U.S. Government Prepares For Vista

IO ERROR writes "Patrick Svenburg, program manager for Windows Client Solutions in Microsoft Federal, answered questions from government IT managers today about the upcoming Windows Vista release. Many of the questions were about BitLocker, Microsoft's new drive encryption technology, as well as other security questions, upgrading from Windows XP, IPv6 deployment and more. Svenburg is a member of the Windows Vista Launch Team and is leading early adoption efforts for Windows Vista within the Federal community, according to Government Computer News."

Comments

[OT] Threadwatch - 7 hours and counting

[LiquidCoooled]

Still got no threading and its been over 7 hours.

You don't know how much you miss something until its gone do you?

Early Adoption?

[WannabeAnonymous]

"Svenburg is a member of the Windows Vista Launch Team and is leading early adoption efforts for Windows Vista within the Federal community" The USG should adopt a policy of never being an early adopter. Recently-released software generally has too many bugs to be used safely.

Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate- the OS of

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Child pornographers. I notice none of these people asked the obvious question about the destructive potential of BitLocker on the science of computer forensics.

Re: Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate- the OS of

[SEMW]

>Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate- the OS of child pornographers. I notice none of these people asked the obvious question about the destructive potential of BitLocker on the science of computer forensics.

Sorry, but that's a load of scaremongering bull. Encryption is not a new thing. Anyone who wants to has been able to encrypt files has been able to do so quickly, easily, with minimum effort, and for free for quite a long time now, using something like Truecypt. Having full drive encryption on enterprise versions of Windows is not going to change a thing; the people who are going to pay for more a more expensive version of Windows in order to use full drive encryption are not going to be those who would not have otherwise used encryption.

>Windows Vista will be an enormous disruption in how people use their computers. They will have to learn the new environment and the new software that goes with it, and it will be some time before they get used to it and become comfortable with it. Well. If you're already planning on disrupting your computing experience that much in the vague hope that, "Maybe this time will be better," then you are obliged to try out Linux.

Sorry, but please, please shut up and go away. There are certainly a large number of truly excellent arguments in favour of using Linux instead of Windows. But condescendingly informing people that they are somehow 'obliged' to try Linux instead of Windows, whilst ignoring or dismissing the real and existing - but emphatically not unsurmountable - barriers that exist to switching, is unhelpful, patronising, and arrogant.

Tag please!

[GFree]

"early adoption efforts for Windows Vista within the Federal community"

Hmm... OK, I'll allow the "itsatrap" just this once; it makes sense here.

That's just great...

[__aaclcg7560]

Now we have to wait until Windows Vista SP1 is out before the government can be fixed.

U.S. Government Audit Vista Source Code

[lotusleaf]

Does the U.S. Government (or any government in the world) get to audit the source code of Vista for themselves? If not, why not?

Coming soon, cheap used computers!

[LibertineR]

You just know that some fool is going to issue some kind of mandate that all Government computers maintain a Vista evaluation of 5 or better.

That means that any computer running with less than 2G of RAM and without a 7900GTX GPU is going to be tossed out as obsolete.

Bet on it! Cheap PCs are-a-comin.......

Why Do They Care?

[Watson Ladd]

Why does the government, esp. the DoD even use windows in the first place? I see 3 kinds of users of goverment computers:

1. The secretary level(basic Word, Excel,..). Something else would work fine.
2. The Critical Service Level. Windows should be driven far away
3. The Scientific User. They mostly use Linux anyway. The one exception is CAD.

So only the CAD'ers might need Vista, but they probably don't. So why does the gov care? And did I make a mistake in the list?

Oh, I can see it now......

[LibertineR]

"Look lady, I know your ISA Client no longer works under Vista, but I am only a GS11. I am only allowed by law to turn off your transparencies, or tweak your ClearType settings. When I am promoted, they will let me defrag you, but only on Tuesdays unless it is raining, which means I can defrag only on Fridays. You need a GS13 to fix network shit, sorry."

Bitlocker

[Fonce]

You know, Microsoft usually has either extremely dull or extremely stupid names for their products or features, but Bitlocker strikes me as actually being pretty cool. And it's not every day that they do something nifty, so write this one down.

As for the asshats asking about why threading is disabled, GO READ ABOUT IT ON THE FRONT PAGE. A little research won't kill you.

Re: Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate- the OS

[0racle]

Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate- the OS of Child pornographers. I notice none of these people asked the obvious question about the destructive potential of BitLocker on the science of computer forensics.

Maybe there are people in the world that are not so stupid as to believe that only people doing illegal things encrypt their files.

BitLocker for decommissioning!?

[wvitXpert]

I think it's a joke that Microsoft thinks that BitLocker will allow us to more easily decommission computers. Right now we have to write the entire drive with zeros twice, then verify it. Or we can send them to be destroyed magnetically. There is no way that encryption will be considered good enough.

The feds aren't early adopters of anything

[briancnorton]

It'll be three years before a single agency goes vista. The testing and approval process is long and painful. DOD is just starting now to roll out XP five years after launch. There aren't compelling reasons to upgrade yet, and the third party support isn't there. Most importantly, the crappy administrators they get from learncomputersfast.com don't know how to work it yet.