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IBM Suspended From US Federal Contracts
theodp writes "IBM has been temporarily banned from receiving future contracts with federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed on Monday. The suspension went into effect last Thursday due to 'concerns raised about potential activities involving an EPA procurement,' the agency said in an e-mailed statement. Under a reciprocal agreement among federal agencies, when one issues a ban, the others follow it. The EPA said it will not comment further on the matter. An IBM spokesman said he had no immediate comment. 'You don't see this very often, particularly for large companies,' commented a stunned industry analyst, mentioning a bankrupt MCI as a notable exception. IBM earned an estimated $1.5 billion in revenue from federal prime contracts in fiscal 2007."
Linux stinks like shit and looks like it too with KDE!
Yahoo reports a completely different story. Happy April 1st everyone!
I don't get it.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
The links in the article look legit...
Is this the day of actual stories that look like April fools stories but aren't, or am I still too dense?
I don't think this is a Apr 1 joke... http://www.epls.gov/epls/search.do?debar_recid=98050&status=current&vindex=0&xref=true Unless it's a really elaborate .gov joke...
Mike Pacific
Lots of slashdotters bitch about tags. But today, tags are your friend. Today, I'm looking for the tags omgponies and aprilfools to know if stories are hoaxes, and !omgponies and !aprilfools to know if they are real.
Now, this story was just tagged !omgponies, but that tag is gone now. Ugh.
Sigh, tagged "still!omgponies"
What good is April Fool's Day on /. if we're just going to get real articles?
I'll take my prank-hungry business elsewhere, thank you very much.
Just do a search in Google news for IBM and you'll find the story. Looks legit to me, although the Register clearly has an April Fools story that Robert Scobe is an IBM construction with 1TB of memory.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Twofo is Dying is Dying
It is official; GNAA confirms: Twofo is Dying is Dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleagured slashdot trolling community when Google confirmed that Twofo troll posts had dropped yet again, now down to less that a fraction of 1 percent of all slashdot posts. Coming hot on the heels of a recent usenet survey which plainly states that Twofo trolling frequency has fallen, this news serves only to reinforce what we've known all along. Twofo trolls are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in a recent digg.com comprehensive trolling test.
You don't need to be one of the Slashdot moderators to predict Twofo Trolling's future. The writing is on the wall: Twofo trolling faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Twofo trolls because Twofo trolling is dying. Things are looking very bad for Twofo trolls. As many of us are already aware, Twofo trolling continues to decline in popularity. IP bans flow like a river of firewall rules.
"Twofo is Dying" trolls are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of their core posters. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time trolls Daz and xyzzy only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Twofo trolls are dying.
Lets keep to the facts and look and the numbers.
Twofo Trolling leader Echelon states that there are about 7000 "twofo is dying" trolls. How many "Zeus sucks cock" trolls are there? Let's see. The number of "Zeus sucks cock" trolls versus "Twofo is dying" trolls on slashdot is roughly in the ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 "Zeus sucks cock" trolls. "Fuck twofo" posts on slashdot are about half the volume of "Zeus sucks cock" posts. Therefore there are about 700 trolls specialising in "Fuck twofo". A recent article put "destroy twofo" at about 80% of the twofo trolling community. Therefore there are about (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 "destroy twofo" trolls. This is consistent with the number of "destroy twofo" slashdot posts.
Due to the troubles at Twofo, abysmal sharing, ITS, lack of IP addresses and so on, "destroy twofo" trolls stopped posting altogether and were taken over by "Zeus sucks cock" trolls who specialise in another kind of slashdot posting. Now "Zeus sucks cock" trolls are also dead, their corpses turned over to yet another charnel horse.
All major surveys show that Twofo trolls have steadily declined in slashdot posting frequency. Twofo trollers are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If Twofo trollers are to survive at all it will be among hardcore slashdot posters, hellbent on Twofo's destruction. Twofo trolls continue to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save Twofo trolls from their fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Twofo trolls are dead.
Fact: Twofo trolls are dying
great...i get subcontracted a lot of their fed. work. =(
Anyone want to offer me a new job?
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Nobody ever got fired for......
Well crap.
I suspect that this isn't an April Fool's joke as it is mentioned on the NYSE site here
Posting a story like that would be a sure-fire way to make Big Blue's stock drop like a hot rock, and you'd have shareholders on your arse faster than GNAA members at an orgy.
If the SEC thought it had been done with the intent of manipulating the market for gain, though, you'd be wishing that it was just shareholders and the GNAA after your arse. Coz there'd be a strong likelihood that your arse would become property of Bubba.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
it's a rickroll.
... it starts in America and I get the whole thing all over again. The OMG Ponies were better.
The funny part2 about that video....
1) Rick dances like a white guy
2) The girl dances like a white guy
3) The girl is somewhat more masculine than Rick, but to be fair, she's pretty masculine
4) The black guy looks like he want to punch both of them in the face.
5) And who can blame him?
Of course, the should ban Microsoft for monopolistic practices.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's convicted monopoly cock continues to be freely sucked by all.
Fuck you M$!
Worth it for the look on the IBM salesman's face.
And justified by all the crap tools they sell to my management for me to support.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Think of it like this. IBM is one of the greatest champions of Open Source, which inherently prevents just about anyone to tamper with the source code. Now, since Open Source as a movement (rather then a company) doesn't have one central authority IBM is simply the closest to being seen as one of such focal points. Or motors if you wish. Sans IBM, there's mush greater chance then some other companies and business models will "prevail". Having said that, this also means that closed sources (with or without NSAKEYs or backdors built inside) are better off without IBM and whole other Open Source community (some equalled it with the communism). We may yet see the final results, but preventing IBM from getting government contracts is also preventing government to reach for IBMs technology and solutions. IBM is not without good options here, and remember still, that the presidential elections are just around the corner.
this has more to do with China made products. I am guessing that they found something interesting.
Read summary, read article, not helping. What a hell are reason for it? :)
But nice tagging with !omgponies. Damn, that was so cool, a little overboard, but still cool.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
/.ers:
The timing is curious but I can assure you this is not a joke. I work as a contractor for DHS and the word came down yesterday. We said the same thing - you're kidding, right? - but it turned out to be a very real order.
I don't know how IBM is about delivering on contracts themselves, but we as a contractor (in conjunction with the government program managers) use IBM commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software extensively. Since the DHS reciprocal ban includes purchase orders, this really throws a wrench in our works. We are looking at the possibility of switching a 500+ head software development shop from IBM-Rational to...something else, by the end of the year when our maintenance runs out. Another project I work with was just evaluating and beginning development with WebSphere, and they are going to completely lose momentum.
I am sure other agencies are doing the same as far as the extent of implementation of the ban. This might be good for the taxpayers in the long run, but right now it is causing a lot of billable hours to be spent scrambling, so I sure hope it's worth it, EPA.
Sounds like classic payback by some "Loyal Bushies", doesn't it?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
that IBM got suspended or that IBM only earned 1.5 Billion dollars of the US business.
The government spends a fortune on IT, I can't imagine a company as large as IBM not having a bigger piece of the pie. Perhaps they don't pay Congress enough during elections?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And they invented a reason to ban them from government contracts. Well, thats unheard of, especially for bush administration (!)
Read radical news here
Considering what Haliburton has done (and been caught/fined for) and yet is still chugging along without a hitch, what did IBM have to do to get suspended altogether?
IBM have been one of the most prominent corporate voices against ISO's approval of OOXML.
Imagine how IBM's investors will feel about this news.
With OOXML looking like its scraping through ISO, surely this is a Redmond-inspired powerplay to remind IBM that they need to start toeing the line or be crushed.
For me there is a clear message in this announcement. Its not a coincidence.
I work for IBM at the EPA agency they are claiming was affected, and even though my group runs the systems they are talking about, no one said a thing to any of us about this until today. The rumor here is that IBM corporate has been a bit too friendly with the Democratic candidates for the upcoming election and that this action is blow back intended to punish the company. Apparently there will be some more actions like this coming up in the next few months as more companies will be "made an example of".
Didn't IBM get in trouble with the U.S. government once before - resulting in big fines - for selling mainframes("supercomputers") to people behind the Iron Curtain(USSR itself?) during the Cold War? :)
My search-fu is failing to pull up a valid reference to this. Maybe I made it up.
IBM is banned but squeaky clean M$ gets a pass and ISO certification. I suppose the EPA needed to make room in it's budget for Vista, new word processors and the supercomputers required to run them. The Bush administration has zero credibility in technical and scientific matters but this is a staggering new low.
You have the suck backwards too. IBM will miss 1% of their revenue much less that taxpayers will miss their services. The last time I looked, IBM was delivering product people wanted. What's going to take it's place? Dell servers running vapor and Windows 7? What nuts.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I remember when I was a youngster living in South Africa. We were told that the government was corrupt because they were white supremacists. Then the black government came into power and were just as corrupt. It then dawned on me that PEOPLE=GREED and POWER=OPPORTUNITY. When I studied government administration as one of my college modules we did the prcuremnt process and the lecturer went to great pains to tell us some of the schemes that people came up with to win contracts. Wow, the human mind has no limit when it comes to selfishness.
http://projectleader.wordpress.com
But I'm sure they can still subcontract through other vendors. It's just that they won't make as much money.
IBM has been banned several times from other agencies. My old place, they were banned for 2 years, but then sub-ed to SAIC in the mean time. Nothing new here.
ARMONK, N.Y. - 04 Apr 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to terminate the temporary suspension order barring IBM from participating in new Federal government business.
Effective immediately, IBM will resume participating in new business with all federal agencies -- ending a suspension that began March 27, 2008.
IBM will continue to cooperate with the EPA's ongoing investigation of possible violations of the Procurement Integrity provisions of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act regarding a bid for business with the EPA, and with a related investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
link: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/23814.wss