products for that market.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
There is a strong case to be made for conformance of systems.
.NET Server 2003 comes out then. What do you do? You either have to upgrade all of your servers (and probably patch your desktops) or stay with a now old server OS.
One problem, conformance of systems usually means that you have to use older systems to ensure conformance. To get conformance right now you'd have to throw out most of your current PC's and buy/upgrade all of the desktops to the latest version of Windows XP. Additionally, you'd have to migrate all of your servers to Windows 2000. With that accomplished you would now have a conformant layout.
Then, you'd have to avoid making any upgrades to the systems. All you could do is patch and make sure every box had all the patches. Sounds great. So, this whole process gets completed somewhere around Q3 2003 (being generous time-wise).
Windows
BTW, this part hasn't even started to go into the actual applications being run on the desktops and servers let alone the hardware being used by them.
Basically, "conformance" is impossible. Hardware changes too quickly. Software changes too quickly. You'll either need to freeze everyone in time or just deal with the fact that everyone will be running different OS's.
Finally, considering the DoI's current track record with security (couldn't even put the Indian records into a DB) I find it very hard to believe they would be able to stay up with the patch-wave that is MS.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
What opinion has General Accounting Office about that policy? (One of GAO duties is to oversee money usage of other federal agencies). If they don't know - somebody point to GAO about that...
Beside the fact that the employees probably had almost nothing to do with the decision, it is objectively bad for the government to lock up our information in a propriatary format.
The real tragedy of this will come down the road, when not even current MS crap (if they survive) will be able to read the obsolete Word2002 formats stored in the archive. Even today, I expect that you would have some problems reading at least some old windows document formats in the most current editions.
MS development processes are so ad-hoc and market driven that they cannot even keep track of all the external representation formats that they have created. They just don't get it. The reason that experienced and skilled software architects and designers insist on supporting mature standards is because otherwise it turns into an unmanagable mess. Stability is way more important than wiz bang features. Note that this is also the source of many of their security problems, at least the ones that aren't due to allowing program fragments to run from untrusted sources, but I digress.
This is also why the Linux platform is so much better. Even though it is not yet at a maturity and stability level that satisfies us, it is still completely usable because it doesn't just abandon standards in an attempt to gain market dominance. Once a standard is established and has become stable, you can be certain that it will be widely adopted. In this environment, any number of projects can implement that standard, and users have a choice to stay with the old reliable tool, or upgrade to get more features and functionality. Or even use both situationally.
Go to Windows Update for a freshly installed Win2k box... How many of those updates say, "This update must be installed seperately from all others"? At least 3-4, even after installing SP3.
How many of those aforementioned updates require a reboot?
All of em'.
When a *web browser* patch requires a reboot, there is something fundamentally WRONG WITH THE SYSTEM.
At worst case under Linux, a web browser patch to Tux will require unloading and reloading a kernal modules. If you're using any other web server, you can do an upgrade, and restart the webserver. Total downtime? Restarting Apache takes a fraction of a second.
This is the difference between Unix and Windows - Unix requires a reboot only for the most major upgrade of all, the kernel. Anything else doesn't require a reboot. Windows, on the other hand, needs an update for damn near any system update you'd like to make, and a significant number of system changes require an update too. You need to reboot to change *font scaling* for chrissakes. (Let's not get into the fact that there is no need whatsoever for any server machine to be running a GUI at all times because it's an unnecessary waste of resources - A true server should be 100% administratable without even a video card and just a serial console for worst-case scenarios when the network goes wonky.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I worked for USGS for awhile and their management is
a joke, just like most other gov agencies, only worse. They treat most of their computer people like
crap and wonder why they can't get any good ones.
There are some good people there, just not many.
The earlier post about the web master that was hired
without anything close to good qualifications is
typical.
So MS equips The Department of InFeriors with its Software? ...
Good match if you ask me.
Oh well, couldn't resist
Contrast that with the high availability for non-experimental products like Netware for file sharing or Exim,Postifix, or Sendmail for mail.
Sounds like the government's Fraud, Waste, and Abuse hotline, 1 (800) 647-8733 is going to be ringing off the hook.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
.. and this whole thing is basically nonsense. As briancnorton said in his post, expect waivers to fly like snowflakes in a blizzard (if they even bother to try to enforce this at all.)
At the installation where I work, we've got dozens of legacy systems running on UNIX boxes as far as the eye can see. Some of these are processor-hungry image processing applications that run on high-end boxes from SGI and Sun. These systems are not going away anytime soon, regardless of what some tech-clueless bureaucrat at the top of the chain would like to think.
I'm posting this from an SGI O2, sitting on my desk next to a PC that dual boots Win2K and Linux. All of the developers in the cube farm outside my office door are doing UNIX development on Linux PCs. In the past couple of years, we have started to shun more expensive solutions in favor of software like Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL/MySQL. There are currently several efforts underway to port existing systems from proprietary UNIX (i.e., IRIX or Solaris) to Linux so that we can leverage inexpensive, commodity hardware platforms and get away from paying exorbitant maintenance fees.
We're moving pretty aggressively towards open standards and free software, and I would guess that this memo will have exactly zilch effect on that.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
It has now been up for 4 and a half months and the last reboot was to install SP2.
Contrast that with the most recently rebooted Linux server I deal with - 300 days uptime, rebooted because of a power failure due to storms, which outlasted backup power.
You say you installed SP2 - what about the post-SP2 hotfixes, or SP3? The countdown to your next reboot has begun... Luckily, you may not have to worry about those as much in your case, because some of the security problems affect IIS, and you're running Apache. So yes, by staying away from Microsoft server products, you do achieve greater uptimes, which is my whole point.
Your 410,000 hits a month is very low traffic. Some of the servers I work with routinely serve that much in a day, and they're not the busiest by any means. But ability to handle load is not really the issue at this point - since about Win2K, Windows has done much better at this (NT4/IIS4 was pretty pathetic at that, also due to memory leaks).
I'm not saying longer uptimes can't possibly be done, but compared to real operating systems, Windows requires more reboots in practice, because of the number of mainly Internet-related security problems it's had over the past few years.
I work with both Windows and Unix machines doing software development and consulting on administration issues, so I have plenty of direct experience with administering Windows boxes. I've worked with WindowsNT/2K/XP since the betas of NT 3.1 in around '91. In my experience, there's just no comparison between the two in terms of security, stability, and ability to run for truly long periods without reboots. If you think otherwise, my guess is it's just because you haven't had much experience with Unix.
Is it me, or are CIO's who issue this completely clueless? Has anyone anywhere on any mid to large size company ever "standardized" on a single server platform? There are always sneeky people who slip in a Linux or Apple or some other non-standard platform.
All biases aside, there are some things which just naturaly perform better on different servers. As much as I like Linux, there are some problems that Linux isn't the best solution for. Windows is fine, but there are some thinks it doesn't do well.
Choose a solution based on a problem. Don't choose a solution based on a policy.
new era in government transparancy for the Department of the Interior
Great! Now all Hackers will be able to access their network to see what they are working on. Another great day for open network systems!
If the gov't had created a policy requiring the department to settle on the most widely used and standardized systems available, that would have acheived the desired end.
As I understand this policy (and I really don't, because all of the links are dead), I'm required to purchase a Microsoft product even if it a) doesn't integrate well with other Microsoft products, b) is completely non-standard, and c) is not the package generally used for that purpose.
One policy is at least vaguely justifiable. The one they've chosen is just a blank check to Microsoft.
Many comments are about the "expense" of these M$ products. However, "expense" doesn't refer to just the cost of buying the software.
It also has to factor in maintenance, compatibility with existing systems, and worker usability.
I bet one of the main problems for the DOI going to *nix is that no one wanted to spend the time and money teaching these govt. employees a *nix, since most likely 95% of them use some form of Windows at home.
I dunno about you, but would you like to have the job of teaching a disgruntled govt. employee *nix?
5 years ago the DOI was almost 100% unix. I guess the point and clickers have taken over.
Well, good! Now perhaps some altruistic hackers
can take a peek inside and find the $40 Billion of
Indian land trust money this department has lost.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
Then you aren't properly patched. What is your IP address?.... Just want to check something.
I don't know about the rest of the DOI, but at my office, we still use Lotus Notes for email. I don't know of any plans to switch to Exchange/Outlook, either.
I do know that our word processing standard has changed from Corel WordPerfect 8 to MS Office, which as much as I hate office, I consider this a definite improvement. Try to collaborate with anyone with WP8, or better yet try to get your WP8 install to play nicely with your bloated OS.
Another thing to consider as well is the overall technical expertise at the DOI. Many of these people (including myself) are not really total computer people by nature. Sure I can install software (I even got Gentoo to run on an old 400MHz PC), but I am lost when it comes to directory services and the like.
I just wish Mozilla was approved as a standard browser (and they can uninstall it from my work machine when they pry my cold, dead hands from my keyboard!)
Cheers,
phil
Transparency. I know you have the ability to now fix this misspelling. Why don't you?
I know that a thing called a spellcheck exists and can be used on a computer. Why don't you use one before you post? The articles are generally one paragraph long. This is not a huge undertaking.
I mean, I know you Slashdot editors are annoyed by people who nitpick about your shoddy grammar and spelling. So why don't you at least spellcheck? Seriously. Is it some sort of ironic pride thing?
"If we check over our spelling and grammar, the language trolls win!"
Who knows what the reason is, but I know people would take you more seriously if these kinds of painfully obvious errors were eliminated.
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I can just see it now, some little script kiddie will buy half of Yosemite Park for $.01.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
I assume that will be zero for the DOJ after they agree that MS is not a monopoly
I don't think anyone in the Microsoft camp knows anything. Period. The whole thing is about not thinking. Not innovating. Not knowing what is possible. Not admitting that other solutions exist. Not being technically competant or having the curiosity to ever achieve any competance.
That being said, it's not enough to just say they are LAME. THEY ARE DANGEROUSLY LAME!
Now you might think this is a rant, but it's nothing compared to the insideious compulsion of "burro-crats" to stick their heads up someones bum, and "play it safe." The burro force is with them!
Think about all these dim-wits who build their own system and load Microsoft Windows on it. It's like building a diving board over a sess pool!
I don't care what anyone knows about M$. I hate it and will never write software for it. No good engineer ever would.
WP
Alarm, yes, but it still beats MS-Exchange for security and ease of configuration. ;)
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
A good sysadmin, who is familiar with the OS being run, using proper security procedures, and working in a reasonable corporate environment, can keep a system stable and working properly for reasonable periods of time.
A bad sysadmin, who is not familiar with the OS being run, and does not follow proper security procedures, will not have a stable secure system, regardless of the system being run.
This is much more an issue of having good people following proper guidelines. I might accept that some OSes require fewer patches than others. Maybe.
But most of this "my system is better than yours" is coming from people who know one OS and not the other. This is not informed comparisons. This is trying to validate your personal choice by saying any other choice is stupid.
Doesn't matter if you are a Windows admin trying out Linux, or a Linux admin trying out Windows. How much time did you invest in the OS you know now? Spend that long working on the competition, and then you can make an informed comparison.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
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Ok, I'm going to ignore the justifications given (as I'm sure everyone here knows they are false.)
Am I the only one here that sees this, especially given microsoft's current licensing practices, as a huge waste of money?
And whose money is being wasted? Taxpayers. If our government is flippantly blowing out cash in even the department of the interior then clearly they are getting too much money. Its time to cut taxes and stop letting the leeches live high on the hog.
MS Windows? Office? My god. What obscene spending!
We must cut taxes until our money is spent responsibly.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
> They spent MILLIONS replacing 3000 mail servers with 32 Domino servers
Seems to me their biggest problem isn't switching to 100% Windows, it's running Domino as their mail server (for all your database needs! w00t!). Whoever thought of that brilliant idea should be shot. Then again, IBM seems to have some good salesmen and women. GOD HOW I MISS NOTES' INTUITIVE USER-FREIDNLY INTERFACE.
-- ex-Lotus Admin and Flamebait since 1978
The cited reasons for making this move are all rather interesting and generally interestingly flawed.
-
Lower Total Cost of Ownership for the desktop, including lower user training costs.
- Centralized and efficient security policy administration
- Greater flexibility and management functionality from products that offer a broader range of management solutions that integrate with non-Microsoft environments
- Greater productivity and reliability attributed to less downtime.
-
Extended support for a large base of software applications. Applications almost entirely written by Microsoft?
I can't find this on the DOI site but I do note that the front page (on mozilla) has the search entry/button going right across the eyes of the presidents on Mt Rushmore.I'm interested in how they determine total cost of ownership, but even so "lower user training costs" is a fun one. Translates to "All our users already know windows, so give it to them ". Seems reasonable, but if this becomes normal in the government, then everyone will need a Windows UI because no users will ever know anything else. Self fulfilling prophecy (profitcy?) anyone?
I guess they're getting Windows for free too as getting a linux distribution for the entire DOI would have cost (just for the software) essentially nothing. (If they're getting it cheaply enough, one must wonder if the consumer isn't subsidizing the government - including consumers in (say) Peru.)
Then too, while it would take a bit of training, I expect I could, with only a few (however radical) changes change the total cost of using most of their tools down by probably 80%. The learning curve would be steep and the users would scream their heads off. In the long runthough, I believe they'd save enough that it would far overcome the training costs.
I don't know to what extent windows boxes can be set up as remote GUI servers (such as Xterms) but I'd bet that with the number of seats they need, that a good deal could be found for minimal UI boxes and with an openMosix like system behind them. I suspect this would lower the total cost of hardware by 50% or more since most of the time most of the computers on someone's desk are running screensavers while the user is drinking coffee or on the phone.
Unix has allowed this for years. Long before microsoft even invented networking.
This is a wonderfully fun one - since Microsoft has said from time to time that it is their policy to not "integrate" with any system they don't approve of - especially open source systems.
It does seem to be true that windows 2000 is doing well for staying up for long periods of time - but I've had linux boxes that (several years back) stayed up for a year or so without problems. This at a time when one person I knew -- a true Windows NT fanatic -- reinstalled everything every two weeks because he claimed the system wasn't stable if he didn't do that.
Do they also have a policy of writing their web pages for only IE? (Assuming it works on IE) (I don't remember which, but at least one other US government web site only works right with IE and the webmaster told me that they were "considering" using the standards, but that it would be a lot of work and I should not expect it quickly.)
obmisquote "Malt does more than anyone can To justify the government's ways to Man"
The meaning of 'transparancy' is completely opaque to me. Your 'parants' should be ashamed.
yup, i would let you have 40 NT servers, and i'd only need one sun (at say, 1/2 the cost of the 40NT boxen- not to mention the 1/10 cost of maintainence) and i'd blow you out of the water. give me one os x box for the ldap acl's, and you can have 80 nT boxen. and lets talk security- ONE patch vs. ONE FOR EVERY SERVER RUNNING A SERVICE. lets talk remote reboots (not really necessary on a sun, but available nonetheless, for that one time every few years you NEEd to reboot.) lets talk uptime- no lets not i dont even feel like wasting my breath on a company that claims 'scheduled downtimes do not count towards 5-9's, because it is scheduled.' we could go on and on, but you already know all there is to know- the microsoft marketing reps told you! i would call you a moron, but i think you a 'less-on'.
Apparently Gale Norton decided she'd better spend all the money the DoI has kept from Native American tribes. Ah, free software: damned if you're free, damned if you're not....
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Seriously, what's up with people who are amazed at uptimes over a month? I've only seen the Windows side of things do that, as my Linux box has been up for over six months. I've seen boxes up for as much as a year, and it was only down to upgrade the kernel.
Zodiac Survey
"You can paint it any color, so long as it's black." - Henry Ford
EXACTLY
Oh, I see: this is an LCD sit-com kind of show:
Someone tells a joke: no laughs.
Someone else explains the joke: Loud Canned Bwahahahaha and modded +3
I thought Slashdot was meant to be at the level of "Sienfeld" rather than "Married..." but I guess the Editors' dumbing-down is starting to take effect.
Another point: Everyone else knows that a story hosted on geocities will not be viewable by first-post time, *so why do the Editors keep putting them up* ?
It's about competent administration.
Your story is yet another of the scores of examples which contradict the long-touted "feature" of (NT|2k|XP) that it is "easy to administer." If it was truly easy to administer, then the administration would not need to be done by competent administration; i.e., anyone should be able to do it.
I maintain that (NT|2k|XP) is equally difficult to administer as *nix and has always been. One may be better than the other for certain tasks, but effective administration for both has been and still is difficult and requires highly skilled professionals to do it right.
I think that my biggest problems with NT systems was the outright deceit which pervaded the marketing surrounding said systems. (See also: "NT Workstation and NT Server are completely different operating systems. Really. I mean it. Pay no attention to the identical kernels.")
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
they already were 98% MS, 2% Novell. They had a big requirement that you needed to be Novell certified to support their MS systems. On the other hand; you also couldn't get a government job doing actual support work; you had to be a contractor. Only management got the cushy government tech jobs - at least as far as the department-level was concerned. Not all sure about the Secretary (as in Cabinet Secretary) level positions.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
What is actually printed on the /. article and what the actual memo says are 2 completely different things. Have any of you actually seen the memo???? It does not "lock" anyone into anything. If sun provides the best solution with an oracle backend for a DB, guess what, they will procure that. All this does is provide DOI with a standard "desktop" and the appropriate licensing. I have seen the actual memo (note: work for gov't within DOI). 60% of DOI is already MS, all this does is force the issue. It removes Novell from contention more then anything else.
Blah blah blah
By the way, Microsoft also has offices in Charlotte and Raleigh.
Isn't this the same department, that is court ordered not to connect to the internet, because hackers have immediate access to billions in Native American funds held in trust.
The most recent order included the judge indicating he's never seen more gross negligence in fixing the problems the've been ordered to fix...
In that light, this is downright hilarious...
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
I happen to agree with you; I have yet to see a Linux distro that will really work sensibly right out of the box (though I admit I haven't been looking too hard). However, the issue at hand here isn't purely "Linux vs M$", though many people on both sides are trying to make it so. The real issue is that the DoI has removed the choice to use Linux--or a Mac, if they want to use a Mac (I'm using one, and I love it), or whatever other OS they want. I fully understand the support issues involved in dealing with multiple OSes; I've worked closely with people who have to deal with that. However, it is my firm belief that it is better to allow people to use what fits their needs best than to lock everyone into one thing just because it's M$--or, for that matter, Linux, or anything else.
Of course, what really hinders this is the interoperability issue, and that is at the heart of why M$ is such a bad choice--and why they make themselves appear to be such a good one. They make their software all integrate very well, and accept any format from other software, thus making it easy to switch to Microsoft--but only the plain text format is any good at exporting to other software, making it very painful and difficult to switch to anything else once you're locked in. And then, of course, they can do whatever they want, since it is at least apparently more expensive to switch to anything else than to stick to Microsoft's "solutions."
The real problem comes when, someday, the government decides that Microsoft is, in fact, an illegal monopoly (oh, wait...they already did), and to actually really do something about it, like mandate government boycotts of their software, and maybe make them play nice with other companies, and maybe even the *gasp* public. At that point, they will find that it takes vast resources to convert all their old Microsoft-format documents into formats that other software can reasonably read (and I'm not just talking Word, here; what about databases and spreadsheets and such?).
Thus, the issue is really one of choice, and of having to worry about the future, when no software that exists will be able to read a Word or Access document created today--but documents with open formats will be easy to read. However, someday, Linux will be ready for the desktop, and then it wouldn't be terribly unreasonable to mandate, if not an all-Linux department, then at least an all-open department (with the choice of any open OS).
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
[Ironically, when the DOI web site was heavily attacked by the Chinese after we accidentally blew up their embassy in *Bosnia* ]
It was not Bosnia. It was Yugoslavia. You can't remember that where it was. Do you also forget that three people were killed?
However to help all of you out here are some relevant email addresses:
Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget
Lynn_Scarlett@ios.doi.gov
202 208-4203
Chief Information Officer, Acting
Hord_Tipton@ios.doi.gov
202 208-6194
Deputy Chief Information Officer
Sue_Rachlin@ios.doi.gov
202 208-6194
Hope that this helps everyone that is interested.
(Sorry about the double posting... I'm new at posting things on slashdot)
'Nuff said.
I have a friend that works for a Govt. agency, he is always bragging about how stable his windows servers are and how he has "major uptime". I asked him.. "So, are you not patching them? Or just not rebooting to have the patches applied properly?".
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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What the KB doesn't say is that you can trigger this out-of-resources situation in a long-running session, just by running and exiting many applications over time, with IE being particularly guilty. Once you hit the limit, even quitting everything and yes, killing the desktop-controlling Windows Explorer process doesn't completely resolve the problem - it returns much quicker, once a few applications have been loaded. Because of this, there's a limit to how long a Win2K workstation can remain running before needing a reboot.
Since many people turn their machines off daily, it isn't a problem for them in practice. Others have experienced this without knowing the cause - since it usually silently prevents new applications from being loaded, or may prevent e.g. menus from being selected or dropped down, people simply shrug and reboot.
The KB claims that this essentially arises as a consequence of 32-bit addressing, but you can run the same test side by side on a 32-bit Linux box without a problem.
When I worked for DOI in the late 80's and early 90's, they tried to force everyone to only use "standard" software. Wordperfect, DOS, (no Windows or any GUI). When I pointed out, on a DOI mailing list, that the software then "required" for submitting travel vouchers was bloated, cost a fortune, was so poorly designed that it was crashing PC's, AND that there was a much more efficient program available at a fraction of the cost, I was severly chastized that I was NOT AUTHORIZED to inform other government employees that there was a better alternative that would be more efficient and would save the government money!!! The managers "responsible" for making decisions about software acquisitions nearly had a cow that someone not of their ilk and "authority" would have the audacity of providing such information to others. The competing software vendor felt that a decision had been made to only authorize the use of software from a vendor who had a political inside track.
As a former employee of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) our MS tools (Word) were set to default save to Word Perfect format so others could still read them.
So, you guys know.
CIOs in the Federal government tend to be political appointments with absolutely no background in IT at all (with a few exceptions)
So, this should be no surprise.
In other words most Fed CIOs are not qualified for the job they are in.
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Funny how America is doing such things, while the rest of political world go to some brand of open source.
Hi
What they meant to say was they were going Mandrake not Microsoft. Then all the reasons listed apply!
Not even defacto. Things might be reasonable when it comes to SQL server, but have you ever tried supporting version 5-6 of IE or versions 97/2000/XP of office all for one website or set of documents? The hot fixes and bug patches alone can throw everything you've got into chaos, even when everyone's on the same revision!
Images for Slashdot posted on GEOCITIES. Funny guy...
The real funny part is that the entire staff of the OCIO (Office of the Chief Intelligence Officer) has already been exempted from the M$ requirement so they can keep running the various unixes their network support folks won't give up. It's basically the same way in the very large government agency I work for also. The inside joke is that the DOJ gave us to M$ as a part of the settlement.
Give me a break. You go count the number of "root" exploits in Apache, then you go count the number of exploits in IIS that allow "arbitrary code execution". (Especially the number of days versions with such exploits remained current after disclosure)
When you're done come back and try to say that again with a strait face!
Not putting Apache on an LDAP server is simply a good practice that is easy and "default" so it's generally done that way. IIS on the other hand comes default installed and fully exploitable on MS server OS. Why should I have to be un-installing/disabling ISS on every new server install (or sometimes system update)??!!
The Indian Trust fiasco dates back to the turn of the century but the recent court action those quotes came from was from a lawsuit against the previous Interior Department run by Clinton. Please get your facts straight...
Dawn of the Dead
With all the MS products coming on line the amount of Code Red probes are about to go through the roof. Maybe you could consider the DOI's decision as the first Unix/Linux SysAdmins Full Employment act.. in about six months with all the downtime and fried servers and work stations.
Dawn of the Dead
That is the scandal, the sole source requirement. There's only one company that makes M$ OS, and it's proven inferior. So, my government is spending my money to purchase inferior software without bids. There are many providers of free software and the lowest bidder mandate that government is supposed to live by would always pick one of them.
Single vendor bids ordinarilly are seen as a sign of fraud. Here, it looks like incompetence.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
post facto scriptum ?
i like it
"# Greater flexibility and management functionality from products that offer a broader range of management solutions that integrate with non-Microsoft environments"
Um, wouldn't using the non-Microsoft environments foster greater flexibility and functionality with the non-M$ environment?!?!?
Does this mean that the DOI will be subject to the same EULAs that Joe Consumer is re M$ software. To wit, can M$ now alter DOI computer systems at whim?
The issue isn't whether maintaining a nice homogenous system is easier. Of course it is.
The issue is that you can never get to that homogenous system. Tell me how long you think it would take to upgrade 50,000 machines so that they're all running 2K or XP? Additionally, you have to upgrade all of the servers as well.
Throw in migrating the domain and user structure (if you have that) to Active Directory. Also, any applications currently running on non-MS platforms that won't get a waiver...
If you're starting from square one then standardizing on one OS might be useful. As for a retrofit of a country-wide organization? It'll never happen.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's some information from the DoI site concerning physical resources/inventory: http://www.doiu.nbc.gov/orientation/physical.cfm
Give that a good read over. Then tell me how you would go about creating a "conformance system" for a group that widely varied.
Interesting points to know:
1) The DoI includes the US Geological Survey. They'll be a fun group to migrate. (The U.S. Geological Survey rents 4.4 million square feet of space in about 220 GSA buildings nationwide; owns 35 installations with Power plant in Big Thompson Canyon, part of the Colorado Big Thompson Project.1.2 million square feet of space in 287 buildings. In addition, the USGS maintains and operates an earthquake monitoring network comprising a global seismographic network of 120 stations located worldwide and national and regional networks located throughout states and territories, 14 geomagnetic observatories, one landslide network, one volcano hazards network to monitor 44 U.S. volcanoes, 17 science centers and associated field stations, a center for biological informatics, and 7,000 streamgauges.)
2) The Bureau of Reclamation administers or operates 348 reservoirs, 58 hydroelectric power plants, and more than 308 recreation sites. Don't forget all those control and monitoring systems at the reservoirs.
So, where's the cost savings in this project?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
With winBLOWS in place we are only a few minutes
away from total K.A.O.S.
Even the dumb ass Al Queda terrorists can hack this trash..
>:(
Next up? Big Departmental CIO meeting on Oct 17 to discuss migrating from Lotus Notes (50,000 users out of the 58,000 in the department currently) to MS Exchange? One fantasy is that they will be able to do server consolidation down to a dozen or so servers. How? Good question! There ain't enough bandwidth and you can't build an exchange server big enough to handle thousands of users reliably. Nevermind the fact that most bureaus have all kinds of Lotus applications, Sametime (IM), Quickplace (e-teamrooms), LDAP directory services, backend MS or Oracle. Someone in the legislative branch should make an inquiry or two.
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #14 -- VALGOL
VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the
industry. VALGOL commands include REALLY, LIKE, WELL, and Y*KNOW.
Variables are assigned with the =LIKE and =TOTALLY operators. Other
operators include the "California booleans", AX and NOWAY. Loops are
accomplished with the FOR SURE construct. A simple example:
LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
IF PIZZA =LIKE BITCHEN AND
GUY =LIKE TUBULAR AND
VALLEY GIRL =LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2
THEN
FOR I =LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
DO*WAH - (DITTY**2); BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
SURE
LIKE, BAG THIS PROGRAM; REALLY; LIKE TOTALLY(Y*KNOW); IM*SURE
GOTO THE MALL
VALGOL is also characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For
example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the
message GAG ME WITH A SPOON! A successful compile may be termed MAXIMALLY
AWESOME!
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