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.

Comments

In a perfect (and more secure) world.

[techstar25]

"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.

Numerous Pluses

[felonious]

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.