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Microsoft Wins Homeland Security Contract
syzme writes "According to The Register (as well as Reuters and News.com), 'The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has signed a deal for Microsoft software worth something in the region of $100 million, covering servers and over 140,000 desktops. This does not however mean that Microsoft and its hench-OEM Dell are poised to hoover up all of the Department's lovely IT budget, nor indeed that this is all new money for them; largely, it seems to be more a case of Microsoft holding onto business it's already got.'" This shouldn't be much of a surprise -- remember the Federal government is already Microsoft's biggest customer.
So much for security in our homeland...
Given Microsoft's record of continual failure with regards to security, I've always thought putting MS in charge of security (as with Palladium) was like asking the wolf to guard the sheep.
This shouldn't be much of a surprise -- remember the Federal government is already Microsoft's biggest customer.
No, it shouldn't.
The US federal government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the world.
The above statement seems to imply something ugly, when in fact MANY companies' largest customer is the federal government.
Given Microsoft's record of continual failure with regards to security, I've always thought putting MS in charge of security (as with Palladium) was like asking the wolf to guard the sheep.
Given that 'homeland security' is really a euphemism for something between 'Big Brother' ("total informational awareness" etc.) and 'Political Police', I for one am relieved they are sufficiently incompetent to select Microsoft as their platform. This may, and I stress may, slow down our slide into a complete surveillance society submerged beneath ubiquitous governance.
Or not, as it may be just the prelude needed for even more draconian legislation and public hysteria when Microsoft's chronic security issues begin to affect our perceived safety, leading to the unpleasant irony of having the technical ability to monitor and ubiquitously govern every man, woman, child, dog, cat, and garden slug in the country diminished while providing the political excuse for accelerating legislation through congress that makes the former pre-Gorbochov soviet parliament look positively liberal by comparison.
What we do know for certain is that it puts a lot of money in the pockets of a convicted monopolist, which isn't helpful to anyone (other than said monopolist).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The reason that everyone (including the federal guvnment) still uses Microsoft is because, It Just Works(TM). I can pull windows out of its box, put it in my computer, and have it running in about 30 minutes. I don't have to manually pick out kernel drivers like with debian, I don't have to worry about RedHat not recognizing half my hardware (like my ATI or my AC97 sound chip). I can take any lance corporal off the field, and with windows, he's most likely to know how to at least do basic stuff like surf the web, read e-mail, etc. If the guvment were to use Linux, they would have to spend additional manpower on installation, more man power keeping those boxes up to date (or pay money for RedHats up2date service), not to mention retraining a lot of staff on how to use these computers.
Another reason for the Government choosing Windows is that they probally already have a majority of their services on windows, and to ask a Four Star General to approve a massive budget to switch away from what works to what might not work will take quite a bit of effort.
Wow....that karma just burned brightly....
Reality isn't so black and white as this, and I know plenty of MS-centric people who know what they're talking about, just as many Mac people who know their wares, many of whom more experienced than me I'm sure. But to say that Linux has zero support suggests that documentation isn't counted, which I count and count on daily. Speaking of documentation, Try using MS's knowledgebase to find an article on a specific issue, then hop to google.com/linux and look up how to do something specific in Linux, then tell me which one procuded a usable answer faster and easier.
As far as why more people don't use Linux, or any otehr OS, why not ask the hardware vendors that one. They sell the systems with Windows pre-installed to customers who have bought into the marketing over the years and are now floating though MS-land on auto-pilot. Someone interested in using Linux still for the most part has to install it themselves, something most people have no desire to do even to spite the OS they might percieve as evil (personally I don't think MS does anything any other profit-motivated entity would do given the position they're in; Everyone wants to own a monopoly in business, that's the reason we have public and consumer rights laws right?).
I hear end-users say "Gates is evil", "Microsoft is an monopoly", etc, all the time, though relearning their own computer is too much to do to put their feelings into some action. I can't blame them. If I wasn't interested in this stuff in the first place I'd probably be in the same situation.
Also when was the last time you saw an MS box act as a DDOS drone?
Your kidding right? Look here.