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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.
What I want to know is, what technologies are they using to integrate all those different computer systems? That has to be a nightmare and a half.
Finding God in a Dog
Since MS did a bid, can we get a list of competing bids as well as criteria? It would be interesting to review...
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
That they'd make use of SE Linux, since they helped develop it.
Also, you'd think they'd want a variety of O/S's, ect, for security purposes.
It shall be very funny/ironic when "Homeland Security" gets hacked due to some newfound MS flaw. Actually, i'm frightened, as they will probably have ever detail they can glean from every person they can, opened up to some arsehole
what would be the surprise? did MS do anything illegal here? or are they doing what companies do for fun; MAKING MONEY?
The problem I see here is that Microsoft's customer is the government. Where did the government get their money? Did they work hard and earn it? Hell, no! They took it by force. If the government wants more money, do they have to work harder for it or cut expenses (like the rest of us do)? Of course not! They just haul out the guns and take it! So, no, they didn't do anything illegal. They did something that is anti-freedom.
please stop looking at everything microsoft does as immoral - they are a company, their purpose is to make money.
Lots of Leftists think that making money is inherently immoral. I am not one of them, so your argument here is ineffective on me. I think Microsoft is immoral for other reasons. These are reasons for which they have never apologized, for which they have never tried to make amends, and that they show no signs of stopping.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
There is no US Company that is better integrated into the US Goverment (especially DoD) than Microsoft. And anyone that says "Linux" instead knows little about the deep-seeded failings of the OSS security, or widescale deployability. The only other legitimate choice for a 'solution' contract like this would be an Apple/IBM combo, but they don't even currently make such offerings except via contractor.
Integration is where it's at. Whether you realize it or not.
This is worse than those 600 dollar hammers a few years back.90 million dollars wasted on winXp and officeXp.What can they do with that software that I cant do with free debian and openoffice?
"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has signed a deal for MandrakeSoft Linux software worth something in the region of $0 (free), covering servers and over 140,000 desktops."
Instead they paid $100 million of our tax dollars to a company who is breaking antitrust laws. Maybe Microsoft isn't the bad guy here.
Is there any other real option for the government? I'm assuming everyone here wants a distro of Linux to be the government's OS of choice. Which one? Red Hat? Are they a large enough company to ensure 24/7 tech support on the governments' 140,000 computers? I don't know, and I don't think the government does either. I think Microsoft was the safe choice. Granted it's not the more secure operating system, but their needs go beyond that.
If you think about the reliability, uptime, and random reboot problems with many MS products then this could be great for us citizens.
We know all of the attempts to restrict our personal freedoms with wire taps, internet/email monitoring, and the ideology to put all of the collected info into a massive database for those who have the clearance to peruse. The best thing is, although, they might have your most personal info it will probably be collected and stored by a MS product.
What does that mean? It means it will either disapear or just spontaneously fragment and corrupt itself! Why our goverment chooses bloatware over dependablity and functionality is beyond me but they were never known for being frugal or making the best decisions in terms of bang for the buck. I'm sure MS is practically giving it away just to keep the business anyway.
It makes you wonder how many fuckups happen just out of using MS software. I'm not saying it's the worst or best because it does have it's use but since this story is about our goverment using it I'd prefer a more stable and dependable os/desktop. When I think of mixing MS software with our goverment all I see is the movie "Wargames" and that's not a nice thought.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
at least we can now acertain that the government isn't REALLY serious about this issue.
.. the words security and Microsoft are pretty much polar opposites - unless your talking about cash reserves.
I mean
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
The single largest company ever to warn people not to use their software for life-and-death situations, is now going to have an exclusive with the government to help prevent the next 9/11 attack.
Considering that the only (repeat: only ) effective Microsoft security measures to date are the ones that prevent people who've already stolen Windows-XP from upgrading it, it's pretty safe to say that we can all prepare to live with having any enemy who wants to know something knowing it while substantial numbers of us sit around glowing in the dark.
Today's bonus question: 'will the government's relationship with Microsoft include a EULA that precludes the government's suing them when they screw up?'
It's amazing what you can do to a society with enough money.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
I did some short term consulting work with a company recently to help them prepare some bids on the last BAA (Broad Agency Announcement) sent out by the DHS. The scope and scale of the projects that were in the request were quite interesting, with some that were tailor made for linux (wearable computing initiatives, anyone?).
We haven't heard any updates on the bid selection, but after looking at a good portion of those potential projects I can truthfully say that Microsoft is going to have a really tough time filling the required roles for many of them, let alone doing it securely.
The Windows "just works" thing is a myth. I would say that 2/3rds of the time, an HW installation in Windows works OK. But the remaining 1/3rd is practically impossible to solve for an end-user.
Let me tell you the wonderful story of the Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse. I got hold of one of these right after Christmas and went home to try it out. As I was putting the CD in the computer, I noticed that i said "MS XP only". I was running 2000 at the time (Now running RedHat 8). OK, so I couldn't use the Bluetooth device on my computer without paying additional MS tax.
OK, so I gave it to a friends girlfriend who had XP on the computer. She couldn't install it, so I went up to her to install the device. I put the CD in the machine and was told that I needed XP SP1 to do this. Fuckin' L. OK. The XP SP1 CD was included was after 30 minutes, it was installed on her computer. Reboot, and try the Bluetooth driver CD again. It seemed to install something but it soon told me that since I did not use the English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese, Chinese (simplified), Japanese, Danish or Swedish language, the drivers could not be installed. (She had Norwegian installed) DAMN IT!
After the failed attempt to get the Microsoft product to work on another Microsoft product, I went to my mother to have a look at her new iBook. I though that just for kicks, I could put the MS Bluetooth dongle in the Mac USB port. So I did, and...
Go figure.