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Building The Navy Intranet
wiredog writes "The Washington Post Business section has an article about the ongoing upgrade/integration of the US Navy's computer systems. The $6.9 billion project is the largest Federal IT project ever attempted. The mission is to get rid of, or upgrade, all the old software still in use (including, I kid you not, WordStar), do the same for all the hardware (including, I kid you not, typewriters), and link it all together. There are 100,000 different applications that have to be evaluated, and then either upgraded or replaced. I remember using WordStar. 20 years ago."
I remeber Wordstar back when I worked for the Navy in the late 80's!
If they're willing to use Wordstar, they may as well just use vi. : )
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I kid you not, wordstar probably NEVER crashes on them. :)
This is something I've never understood about IT upgrades.
If wordstar and typewriters are working, why spend $6b to replace them?
A lot of IT spending seems like "make work" projects to me.
It will be 5 years behind schedule and 6.9 billion over budget.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
And after this project is deemed a success, the Navy plans to decomission the USS Constitution.....
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
I'm truly amazed that the security of this country relies indirectly on products "that were not engineered for security".
The Raven
The Raven
Gosh I did not know that Navy sitll sued Kaypros and Wordstar..so thats where the Kaypros went..was wondering..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
But the $6.9 billion project has turned into a major technology headache for the services and the prime contractor on the job, Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS).
Hey, if EDS can herd cats, they can do this job, no sweat.
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
I worked for them 5-6 years ago. THey had this one older than god crank app that barely ran on an 80-86, buch less a penium that you had to nurse along, because the messages it sent could be read by the navys standard telegraph sort of thing. THis way, even the guy in the 30 year old shack on theat island in the middle of the arctic circle talking to penguins could read the messages. I wonder if theyre also upgrading all the hardware too?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
There's something to be said for using common typewriters and flash-paper instead of MS Outlook on a WiFi network.
I don't have much to say for using WordStar though. But hell, if I could get a copy of WordPerfect 5 (5.2?) that would run well over xterm in linux, I'd be stoked.
Now to go and actually read the article...
Wordstar, we still use it.
:)
Dos boxes NFS networked to Linux
Works and keeps working reliably !!
I dunno if WordStar came up with them, but it had a ton of great keyboard shortcuts that exist today, but most people don't know about. Like Control-Y deleting a line. That command worked in the VB Editor. (I uh... asked a friend to test that... I don't program in VB, ha! Me, program in VB, d00d!)
M@
Krispy Cream is people
That would have made my time underway much more pleasant. The best connection we could get was 9600 baud floating a wire antenna. Many years ago though... not sure what they're doing now. .:diatonic:.
Vi and EMACS are great, but for word processing, and I don't me lame desktop publishing which is what most programs like MS-Word and WordPerfect do today, for word processing, no one has created a better interface. Once you know the commands, you can virtually fly through editing a text document. Emacs and Vi are good, but they are designed for editing source code, not text.
Wordstar Still rules!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Based upon what I'm hearing from my contacts in the USN, Microsoft Bob will survive the chopping block and, is in fact, the key component to the new Navy Intranet.
-- jimmycarter
One of the reasons for replacing typewriters/WordStar/etc is connectivity. With the current system sending a message from one base to another might require using snail mail, or a courier. Modern systems have this thing called 'electronic mail'. I hear it's going to be the Next Big Thing.
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wordstar was burned into the first 2 amber monitors i got! i never actually used wordstar, but because of these i saw plenty of it . . .
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
Are they seriously going to use Win2k? What about security? This article doesn't really say much about the new system, just problems with the existing stuff.
Seems to me that they have acheived what M$ always holds as its triumphantly successful (hahaha) security through obscurity system. Why change now? (snicker)
gs
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Ha, ha! I know the feeling. Yea, I remember using vi 20 years ago. Oh wait, I still do.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Just recently, in the past 2 years, all uniformed services stop teaching ADA to their developers coming out of tech school and started teaching C.
They still use DBase I or II at most installations. Only a few use Access 95 for databases.
As far as messaging, I think DMS (Defense Messaging Service) is still not rolled over to Exchange or Sendmail).
Air Force is still running Brownie Bake Sales to fund the 2 million dollar toilet seats and coffee makes on the B2 Bombers as your mothers bumper sticker states.
reassign null to be the tape device - it's so much more economical on my time as I don't have to change tapes_BOFH
including, I kid you not, typewriters), and link it all together
Once all the dot matrix printers were replaced with laser printers, a typewriter was the only thing that would work on carbon paper. Remember carbon paper?!!!!
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
this to happen again.
Exactly what is so laughable about using WordStar and typewriters ? A competent WordStar user (and in the day, Wordstar was THE word processor for power users) could almost certainly outdo the best Microsoft Word or free-software-Word-clone user in 95% of the everyday typing tasks that people need to do.
And typewriters still DO have their place. A good typewriter is still the fastest way to fill out a form, or fill out a label to put on a file folder, or even, sometimes, whip out a quick letter.
Ridiculing tried-and-proven technology is about as arrogant as ridiculing conventional mail.
My research team used several different mathematical code libraries and merged them into a custom Blender-3D build that a few grad students just created here at our laboratory.
With the power of math and a nice piece of 3D software, we're able to model the effects of airflow on Air Force and Navy aircraft (we just received $10,000 in grant money for this experiment).
Using a computer model of an F-14 flying at a high angle of attack, we can see how airflow coming off the front of the aircraft hits the tail, and interactively change the direction of the airflow with a few clicks in Blender.
So far, everything is going better than planned. The best part is that without Open-Source and Free-Software, this would absolutely, positiviely not been possible.
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
Much of the pain is borne by desk personnel who have to use the new system. "From an employee standpoint it has had a demoralizing effect because it's making the job more difficult," said Ken Polk, the Marine Corps representative to the Federal Managers Association He continued, "The new systems actually have the audacity to tell us where we want to go today, and how to get there. Thats the sort of decision we try to make for other people. Geez."
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
95% of computer users would be just as productive with a typewriter and a subscription to [fill in the blank] pr0n magazines.
don't be knocking wordstar or typewriters when they get the job done usually just as well.
your jesus is another mans xebu. chew on that hypocrites.
Besides, typewriters just *sound* cool. And they make you look very busy with very little effort. Stupit soft-touch keyboard, I bite my thumb at thee!
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I still vividly recall being a high school student working on the family's first IBM PC (no hard drive, just two hard-working, 360K, full-height, black-faced, metal floppy drives). It was a History paper, and I was done. I went to save it...no dice. Out of space on my data diskette.
I substituted another diskette, and I think that's the precise moment I became an IT person. Because that's when I realized that a WordStar "Document" (as opposed to "Non-document," which IIRC was ASCII) file is opened when you create the document, not when you save it. So there was a little stub file on my (otherwise full) diskette that WordStar expected to see.
Could I print the paper? No, not without saving it first. Could I copy the contents into a buffer, exit the document and paste them somewhere? Please.
So I wrote that $$#@$%%$@ paper twice. And whenever I pull a boneheaded stunt by not thinking something through, I get a little taste of that sweet WordStar pain, and I can't say I'm sorry they're gone.
(On the other hand, given my very brief experience as an ROTC midshipman, I'm surprised that they're not still relying on punch cards for everything but Aegis.)
Umm, perhaps there's a good reason why you might not want a lot of radio communication between land and a ship that's supposed to be hiding???
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Gee, I wonder if they're gonna get rid of the MOD-28 TTYs, they were still in service when I left in '88.
I've got a meeting to go to, so I'm writing this before I read the linked info...
I know someone who's in the DoD... not very happy about the way this is getting implemented.
Seems like EDS dropped the ball.... on a multibillion dollar project.
My wallet hurts.
"Hundreds of old applications can't be moved to the new system, meaning that hundreds of workers still have two computers on their desks." Interesting. After all this, they still won't be rid of the old systems! I hope my state Department of Transportation adopts this method of highway management. "Instead of actually evaluating your needs beforehand, we have decided to spend billions on new highways, then we'll see if they actually take you where you want to go."
I actually just enlisted in the Navy in July and they use the typewriters to input your contract information for term of service.
The CPO that filed out my contract said it was some Navy regulation that the actual agreements and amendments to the contract be typed not printed out and that their be a number of carbon copies.
So now I wonder if they have done away with that reg...
Yes... they are using Win2k as the standard.
Dell, M$, and EDS are the partners.
I find the interesting bit that Win2K is the standard and the rollout is supposed to take upwards of 3 years. WinXp is not authorized at all yet Win2K is not supposed to be available after what? Spring 2003?
Interesting times ahead
So we could use open source software where appropriate, saving the taxpayer a couple of billion dollars (sooner or later it adds up to real money, and all that).
A shame no slashdot readers are fit enough to join the navy.
But seriously... if the costs can be lowered by using OSS, can we influence the choices made before it's too late?
I guarantee you that typewriters are 100% hackproof. Unless you count that backwards ribbon-reading thing. Even then the gummint has strict rules regarding disposal of typewriter ribbons.
Based on anonymous sources I know who are currently working at AMSA, this could be hell. AMSA is currently a test bed for microsoft development, and they are involved in "upgrading" their system, eventually replacing a 4 or 5 person department running their tracking software on PIC on Unix or something like that, with a windows based system with several hundred employees. Given the morale there (see the link for esplanation), it is not hard to get some gossip
Part of the problem is that with PIC, they can get real time information, not possible currently under MS. And some of the functionality does not translate well when you migrate out of a multidimensional software enviroment.
If I recall correctly, PIC was first devolped by/for the government to provide a multitasking environment with natural language queries on machines as small and slow as an IBM XT. It was and is from the start a combination OS/Database. Which MS is only now starting to explore.
I imagine that there any number of these systems out there in the navy enviroment, among others.
Typically this is a case where the MS solution is in fact an inferior technology.
BTW, PIC was part of the technology acquired by IBM when IBM purchased Informix.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Where, or how rather, do you come up with a number like 100,000 when you are talking about applications? That number seems impossibly high to me, no matter how long they have been using their network. Can anyone here even imagine 10,000 apps? On the other hand, how much of that 6.9Billion could be elimanated by using Linux on the desktops and servers?
I'm surprised nobody has said it yet... (or at least, I couldn't find anyone that could... there are probably a bunch below my current threshold which will make this post look idiotic, but I digress...) but an open source solution to this problem would be relevant here, especially considering they are using older file formats anyway and Office compatibility isn't a must right now. Go open source!
Of course, they won't do it. Bush LOOOOVES his widdle baby Bill so it's probably M$ for everyone! But it would be nice...
-- Jim
that kind of money should be spent rolling their own...I'd love to see a US NAVY distro of BSD. They should have a fuller central IT department for support, development, patches and upgrades that is tightly focused on NAVY only needs...I think this project could be SUBSTANTIALLLY cheaper if they would just do it themselves....They could probably even do their own hardware
Maybe this exists and I'm uninformed but I doubt it.
this sig is deprecated
I wonder, on what platform they run it. A typewriter?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I've had the experience of working in several government agencies that were in the midst of this type of situation. Fortunately, they were much smaller installations. What the article doesn't talk about is the barrier to each individual unit/cost center to purchasing common hardware and software. It is next to impossible for a US Government agency to buy the latest and greatest of anything because of how purchasing works.
In order to buy *anything* you must first go to the GSA (General Services Administration). They send you copies of their current vendor contracts. GSA contracts are put together either yearly or every year and a half. This means that if you aren't ordering at the very beginning of the contract cycle you are getting older models of equipement or software, for higher prices. The contracts are not modified to reflect current market prices or models. If you catch the cycle at the end, you'll be buying 1 to 1 1/2 year old computers/software for 1 1/2 year old prices. A win for the vendor and a big lose for the agency buying stuff.
But wait, there's more. Now that you've ordered through the GSA contract, you have to receive your goods. This takes a very long time. The terms for payment from the US Government is not what you would call favorable to the vendor. The stuff you've bought has to get sent to the GSA, then the GSA has to send it to you. Has anyone ever heard of efficiency in a government agency? I didn't think so.
So what if you don't want to go through the GSA? Well, then you have to write up an RFQ (request for quotation) and publish it so that vendors can submit bids. Not a short or easy process. You then must take the lowest bid that will meet your requirements and start doing the contract thing. Once the contract is in place the vendor can start work. Some government agencies have interesting contract regulations. For example, one that I worked for had an unpublished rule that a vendor could increase the price of goods/services by up to 10% without the contract having to be re-bid. Take that to its logical conclusion.
It's always more difficult when it involves the government.
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
computer games like Doom and music-swapping Napster software. Well considering that the later doesnt even exist anymore, and that you cant even jump in the former its obvious the navy is even further behind than we thought.
my father has a typewriter by his desk at his home office. So he can type up the waybills for FedEx, UPS, etc.
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Let's face it, if they want a unified system will they be going with UNIX or with Windows? I believe we are looking at a federal bonus of nearly 7 billion for Microsoft.
...some even had CD burners.
..when sailors wanted to send e-mail attachments to a Navy base across the country they sometimes found that their counterparts couldn't open the Microsoft Word or Excel document. .ppt files in there too.
..The new system was designed to change all that.
..also cluttering the files were computer games like Doom and music-swapping Napster software. :)
No doubt there were a few suspect
Yey, they're going to be using OpenOffice!
And this is a surprise? It's time that people woke up and realised that people are people, no matter where they work. And people like to play doom and listen to music
It will certainly be interesting to see how this turns out, how over-budget it is, whether it actually improves efficiency (cus it sure isn't at the moment with the two-systems per person approach) and how many security holes pop-up during the transition.
I'm been involved in this "cleanup" for a year now and let me tell you it isn't pretty. While I think its a good idea, unfortunately, their goal is to migrate everything they can to Windows 2000/Office 2000 and get rid of shareware/freeware, therefore open source, products.
Of course there are tons of HP-UX, Solaris, etc boxes that will stay, but those will be in a completely seperate network and not supported. Thankfully, as a Java developer, I can move all my development to a *nix box and keep all the open source software I use.
Its all probably a good idea for the Navy, but I wish they didn't hold such a negative view of any software you didn't pay a crap load of money for.
When the whole Navy converts to W2K, who will be left to tow them into port when it crashes? Some jarheads in a rowboat?
http://mah.www4.50megs.com/jokes/wince.html
anyhow, i've seen stuff about win2k being used in military gear in 2008. i'm sure m$ will make it available to the military when they want it. they'll pay for it, after all, M$ is about the $.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Just think of the fuel savings after they throw all those 30 pound typewriters overboard! Plus the typewriters will provide valuable marine habitats. Just hope the MS bloat doesnt sink the ship.
Well, security through obfuscation and obscurity seemed to work for Novell for a long time, and still does today. The (in)famous 'itsme' from *some European country* did more to expose the insecurities and ease of breech-ability of the Novell OS than any other hack-meister that I can remember. One particularly memorable moment was when I used his hack to crack the console login. Kill the server, press *function key*, type in the magic key combo '6b', and PRESTO! unsecured, no password required login with full privelege. Although most of the hacks were for the console, there were some other vulnerabilities that required packet sniffing, traffic logging, and the like, but most of the traffic was unencripted, so anyone with a little rconsole logic/knowledge could get to the server.
Just my 0.02
I can tell you that it's horrendous the way the navy treats IT. They are married to M$. Don't be fooled by any feelgood articles you might read, on the deckplate M$ is king. Granted, he's an old king since he's prolly only NT4! But when the navy looks for solutions, microsoft is the only place they look
Keep in mind that it has been my experience that things move extremely slow in the military. That's why when my shop did happen to have a printer, it was dot matrix (year = 2000). There was one laser printer for the entire division ( a collection of shops ~100 ppl)
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
As an ex-squid, let me assure you this is a bad idea. Why? If you lock a sailor in a room with a steel ball they will either lose it, eat it, break it, or fuck it. They don't need more expensive toys to break. To be honest the above only applies to OS's, Crypto-Weenies, oh yeah, and air-dales ... friggin brown shoes ...
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
The article talks about how most of the software is too outdated to run on Windows 2000.... errr... isn't Windows 2000 out of date?
Last I checked MS was dropping support for it.
Only the military.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Will WOPR be upgraded? What's the newest version?
Penguins only live in the South Pole. The guy in the 30 y.o. Artic Circle shack was probably talking to polar bears. Actually, he probably just mutters to himself most of the time.
I hope they make the right choice and select FreeBSD for their operating system.
Really I do.
Of course the memory comes from going to see a shrink to investigate my past lives.
Lessee... there was the one where I used WordStar, the one as a Spanish Jew during the Inquisition, and the one where I was Lothar the Norseman, Conqueror of the Seas, Destroyer of Kings, Rescuer of Chambermaids.
So it all just goes to show that:
1) WordStar is old.
2) It is true that Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
3) The Norsemen were... wait. no. Lothar was a "game" my girlfriend thoguht up last week. Sorry. Got a little confused there.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Its not the Navy, its the Bush administration.
And its not the USS Constitution, its the US Constitution.
Okay, I'm contributing to the random anti-MS FUD here, but I am seriously worried. Standardisation can provide lots of benefits, agreed. However, how many footholds does Microsoft have into the standards space right now. I can see the requirements..."We absolutely MUST have MS Office...and it only runs on Windows"...or "Outlook has the largest enterprise deployments as an e-mail infrastructure in the world, so we should start with that as a base".
So by starting with something inocuous, it can really snowball. We've all been on projects where the MS rep directly sells his wares to the business, and then you're caught having to integrate the stuff. How hardcore do you think they, or their hardware shills (HP) will market this stuff?
For an organisation as unwieldy as a government military institution, how much due diligence do you think will take place? How will total cost of ownership be factored in? What metrics for "secure" would actually exist?
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
How long did it take you to type that?
I found my inner child, then I got caught abusing it...
I considered joining the navy several months ago and I went on a tour of a nuclear trident sub out in GA. The systems aboard the ship were rediculously old, considering their purpose is to control enough nuclear payload to wipe out most of the life on this planet. The fire control room was probably 20x30ft filled w/ rows of equipment which had the combined processing power of, and I quote, "an atari 2600". I'm almost amazed that those things could calculate a firing solution in any reasonable amount of time...
I used WordStar up until about 5 years ago. It worked fine. I know someone who use it to this day. Version 4, no less... later versions added color, thesauri, and all manner of such crap that he doesn't want. It's a perfectly good text editor.
WordStar for Windows, however, was a piece of shit.
^K^X
The fraud here is that the Navy can't step up to the plate and deal with the current technology of data communications without a plethora of vendors to loot the treasury. What is needed is a Hyman Rickover for data comm. Unfortunately, the post-Clinton military is defined by it's lack of testicles, and preponderance of hymens. NMCI ranks right up there with y2k.
Nope, still slow as snail spit. Might be because they're trying to hide. The intel comms system I'm testing next year refuses to talk directly to subs, so they have to condense messages, strip headers, and send the summaries to the subs. The other ships in the fleet get the full messages, and I think carriers are getting video chat or something by now. :-)
Illegitimi non carborundum
The Navy's out-of-date computer systems have created a confusing and inefficient patchwork that has made it difficult to share electronic information.
I think this is justification enough. For cryin' out loud, if there's one part of government that should be able to move information from one place to another quickly, it's the military. Maybe after this is over they can retire the carrier pigeon fleet.This is typical government love, Navy thought they new what they had had EDS bid, and now they have more ... maybe this is where all the FBI missing laptops went!?!?!
The entire economy is a gigantic make work program. After all, the purpose of technology is to ELIMINATE work. Do you really think we need 280 million folks going to their daily jobs? No, but what would happen if 250 million people were unemployed... it would be chaos.
It is overpopulation which necessitates the office make work program we have had for most of the twentieth century. 200 years ago, if people couldn't have an independent livelyhood they immigrated to someplace they could. From the Romans expanding north, to the Vikings colonizing Greenland, to the English in America... the excess population of one group moves elsewhere.
The problem is, the entire world is populated. Hell, even the Faukland islands have 15,000 people living or something. Every nitch of land. We can't go into the wilderness, build a cottage and start farming. There is nowhere to go.
So, a gigantic social system was created to keep people busy, to do something, ANYTHING other than rebel against their masters. The social order the governments seek to maintain is not true order, but power.
First it was religion. Then it was government with compulsory education intended to model the perfect slave for the state, ready willing, and able to do as instructed. Both attempted to suppress our human nature in order to make us into more efficient batteries.
The reason society is about to collapse is because there is nothing left... No one can control billions of people with nothing to do. Religion is over. No one believes in organized religion, and most don't believe in a god or gods. People realize education is bullshit. A college degree doesn't mean shit today. Now, its grad school. So, what happens when everyone struggles to go to grad school? Everyone needs to be a doctor of something? We are going to make people waste half their life learning to live the other half of their life?
Soon, we will have machines capable of doing everything. We won't need humans to at all work for their own survival. Then what?
That is the basic question. What do we do now that the necessities of life are no longer a tremendous expense?
This is the philosophy for the future that is not yet available. We need to teach people to live in context of their humanity, even though the basics of survival are no longer scarce. I don't have the answer, but it is a question that will require an answer in the next 100 years.
Otherwise, we will all be destroyed, or end up in a matrix-like fantasy world.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I am an network administrator who's base is about to be "upgraded" to NMCI. This program is an absolute nightmare! The base they started converting as a test platform in CA is still non-function and it's been at least 18 months since they started.
The number one problem with this system is that the Admral who wrote the contract with EDS didn't know a damm thing about computers or the software that the fleet is using and the primary contractor (EDS) has never delt with the military. You wouldn't beleive the amount of problems we have with they way they want to run the network, it will not support our command mission or requirements.
also, I don't think they've realized that Win2K will not scale to the size they have in mind! Where I to have any say in this we would be running all (where possible anyway) open source software and dumping the billions in M$ costs into more and better infrastructure and training. But who listens to me anyway. It all seems like a huge waste to me.
I am sure that not all of the navy is using such OLD technology, no matter how reliable it is. I am for the dept that helps invent new technologies and gadgets everyday, I can't all be so outdated.
I only see a small piece of the Navy's IT structure, primarily the systems that deal with intelligence collection and dissemination. The current development system runs on Solaris 2.8, and they allow clients running Windows to connect, but the developers don't like it. Current military developers (I work with Joint, Navy and AF) seem to have a great love of using Java for the interface controls. This allows any properly-configured client on a network to access the server, and then the geeks can keep their servers MS-free. The military intell community knows very well how completely worthless Windows is for mission-critical functions. Unfortunately, the rest of the military sometimes forgets. Wasn't a cruiser knocked out by a BSOD last year?
The development and deployment cycle for Naval systems is on an entirely different time scale than the norm, even in the military. Navy systems get upgraded when a ship comes into port, if there is time and resources available at that portcall. Considering the current operations tempo (optempo for the buzzword-impressed), about 1 or 2 intell ships get upgraded per year. They won't tell me how many total ships there are, but I know it's more than a dozen. So, just the installations will take 10 years, if nothing goes wrong and there's no major war.
If there's a war, nobody gets upgrades if they're needed in the theater, or as immediate backup to the fleet in the theater. Makes time schedules rather flexible.
Illegitimi non carborundum
Hey I resemble that statement, 10 years in the Navy as a OS and yes noting is safe....ROTFGLMAO
Got Code?
Agreed.
The only editor with better keyboard interface for editing text than VI.
Unfortunately screwed by the Caps/Ctrl keys on current keyboards.
While reading about this subject ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A378 82-2002Oct17.html ), I found this quote:
"The large number of old applications uncovered another set of problems: Some programs can't be merged into the new system. They are either too antiquated to be compatible with the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system or aren't in compliance with security requirements."
As any technically competent techie knows, being "compatible with Windows 2000" is hardly required for applications to be movable. MS-DOS programs can be run in several different Linux/BSD-based emulators including complete emulation of Windows if needed. As these emulators run within the confines of a secure operating system (Linux/BSD), this also addresses the security issues -- at least as much as moving to "secure" Windows 2000 will. So basically the Navy is getting bogus technical advice. Hopefully this "mandatory" migration to Windows will work out better than the "upgrading" of the battle fleet did (anyone else remember the Navy ship that had to be towed back to port after the NT-based ship control system BSOD'd?). Gates must be laughing.
At least there is no EULA attached to my old 1945 Underwood (at my office), and it keeps on ticking right through power failures.
WordStar?? A lot of us got our first taste at WP'ing with WordStar. I was so excited to upgrade from Edlin to WordStar that I had to show all my friends.. WOW!!! Those were the days..
Matter of fact, somewhere around here I have an old IBM Diags floppy that I overwrote with WordStar. Come to think of it, somewhere around here I still have an original IBM DOS 1.0 floppy.. Fred Flintstone touched it too...
You wouldn't be 'suprised' anyway, because there's no such word.
You might be surprised at how it's actually spelled...
I read
the largest Federal IT trojan ever attempted.
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
JAG's, SEALS and Penguins?
1. Navy spends $100K on wordstar and typewriters
2. Navy spends $6B to get up-to-date and networked
3. Navy gets haX0red
4. ??? (what were they thinking)
5. Navy returns to wordstar and typewriters, IT vendors made profit!!
I wonder if anyone thought about using VMware to replace that second system... Nah, that makes too much sense.
Snipes cannot use puters they have asvab scores just slightly above deck apes.
If you think that North America (As well as South America) are overpopulated, I suggest you reexamine the population density of India.
It doesn't provide a way to shift taxpayer dollars to Military contractors.
Truly, slashdot has no memory.
Howdy PhysicsScholar/PhysicsExpert/PhysicsGraduate. Long time no troll.
The project is her in Hawaii now, and is providing hundreds of IT jobs with great pay, 5+ year contracts, and some pretty great opportunities. I am not complaining.
are still useful tools. You can still
buy new ones. Non electric ones work
quite nicely during a power failure.
I'm currently a helpdesk contractor at a Navy Station slated to be NMCI'd.
To answer some questions:
-Yes they will be replacing the current winnt4 workstations with Win2k workstations.
-Yes they are going to use Exchange/Outlook, we currently use lotus notes 4.6 and it's a nightmare, we have to setup each users email on whatever machine they log into. Unlike groupwise or outlook where your email follows you where you login.
-We are on a hardware buying freeze for the most part but we do get allowed to buy things for upkeep when they extend us another 6 months (Happened three times already).
-As I understand it, the current machines will be left on the desktop if they meet hardware requirements.
-The helpdesk will be moved to a location in San Diego. If they can't walk the user through the issue on the phone the contracted local helpdesk guy will come and replace the machine with a new dell. The theory here is every machine will be the same, no more backgrounds of kitties and the kids.
-The big issues come when 'unsupported' hardware/software dies. EDS will make a 'good faith' effort to repair the device (ergo keyboard for instance) but if they can't it is sh*t-canned without a replacement (they'll get a normal keyboard instead).
-There's the morale situation, IT departments across the Navy are working to put themselves out of work.
There is no question that the legacy apps across the Navy aren't helping it and it is commendable to try to get an organization that size onto one standard platform. I wish them the best.
The scary thing is that they want everything standardized to one OS, and one type of software. If you build the whole Navy network on this, and it only takes one exploit to bring the whole thing down. (remember Melissa?) Should we make it so easy for our enemies to shut down our entire Navy, that they could possibly send an e-mail to stop the fleet?
Standardization is good (especially in protocols, standards, and file formats), but 100% homogeneity implementation is bad.
Ok, first I like linux and open source but there is a HUGE flaw in Open Source that Open Source Fanatics don't understand. I will be brief and to the point.
Open Source is Dangerous in Military Applications.
Yes Open Source allows you to have more stable and better applications BUT (In a GOD like booming voice with dramatic echo) if someone has access to the source code they can better engineer attacks against the software. Abiguity is a strategic advantage in, if they don't know how the software "works" they'll have a harder (note the use of HARDER, not impossible) time causing problems. There is a reason that email is not used frequently and you can see hundreds of reasons why even the best encryption is flawed (as in the encryption is only as secure as the people using it). I would seriously have a problem using ANY application in a mission critical position where the source code is available. Here is an example (abstracted and general for readability)
------Begin------
Goal: An email like program that is secure to transmit messages.
Using an open source program called WidgetComm you can send encrypted messages between locations.
Right now you have no clue how to hack it. You don't know what protocol, network hardware, CPU, or encyption is available.
But with the source code you now know that the program uses TCP/IP on ethernet hardware on Intel x86 processors using PGP.
Now you can start targeting the weaknesses inherit in the components with the source code to help you. Ahh the only use a 32 bit integer for this input, I could overflow that to get XYZ into the Intel EAX register and then by overflowing field 2 (also a 32bit) I can get ABC into the EBX register. When I hit submit it will Jump to ABC and execute XYZ. Muhaahhaa. Source code gives you the ability to better focus an attack, as ANY GOOD INTELLIGENCE is important to an attack.
Even if the Navy re-wrote the protocol with a custom there are still the vulnerabilities in PGP. And if they re-wrote that part there would still be processor exploits (anyone here ever heard of Micro-Code? I can create a virus that doesn't need an OS to do it's dirty work. I just need to send a few key voltage params to the processor to re-program the processor itself). Open Source is great for home users but when human lives are on the line, with the defense of the nation at stake I'd really rather not provide the enemy a GOD DAMN ROAD MAP illustrating how my mission critical application works! Does this not seem to make sense? Or have some of the fanatics gone back to sniffing glue? Hello to even suggest Open Source in military applications is bad, using store bought crap is just as bad. The military needs to code it's own on a proprietary processor for optimal security. If 90% of hackers are using x86 put all your systems on a different architecture. There is a reason we don't tell people where are subs are, why would we tell them where our software is most vulnerable. And if you hand me the "There arn't any vulnerabilities because of Open Source peer review" you need a swift kick in the head and re-read. When you use open source you give potential attackers a road map of HOW the application works making it easier to attack the software. This has nothing to do with how crash-proof it is. This has to do with a directed assault, penetration, and intentional compromises that extend far beyond what rookies like Kevin pulled. We are talking nuclear secrets, weapon blue prints, troop movements, logistical data, not some cheap credit card DB that hold whether you bought Pr0n last week. This is serious shit and certainly wouldn't want enemy nations holding the god damn blue prints to my software.
Ok I'm done... go to the happy place.. go to a stripped down easy to use linux system... happy... happy...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
My last assignment in the Navy was the ADP department (their term for IT) for a maintenance facility in Hawaii. We did not have WordStar but were still very dated, in mid 98 they had Dos/W3.11 with Novell and Banyan over coax. Very few of the computers were Pentiums. Due to the bidding process we always received bottom of the barrel equipment that rarely worked like Fujitsu HD's (at the time 50% were failing), boxes of MB's with bad serial ports, 10 packs of zip disks with only 5 in them etc.. It was hell. The network was slow and the computers were slow. The funniest thing I had ever seen was just prior to me leaving. They upgraded the coax to something faster. They did not mess around either, they ran fiber directly to 100's of workstations and used an AUI to fiber converters for some and direct fiber cards for others. Now we still had the same slow computers, same slow network, but it was connected directly with fiber! I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish with that. The software side of things was not really that bad. I guess there was not much you could do that could screw up W3.11, MS Office 6.0, and DOS apps.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
To your statement there is no where to go, I say bullhockey.
Ever been to the Dakotas? There are thousands and thousands and thousands of cheap acres of land to be had.
If I wanted to, I could go to any number of wildernesses and build a cottage and farm. Dakotas, Eastern Montana, Northwest Territory, Alaska, northern Wyoming, the middle of Siberia, the eastern deserts of Iraq, Mongolia, etc.
More and more people are moving to cities around the world, thus more and more land out in the "Fly-Over" states and provinces in North America are opening back up.
I think you've watched the Matrix one too many times.
I do not think even India is too overpopulated that science cannot provide a solution.
We could feed another 50 billion people. The point is, what will thsoe 50 billion people do. We are overpopulated from the standpoint that not enough meaningful work exists to allow everyone to live in a way well suited for humans.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
An area of land is overpopulated if it cannot maintain its current population without either importing food or degrading its own environment to the point that at some point in the future, it will not be able to maintain its population. Thus, Antarctica is overpopulated. So is Greenland. Each parcel of land can accomodate X people. If the population is greater than X, it is overpopulated. It has little to do with density, as some land is more productive than others (and more controversially, some people consume more than others)
I am sure they meant "public" budgeted IT projects. Either NSA, CIA, NRO or the USAF should have crossed that figure by now.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
"I am Ellen Feiss, and I am stoned"
I wonder if he's kidding...
For future reference, I didn't make WordStar painful, I merely used it and found it painful.
;-)
Well, being a bonehead may have been involved, but that's a whole separate issue. And the documentation said *nothing* about needing to save the file to the same disk I started on.
Not that I'm at all defensive about this.
Besides, I'm sure part of the Navy's budget goes to seeing that the Navy's users get to use fresh new 360K floppy disks for each file, just to avoid this type of situation.
"Were I work we fear the NMCI contact mentioned in the article. Primarily because it shoves MS solutions down our throats and takes away our ability to choose the best approach to an application."
But isn't that the very approach that has lead to the present mess? Everyone doing their own thing with little to no regard for the whole. That's why companies standarize on a solution. One may lose some flexability, but more than make up for it elsewere.
What I would hope to see is a case where the Navy says:
...
We do these things and we use these products/applications. This should cut the number from 100,000 to 1000. While not every government agency needs to act like a business, in 99.9999999999999999% of the cases the Navy (Marines, Air Force, etc.) could.
They intent would be to standardize on a set of products such that an application requester would not build their own or for that matter go off on their own to decide.
You need a database, choose DB1, DB2, DB3...
You need a procurement application: PA1, PA2 no others and these interface with each other.
You need a desktop, choose Vendor1Product1
You need an OS, OSA, OSL, OSM, etc. and it must be an xyz compliant version, this network support.
any step toward a consistent infrastructure that does NOT list parts. (I was talking with a guy from my State government who was ordering outdated computers because they are force to list the components. What $2000 got you in 2001, is different from today, but buracracy only lets them buy what was specified in the budget.)
We do not want to see is 100,000 applications rewritten in VB, or C++ or anything. 100,000 came from attrition. If they are going to have to convert get them prove you cannot use one from the list.
I doubt however this will happen. There are too many interests that do not benefit from a smooth, consistent approach. Too many contractors who cannot make money selling packages, and too many buracrates who benefit from a custom approach.
My cynical side says to look for it to be $12 billion, and 99,999 systems.
Another problem with NMCI is that once the hardware part is settled and running smoothly THEY WILL GET FIRST DIBBS ON ALL SOFTWARE PROJECTS! That's right boys and girls! So, if your company has developed a cool information management tool that the navy currently can't do without, within the next 5 years (so I've heard) NMCI will get a chance to replace your software with their version without bidding on it!!
And!! You ready for this! THIS NETWORK CAN'T PROCESS CLASSIFIED DATA!! Yep! You heard me! It's sorta like having a car with no WHEELS!!
Man I love payoffs and politicians! They both start will a 'P'! which is damn close to the letter 'S' for screwed!
LFS. Have you built your system today?
Funny, but given that the Navy is going to be running supercarrier navigation and weapons systems off Windows 2000, i.e. the evolved version of the platform that turned the USS Yorktown into a sitting duck... the only people who have reasons to cheer this decision are the world terrorist community.
What would they do with the power to shut down or redirect the firepower of a US nuclear fleet? Live and find out, but if I knew anyone in the USN at this point, I'd be telling them they don't need to re-enlist. If our country values their lives so cheaply as to regard MS products as adequate protection... what does a sailor who's been in for a few years owe her country in further service?
This project is going to get US service people killed sooner or later, not just waste our money.
Tech Public Policy stuff
A few years ago I worked as a consultant on an Air Force contract. The project was part of an effort to introduce "modern" software techniques into the Military's software development organization. Part of this work included bringing COTS (Commercial of the Shelf) products into compliance with various government and military standards. Our organization did a pretty reasonable job of meeting the Air Force's requirements for our specific projects on a reasonable budget, comparable to a commercial budget for equivalent projects.
My primary point in posting this, though, was that while the Air Force did a reasonable job of things, the Navy always seemed to be ahead of the other services. Inter-service projects being done jointly with the Navy were quite a challenge for our Air Force team as they were always well ahead of us, both in technology and budget efficiency. I can't imagine that things have changed dramatically in the relatively short time since I left that job.
CHeck out this month's issue of 2600. Boot win2k CD into recovery console. Then do chkdsk. Then go to \winnt\system32\config one of the files, probably system file is corrupt (zero size?) Copy a backup file, system.sav over it, then reboot. http://ntpass.blaa.net/bd011022.zip Shut down machine and insert floppy. Next comes a list of all found partitions on all disks, followed by a list of what it thinks is NTFS partitions. At the prompt to select a partition, the first bootable NTFS partition will be the default selection. (First bootable FAT if no NTFS found) You may however select another partition (also a FAT partition) by giving its full name (like /dev/hda1 , or /dev/sda1). SCSI: sdDP -> D=disk a b c d etc, P=parition number 1 2 3 4 etc. IDE: hdDP -> D=a or b (primary IDE), c or d (secondary IDE), P=partition number.
The partition will be mounted, and the type (NTFS or FAT) will be stated.
Then you must select the full path (relative to the partition) of the registry directory. This is usually 'winnt/system32/config', which is the default selection, but it will also automatically recognize windows installed in winnt35 or windows.
Then select files to copy to temp area in ramdisk. For password editing the default is 'sam' (essential, it's the password database), 'system' (contains some info on syskey), and 'security' (additional syskey info in Win2k). If syskey is not active, only 'sam' is changed when editing passwords. If you instead want to edit something in the registry, select the hive you want, 'system' is proper for services, hardware settings etc.
You can then select between:
Password editing (default selection)
Registry editing. (see regedit.txt)
Now it has everything it needs, so the 'chntpw' utility will be started, working on the files in /tmp. There:
Some nice statistics of the registry hive will be displayed.
All usernames in the file will be listed.
A check for SYSKEY is done, if it's found to be enabled (it is by default in Win2k RC-something and up) you will be asked if you wish to disable it. You do not have to disable it unless you have lost the key-floppy or passphrase. It seems pretty safe to disable it on NT4, but will cause trouble in Win2k (see main page or syskey.txt)
You will then be prompted for the user which you want to change the password of. (default selection is administrator, it recognizes admin-account with changed name or localized names, too) It will continue to prompt for a username until '!' is given. Re-list the users with '.'
Some information on the user will be shown (and still with some debug info) before the prompt for new password.
Enter the new password, max 14 chars (it will show on the screen). Or enter nothing to keep unchanged.
Then confirm the change (this is for the change to the file, which at this point is located as a temp file in the ramdisk, writeback comes later)
If the 'chntpw' utility succeeds, you will be prompted to confirm the writeback to the NT disk/filesystem. Only 'y' is accepted for it to commit the changes. (the commit is in 2 steps. First in the editor program, then in the bootfloppy scripts. Your harddisk will only be changed if the last one is confirmed)
After everything is complete, you will get the "# " shell prompt. You may then reset the computer (three-finger-salute).
To get AIM...get acess to a linux/unix shell account...or set one up yourself...on the outside and tunnel aim and whatever naughty http traffic you want to your nmci workstation.
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1149/sam0106s/010 6s.htm
I used to work as a contractor at a government research facility a couple of years ago and was the main contact point to purchase and/or upgrade hardware. Typically it was as easy as calling a GSA approved vendor and getting their most recent price list. Strangely the purchasing people were often not aware of their options. I was able to point them to many GSA approved vendors who were able to send us current market quotes with current market prices, and deliver them quickly. Dell is probably the best example. You could call and get a current quote and get it shipped to you in a few days. It was all mostly contigent on hassling the people in purchasing to put it through quickly, which could often be done if you filled out the purchasing system completely and walk the quotes from the vendor up to them. Oh yeah, and if you had the funding pre-approved by your department.
Now mind you I know that things have changed a bit since then, but from what I hear they're no longer as bad as you mention. Though I definitely did hear those stories. Then again maybe I just figured out how to finesse the process so that it was speedy, I did get compliments for managing to get hardware to the customer quickly.
Greetings!!
... our base was to be one of the "pilot program" sites where it was to be implemented first. Everyone was so thrilled that they got to be the guinea pigs for such a large new plan.
.. that's just my rant. I am so glad I got out of that place before it went into the dumpster.
In 1999/2000 I worked at as a civilian contractor employed as network/desktop support at a Navy base. The company I worked for had been the contractor for a few years. The way things worked previously, each department at the base was responsible for its own support. Some used primarily government employees, some primarily contractors. In the network of over 2000 people, and around 8 departments, I was but one small fish for a department of around 300. We had 3 people from our company contracted, working for one government employed network manager.
We had that department working. We had that department happy (well, mostly).
When NMCI was coming, we saw the marketing of it. How it would solve everything, it would tie the entire Navy and Marine Corps into one seamless unified network. We didn't believe it. No one I spoke with in our department believed it. They would turn to us and ask "You guys are going to still support us, right?". We responded with "We have no idea". Because we honestly didn't. The worst part was
Well, the company we were employed by tried to get into the NMCI contract. The team they were on lost to the EDS team. (There were 4 final teams for the contract award.) So they tried to get into the EDS team for the site work.
Well, with the end of the year 2000 approaching, the NMCI contract was awarded, our specific contract was extended to the end of the calendar year by the dept manager to cover the "transition" period, but we had no clue if we would have jobs after then. So I jumped overboard and swam for it. I got a new job.
I have heard through various people I know who are still involved out there (around where I live, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who is involved with the Navy bases, it is very important to our region's economy.) Apparently no one is happy. Slow response time on support (computer crashing? we will come out next week some time, need a program installed for a new project? see you next week some time) is probably the biggest complaint. I can understand being busy, but causing your users to wait over a week to get a functional computer? That's just bad management/planning.
Anyway
-Zzyzzx
OK, there have been uncountable posts now that discuss the pros and cons of WordStar.
The issue was not that everybody used WordStar and that now they have to switch. The issue was they everybody used a zillion different programs (of which WordStar was one example).
The idea is, as many other have pointed out, to improve communications. A first step is to make sure that applications are standardized. If everybody had used WordStar, they could probably have made this happen with that program, but in reality M$ Word was probably much more common.
Tor
I've tried scanning forms, then editing the scanned files in various tools, but it never worked right.
They may be getting rid of some of those beasts, but the armed forces love forms, so they're going to still need typewriters :)
A friend of mine tells me that the army is trying to go paperless. They now get emailed publications and are specifically prohibited from printing them out -- and they're punished if caught printing them out. Ack!
If so, let me keep my WordStar and typewriter.
I actually work at a Navy base that is scheduled to be transitioned to this new network. The initiative is called NMCI (Navy/Marine Corps Intranet). From everything I hear this project has been one big cluster f*** from day one. My base was scheduled to be transitioned over a year ago but delays have pushed it back so far that we're not even supposed to start for at least another year.
This whole thing is such a colossal waste of taxpayer money.
Hey This professor still uses a typewriter. Why? Cuz he's tool cool for school.
well, to be fair, he has a secretary who reads and prints his e-mail and checks his phone mail. Gosh, I wish I was that important! (or had the disposable income to afford a personal slave^H^H^H^H^H assistant...
But the important AND ON TOPIC thing here is: use the tools that work. If you need additional functionality don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. However, there are times when you will have to give up your old ways (no more pulse dial phones, granpa!)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I'm such a dork...
kids, hit the preview button. JUST DO IT.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Wordstar's UI is awful. They should upgrade to the modern standard.
Remember There is a lot of money to be made in prolonging the problem, not in fixing the problem.
Have a friend that in the mid-80s was working out at the Blue Cube rewriting the many millions of lines of SNOBOL they used to run the U.S.'s spy satellite network into Ada. I think they may still be working on it to this day.
All military orgs run by the maxim of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", especially when it comes to administration. And the farther you get from the tip of the sword the more backwards things get. I'm sure Wordstar does just what they want done in the applications it's used in. The tragedy would be to replace it with OfficeXP.
Hey, maybe they'll replace it with vi.
--Len
why dont they use star/openoffice and save 3 billion?
I took an Enterasys Switching cert course just under 2 years ago. The guy teaching it used to be netadmin for the Dept of Navy. He told us that they were an all Enterasys (then Cabletron) shop. I wonder if political agendas will push them away from Enterasys to, say, Cisco. It certainly happened where I work. Enterasys is a good company and they make good products. Frankly I've had fewer problems with Enterasys's professional product line than I have with Cisco's. Cisco hardware can do a whole bunch of funky things but how many people do you know that really have a need to use a proprietary Cisco protocol? I hope the Dept of Navy doesn't let politics get in the way of picking the best solution(s). I say that knowing that politics are running as rampant there as they are here though.
I'll agree with you, and I'll even go further. I've thought for a few months now that the Federal Government, including the military and all various Federal agencies, should develop their own Unix OS. Call it Govnix maybe. You could have an ultra-secure military variant. Milnix, perhaps?
.doc format has become the word processing standard, so you'd probably use that binary format, maybe adopting OpenOffice, or developing your own variant. For databases, as long as it's written to the SQL standard, there are various options here as well. You could probably buy an existing database as well, and modify it.
I know everyone here thinks that a GPL'd system like Linux should be adopted, but face it, that's not going to happen. The GPL is now a no-no in goverment circles. Ask the NSA. And as much as we exalt the penguin here, Linux is nowhere near secure enough for military use anyway, even the NSA secure version that was developed.
So that leaves you with two choices. Go to an outside contractor, or roll your own. If you go with an outside contractor, you either have to pick a single vendor, or go with multiple vendors. Both paths have strengths and weaknesses, but you'd probably pick the multiple vendor option. Do you really want to hand one company the responsibility for Federal IT? Clearly not. I'm not comfortable with any one company, be it Sun, IBM, or Microsoft running the show. So if you do go multiple vendor, you just increased the complexity of your project by an order of magnitude.
That leaves rolling your own. To me, this is the obvious choice. You start with Unix as your OS platform. It's very mature, well known, and there's lots of expertise on it out there, both inside and outside of government circles. And you wouldn't even neccessarily have to write a system from the ground up completely. You could quite literally buy the rights to a current proprietary system, and modify it for the goverment's needs. While this will rankle open source advocates, obviously you'd keep the guts of the system fairly limited to authorized personnel. Sorry, but I agree with Gene Spafford on this one. It's more important to have a trained staff looking for bugs than to have the code open sourced, especially with national security questions. As for what you'd buy, SCO has two traditional Unix operating systems they sell in addition to their Linux distro. They could probably be persuaded to sell one of them. Unixware would finally find a proper home. There are lots of other options here too.
And what about other software? For office productivity stuff, You could probably develop your own apps, but that isn't as neccessary. Like it or not, MS's
Then it just becomes a matter of implementing it government wide. A unified platform would reduce costs in the long run, in maintenance and training, and would be easier to secure. Currently, the Navy seems to be adopting Microsoft operating systems, even for shipboard controls. This is a bad move. Of course, MS would lobby furiously against the homegrown solution (as would other companies. Sun would argue that SunOne is "all you need"), but I think this would be our best bet.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
I know it is hard for word users to start using latex, but once they learn the basic syntax they love it (well, at least 50% of them do).
Back then, when I was in college, quite a few of my profs gave it a shoot and it worked for them really good. The next step was Linux. Many of them are still using latex on linux and love it. I don't think they would trade it for anyting else.
Besides, have you ever tried to write a scientific paper with lots of equations in MS-Word?
If not, give it a try, and then try to do it in latex.
This would be true if one size fits all. If what you say is true then why not propose a single solution for all of the DoD. And why stop there - why not all of the federal govenment or maybe the whole country should just standardized on a single solution than we may lose some flexability but we would make up for it elsewhere? ...err wait a minute I think I just paraphrased Microsoft business plan.
Organization and people all have different needs and desires. A computer that was sized for the "heavy" computing needs of a receptionist does not fit the niche of a engineer that wants to install Perl on their machine or run X to process data on a remote machine. Yes I know there are different steps of standard desktops supplied, but have you looked at the top of the line - its a dog. So what will happen is that you will have 2 computers on your desktop and 2 networks. One to send e-mail and use office products and another "project" computer that you can control and get your work done.
Also, from a security point of view if your systems look alike a single virus or attack has the potential to wipe you out in short order.
Diversity and chaos does have its advantages.
From a software engineer that works for a defense company...
Government loves open source... we develop and test on rh 6.2. saves us and them $$$.
100% Insightful
in the navy....
Of course, what is brought to mind here is that if they are upgrading the network then why not include using secure and stable software and systems as part of "upgrading" the system?
Not like I actually USE my Underwood manual typewriter any more. It's a dusty museum piece.
....
But in a pinch -- power outage, post-apocalyptic dark age, whatever -- I can still pound out a memo to FEMA
-kgj
Just because something can be replaced with a shiny new gizmo does not mean that it should be replaced. If the old process is good enough and is well-understood by the crew then what benefit is there to replacing it? It is rather sad that you could not see the whole boat as a large, complicated process and understand the elegance and graceful degradation in the face of component failure that is built-in to these systems. Maybe once you understand the technical challenges of designing fault-tolerance complex systems you will start to appreciate these boats for the marvels of systems and process integration that they can be...
Yep, I'm one of the (un)lucky recpients of EDS hardware. You'll see why I'm posting anonymously when you see what I have to say.
As I speak two guys are pulling fiber thru the ceiling next to my desk. We've been absolutely dreading it for well over a year. Most of the stories we hear from worker-level folks are nothing but horror. Unfortunately all we hear from the management is peace and contentment - because all they use is Word, Project and Excel. But the article obliquely mentions "test sites" - where I work - and how painful it will be. Well, those of us with grunt-level engineering jobs use a LOT more than just Office. For example my computer has about six (official) unapproved apps installed - things like Macromedia Freehand - useful for doing illustrations (ever try that with a Word Picture?) or Photoshop (ever try using MS Imaging for serious photo editing?), or even the full version of Acrobat (essential for sharing cross-platform compatible documents). Basic, simple apps, but essential to our job.
Let me give you a scary picture of the EDS NMCI machine - I have seen and used them. Windows 2000 professional, with ALL access controlled. There's a permanently-installed remote-control program - so the tech support folks can take over anytime to fix a problem. You cannot even open the case without generating a trouble call automatically. You cannot store data anywhere other than the Documents folder. If you try it anywhere else, including the desktop, it gets automatically deleted at night. You cannot even change the screen saver - it's an EDS advertisement. You cannot install software. No chance in h*** of using Mozilla (or any other unapproved app, especially network-based programs). You cannot connect to a POP server - although you can get outside email IF you have access to a web-based mail service like Hotmail. You can only use the approved apps, which locks us into IE, Office, and whatever "legacy" apps we manage to convince (with lots of paperwork and pain and fuss) the EDS folks to install FOR US. If I cannot change the screensaver, I'm not sure my MS Office preferences (like toolbar settings) will be saved. I'm pretty sure that "basics" like Visual Basic Help files won't be installed - although I regularly use VB heavily for scripting Excel.
The "benefit" of all this is that EDS will be replacing our machines on a biannual cycle. Supposedly. Wanna bet? And theoretically, I can walk to any machine, log in and be using my data and preferences on that machine. Wonderful - but I do all my work from one desk.
What's the result? I am forced to keep my old machine. But it's not connected to the network. So I'll have to "sneakernet" files between the NMCI machine and my "real" machine - so if I get a file by email, grab the ZIP disk or CD-R to move it over. And forget printing documents from a VB scripted Excel, unless I have cash to buy a separate printer too.
Even more frighteningly, much of the "unapproved" apps will be relegated to a kiosk - a standalone, un-desked computer, perhaps two per 60 folks, where theoretically we can go to do those unapproved processing tasks - like Photoshop and Freehand. Yeah, like I want to spend six hours standing at a kiosk - or waiting in line for my chance to use it.
Just remember, "Efficiency in Government." Folks, I hope this dies an early and UGLY death.
This project is called nm/ci and it has been around for better than a year.
nm/ci does make some sense, from the Navy's POV. Many ships and shore facilities use different OS's and different apps to do much the same kind of thing. For example, some commands, like mine, disseminate information internally in, for example, powerpoint 2000 documents. Not everyone here can even *read* powerpoint, much less 2000. They are doing this to facilitate communication.
Having said that, they are going about this rather stupidly (IMHO). They are trying to force *everyone* to use the same set of apps, regardless of what is needed. We are a scientific research facility, and we do a lot of work on Linux and HPUX boxen. However, Windoze 2000 will be the only allowed OS. The only allowed web server is IIS (God help us!). Anything that we currently have that is not on their approved list are considered "legacy apps" and are not allowed on the boxes they provide. *All* of our IT budget has already been taken by nm/ci. We no longer have money available to upgrade hardware. We will not have root privileges for the boxes on our desks, and we therefore cannot install apps that require root privileges. Technically, all boxes that *were* on our desks before nm/ci came along now belong to them, and they can take them away at any time.
In practice though, they don't know what they are going to do with the old hardware, and the odds aren't good that they will take them away. But our old hardware will continue to get older and there is little we can do about it.
As I said before, for most of the Navy, nm/ci makes sense. Sailors want to read and write email and Word documents. Most don't care about the OS or even which word processor they use.
I work for a software company whose core business is on pick databases. They are pretty stable, and pretty fast when you run the pick layer on Unix.
If anyone is interested in a look at pick, have a look at www.jbase.com. They provide a free copy of their software for Linux. It is a well known pick implementation. The other one is Universe (also for *nix) which is well known for being damn near indestructible.
Lots of big companies use pick databases. They aren't a new technology, but they are a good working multidimensional database. In many ways they are still inferior to modern transactional-relational databases though.
EDS used to specialize in them, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were more than a few in use within the Navy right now.
Just my $.02
Cuchullain
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is not shared." -St. Augustine
They still have sextant operators ships, just in case all the whiz bang technology stops working. GPS is more convenient and accurate but that does little good if the satellites get "Goldeneyed."
>Unfortunately screwed by the Caps/Ctrl keys on
>current keyboards.
That is part of the reason I get points on the Hacker's Test...I always remap my caps_lock and control keys. And thus, customize my environment in such a way that it makes it hard for others to use.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Well, I guess _you're_ part of the problem, then. Want to help solve it?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
At least, not with manual typewriters, anyways.
In any case, I'm completely horrified at the idea of mandating the use of Win2K in an environment where security is an issue. I had a student who, in 4 tries, was unable to install and upgrade his Win2K box before he was infected. I remember a slashdot article about similar problems. As somebody else mentioned: One rogue virus and an attacker could take down the entire defense infrastructure.
It's not like Linux is entirely immune, either (although it does appear to be a good bit more secure and reliable than Wintendos). I'd much rather see a focus on diversity and interoperability (I guess I'm speaking sincere choice, here)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
"Diversity and chaos does have its advantages."
Controlled Diversity and chaos have advantages.
The hodge-podge systems that the military has is an example of what happens when there's little to no regard for the whole. Remember ARPANET? "Diverse" and "chaotic" systems that couldn't talk to each other. I'm certain that at the endpoints, those computers were selected to fulfil a role, and were good at it. But when it came down to the big picture. Not being able to talk to their counterparts kind of negated some of the advantages "diversity" and "chaos" brought. The present internet shows the advantages of cooperation in a 'relatively' uniform solution, instead of "everyone do their own thing". The american public is going to be paying big time for unrestrained "diversity" and "chaos". If the military's going to be looking for solutions to their diverse needs. They also need to look at how that solution will fit into the big picture. The military has some of the same needs and problems as a big business. The cost of maintaining multiple platforms, and diverse software:i.e training,licensing. Also like a business they need to keep an eye to the future. Migrating the volumes (emphasis on volumes) of data that they generate, to future equipment. Keeping their cost low when it comes to a parts inventory for their equipment. A 1000 and 1 diverse solutions don't make that task easier. The present system is an example of what happens when one doesn't incrementaly keep up were one needs to keep up.
Typewriters are EMP - proof. They're also vastly more sturdy than most computers. THey even work when there's no power.
qts
You're quite right that the Navy could see some improvements in streamlining its bureaucracy by making over its IT infrastructure so that more business can be conducted electronically without the need to kill trees, have people get into the loop, etc.
OTOH, a very real danger of simply introducing a more efficient processing system into many bureaucracies is to thereby encourage and motivate a proliferation of more bureaucratic procedures!
I know. In my workplace I saw how the WWW on our internal network transformed rapidly from something fun and informative to something that resembled the worse parts of the business. Heavy, sodden reams of regulations choked the nascent web. What was fun was no longer as I started to get automated emails reminding me of some trivial bureaucratic hurdle I must needs soon complete.
And, from what I hear, of all the federal bureaucracies, the DoD is unmatched, despite worthy competitors from other byzantine agencies.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
...coming to a pork barrell near you!
Maybe if set it up as one huge contract, and make enough noise about it, we'll get to watch a half-dozen big corporations vie for the fast track to croporate ruin, following Intergraph's course in the aftermath of NAVSEA, NAVFAC, NAVAIR and the end of the Cold War.
IIRC, there used to be a law that the gov couldn't do business with a company that had done illegal things... WTF happened to that?
CoCo Scripsit rules.
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
If you're comparing the US Navy's antiquated technology to some other country's Navy and wondering how the US, the world's largest superpower can be so ridiculously far behind, consider this.
While FOO may have modern systems now, 20 years ago they probably had no IT at all, compared to how the US Navy was running cutting edge WordStar. Such is the case for financial networks in the US vs. Europe. They're old and crappy here, but we've had them since the 60s, whereas Europe is only getting them fairly recently.
Legacy systems support is a huge bitch. And who the hell are Electronic Data Systems? I swear, all of these companies that work with the public sector have such generic names. Are they chosen just because their names are so generic or what?
Criminy!
To flush the $5 billion in waste down.
:/
First off what rocket scientist decided to install Windows 2000 on these computers!! I can't even keep that thing secure long enough to install the securty patches half the time. The fact that it's Microsoft's most stable OS is cold comfort. And how are they going to code review 1 million+ lines of sloppy C & C++ code for just 5 billion dollars? Oh, I guess their not
Second, what kind of idiot is sending Word attachments in e-mail? Shouldn't they be fired on general principle? (Wordstar 5.2 kicks ass BTW, most productive small document word processor ever. For books, math, journal papers latex is of course king with it's infinte macro and formatting abilities.)
Third, what's wrong with 2 computers? And why doesn't the guy in the picture have a KVM? If Wal-Mart can sell a computer for $199, couldn't the Navy buy in enough volume to get a better price? Two computers also means one could be connected to the internet for doing research, while the other machine is only attacked by those who have already made their way onto the navy network, which could be entirely seperate without even a web proxy, since everyone has an internet computer on their desk.
And again Windows 2000! do they want Mr. Osama to have control of 5000 nuclear warheads just to subsidize some convicted criminal?!?!
Hey, I used WordStar right on through the mid-90s. It really was a great program.
I actually wish there were a WordStar for Linux/UNIX using curses. Yeah I'm familiar with joe/jstar, but it's just a text editor. I mean a real word processor that used WS keystrokes.
We had a clone/ripoff called New Word. It was actually a fairly useable application, but that was 10 years ago. It's scary that the Navy is using something like still. You'd think they would at least have upgraded to WordPerfect 5.1?
I consider this ironic, because if I were purchasing equipment for the Navy, I would never consider Toshiba after what they did back in the 80's: illegally selling advanced milling equipment to the Soviets allowing them to build more stealthy attack submarines.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
As other replies have mentioned, there definitely are options in the purchasing rules to let you buy stuff more quickly and in a more normal way (at least for relatively cheap and standard things like PCs; secret nuclear command bunkers are another matter). But that flexibility is often not used.
A Harvard prof (Steve Kellman) who wrote a book largely about federal IT purchasing. Being a good liberal, he expected to find basically smart, creative bureaucrats being hampered by crazy and inflexible rules that accumulated over decades from Congress. To his chagrin, the rules weren't the primary problem, the people were. Even when they understood the new, easier purchasing options, they wouldn't use them.
By and large the culture in the federal procurement world is that they are the guardians fairness, legality, and frugality. They are *not* there to help Fred get new PCs for his dept; they are quite explicitly Fred's adversaries. They are there to make sure that Fred doesn't give the contract to his brother-in-law, or that Fred doesn't spend $2,000 on a Dell when he could have spent $1,950 on a "just as good" Computerz-Is-Us, thus wasting fifty taxpayer bucks (until the cheap one breaks next month...)
This approach came in response to the massive corruption that exisited decades ago (Tammany Hall and all that) when everyone DID buy from their brother in law, but we went way overboard.
Congress and the OMB have been granting agencies more and more freedom since 1980, but it's taking a long time to change the culture of the procurement community, many of whom saw these reforms as just another Reagan scam to unfairly help his business cronies. With virtually everyone in the govt on the verge of retirement, hopefully newer generations will have a more balanced view.
Just remember, "Efficiency in Government." Folks, I hope this dies an early and UGLY death.
:)
We might be in the same building.
Another little thing that the article didn't mention is the migration from Froupwise (on novell & *nix) to mSexchange (Win2k). It's costing a pretty penny so far and the mSexchange nyetwork is *far* from being ready to go live. I'm part of the Froupwise admin team and the migration is not going well. I'm hoping this dies an ugly death.
It does also burn me that my taxes are continually wasted on Microsoft software. Whenever any money is spent on MS Office or a Windows 2000 file server, they are wasting my money when a perfectly suitable substitute exists as a free opensource product.
The taxpayers are being screwed(gee something new) when opensource software isn't considered.
Take for example the fact that their are tons of Wordstar installs out there still. This is an obsolete, unsupported,limited function product. Your telling me that going to OpenOffice instead of MS Office isn't a better idea in every possible way? Oh but no, now they get to enjoy the Outlook/Exchange lockin. Even if God forbid every OpenOffice developer died in a bus crash tomorrow, the Navy would STILL be better off then they are now. Access to the code kicks ass and prevents the current situation they are in now!
Also for their custom apps, they should be rewriting these for Opensource OS's and then also sharing these apps with the rest of the government to save time and money. There should be one freaking giant Opensource Software repository that all government agencies can go to for their needs. This of course should be shared back with us, WE ARE paying their salaries aren't we? Shouldn't we be getting something in return?
Let me also make something else perfectly clear. If the entire US government standardized on OpenOffice there would sure as hell be one giant stampede of consultant firms sending there supports staffs to learn how to use it. So that who will we call for support bullshit goes right out the window.
Instead they feed the MS beast and in the end will be more locked in then they were with 10 year old software.
STOP WASTING MY GOD DAM MONEY ON CLOSED SOURCE SOFTWARE!
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
one hacker can write an "I Hate Saddam" virus and knock out the entire US Navy infrastructure by exploiting outlook/w2k problems! Talk about liability for EDS!
Look, I only see a few people in this discussion really hitting the point of this whole conversion: to allow the Navy to communicate between points A and Z without having to going through every site between them. I worked on a Navy project at NAVICP helping the civilian support get an RFP for a demand planning COTS to replace the thirty systems they currently use. Just mapping interaction between systems took me three weeks to complete.
The goal is not to supplant Naval combat systems with Microcrock components, but to fix the communications barrier between Naval systems. In fact I know some folks still coding ship systems from scratch and their work will continue. It's the desktop they're working on. Every Naval site has its own system(s), many hand-crafted code from the eighties or even earlier. Does it work? Sure it does, in fact very well. Will it talk to the base forty miles down the road? Hell no, it won't. At least not without coding up some custom interface for the two systems. But we're not talking about two systems, we're looking at hundreds, not to mention the 100,000 legacy programs spread over the globe.
Is EDS the king of efficiency? Well, no. Are they trying? Probably better than most. Most techno's out there cringe at AD forcing them to use standard issue desktops, screen savers, and browsers. I understand that annoyance, but as an admin, if you let the techies have control, anybody can have control, including the morons who think removing a program is as simple as the delete button. Scale that up to the 150,000 seats on this project and mayhem prevails. It's no secret most major corps use the same tactics on their employees desktops.
You wanna be a code monkey for the military? Then get in a lab and use the proper tools, not the piece-o-crap IBM being doled out by EDS. It's an ego blow that some folks, the non-coders mind you, don't get to have unlimited web access, DVD burners, and play UT during lunch. Well too bad, bucko, welcome to the real world. You don't write the programs, you don't run the network, you don't get the goodies. And if you code the programs, why the hell are you connected to an intranet with the rest of the desk jockeys? It's the govt, so requisition a T3 for the back room.
of which IIRC HTML is a subset of SGML which the US Navy / Contractors ? used to product technical documents you'd think they'd just dust off the old stuff from the 80's and use it at least
Okay all - I work for the Naval Sea Systems Command and I can tell you the REAL goods.
We have been preparing for NMCI for years. Our original "AOR date," or Assumumption of Responsibilities, was Fall 2000. The contract award was delayed several times and finally awarded to EDS rather than the expected frontrunner, CSC. Rumor was that CSC was prepared to run with it. EDS had already disbanded their team.
NMCI has been nothing but heartache. The ISF, or Information Strike Force, a team EDS has assembled to lead the tranisition, is comprised of mostly freshfaced green sys admins who "basically" understand Windows 2000 and have decided to put 400,000 users, printers, mailboxes, etc, on TWO domains across the country. By my rough estimation, they may even run out of valid IDs for their active directory.
The ISF has been so unprepared they have pushed data inventory calls on us at the rate of once every few months. This has overwhelmed our staff and left us bankrupt energy wise. Most recently, the following two events have REALLY HAPPENED:
Upon reviewing our state of the art cat6 network, they told us they would "upgrade us" to cat5.
They told us they would replace our brand new Cisco switches, locked to the port by MAC, with older, less efficient models, because "our staff is trained on them."
The plan calls for swapping out subpar equipment in Commands who have less money and replacing it with better equipment poached from Command who have it, juggling resources but also leaving those command with less. The rumors are that they will simply NOT support a good portion of legacy apps. Also, word is that they intend to do everything from block ALL non-approved websites to lock the desktop to the wallpaper and screensaver -- with EDS LOGOS!!
The most elite support you can buy is "4 hours response time." Laptops will cost your outfit over $300 a month, and at the end of two years, it's taken away. Computers will cost over $190/mo. We could buy new equipment semi-anually for cheaper. Now they are forcing us to buy Windows 2000 licenses and migrate ourselves from NetWare 5.1.
This is a complete waste of money. Great idea on paper - absolutely deplorable and pathetic implementation. I'm embarrassed and frustrated as a taxpayer and eventually, I may quit on principle.
I've thought about going to the newspapers and sharing some of this information. As a citizen, I'm incredibly upset because it reeks of closed door deals. Your Navy is spending 6 -12 billion dollars on this, and it appears almost every command will need to stand up a second network just to function. How does that make you feel?
WordStar used to be an accepted product for MS Office upgrades. Just keep WS on a floppy and stick it in when asked for an upgrade product.
For PC users WordStar is a great way to page through a huge text file, like a database dump, without loading it all in memory
The answer is simply a return to the basic rules of life. Eventually, the people of planet are going to reach a point where they will no longer tolerate or support unproductive people. Just like in nature, the weak and stupid will become the food or fertilizer for the stronger and the smarter. There is no other answer, there never was, just temporary insanity on the part of all those believers in Religion or Society to solve their problems and their hunger.
What will first happen is the ending of social programs, with laws forcing people to support the members of their families themselves, or risk punishment. This will precipitate a massive drop in births in the industrialized world, along with a drop in the tax base used to support the undeveloped world, which will largely die out, just like animals whose water hole has dried up.
This is not an 'IF' scenario, it will happen.
The daisy wheel was the best thing, and if you really knew your stuff, it could do proportional fonts.
To someone brought up on ASR-33/35 teletypes, the daisy wheel or IBM golfball printers were super!
WordStar's UI was pretty good as I recall, sort of emacs-lite.
Fiat Lux.
Maybe I should offer the Navy my WS2XML
conversion scripts! reads WS 4,5,and 6 for MS-DOS
(I'm sure 3.3 support would be an easy backport)
written in Perl, kinda modular, coupla comments.
I guess if I sent them to the Secretary of the
Navy, (s)he would send them right to EDS, if
they're a good secretary, that is. Wouldn't want
UNNECESSARY DUPLICATION OF EFFORT IN MILITARY
CONTRACT WORK, WOULD YOU???
I have to wonder how long it takes to log on, if you have the thousands of GPO entries in place and roaming profiles needed to make all that happen.
My girlfriend is in the same situation, and it's ridiculous. If she bookmarks a site in IE, it's gone when she logs back in. But the default bookmark for Hotmail is always there. Hotmail is blocked by the Internet filer. She can't change the screen resolution or background picture.
She spend her own $$ to buy a grade book program so she can enter grades, attendance, etc. on her Palm, and transfer the info to her office computer. Except she can't install any software on the office computer. The IT guys at her school can't install software either. To install software, someone has to get in the taxpayer-purchased car at the District HQ, drive to her school, and install it for her. The in-house IT guys can't even install a printer.
Then there's the BESS internet filter, which prevents her from doing any real research. She wanted a poster of Thomas Jefferson for her classroom; all the websites where you'd buy a poster were blocked because they had "objectionable content: swimsuits." The District's policy states that BESS can be bypassed for educational research needs, but there is no system in place to make such a request. She can search Google, but the google cache is blocked.
These are "new" (less than 1yr old) Dell machines with Win2K. They are completely useless. She does all her computing work on her laptop (PII-266) at home now, because the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Seattle Schools has spent to put a computer on each desk has resulted in a useless, locked-down-to-the-point-of-being-a-kiosk computer on each desk. This is also the same school district that just gave their superintendent a raise to $220,000, who then discovered a $33 million accounting "oops." The superintendent was hired because of his strong financial background and he has never been a school teacher or administrator.
Okay, I feel better now.
I worked with a few guys for a while migrating a legacy application to an NMCI web-based SSL-enabled application. We started using BSDs and then linux (for oracle support), and they (the Navy) forced us to migrate to Win2k. We were basically the first non-EDS company to migrate a legacy app to the NMCI.
As for security... You may know that the GAO has no problem cracking into military systems. NMCI will be no exception, I'm sure. I mean, the guys I worked with set up their deployment system connected to the net, didn't disable their web server, and managed to get nimba (or some virus). They know virtually nothing about SSL. They don't actively (and have never actively) administered any public web/db/etc. servers. They do not read Bugtraq or CERT lists. And this is their first Oracle project. Decide for yourself how secure their deployment will be. And this was a small, tightly controlled group.. I can't imagine how bad of a job EDS is doing.
In addition, there was no mention of putting a firewall on the oracle server, and there was no mention of spending time to audit and setup decent security measures like I'd do on my personal boxen. They (the Navy and the deveopers) didn't care about auditing db or OS logs for security reasons. And the individuals that would be managing the Oracle servers would be Navy officers who, on average, know VERY little about system administration. (The person that told me this was once the admin for a Navy command.)
Here's what it really boils down to: Navy wants Oracle, and justifiably so. Oracle support for BSDs is poor. As for linux, its a real pain to get Oracle installed (in my experience) and can take a nauseatingly long time. Oracle support for Win2k is significantly better. On top of all that, at least MS is responsible for providing support for their OS.. and the folks at Dell and Oracle seem to know a lot more about Windows than unix. (Although some of them are linux-saavy from my experience.)
I picked up WOPR at a government auction sale a few years ago. I did on a lot of 286's and airplane parts and he was in the bottom of the bag.
I took him home and cleaned all of his terminals and he fired right up.
He is a bit repetitive at times always wanting to play a game, but I patched him into a pc( imagaine the nightmare of vampire taps and serial connections) and he is happy with UT2003 and Minesweeper.
Later this month I am going to install a Plexiglass window and a disco ball in him to give him a 2002 look.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Napster(okay that is out of date) and Word Star without licences?
The question is "How fast can you say 'Captain's Mast'?" That is classic. Really classic.
How sophisticated a UI does Admin really need? Anyway, they fsck the payrolls no matter how expensive the system is.
No matter how idiot proof a system is made, the world always mades smatter idiots.
-In the spirit of Murphey's Law
This is a serious question... Why should typewriters be disposed of? For general documents, yes of course computers are better. But have you ever tried to fill out a government form by entering everything on your computer and running the form through the printer? I don't recommend it unless you've got a LOT of time and LOT of blank forms. On the other hand, you stick it in a typewriter, line it up till it looks about right, and fill in whatever you need to. You end up with an easy to read document in very little time at all. Granted a template can be made for most US .gov forms, or they can be done electronically, but what happens when they come across some form they don't have a template for?
According to the people who initially published the material you cite they have distanced themselves from the article and referred to it as "early speculation" as more details came out over time and the article was found to contain a little evangilism on part of the old time UNIX folks who were being displaced and/or switched to WinNT. The article creatively mixes different incidents in a misleading manner. And most important of all this was a test platform testing new not-finalized software.
h tml
This is not to say WinNT has a flawless record, just that this instance is mischaracterized and misrepresented. If you want to slam WinNT at least use a case where WinNT is actually at fault.
According to the people who were on the ship and who wrote the application programs:
http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus2.
Others insist that NT was not the culprit. According to Lieutenant
Commander Roderick Fraser, who was the chief engineer on board the
ship at the time of the incident, the fault was with certain
applications that were developed by CAE Electronics in Leesburg, Va.
As Harvey McKelvey, former director of navy programs for CAE, admits,
"If you want to put a stick in anybody's eye, it should be in ours."
But McKelvey adds that the crash would not have happened if the navy
had been using a production version of the CAE software, which he
asserts has safeguards to prevent the type of failure that occurred.
The server application corrupted it's own database and naive client applications needed that database to function properly and to operate equipment. The OS was not involved. If you read more carefully you will see that "LAN consoles" crashed, not the LAN, just the client applications.
>> WordStar rocks.
Sure did. Anyone else remember using it on one of those "portable" Kaypros with the 5-inch screen?
If there was a PC software hall of fame, WordStar would be there on the first ballot. So would Brief and Lotus Magellan. Oh yeah, Sidekick, too.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
On point 2, back in the 70s the Chicago Board of Education made a large purchase of manual typewriters to equip typing classrooms. Turned out they were the manufacturer's second-largest customer after the US Army. Location of the manufacturer: German Democratic Republic (East Germany)! That was the only place high-quality manual typewriters were still being made. Presumably the Red Army used the same model.
sPh
Here are two consecutive paragraphs from
the WP story. This just cracked me up.
That also meant that when sailors wanted to
send e-mail attachments to a Navy base across
the country they sometimes found that their
counterparts couldn't open the Microsoft Word
or Excel document.
The new system was designed to change all that.
For the first time, all Navy departments were
to be on the same system using the same e-mail
and financial management programs. Security
was a top priority.
Excel attachments, all on the same system, and
top priority security all in one swoop. Ha!
--User0x45
The guys on the boat at the time and the guys who wrote the software said WinNT was not the problem.
l d=1&commentsort=0&tid=126&mode=thread&pid=4470622# 4473460
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42591&thresho
I am Dick Brown, of EDS. Resistance is futile. Your life, as you have known it, is over. From this point on, you will service...us.
I'm a civilian technical employee of the Navy, and this new Navy intranet is a big push in the organization...but I think the funniest/most annoying parts (for windows machines, at least) is that Navy PCs on the new intranet have this Navy propaganda wallpaper set on their desktops at domain logon...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
No its not flamebait, its the truth. I'll also be damned if I can't express how annoyed I am by SHOUTING IN CAPS. So there, pfft.
But then agin what do I know? I only used to sell software and handle Microsoft Enterprise licensing agreements for the 3 largest VAR in the world, and I've only been doing this whole "Opensource" thing since the mid 1990's.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Hey I have been in this business for 20 years. Wordstar and even PFS Professional Write are better Simplistic Word Processors for the masses than Word or WordPerfect will ever be!! They were meant to just KISS it. Keeping it simple meant everybody could use it to perform basic wordprocessing. I think the Navy should keep using it... bet you they don't have Word Macro viruses and Microsoft upgrades and security holes every time they turn around.
sPh
I know that the Navy has outfitted some ships with Lotus Notes they have apparently been very happy too. As I understand as its a carrier group, they have reasonbly fast ship-to-ship microwave data transfer but ship-to-shore is limited to a single satalite connection for the entire group. Notes lets everything be syncronized to one server connected to the satalite dish, then its, all compressed, encrypted again with a different method (the DBs themselves are encrypted), and synced to shore. This allows all the ships to share the same data and prevents transfering the same data over satalite twice.
No, they should not be standardizing on solutions, they should be standardizing communcations and formats. The fact that one solution uses one of staroffice or msword, or another sulution uses one of Java, Perl or C++ doesnt matter. Problems arrise when one system can't communicate with another system, or when it stores its information in a different format or even worse a proprietary format.
Client stations will be 2000. Oracle will be running on Solaris.
right after the Grenade invasion the DoD hired some civilian systems analyst and programers to devise a communication system so that the Entire armed forces could communicate with everybody else, Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force it was called JINTACS. Jintacs was almost exactly like XML all the forms defined, opening tags, closing tags, data in the middle the works. You could send it by text plain or encrypted or even voice.
They killed it, they did it by teaching how to do it. Our Army unit spent an entire two days teaching the Battlion how to send a Naval mine laying report. I shutter to think about what the Navy taught their people. Jintacs just went away with no explaination due to user resistance
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
WordStar Rocks! Yes, that's right. Present tense. There's even emulation inside MS Word. Now, if someone would get around to creating a WordStar mode for Emacs I could finally stop dual booting!
What price big iron?
...I'm quite sure they will get it :-)
About thirty miles away from the MS campus in Redmond is two large Naval bases. One of them is the west coast homeport for the Navy's Trident subs.
You may have missed this, but there's no shortage of arable land in the Americas.
Sure, with a couple billion people in the US we'd need to cut down our beef consumption, but that's not a terrible thing for our health anyway.
Someone told me once who was working on the project, that to lock out Mac's some Admirals and Microsoft made sure that the specs for standard desktops and laptops required paralell ports. This decision was made three years ago, long after USB had taken over. The idea was that they could lock out some big Mac sites (Former sites like China Lake, 10K macs) and force them to switch to Windows.
Funny ha. They were not counting on this funny little thing called linux to show up as a alternative to Windows.
I remember the first time I had a WordStar document that was over 64K bytes long. When saved, it suddently became 10 bytes long!
That's when I learned about 'refactoring'.
From the Navy Fact File on Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines:
Ohio-class/Trident ballistic missile submarines provide the sea-based "leg" of the triad of U.S. strategic deterrent forces. The 18 Trident SSBNs (each carrying 24 missiles), carry 50 percent of the total U.S. strategic warheads. Although the missiles have no pre-set targets when the submarine goes on patrol, the SSBNs are capable of rapidly targeting their missiles should the need arise, using secure and constant at-sea communications links.
When I was living in Bremerton, Washington, a few years ago, the subs at Bangor were always refered to as "nuclear trident subs" by the Navy. Which is approperiate if you think of what SSBN (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear) means and what type of warheads they carry.
If you can prove that you are a US citizen and are in the Seattle area, Bangor once did occasionally has open houses and showed off their subs. I'm not sure if they still do after 9/11, but check on on Navy Region NW's page and see if there is any events listed.
I am the lead contractor at one of the NavSea R&D sites - I have been running the network (4500 users/8+ sites) for 3 years now. Our 5 Yr. contract costs the Navy 18 Million Dollars. One year of NMCI is going to cost about the same amount... Some savings..
In my opinion some upper echelon Navy people have signed off on this without understanding the realities, and now that they are 150,000 seats behind on deployment, they don't want to have their career's ruined, so they are fighting tooth and nail to get it done, regardless of the cost. They want everyone in the Navy on the same page.. Fine: create standards, force compliance, don't rip out our fiber to the desktop infrastructure that we have just put in place, and replace it with CAT5E.
Network topology does not matter. Novell -- Microsoft we can make it work. We have been running NT4 multi domain for many years now.. NOT A PROBLEM..
However, do we really want to TESTBED Microsoft's latest NOS on our nations military... Our protector's... Mission Critical stuff using unproven software??
Oh Well, Like a friend of mine says about government work: " there is always time to do it over, never enough time to do it right "
_BoHiCa_
Yes, there's lots of land. There's also lots of people. Pop quiz: Exactly how long ago was it that the US could actually produce enough food to feed itself?
1. Get core group of "taliban loyal" spies to quietly settle into US in 1980's.
2. Spies join military, perform outstandingly and gain high level promotions.
3. Infiltrate US Military IT purchasing decision group.
4. Dissuade the obvious choice of running with *NIX platforms and slowly spread the diseased MSOFT OSes throughout military critical systems.
5. Sit back a wait while military cripples itself to the point where Canada could even invade US (successfully).... ohhh that'll be about 1 year down the line I figure.
Perhaps a good counter-attack would be to send over a whack of free computer running Win98/95/NT or something, slowly forcing them to spend less time worrying about religious freakishisms and more time editing corrupted registries, service pack updates over 14.4 baud modems (one telephone line per town) and reinstalls every time they get a freakin BSOD (blue screen of death... about every month or so). Maybe the 6.8 billion upgrade budget would prove more strategic if spend in this manner. Not to mention that all the Afghan kids can start surfing for porn. Now isn't that what the world REALLY needs?
A nice set of tits always makes me think of peace, love and happiness!!
___________
<b>Belly</b>
Three seconds? Countries generally don't subsidize agriculture because they want to give cheap food to the rest of the world... They do it so that they are self-sufficient in the event that they need to be.
wow, scary stuff. why doesn't the nsa lend them some SELinux technology to help out?
ok, i know, m$ wants them out of open source development. M$ spurns innovation, right?
gs
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I wasn't in he Navy, I was in he USCG, onboard a cutter. I think this is a situation where being small helps, a lot. Our ship's convrsion ook a while, startng with runnng fiberglass through out the entire thing, but every step of the installation went smoothly, and the only eason we still have old systems sitting around, is because we do not have all he programs running yet. But yes, we are also stuck with nothing but W2K... sucks. but a least the web was not restricted. yet.
"It takes a very long time to count to 2 in binary." ~'Fourlegged'
They aim to run every application/database from 2 central servers, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. All Navy personnel (including civilians) are going to have to log in to this system to do their work. They even want smart cards for everyone to use to log in. Classified AND unclassified work is supposed to be centralized. Somebody posted an estimated 5 years late/$7 billion over budget, that's probably not far off.
She does all her computing work on her laptop (PII-266) at home now, because the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Seattle Schools has spent to put a computer on each desk has resulted in a useless, locked-down-to-the-point-of-being-a-kiosk computer on each desk.
I know this is off-topic, but this scenario is what I fear will happen if Palladium becomes popular. Millions of computers "trusted" to the point of the Internet becoming useless.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Yeah, I think your fears are valid. Palladium is another step down the road to making sure that no officially-sanctioned information works its way into your brain. This will be sold as making things "less confusing" and "more secure" for the easily-led-astray end user.
For example:
There was that story about the "switcher" which turned out to be an (obvious) Microsoft PR piece. Microsoft pulled the page, but Google has it cached.
Soon, I think Google (or at least the public-facing cache) will be sued out of existence. Why? Consider this: the information on that page was copyright of Microsoft. When Google cached it, they were presenting content they didn't have any rights to, without the copyright holder's permission to rebroadcast or redisplay that content.
I know it's a stretch, but would a google cache of MP3s be acceptable to the RIAA (or even most of Slashdot?) No. Why should it be different with Microsoft's IP as embodied in that "switch" document?
Fundamentally, are they not both IP? Doesn't the whole basis of IP come down to having final, ultimate authority over the IP you own? How is Google caching a web page, for the whole world to see, any different from www.mp3z.hax0rs.org providing a million MP3s for download? In both cases, the content is no longer controlled by the owner, and thus it fails the "hey, that's my IP, only I can disseminate it!" sniff test. I suppose one could argue that since Microsoft published the site, they made the information available to whoever wants to look at it. But Microsoft has the right to log your visits, track your navigation through their site, etc. That might even be a basic function of their web site, and by removing that page from the larger context, MS lawyers will argue that users might get "confused" and that the Google cache is actually harming Microsoft's reputation. For example, I would argue that the weird numbers and letters in the Google cache URL make Microsoft products seem confusing, whereas they are actually touted for their ease of use. (I'm thinking of the vivendisucks.com web site that was shut down here...)
Anyway, enough future lawyer speculation. The point is: The google cache, and perhaps search enginges in general, allow users to access information (by which I mean IP) in ways that diminish the content holder's control of the transaction. Big content holders will fight this, since (they will argue) they want to be able to provide you the best possible value by tailoring their message to you.
I'm sure Microsoft is already pissed that when I'm looking for a KB article, I search on Google since it searches the Microsoft site better than Microsoft can. How much longer do we really think that kind of thing will be permitted?
Some sites are apparently hiring MSCEs at $9/hour to do installations and user support. Imagine the quality of a $9/hr MSCE. Other sites have had the entire crew (EDS folks included) walk out on the day of rollout. Oh, and they fire most of the people when the job is done. Productivity was not a concern (each person did one to two installs a day) since the longer it took, the longer you worked.
You can probably understand why I'm staying anonymous on this one. Any job that requires a Military security clearance is serious stuff. I worked as a subcontractor for NMCI for about 4 months. All I can say about the whole project is ... boy am I glad I got out!! Like everyone is saying there are huge huge flaws in the way this project was implemented (or shall we say attempted implementation). I would say the major failure was the way the contract was written. Nobody really commented on the fact that over 300 subcontractors are working this project. The only people directly from EDS are the higher-ups and managers. So what does this mean? Well basically all the people who actually do something are subcontractors. Subcontractors = temp workers. Now there's nothing wrong with temp workers (heck I was one myself) but having so many people from so many different companies really makes it hard for everone to work towards a common goal. It puts alot of emphasis on the managers. If they dont do their job good, the contractors dont perform good. And I hate to be mean, but I didnt see one good EDS manager the entire time I was there.
My first week of work I was told that I was to write SOP's (Standard Opperating Procedures) for my particular job function. The only problem was that the only piece of information I had from them was my title. I did not know who I was working with, what I was working with, where it was located, or what exactly I was supposed to do or accomplish. When I asked for this information I was told it was classified and I couldn't have it. That basically sums up the NMCI project for me.
But the funniest thing I saw while working there was the 'OU Update = Instant trouble ticket' trick. They set Windows 2000 active directory to update all the OU's of every machine every 30 minutes. When the update takes place on the client machine, the machine freezes for 4 minutes and 45 seconds exactly. So when the client machines are out in the field, and they freeze every 30 minutes for 4 minutes and 45 seconds a Navy person calls the helpdesk and opens a ticket. By the time anyone even reads the ticket the computer is back up and working fine. Nobody could ever figgure out why!! LOL! It was halarious!!
of course... if it was a modern computer running wordstar it could run a bunch of todays tasks... now consider that the ship mentioned above had a combined power of one mac classic.
now... use that one computer running wordstar as a terminal server and you could run several warships; follow me?
now... here it comes... IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THESE!!... you could run a star wars defense system w/a google sized cluster and still have room for porn!
what an age we live in
one step further:
a grid of clusters spread throughout US/NATO bases throughout the word linked throuhg an irriduim (spellin'?) type network... as well as a traditional network using encryption techniques to secure data...
of course this is all running some form of Unix... which means that the navy can keep their VAX machines, etc... but also employ new technology for horsepower/backups/redundncy... etc
I never thought that I'd see the say where Netscape is free software and
X11 is proprietary. We live in interesting times.
-- Matt Kimball
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