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Air Force Orders Up A Custom Windows Monoculture
Soulfader writes "It seems that the Air Force has not learned from the Navy's folly in single-source mammoth contracts and their attendant problems, and is now working on something similar with Dell and Microsoft. Particularly interesting is the article's assertion that the Air Force is 'fed up' with Microsoft OS problems--but not enough to switch to something else. Instead, they're going to be getting a custom 'solution' of Windows products specially configured for their use. Is this the ever-hoped-for 'good' version of Windows, or more along the line of the sucks-in-new-and-interesting-ways version of Highlander II?"
Wait... I liked Highlander II.
How long is this gonna last before it gets modded into oblivion? I could reply to it but... what's the point. "-1, Troll" is all too appropriate.
the layman's guide to computer science
Windows 2003?
When will these people learn not to trust MS products for critical systems? I'm really not trying to play the "Linux Zealot" here, but damn...
Let's start using something stable for critical shit, shall we?
OT
However, start off with Knoppix, to get the feel.
Then, mandrake for install.
When or if you get tired of the limitations of Mandrake, graduate to Slackware.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
lol, you had to stretch for that one, huh.
The FBI uses OS X, why won't the military consider it?
And no, it's not because of the don't ask don't tell policy.
Doesn't say much for Air Force Procurement. I wonder (silently to myself) how much money changed hands and who was promised what job at Microsoft when he/she retires from the Air Force.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
If you are going to get up on the podium, and put on your Pharisee hat, at least have the guts to log in and post it, so we can stare at you and whistle in amazement.
I've had to put my 6 year old on her own machine because her kiddy games makes Windows unstable, but my wife and myself both run tons of "mainstream" software, ranging from Doom to UT to banking software to Eclipse to video editing software.
My machine doesn't lock up and it doesn't crash and neither does hers.
If the Navy gets a cut of Windows with all the games cut out and they remove the ability for the field user to install the junk apps, they might have something very useful (in a work environment... not for home users)
Agile Artisans
Hey, contractors.... I have a job that needs to be done.
I also have $1,000,000,000 to throw at the problem. Any contractors that have the ability to accept and be responsible for receiving a pre-payment, please step forward.
Sorry, only top tier contractors will be accepted.
Oh, Sorry again. Because of a new requirement added by Congress, only the largest company in this industry will be allowed to submit a bid. And only one bid will be accepted. We don't have time to evaluate other solutions.
Now are we talking Mono the disease, or Mono the .Net environment, because i don't see Mono the .Net environment growing much.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
That would be a "bacterial microfilms"
I'm glad Microsoft are getting the full value of their PAC contributions, I'd hate to think our government was dishonest
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
Go back and reread it.... this is a custom "solution". You just can't go wrong with one of those.
This confirms to me that the US will be behind the world in a few decades. I am also very sure that portions of this custom Windows will be outsourced. The Russians will get some insight to what runs the so called "greatest military machinery" in the world.
Question is: Why are the American bureucrats making mistakes such as these?
Short answer: Some official's hands must have been greased for this deal to get a "seal of approval."
Before Slashdotters mode me unfairly, I'd like to mention that it has always been the case that whenever obvious mistakes have been made, one's hands have always been found as having been greased. Numerous inquiries have shown this.
Dude, you're totally not towing the retarded Slashdotter line by suggesting anything related to Windows or Micrsoft can possibly be the slightly bit useful.
You trying to get a driveby argument or something?
...Suck, and it's brought to you by the new Halliburton That Doesn't Screw America.
Thanks for playing.
CNET News.com and ZDNet.
/. (rejected) on 11/19/2004.
"The Air Force is consolidating its 38 software contracts and nine support contracts with Microsoft into two all-encompassing, agencywide agreements, according to a statement seen by CNET News.com.
The contract, done in conjunction with Dell, will call for the installation and configuration of software as well as ongoing maintenance and upgrades. The deal, which includes 525,000 licenses of Microsoft's Windows and Office, is valued at $500 million over six years, according to Microsoft."
Posted this on my AQFL Web site and even submitted to
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
now I get more crappy stuff I have to deal with at work!
Ahh...nice troll, nice indeed. I guess you haven't looked at the webpage for the project any time recently? The part where major stable and development releases coming out in early November might be a good one to look at.
Dumb fuck.
USAF Version
I hope that this "extra security" means that they'll remove some of the cruft that Windows has (such as Internet Exploder, LookOut! Express, and Media Player), and focus their energy on things that would make Windows have some respectable form of security (such as a decent firewall and better user/admin. handling).
Your post is totally +5 Funny, but you know some zealot is going to +5 Insightful you...either way you win (until the Zealot who realizes you're really exposing his sheep gene -1 Trolls yer ass). Of couse there is always the risk of the argumentative Slashbot -1 Flamebaiting you)
Ah the joy of playing Russian roulette with Karma.
What limitations?
btw, I still can't stop smiling over the decision of the Air Force...
Windows driven guided misiles, yummy...
Widely used, mission-essential, net-centric software will be managed and supported with disciplines similar to those used with weapon systems.
Does anyone have an English translation available?
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
that the air force DOES IN FACT TRAIN PEOPLE TO CODE why on earth would they use a "microsoft" solution when there are plenty of open source / free alternatives ? Granted they don't have to release all the juicy tidbits (read: top secret) but this just a waste of tax dollars. In other words, stop traing them for ADA, and train them for C/C++ etc!
dude, that's what i did, but without the knoppix. to the grandparent poster: this works, and well.
Now I don't have to worry about boarding a jet anymore, but just look up at the ones crashing into my home... Not that the jets themselves are run on Windows, but its just a thought. Hey Microsoft, I am a member of the Air Force too! Where can I pirate, uhhmm, download, my version?
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
Hey I guess it worked, you got "insightful". Let's see if I can try...
Did Netcraft confirm it yet?
In Soviet Russia operating systems buy the Air Force!
Couldn't they put all sorts of compliance clauses into to insure that MS moves heaven and earth to deliver stable secure code? I like the idea of consolidating service contracts under a single RFQ that puts security and stability at the top of the list of compliance functions. I'm not saying they did this, only that it's a good idea.
"The Linux community likes to hide behind the mantra of free and open software for all and as such has the twisted mindset that all software should be free for everyone. This should come as no surprise seeing that the Linux community seems to take pride in stealing anything they can get their hands on and breaking laws designed to protect IP at the same time." Linux is flat out a great OS, one that is truly customizable and flexable. And Open Source Software isn't just great because it's free - but it's great because there are more and more people every day with an interest in actually making it better. For example - MOZILLA. I don't mind paying for good software. What I am tired of doing is paying so much for hyped software only to discover it is crap wrapped in a bow. Linux on the other hand has beyond what XP can do... The latest Distros out there are so good, and so easy to use... and OO.o has become so much better, there really is no reason at all to have to pay such inflated prices for Microsoft's crap. I admire what Bill Gates was able to do with his little company and little actual tallent... but that doesn't mean I have to buy his crap. The only good product MS has made is Flight Simulator, and Combat Flight Simulator. But my god do they have a vanilla name. It's like Ford coming out with a new 2005 Model "Car".
MadOgre.com
How about when linux does the job as easily and quickly. If there is an area where cost is a small obstical, it's the military protecting soldiers lives, and that's a time sensitive specialty. Sorry linux. Stop sucking, start rocking, and the big bucks will rain like mana from heaven. It's a fact. The military just doesn't care, they want it to work, be resiliant and simple. And linux just doesn't measure up.
This is just a smart business move for Microsoft. Offer a coustm, made to suit version of the OS to their critical customers.
95% of the classified systems I've run into are running *nix (in one flavor or another) The systems on my base are proposing to switch to RedHat in the next year. It's not all Windows
Guess you should have made fun of Highlander II. =)
" How about when linux does the job as easily and quickly."
You really think anybody in the military or the US govt gives a flying fuck about that? If so I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
evil is as evil does
cause everyone knows he can't install open office....
Why the hell did the U.S. government even bother with SELinux if they won't use it?
Yes, Windows has caught up in terms of stability and Linux has caught up in the UI and usability department. So, where does that leave us? An expensive operating system with proprietary APIs, limited functionality, expensive application software and a free, standards-compliant operating system with open APIs and thousands of applications out of the box. Which one do you think is better?
They should just grab the disto du jour slap some cute windows icons, and ship the Air Force a Windows Linux OS.
Solaris 10 anyone? Rock solid stable and a respectable history for security. For goodness sake, it's [essentially] FREE now.
Yes. That's exactly what it is.
Except that this is software, so I think it means a group of people whose way of life revolves around (a culture) getting mono to work on Windows.
Which, of course is equally gross. Like the assumption that Christopher Lambert is a Scotsman, or that Sean Connery is Spanish.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Ahh, the age-old "I was just trying to be funny, don't take my karma away" line. Keep trying, troll. Keep trying.
Considering the time crunch they're under in an emergancy, and the turnover problem they have, yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing they'd give a flying fuck about.
"Air Force CIO John Gilligan said the department wants to use a single version of Microsoft products, built with extra security, on its desktops and servers to help it reduce the problems it faces in applying software patches whenever Microsoft announces new vulnerabilities."
Well, I'm glad he finally got off that island. But is anyone else worried with him now in the airforce?
MadROM is where all the ass-clown play. The only mud I know where you need a GeForce card to accelerate all the colored ascii.
These single size fits all solutions are typical of the military. The concern Ihave is that the Justice Department is not reviewing these contracts in view of the anti-trust law suits that MS lost. Additionally, the government and the military are supposed to aviod the appearance of backing a single company yet it would appear the the DOD is firmly in bed with Microsoft, Dell, and EDS. I would encourage all the readers of Slashdot to write their Congressional representatives and the President of the U. S. demanding an accounting of how each piece of these contract was justified.
Let's start using something stable for critical shit, shall we?
And Windows 2000 isn't stable? Is this your first troll?
I don't respond to AC's.
How about a federal regulation prohibiting the government from doing business with a convicted monopolist? Hell, if felons can't vote, why should felonious corporations benefit from government contracts?
We have been going through this "locked down" proposal at the *large* company that I work for. It's a joke. You will have to "unlock" for many things to work properly. Anyway, we are all doomed if the AF buys into this.
They're basically just consolidating current contracts, people. This will very likely SAVE the .gov money by bringing their PC support costs into one buy.
In other words, someone actually used some brain cells. This should be applauded!
He didn't have his karma taken away. He was not modded down. He was successful.
You get what you pay for, but you get more for what you don't pay.
First, they've already concluded that Windows is not doing what they need, so their solution is, to, yeah, buy more Windows. Good thinking!
Second, they're consolidating all of their IT operations under one half-billion dollar contract with Dell and MS. I hope for the sake of the airmen who will have to use these systems that they've been paying attention to all of the screwups that Navy and Marine Corps has had with NMCI. The problem with One Big Vendor To Run Them All is that you are pretty much screwed when they run into problems and no one else can pick up the pieces. At least this contract is relatively "small" compared to NMCI...
Widely used, mission-essential, net-centric software will be managed and supported with disciplines similar to those used with weapon systems.
Translated: We will be turning these systems over to teenagers who have completed a compulsary 12-month training course.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Also Linux is not a good fit for applications such as Global Command and Control System (GCCS) which is a Unix/Windows product (Solaris servers, Windows clients and servers). This is of course if the AF chose to port the applications to another OS, which would take years (look up Common Operating Environment) to meet all of the usability requirements, nevermind the security ones. All I can say is putting your eggs in one basket is not a good idea.
From an interview with Air Force CIO John Gilligan, "Do we like what the Navy is doing? Apart from the fact that it's all one big contract, yeah, there are a lot of good things about that. As you may know, they're struggling on some areas -- it's gone a lot slower than they would like, the contractor is having problems, etc. -- so that is why I am caveating the statement. Would we do it exactly that way? No. Do we plan in the future to outsource increasingly some of our infrastructure? Yes. In fact, I'm looking for us to begin that dialogue with industry in earnest about nine months from now. "
I wonder what changed his mind?
Worse, the sheer size of the NMCI contract pretty much precludes anyone but EDS from handling it. So what happens if their service levels suck? Or they go bankrupt from trying to juggle changeover?
Man, I didn't like Highlander 2 as much as the next guy, but the article summary was kick in the nuts out of nowhere. Isn't there a statute of limitations on crappy movies? Does a time ever come when we can forgive them?
don't realize there is a lot of specific programs (like for maintenance and medical) that rely heavy on windows. It's not like you could flip a switch and everything would be okay. I would be all for it but right now unless OSX or Linux provides some sort of threat against Microsoft there WILL be no end in site. Right now the best thing would be is to get more companys and foreign agencys to sign on to the idea that there are better alternatives and other U.S. agencys will follow suit.
well, its better than using a mac ( let the flames begin!!! ) in all seriousness, i think they should either go linux, or make their own friggen os
Highlander II? What are you talking about? There was no Highlander II. Even the writer and director of Highlander III admited there was never a Highlander II.
People who join the armed forces...in general... are too "slow" to work with anything but windows.
No offense, but if you were on the ball, you wouldn't join the armed services.
So if you have people who top the scales at an IQ of 100 (with the average probably closer to 90), you don't give them c-shell, perl scripts, and solaris. You give them an operating system for idiots by idiots.
Windows.
They're all canon fodder for bush's private war anyway.
I think it's more like
1) Install OS XYZ
2) Leave it there for the next 5-8years.
"Windows (since late NT4) can be quite stable ~if~ you don't install tons of junk software."
Yeah, like backup software, system monitoring software, and Internet Explorer.
If you can leave those off an MS server, you should be in fine shape.
Bill Gates could take a dump in a box and label it "Microsoft Windows SE (Shit Edition) 2005" and people would line up in droves to buy it. As long as an operating system has "Microsoft Windows" in the name, people will believe that they have to run it-- that if they don't, the world will end, or their computer will blow up, or they'll be confronted with an 80x25 greenscreen full of text, or something...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
When has Solaris ever really cost anything?
When you buy a server, you get it for $100 (used to be completely free)
And you can down load the X86 version for free.
This "solaris is free" crap is just marketing nonsense.
"critical system" implies the world is going to end if the system goes down. Basicly either you're buisiness is screwed, your project is screwed, or someone gets hurt/killed. Engineering these systems are a painstaking process generally guided by strict rules. Windows 2000 does not satisfy these rules and should not be used when proper functioning is of the utmost importance.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
I wonder if Microsoft will "accidentally" include a bug that causes the B-52s to drop bombs on top of desktops running Linux...
In any typical MS story, Slashdotters have no problem jumping on the fact that IE is the swish-cheese of browsers, using OutLook _can_be_ the equivelent of handing over the keys to your computer, and that WMP is a total POS. However, when linguae sums this all up, and suggests that in a "custom" environment, more attention should be paid to obvious security issues, it's flamebait.
/. regardless of their actions.
As far as I can see, he's just calling them as he sees them. I don't know why being a MS sympathizer is suddenly becoming en vogue on
He knows his audiance. Welcome to slashdot.
Thanks for playing.
Sorry. You seem to have mispelled that. Here. Let me correct it.
Thanks for paying.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Any idiot, even a professional idiot from EDS, can knock out 80% of a Microsoft network with the click of a button:
1 40 211&tid=201&tid=128
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/26/
So what's 80% of "a specially configured version of Windows to be used by all its 525,000 personnel and civilian support staff" ?
Lessee... 80% * 525,000 = A shit-load of ruined careers?
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
I was at a recent all-hands meeting of the Range personnel at a Navy base (Point Mugu) that I work at. The head of the group said that we all have to work more efficiently and he was open to any suggestions about anything except NMCI. This was because the Admiral (don't ask me which one because I don't remember) considers NMCI an incredible success!!
Now anybody that works on a Navy facility that already had PCs and was forced to use NMCI knows that NMCI is an impediment to progress. I'm sure the first suggestion someone was going to make was to get rid of NMCI. The PCs are slow, and crash often because of changes pushed onto them by the network. The service is slow (as in "months to get something done"), and of course, Windows 2000 isn't the solution to every problem.
So the question to anyone out there is "Why would the admirals think it's a success?".
Is some group of people in the Navy actually better off now that NMCI is here?
Is NMCI meeting some special need the Admiral has?
Did they get kick backs from EDS or Microsoft?
Have they been co-opted by foreign nationals or aliens intent on overthrowing the U.S.?
Please post a response if you know the answer
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
Any idiot, even a professional idiot from EDS, can knock out 80% of a Microsoft network with the click of a button (see "UK benefits system crashes and burns again" http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19900) So what's 80% of "a specially configured version of Windows to be used by all its 525,000 personnel and civilian support staff" ? Lessee... 80% * 525,000 = A shit-load of ruined careers?
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
[funny]People seem to trust M$ so much that they refuse to use any product not built by them. I wonder how much would it cost to buy the M$ and Windows trademarks. We could all of us donate a portion of the money and then give it to M$ in order to buy the rights to their trademarks. Then, we could market a version of GNU/Linux or *BSD as "Microsoft GNU Windows" or "Microsoft BSD Windows". In fact, KGX is not more difficult to use than Windoze. Most users wouldn't even understand the difference if they were told that KGX is a special version of Microsoft Windows.[/funny]
Friggin great, another ton of money thrown at a bad idea. The NMCI literally has thousands of software titles... and didn't use them properly. God help them if the BSA ever checks them out! Hopefully they'll use Tivoli this time instead of that piece of garbage software Novadigm. I really hope the air farce reconsiders this. NMCI was a big waste because middle managers knew crap about IT and they had their MCSE certs to prove it!
So, how long do we have after the air force gives this new system control of their bombers?
stoopid skynet.
"Considering the time crunch they're under in an emergancy, and the turnover problem they have, yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing they'd give a flying fuck about."
In that case I have a bridge I'd like to sell. Interested?
evil is as evil does
So, the USAF orders up a custom version of Windows. I hope someone tells all the suppliers of Windows-based software to them, otherwise a fair portion of it will not function: "Whaddya mean none of your PCs have option X installed? It's part of Windows!"
This will serve no purpose other than driving up the price of future work done for them.
Chip H.
November 27, 2004.
The federal government of the United States of America (NASDAQ: BUSH) today announced that it is fed up with problems caused by its over-reliance on computer hardware from Dell and computer operating systems and applications software from Microsoft. Information technology directors in 127 government offices agree that a problem, technically called "monoculture", places many government systems at risk and reduces the country's national security.
To solve the problem, an executive order has been issued from the office of the president to phase out all non-Dell hardware platforms and all non-Microsoft operating systems and applications software within the next five years. The project, called the Millenium Efficient Government Computing Act of 2005, will cost an estimated eight trillion dollars in replaced equipment and software licenses alone.
"We are excited to work with the federal government on improvements to the country's IT systems," stated Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO. "Our improved software, coupled with an all-Dell platform, will give the country the reliable technology it needs to proceed through this portion of the twenty-first century."
By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions.
The project is scheduled to begin immediately, with plans to push federal legislation through the Congress which would make it mandatory for all state and local governments to switch to an all-Dell and all-Microsoft IT strategy.
Don't run Knoppix on that system. It will be slow as hell and unresponsive. You need at least 512 MB RAM for Knoppix to run decently. I've got 256 MB on this PC with a 700 MHz PIII and Knoppix sucks. It has to read the CD-ROM way too much due to the limited RAM.
I would recommend Mandrake for first time users, but it will suck for you because of the limited resources of your PC. You could try it, but I'm afraid the slow CPU and 4 MB VRAM would hurt a lot. If it were me I would slap Debian on there, but that is NOT a distribution for new people. You can look at the installation manual, but there are a ton of options and many are not well explained. It can be an interesting, if not fun, learning experience, though.
There are other options, but the easiest is by far something like Mandrake. It's easy to install and (relatively) easy to use, but it eats a lot of resources. You should probably try it first, though, because it is (again, relatively) user friendly.
Linux and Apple are out of the question since finding people to support them would be impossible. We have a hard enough time finding people to manage the the most common (MS) it would be even worse for the others. Imagine people trying to use MS, and Linux, and Apple machines. God people have a hard enough time just getting things to print on the right printer.
It would be a blessing if I could have a stripped down version of windows, that doesn't allow most of the multimedia/browsing BS and keeps things from self installing from the web. (IE no cookies, no adware, no spyware, no activex, no flash games, etc, etc)
The only thing I wish would be a spam blocker, since too many people are too lazy to actually target their emails and will just spam whole squadrons in order to "disseminate" useless info that was really only relavent for a half a dozen people.
This is just a ploy to make everyone think the air force is a push-over. Actually they will secretly use a version of SELinux and the Chinese, Russian, etc. hackers will be very frustrated trying to hack them.
After all, who could be so stupid as to use MS software for anything other than old games which only run on windows?
Why didn't the Air Force at least evaluate these products to see if their situation was one in which they would work?
two words: intense lobbying.
Your taxes at work...
I'm Haliburton, and I Accept!
The perfect crime... install M$! "What do you mean the plane went down"?
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
according to internal press releases the armed forces will not use Linux until its proponents are clean shaven, well trimmed, and freshly showered.
BSD was considered as well, until they realized it was all but dead.
Mac OS X is currently in production throughout the military, used to record cadences and bugle solos.
uhh, yea it is for lack of trying. Who the hell in their right mind would want to show up on THIER radar?
:-)
if windows was an airplane, what airplane would it be?
"brxref
^ mod parent up up up!
http://www.angryburrito.com/ The best, completely unfinished software review site ever.
Does nothing on the surface trigger deeper thoughts of high level (20,000 foot) analysis?
In effect, because Windows can now be found in at least 20 different versions, and because that Linux is attempting to standardize, we have:
Windows going from cathedral to bazaar,
and
Linux going from Bazaar to cathedral
And yet you still get the flock of droning, monotone Linux-lovers who can't see the obvious even if it visited them in the form of a 50-foot wooden Penguin.
The biggest obstacle I always have heard towards linux is that it is different from Windows, and thats what everyone knows. Why not spend some time training people who will use computers how to use linux. If they spent more time training them a lot of the problems with linux would be for naught. This would also solve a lot of the windows problems too. But if your going to spend the time training them, train them to do something useful rather than something which will give them more problems down the road. It is a shame that the whole open source vs. closed source debate comes down to Linux vs Microsoft. Microsoft is an example of everything that is wrong with closed source, but there are examples of properly performing closed source software.
"brxref
Now we just need to find a problem
Think about it - if Linux was better, they would use it. But since Windows destroys it, the Air Force - and everyone else who likes to make MONEY - relies on Windows, despite its issues.
Anonymous Intelligencia
Mr. Geer's report. You would think they would have learned from experience. I guess the USAF enjoys the "abuse". Some people(militaries) will have to learn the hard way I see.
It sounds like when that nuclear power plant almost exploded because some dumb@ss was surfing the internet... You guessed it right!! It was using Microsoft Windows!!!! Where do you want to blow up today? right? Better yet, Im sure the guys that aproved such stupid contracts work closely to the guys that almost banned a "toxic chemical" that was called something like dihidroxide (H2O) aka water. WTF?
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
I hope not all the Air Force runs Windows;
NORAD comes to mind.....
We could really get a WOPR of a virus.
Hmm, is this Code Red or Code Red?
Slammer or a city buster?
Stealth Fighers or stealth boot monkey virus......
Microsoft is simply asserting their new mantra: "There can be only one."
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/2 232258
... the Air Force will get a red, white, and blue screen of friendly fire!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I am totally shocked that the air force is still using Microsoft software. This is a severe risk to national security in many aspects and should not even be considered an option. If the article is true and they are actually still considering windows machines someone high up is obviously receiving some serious "donations" from Microsoft... Hopefully these desicions will be made openly and with public oversight since it is a no brainer to opt for a well reviewed open-source solution, e.g. Linux in case of an OS, whenever security is a cricital issue.
Quite honestly, we are giving China and Bin Ladin the best possible Xmas presents that they could ever want. The ability to take out the US military (esp. the air force) in one quick clean strike.
When I worked with State Farm Insurance, they had a highly customized version of Windows NT and MS Office. They also had a major part of the source code to both. THis was about 5 years ago. My understanding is that this is pretty common for large customers of MS products. And to answer, the next question. No, they were NOT more stable. In fact, they appeared to crash more frequently.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I'm not sure if I would want my life support system running Windows XP...
Most likely it was the software handling the processing that was not doing adequate checks. I love my Mandrake box to bits, but the same argument can be made against Linux if the code running on it is crap.
For example:
If you "cc" this on Linux, you get a "Floating Point Exception" error and the program exits. If the software on the ship were running into this same scenario, it would halt as well - doesn't matter if it were on Linux or Win32.
"U.S. Air Force Selects Microsoft Software and Services In Technology Transformation Effort to Increase Security"
There is no sig
Flying high, into the GROUND!!!
Well, my business and my entire livelihood depends on Windows 2000. So I have to disagree. If Windows 2000 were to break, I'd be both homeless and hungry. It hasn't let me down yet, so I've got to disagree.
I don't respond to AC's.
I know Highlander II was a terrible film but man, why we gotta drink your hateraid? It broke the rules of a sequel (it didn't tell the original story in a different way) but it was fun and at least watchable. At least when they introduced new concepts they tried to explain them and didn't deliberately try to misinform viewers about real world issues. If you wanna talk about a movie that really sucked, have a look at Replicant. Now that was a piece of shit film. Fans of the film actually considered it the best acting Jean-Claude Van Damme has ever done, which kinda reminds you of people who talk about Windows XP being the most stable operating system that Microsoft has ever produced. It may be true, but it's not saying much.
How we know is more important than what we know.
DOS Airlines
Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again, then they push again jump on again, and so on.
OS/2 Airlines
The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling about. The announcer says that their flight has just departed, wishes them a good flight, though there are no planes on the runway. Airline personnel walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight systems.
Once they finally finished you're offered a flight at reduced cost. To board the plane, you have your ticket stamped ten different times by standing in ten different lines. Then you fill our a form showing where you want to sit and whether the plane should look and feel like an ocean liner, a passenger train or a bus. If you succeed in getting on the plane and the plane succeeds in taking off the ground, you have a wonderful trip...except for the time when the rudder and flaps get frozen in position, in which case you will just have time to say your prayers and get in crash position.
Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows NT Air
Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.
Mac Airlines
All the stewards, stewardesses, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look the same, act the same, and talk the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are told you don't need to know, don't want to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.
Unix Airlines
Each passenger brings a piece of the airplane and a box of tools to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, they build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there.
Wings of OS/400
The airline has bought ancient DC-3s, arguably the best and safest planes that ever flew, and painted "747" on their tails to make them look as if they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need, though the drinks cost $15 a pop. Stupid questions cost $230 per hour, unless you have SupportLine, which requires a first class ticket and membership in the frequent flyer club. Then they cost $500, but your accounting department can call it overhead.
Mach Airlines
There is no airplane. The passengers gather and shout for an airplane, then wait and wait and wait and wait. A bunch of people come, each carrying one piece of the plane with them. These people all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they're building. The plane finally takes off, leaving the passengers on the ground waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. After the plane lands, the pilot telephones the passengers at the departing airport to inform them that they have arrived.
Newton Airlines
After buying your ticket 18 months in advance, you finally get to board the plane. Upon boarding the plane you are asked your name. After 6 times, the crew member recognizes your name and then you are allowed to take your seat. As you are getting ready to take your seat, the steward announces that you have to repeat the boarding process because they are out of room and need to recount to make sure they can take more passengers.
VMS Airlines
The passengers all gather in the hanger, watching
However I can just see it if they used it for a fighter crafts o.s.
After a fighter goese down durring testing.
Kernel: "What the heck happened up there"
Test Pilot: "well my plane crashed then it hit the ground"
Kernal: "don't you mean it crashed WHEN it hit the ground, and what kinda report is that test pilot."
Test Pilot: "No sir, it crashed first, all my controlls turned blue, the HUD flashed the name of some general named Fault and gave his service number, though not like any service number I've ever seen. Good thing the ejection seat has a manual backup, the automatic one just caused an hourglass symboll on the digital airspeed indicator and it said somthing about a cd. That's when I pulled the manual releas lever and got out."
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Eh? I haven't seen this movie (not even the first one) so I don't know what the joke is about.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Please give some examples of 'non-critical' knowing it's used to run Air Force day-to-day operations. Pick any army: frontline soldiers & systems, a huge logistics operation, training facilities, some research/development, command/control. When not at war, a breakdown may be a nuisance, but at war, logistics or training facilities can be just as crucial to the outcome of a conflict as anything else.
Some piece of software may not be guiding a cruise missile to its target, but what if a parts ordering system fucks up? Frontline soldiers run shit out of luck when supplies don't come in time. Same with maintenance/repair tasks. When your fancy computer-aided training system breaks down, that can cause an army to run out of personnel that has the right skills for a particular job.
Consolidation of software may streamline this whole machinery (good), but at the same time provide more centralised points of attack (bad).
If a terrorist could take out a single data center, they could essentially take out the whole Air Force.
"Cripple" would be a better description, but just as effective. The upside? (sorry, my opinion, I'm not too happy with US military deployments lately). Maybe this improves other countries' chances when facing US forces. Heck, if you're a small guerilla force: train hackers instead of soldiers, and your army's effect on US forces may increase swiftly. A piece of malware injected in the right place may be mighty effective if all desktops run the exact same software.
Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. -Ani DiFranco
I'm posting as anon, because it puts a pretty significant % of my contracts at risk... It's worse than you can imagine. Think incoming bandits, then blue screen of death. Except in this case, your wife really is a widow. I've been around the software industry a long time, and one day I'll be able to trust national security to MS. They'll get better when the have to. But they're not there yet. Not even close.
Lemme guess this is you?
If you don't support NMCI (or you aren't some pissed off EDS shareholder) Give me a few hours and I'll tell you about folly.
Repeat after me:
O p e n S o u r c e
I know its probably a foreign concept but we bash Darl (oh were art thou?) for not understanding Open Source yet we allow the Mac zealots to spout the benefits of closed proprietary systems which dont play nice with other computers.
I have seen a secure windows system that is inderectly connect to the itnernet. It usues Linux, WIndowws, ACORN and Unix. If any system starts sending packets to a computer it is not supposed to it is cut off and a red light goes up. They are also programed to ignore all pakcets sent by computers they are not supposed to recieve from. Any port that is not necessary is closed. So it is possible to set up a secure environment using Windows. Oh, and the system is call ACE.
This system has an expected downtime of somewhere around 13 seconds per year. So far it hasn't gone down once in 6 months.
This system actually has a connection to the itnernet. I highly doubt the Air Force's will.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I have had the opportunity to work on some of the AF's critical applications. They all run on Sunfires running Solaris. Windows is for the desktop, unix is for the servers. The only exceptions I've seen are the Exchange servers and the domain controllers. The whole reason for going with MS for the desktops, as explained to me, is that the cost of supporting and training the unwashed masses how to use *nix shifts the TCO so far that windows turns out cheeper. Also, the AF can bulk buy PCs at rock bottom prices with windows preloaded, which turns out to be cheeper than getting custom machines with linux. Here is a link to where the AF is going on the server end: http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2003/08/0308 acton.html
Isn't that thanks for paying?
Without giving up to much, this deal actually isn't to bad for the tax payer. Basically all this is a plan to give a fixed number of licenses for core software at every AF location, consolidate procurement of "extra" software at a negotiated price rate (rather that a rates different for each organization,) and then provide some professional support.
/.'ed https://www.ssg.gunter.af.mil/contracting/microsof tea)
This deal doesn't prevent anyone from implementing UNIX or variants, as a project if you were not on the list for the "fixed number" you still have to buy software but at a negotiated price.
More details on the contract (although only a little bit of information can be found at the following location, it used to be available publicly but maybe it was
Could be a bad solution, but I'll be the first to say that Highlander 2 kicks ass!
Some obscure registry tag called "WindowsAlwaysBroken" is set to 0 instead of 1. Too bad only MS knows where it is...
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Better mod you down quick!
When the Navy having their bout with "Blue Screen Of Death", at least their ships still floats.
On the other hand, when the Air Force pilots getting "Blue Screen Of Death" on their fighter planes, that'd be the last thing they ever see.
The pencilpushers who chose Windoze over other more reliable system won't have to tackle the problems the frontliners have to face.
I have much sympathy for the poor grunts.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Just wait and see when one of thoes auto updates makes the hole system stop working
Peace might just break out.
Yeah, this'll be the 'good' version of Windows, just like the Air Force's implementation of Exchange for the Defense Messaging System is a 'good' one.
The best single description I've seen of DMS was a single-panel cartoon in Federal Computer Week - a covered wagon labeled 'AUTODIN' disgorging passengers who are boarding a modern-looking but completely defunct bus labeled 'DMS'.
Fortunately I don't deal with DMS on a regular basis. But I feel the pain of those who do have to maintain a poorly-documented, semi-custom product. We brought in an experienced Exchange admin from our commercial operations, and it took him probably half a dozen tries to build a functioning DMS site, following the provided instructions.
I'm convinced you need to either go off-the-shelf 100%, or build and maintain your own software from scratch. Every Air Force project I've seen that tries to customize or extend COTS products is a horrendous mess.
It doesn't have to be sensible or the cheaper solution. Just so long as the contracting company passes on some favors to the requisitioning air force officials. Don't be surprise if some of them retire and get jobs at microsoft.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
AUTOMATED UPDATES???????
*gibber*. the US military is happy for _microsoft_ to push automated updates onto 500,000 windows desktops???
what did i miss. is there something i haven't quite understood?
Graduate? Just start with Slackware in the first place!
HARTMAN
What's this server's name, Private Pyle?
PYLE
Sir, the server's name is Charlene, sir!
HARTMAN
Private Pyle, you are definitely born again
hard! Hell, I may even allow you to serve as a
sysadmin in my beloved Corps.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
It's a biography of John Boyd, one of the best 'instinctive' pilots the USAF ever had. His nickname was "Forty-second Boyd" because as an instructor at Nellis AFB with the AF equivalent of Top Gun he had a standard wager. He'd let anyone get on his "6" ready to shoot him down. In 40 seconds he promised he'd be on THEIR 6, killing them. And though he came up against some of the best fighter pilots in the world, he never lost his bet.
The book describes how he developed the Energy-Maneuverabililty Theory, which measures how effective a fighter will be in combat under every possible situation of speed and altitude. Most fighters, even the dogs, have areas where they are good. One chilling result of E-M theory was to show that an expensive dog of a plane, the F-111, could not defeat the main Soviet fighter planes in ANY situation.
In the 1970s the E-M theory went against the pervailing dogma of the Pentagon that each new generation of fighter should be expected to fly "higher, faster, further." Boyd believed that the best fighter was light and maneuverable As a mere colonel he and a few others in the "fighter mafia" took on most of the USAF high command and forced the 'Blue Suits" to adopt THEIR fighter. That tale alone is worth the price of the book. And that same idiotic mindset is why the USAF is going with Microsoft.
Boyd also developed theories of warfare that involve getting inside an opponent's decision cycle, thinking faster than he can, throwing in unexpected actions, destroying his faith in his judgment etc. Recently it has come out that Cheney forced the military to use that approach in the Gulf War rather than their initial plan for a frontal assault, which Boyd sneeringly described as "Hey, diddle, diddle, right up the middle" and which would have meant a much longer war and higher casualities.
The USAF brass, burned by the battle over the light fighter, now pretends Boyd never existed, but in the Marine Corps, he's virtually a saint. (Quantico has Boyd's collected papers, not the USAF Academy). The Marine Corps has modeled their entire way of fighting around his ideas and consider him one of them. For Marines, there is no higher honor.
I just finished reading the book today. It's a very good read.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
Windows 2014?
Wait - how about (from Marvel) - Windows 2099?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Blah, blah, blah. You talk a good line of shit, but, alas, that's all it is: shit. You have no idea how the military's tactical computer systems work or you wouldn't have spewed that odiferous blather. Give your anti-Microsoft zealotry a break and quit making up stuff in order to sound like you know what you're talking about. I know that you don't and you know that you don't.
You may be a troll, but I'll bite. First of all, I am not anti-Microsoft, I am anti-monoculture. If the Air Force picked Red Hat as the desktop OS of choice, I would object. Same with MacOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, whatever. Diversity is key.
"The military" is a broad term. I have been working in Air Force IT for over four years now, developing database applications deployed world-wide for a variety of tasks from maintenance to intelligence. Notice I make no claims about the Army, Marines or Navy. Only the Air Force, where I know first hand how things work. I know how the pieces of the IT puzzle fit together, and I am upset by what I see. All of these critical database systems that handle the Air Force's data are consolidated in a few locations. Yes, a single truck bomb could severely cripple the Air Force. If you are so smart, you tell me where to detonate it.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I would be more of a Rossevelt republican, so obviously, I voted a stright democratic ticket this year.
The Defense Department invented the Internet (OK, the predecessor to the Internet) for survivable communications. It was based on standards, which allowed a great diversity of standards-compliant hardware and software, which was part of the robust design. Now the Air Force knows better and is going closed, proprietary, non-standards-based software, lock, stock, and barrel. Pure genius. The enemy will never see this one coming.
FP = Fisting Presidents. Hahaha! You fisted the president's butt...
Except for network effects, the lie usually seems harmless as long as you keep your own sphere of influence clear of this bullshit. But when the government buys into the lie, we all get dirty. It makes me angry, and I don't know a damned thing I can do about it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Sounds as if they are going to put "traditional weapons" in the hands of madmen.
Free Firefox news reader.
Here is where people are not getting it, Microsoft is large enough that they can support any shit they write. I know that you uber geeks think that linux is capable of the solution, and technically speaking it is, but the man power and resources behind ANY single flavor of linux is crap compared to the TEIR 2 tech support department for Picture IT. until there is a single entity that can best MS in support (Long Term, not fire and forget) then linux could never touch anything like this. Also you need to consider that if it is a totaly single source provider, you only need to extend one finger to point to who is to blame.
I know that most people wanna bash M$ and put up a flag saying no fair or that the government owes M$.
Let's put some thing in perspective before we say use Linux it's free. The Air Force has about 450,000 people serving and most have a computer at there work area. Now take into account that many of these people can turn a computer on and open some programs. But when it comes to configuring and networking most don't have a clue.
Next we have many people who just don't care about what OS they use just as long as they get internet and email-but all they know is IE and Outlook (which the AF uses heavily).
Every shop or organization has different needs and special software, specialy for different test equipment. To compound this, since the Air Force it a Department of Defense organization they need to bid out contracts for test equipment and such-and guess what most contractors make their own software for windows and offer little support. So that right there binds us in.
And the deal with Dell is not so bad, at least there will be a standardized configuration instead of having a base with 1000 different computer configurations trying to give support. And the other big issue is training. IN the military people "move" around a lot every 3-5 years. So new people come in the military all the time and need to be trained. You could argue just hire civilians, but it's hard to get them to go to Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other remote place because people would like email to talk to loved ones at home.
And just so you don't think it pure M$ the Network Control Center does use many Linux and Unix servers.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Why should they learn? Government, unlike businesses, doesn't have to worry about pesky profits and losses. So if the Navy loses a billion dollars here and there, it's no problem; they'll just print/tax more money. This always has happend and always will happen (the solution is to privatize defense and open it up to competition).
this was on eetimes few days ago....
article on eetimes
my blog
Weasel words again.
What they are doing with this, and other announcements, is forking Windows. Remember this the next time they accuse Linux of forking because of all the different distros it has.
I just got out of the AF after 8 years of Avionics maintenance, and this is actually what the Air Force needs. For about the year or so before I got out, they bought an INSANE amount of Dell systems. We were running PII 350s, and 450s through 2001 or 2002 (If you were an officer, you were lucky, and had a 1.5Ghz system, but not us enlisted folks). Talk about frustrating... There is actually a lot more computer work done that just the accounting and forms that you think... everything from documentation of maintenance actions to a database, to doing the usual forms, troop performance reports, etc. Anyways, the AF has a HORRIBLE track record with software. They changed the personnel information system to a new, fangle-dangle thing, hailing it as a new wave. Unfortunately, by the time it was implemented, it was outdated, and never tested. Troops spent anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half getting paid at a lower rate, because the system wouldn't register their promotions (just one example of the poor quality of this system). If you had ever worked around the AF 'Small Computers' shop, you would know that they CANNOT handle Linux, or anything other than Windows. These people are MORONS. It got to the point that when one of my workcenter's 6 systems failed, I ended up formatting it and reinstalling Win because when the system was unrecoverable, they would rather spend 5 days running Norton AV than spending 1 hour reinstalling the OS. They always thought a virus was involved for some reason (that tells you about the quality and security of the networks, I suppose). In any case, I witnessed the incompetence first-hand, and think that, although Win sucks, the AF can't handle anything less user-friendly.
>>Sean Connery is Spanish.
Egyptian, he was only working for the king of Spain.
Still a dumb fuck zealot, I see. ;)
Whoo Hoo. My stalker is back!
Hey fagboy how ya been?
evil is as evil does
Not too bad actually. Got a little busy with work, but can't complain. Having a good holiday season?
Anyone use win2k3 ? .NET framework
I use it on 3 of my machines and my development workstation has a current uptime of 5 months 21 days!
i had to reboot it almost 6 months ago because i upgraded the
I also have a linux box (debian 3.1) for downloading torrents.. so it will be interesting to see which dies first.
God is real unless declared as int
Heres how I see it, they are committed, they made a decision right or wrong and thats that, what i look forward to is seeing whether window$ can stand the test or not and how they hold up, think about it , what if windows was not here and the only choice was linux....no one wants less choices do they??, think of all the things windows has shown us NOT to do, they have proved so many things the hard way and the wrong way its invaluable what we gain from that, and think of it this way ...now the air force has standardized operating systems, and the next logical step when it comes time to replace all that in a few years will be yet another standardized OS
who is better suited to work together in a homogenous environment?? i see it as a good thing for linux because in 3 or 4 or 5 years when it comes time to replace this current contract Linux will most defintely ROCK even more than it does today and there will be serious consideration given by everyone to choosing it over Windows...support and traing will have matured even more...its gonna happen just be patient !!!
from the article:
...Apart from the fact that the very concept of extra security in MS is an oxymoron , I think that that contract is basically a giant Help desk contract. If MS had been able, within the self-imposed architectural constraints, needed to lock customers into their apps, to produce a secure windows XP, they would already have done so.
"Air Force CIO John Gilligan said the department wants to use a single version of Microsoft products, built with extra security, on its desktops and servers to help it reduce the problems it faces in applying software patches whenever Microsoft announces new vulnerabilities."
Lots of interesting aspects here: will they build a kernel without integration of outlook, IE, and WMP, just to appease the security needs of the Mils? and if so, with half a million PCs, how long before this gets told in the open?
Moreover, one of the apps specified is windows server 2003. I fully expect pagan rites to be done in tech offices of military bases all over the world to ward off this evil....."Oh , Lord ; I will sacrifice this goat if Thou will not take my Apache server away from me...."
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Starting price for a PC desktop: $499
This is an old and tired argument. There is no way you can find a Mac laptop or desktop that *starts* at a price as low as that offered by Dell or some other PC vendor. That's because Apple is not willing to drop below a certain quality point with their hardware.
As you move up the ladder in performance, you'll find plenty of high-end laptops and desktops that exceed their Mac counterparts in price.
Expense also includes a wide variety of other factors, including necessity for hardware and software support, ease and speed of peripheral deployment, time (and money) spent dealing with security and malware issues, and so on.
Comparing a bottom of the barrel PC with the lowest-priced Mac is like comparing a Dell Inspiron to an Alienware Area 51 machine.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
interesting theory... wrong though, there are plenty of services running on win98 by default.
Interesting that most people are slagging off at a group who went through what was no doubt a very long and arduous decision making process before deciding to go with Microsoft. I guess the problem must be with THEM rather than with the alternatives - it's easier to find a problem with someone else than fix yourself.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
This is a typical Government move...
According to the Government, COTS software isn't stable/reliable or isn't suited to Government purposes as-is. It must be customized because the Government "does things differently". So we get systems like the proposed Air Force solution where things are modified in hideous ways to do things the way the Government thinks they should be done. This results in little innovation, no competition and ghastly maintenance fees down the road for us taxpayers.
*sigh*
The Government has been yammering about using COTS and changing business processes to adapt for years now. Maybe one day the government will TRULY believe that it should learn lessons from the private sector and implement based upon private sector best practices...
I used to fear clowns...but I'm discovering that chimps are far, far, worse.
My other computer is your missile defense system box.
how long until
[vengeance@baraddur temp]$ cat hello_div.c
./hello_div
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello World!%d\n",5/0);
return 0;
}
[vengeance@baraddur temp]$ gcc -o hello_div hello_div.c
hello_div.c: In function `main':
hello_div.c:4: warning: division by zero
[vengeance@baraddur temp]$
Floating point exception
*** STOP: 0x0000000A (0x802aa502,0x00000002,0xFA9401C)
IRQL_NOT_LESS _OR_EQUAL*** Address fa84001c has base at fa848000 - i8042prt.SYS
CPUID: GenuineIntel 5.2.c irq1:1f SYSVER 0xF0000565
COOL!!!!!!!!
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Before I left Government contracting, they were in a fierce cost reduction effort after the fall of USSR. This was necessary simply because there was no more funding for the military spending arena.
What's really shameful for the military is that while they made some real progress in cost reductions and beaurocratic simplification in hardware, it seems that they've completely failed when it comes to software.
Everyone with any experience with software will understand that
And going with a Microsoft Custom package is fantastically stupid. This is obviously a case of a beaurocratic decision being made and not a militarily based one. Fortunately it doesn't say that the new F-22 will be flying with XP SP2 installed.
But I'm pretty certain that the USAF is wasting their money thinking they can get better security by paying extra for an "early warning" security update program with MSFT. It just means they'll be the first one's to find out that the patch doesn't work.
Now we know for sure we're getting our money's worth. Presumably, that is a Custom (TM) Software Assurance because the "custom" Windows they sell the Air Force will be so much better it will be incompatible with regular Windows?
They have all those smart people in StarGate command. Maybe they brought back a version of Windows from an alternate universe?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Americans ... you start a war against Iraq costing 100 Billions of dollars - and then you're discussing bout some million dollars for M$-Software ...
Stay where you are.
"There are a lot more airplanes at the bottom of the ocean than there are submarines in the sky"
There's plenty of info out there on the NSA; you just have to actually pick up a book to find much of it.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
The Linux Servers I have seen are really quite good, and I imagine that they will more and more become a part of the Government IT infrastructure. I have seen them to be reliable, secure and stable: what more could one ask? I think they are a great alternative to the MS World when importing mass amounts of data from Custom Apps is not a requirement. Otherwise, the cost for thier deployment is prohibitively great. So...for Internet Servers, Proxys, File Servers, etc., I definetly would look at Linux first.
However, the Desktop is another story whose end is already written, and one chapter is called "Applications". Like it or not, "User Applications" are what matters on the desktop and for the majority of Desktop Users, Linux doesn't quite fit the bill, and probably never will. For example, although "Open Office" touts itself as a replacement for MS Office, it doesn't import graphics and spreadsheet data from MS Applications very well at all. Game over. Again...the cost to conversion is prohibitively expensive.
Likewise, Linux Desktop does not support sound cards, video cards or USB devices near as well as Windows (if at all in many cases), and these are some Applications that many Users insist on having. So...why should a user switch if they are going to get less of these things?
Then, there is non-stadardization: the achilles heel of Unix Desktop. Even is we had the software for Linux, not all versions of Linux support all software. I mean, it's a real "hit or miss" to determine whether or not a piece of code is supported by a particular brand of Linux. This really limits the ability to load user-specific software in any environment. Did I ever even mention Linux's "Dependancy Hell"?
Then, there is the Kernel. Although the Linux Kernel is nice, all versions do not support all types of Processors. Pretty bizzare. It feels really strange to here from a vendor that a particular Kernal does not support the new processor you oredered without first applying some obscure, untested third-party patch. Yuch. Well...so much for relatively easy upgrades.
Then there is IT support. With so many flavors of Linux floating around, no one knows them all, so support for any is limited. Not the case with MS. At least with MS there is a single intity insuring compatability and suppot. Meanwhile, Linux advocates are talking about forking the Kernel - another headache.
So, while fielding Linux Servers may be a good thing for an IT Department, going desktop would be a nightmare.
The huge number of people in the Air Force with desktop computers amount to a monument to bureaucracy, layers within layers of the most inefficient thing you have ever seen, all for the purpose of making a lot of people look busy.
The OS they run on their computers ought to be the least of your worries. These aren't people breaking enemy codes, or even, driving supplies to the front. Anybody who is able bodied enough to sit in front of a goddamned computer ought to be able bodied enough to pick up an M-16 and get their cowardly ass to the front line in Iraq.
I spent 20 years in the Air Force and there are reasons that they are stuck with windows. One big reason is the Airforce uses electronic forms. In government there is a form for everything. PerForm or ProForm are the tools they use it's only available on windows. Everything from performance reports to special requisitions are done right in the program and the form is usually emailed. There are also alot of units that have various Access databases. The people creating these are not IT people, they are your average airman and officer who can "use" a computer. The Airforce has alot invested in windows, literally billions. They cannot throw out every windows system and start over it's not feasable. But this doesn't mean they don't have quite few various linux installs around. I worked in intelligence and we needed a fast, cheap mail and file server for a deployed location and we didn't have the usual IT staff there. The entire unit was used to Irix on our workstations. So for the deployed location we went with slackware!
We run $1.4 billion company with a Windows 2000 domain and 98 & XP clients. It is very rare that we have any problem with the Windows OS. When we do have problems it's usually due to poorly written third-party software. Oh wait -- we know what we're doing...nevermind.
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
With all the money and resources the military has, why risk getting attacked by worms, viruses, hackers that are all going after the known vulnerabilites in commercially available "civilian" OSes?
It seems to make sense to me to for them to create their own OS. Perhaps even their own hardware platform, and then keep all inside technical details top secret. Make it a crime for non-military personell to possess the machine and OS.
In this era of heightened security, it seems to make sense to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
http://www.nsa.gov/kids/kids00009.cfm
What next? NSA Ken'n'Barbie dolls? Creepy.
Now to you, this sounds like a user problem.
To me, it is a problem with Microsoft's security model (allow everything that the user doesn't specifically deny).
Firefox has the opposite model (deny everything that the user doesn't specifically allow).
Not only that, but look up info on "cool web search" and you'll find that this crap exploits a "function" in Windows that hides the
Look up "BHO" for mor information on that subject.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bho+internet
My Linux boxes are frequently "targetted" by worms and such, but they aren't infected because the worms are Windows specific. The Linux worms just do not infect that many machines because Linux has a better security model than Windows.I always find these claims fascinating. I can easily post my uptime stats for my home machines:
08:40:13 up 65 days, 14:29, 1 user, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
-and-
08:40:26 up 65 days, 14:10, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Fully patched. That was the last, extended power outage.
I've seen the Microsoft fans post all kinds of claims about uptime. It usually comes down to their definition of "uptime". Remember Win95 with the 49.7 day reboot bug? Yet I remember people making claims about never rebooting Win95 for "months".
Microsoft often releases fixes for memory leaks in their software.
A long uptime means you aren't applying those patches.
Therefore, the memory leaks are still leaking on your machine.
Therefore, it is not because of your skill that your machine stays up (if it does stay up) but because you are not running anything that would trigger those memory leaks.
Finally, why would anyone at work be allowed to skip the patches on their system FOR A WHOLE YEAR? Even skipping them for 5 months sounds unreasonable to me. My machine is fully patched. It has to be. I'm the network administrator. I cannot have a known vulnerability on my machine.
Defense in depth, baby. It's the only way to go.
The government should standardize on an Open format for all of the documents.
Then, any company can build a word processor that handles that format.
Only then can the best "tool" be chosen for the job.
Otherwise, if MS Word doesn't have the capabilities you need, you don't have any options because you've locked yourself into a proprietary format.
Yet how much more do the other OS's suck? How usable are these things? How stable for anything other than the 5 services you are running on them in a very controlled environment?
Can HPUX be said to be cost effective and allow the kind of scalability that a Windows server allows? What about AIX and Tru64?
An OS is like a car, you can either make a car easily available and usable or simply charge an arm and a leg for bin of parts and a couple of old hyperlinks to forums and listserv archives and require the driver to figure it all out in a timely manner.
Drivers go for what works and UNIX does not work unless you have the 30+ years of experience folk sitting around to hammer, hack, squeze and ghetto in solutions you need... plus you must have all the time in the world to wait for this to happen.
However... BIG however here... I am betting that with the money available from any branch of the government, that Suse or Redhat would fall all over themselves to make a usable system and respond to and fix stupid design and implementation bugs and get around the hobbiest hack that is OpenSource. Thousands of hobbiest eyes produce a more viewed hobbiest toy. Professional engineering and discipline produce usable tools.
My impression is that fewer and fewer people have been lining up at the stores to buy the newest M$ junk, despite exponentially increased advertising and hype. People did line up for Windoze 95. Fewer for 98 and fewer for XP because there were more people who'd actually been through the "upgrade" and been dissappointed. Bill Gates can hand deliver the new junk on top of a building in person, he can hire an RIAA whore to sing for him and he can gush about your "potential" but he can't restore faith in software that's essentially the same thing it was ten years ago. Besides a dreadful lack of real new features, the user typically loses ability when some favorite piece of software or hardware does not work with the new OS. He's pulled the same trick four or five times now and people just don't buy it anymore. The best example of this loss of faith is in the move away from IE, the most important piece of M$'s strategy to expand into new markets.
The real push for M$ junk is coming from the top down. Government agencies, the military and large companies are an ideal place for such a stupid deal. Anyplace M$ can lobby a few individuals with more money than sense, you will have dumb deals like this pushed down on thousands of people who either don't care or know better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The Yorktown is the fifth vessel to bear the name and has been in service for twenty years. She has had a lively career and an excellent reputation, in which a testbed Smart Ship failure in 1997 would rank as a demerit only on Slashdot. CG 48 Yorktown
It would seem that success in a combat environment is not beyond Windows.
It's just windows 95 with a hacked boot screen that shows the Air Force logo, wallpaper showing the a-10 warthog, and IE opens with the homepage set to the us military
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I suspect the US government is not dissimilar to the UK government in this respect.
Here, rather than leading the field, government trails, because the decision process is so long (and on huge projects the decision process should take a while) that by the time government buys into something it is on the way out.
So we had X.400 email...and then paid again to rip it out and replace it.
Now the National Health Service is lining up to go Windows Windows Windows, and looking around, I think that if this is the crest of a wave, it is already breaking.
By the way, MS has already stopped supporting 2k's IE. It's only be a matter of time before 2k development is halted and you have a choice between continiously increasing insecurity (as more bugs/holes are found) or an upgrade to 2k3 server.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
It's pretty well known that Tinker AFB houses a lot of computer operations
Since you've said `no Windows OS' ... what OS (since you seem to think it's an OS thing) do *you* think is safe enough? (This should be good ...)
It is and it is not an OS thing. All those systems you listed out of the box (or hot off the ftp) would not qualify for a critical system. However, a firm with the neccessary resources could take any of those open OS's and focus them into a proper system. Windows is a notoriously unreliable closed source desktop system. Not only does it require downtime for many upgrades, but you cannot even get into the source to cut out unneccessary or undesirable features.
Like it or not, people *do* use Windows 2000 (or 20003, XP, etc.) for situations where if it fails `their business or project is screwed'. And there are certainly cases where the wrong Windows failure can cause people to be hurt or killed. It may not be smart, but it its done, and merely saying `mod this parent way down' isn't going to change it.
That is a sad and scary fact, and I don't expect it to change magically with my slashdot post. But I am not going to stand idle when someone posts bullshit and people mod it up. Truth should be heard, and people should wake up and realize just how poor Windows is from a reliability engineering standpoint.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
While the Navy's NMCI is a huge mess of problems and red tape, it's not utilized on ships. Shipboard networks are still controlled by ITs (Info. Systems Techs) and ETs (Electronic Techs). Does anyone have any info on just how far the NMCI spans. I've been places in the Navy where SCO, HPUX, and Solaris have been used for more critical systems, but am just now starting to work with NMCI. I've only seen it used for desktop clients, just how much of what we still have going is NMCI?
if it's ram that's the problem just use the cheat code knoppix tohd /dev/hd* and knoppix will write itself to a single file on the disk, without overwriting anything, and free the cdrom. You just need 700 meg of free space on the drive.
I've run knoppix on everything from a cyrix 400 mhz to my current rig, amd64 3000. Ive used it with everything from 64 meg of ram to a gig.
jaz
jaz
Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. No-one sees motorcycles
The one caused by one of them internet worms?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
And indeed they already have. As with most platforms, 99% of the security problems in Windows are due to the users.
Lots of interesting aspects here: will they build a kernel without integration of outlook, IE, and WMP, just to appease the security needs of the Mils? and if so, with half a million PCs, how long before this gets told in the open?
There is no "kernel integration" of Outlook, IE and WMP to be "without".
I just don't understand their logic. Patching is a heck of a lot easier to do in linux than it is in windows. they said the transition would cost too much but what do they do - go ahead and lock themselves in more - so now if they want to switch later it will cost even more. my tax dollars hard at work - I bet microsoft put the length of time to cover the next presidency in case another bush-alike doesn't get elected. I just hope they take a hard look at their apps and quit the fricken lock so when they do switch it won't cost so much. I hope they aren't writing their apps for internet exploder only - but reading the article and trying to diffuse their logic they probably aren't even bothering.
Funny. my Sygate personal firewall thinks otherwise.
When I installed Firefox on my Father's PC, he wanted to continue using outlook; so I only enabled Firefox, Outlook and tha antivirus to freely talk to the outside world, blocking the Kernel from accessing the internet. lo and behold, it doesn't work.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
The military is about control. I was born on a Navy base, grew up on Navy bases and did a four year hitch in Navair so I have a small insight into the mentality of that one service. The military does not like contrarians and Linux has positioned itself as contrarian. MS, on the other hand, has done all of the hard work necessary to get itself into the procurement system. It does not matter what's "better," it does matter that MS is in. It has the capital and the resources to provide what the military thinks it wants. Again; what's "better" doesn't enter into it. As for some terrorist(s) somewhere, someplace, pulling off a coup that would hobble the military, that's very wishful thinking; remember that folks will usually figure out a way to do damage.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... "If 5 million dollars aren't trasferred to the following account in seven days..."
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