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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
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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!"
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?
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"
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
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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...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?
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?
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...
Are you kidding? ADA was an utter failure.
It was supposed to be an common language for all embedded applications, and it's design goals were object oriented design, orthagonality, and was to promote clear and reusable code. It was to undo the use of dozens of different languages for different tasks.
But the applications were so varied, ADA started being pumped full of hardware-specific and mostly redundant commands, and eventually became a complete bloated mess. So each device had it's own implementation of ADA, and there was barely enough common ground to call it all the same language.
It was supposed to be Java, and it ended up more complicated than the bastard child of FORTRAN and C++, abandoned and raised in the wild by a tribe of assemblers.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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 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?
I read
the largest Federal IT trojan ever attempted.
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
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.
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.
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
in the past 2 years, all uniformed services stop teaching ADA to their developers coming out of tech school
Having gone through that class in '94, the ADA section was woefully short. 2 weeks, IIRC. Not nearly enough time go really get it. Nice as an intro, though.
They still use DBase I or II at most installations. Only a few use Access 95 for databases.
And if you knew what you were talking about, you might be dangerous. Oracle, Access2k and 97, SQLServer...used on USAF bases all over the world. Oh, there might be a few DBI/II applications floating around. But mostly gone by now. Don't know about the Navy, but I'd expect them to be not far behind.(Although, the Navy just got their first CMM level 3 unit, while the USAF got their first CMM level 3 back in '96 at Langley AFB)
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
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
Sure. Some are subs of others, but can standalone as well. There are MANY, MANY office and desktop apps. For instance, the office that hands out the base access stickers you put on your windshield probably uses 10 different app in their daily routine. Now multiply that by 50-100 different offices in the personnel building. There would be a lot of overlap, but it adds up rather quickly.
Now add in actual ship related stuff. 100,000 is not unreasonable.
how much of that 6.9Billion could be elimanated by using Linux on the desktops and servers?
How much of that 'saved' 6.9B would be sucked up in retraining, rewrite,etc? Add at least 2-3 years to the project.
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
Second, there is one big difference between Ada and java -- Ada is designed to be useful for hard realtime applications. The garbage collection in the JVM makes java unsuitable for applications that can't stand a little interruption of processing now and again.
Third, Ada is designed for very high reliability and very long lifecycle projects. Stuff like programs to control defense hardware that is going to stay in use just about forever, be maintainable forever, and should never fail. For example, the B-52's appeared in the 1950's and will likely still be flying in the 2020's, and newer hardware may be expected to last just as long. These are very extraordinary requirements compared to what most software is supposed to do, and Ada is not too bad at addressing them. In this domain, that's not over-engineering. How is anyone supposed to maintain twenty or thirty years worth of Windows or java code when there is a new version of Windows or java every couple of years?
Software that meets its requirements is an engineering success. Software that makes users want an improved version every 1-2 years is a commercial success. "COTS" (Commercial off-the-shelf) is the currently operative buzzword in the DoD.
>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
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.
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."
CMM 3 is a bitch. Have fun. I was on the Level 2 and Level 3 team at Langley.
Document everything .
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?
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?!?!
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
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.
They would have grown into a nice network if they had followed the lead of academics and standardized on BSD in the 80s, followed by any flavor of UNIX followed by Linux. Now they think they are going to make things better by buying licenses for Microsoft products?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
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
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.
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?
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 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
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
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'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
sPh
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
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.
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.
This is exactly why I will vote against every school levy that comes on the ballot in my area. Because the schools are doing the same thing. They whine and cry that they have no funding and the teachers go on strike because they aren't given a decent raise, but then the administration goes and wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars leasing M$ windows and M$ office. If a student is supposed to learn "keyboarding" then why must it be done with M$ Word? Why not use free software that looks just like M$ Word? Cut, copy, and paste do the same damn thing regardless of which company wrote the word processor so why waste $699 on each of 30 pc's in each computer lab at each school?
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?