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UK Government Pays Microsoft £5.5M For Extended Support of Windows XP
whoever57 (658626) writes "The UK Government has signed a contract worth £5.5M (almost $9M) for extended support and security updates for Windows XP for 12 months after April 8. The deal covers XP, Exchange 2003 and Office 2003 for users in central and local government, schools and the National Health Service. The NHS is in need of this deal because it was estimated last September that 85% of the NHS's 800,000 computers were running XP."
I wonder if these sorts of figures will be mentioned in the next "Total Cost of Ownership" study done by Microsoft.
What I would like to know is how much would it have cost to upgrade to Linux? As a UK Taxpayer, I would prefer my money to be invested in Linux systems instead of Microsoft.
If someone redistributes the patches, Windows XP would get another year for everybody.
Which Linux/FOSS distro is fully compliant with the .NET 4 spec?
It's actually worse than that. We have a number of systems where I am which was just recently upgraded to XP, including the main security system for the buildings. It ran on Windows 2000 up until a year ago or so.
Is the ability to run Windows programs well
the problem is no microsoft... its the fact that no matter what company your with.. they dont update. The cost would probably be the same if you waited that long. File formats change and other things change.
sorry im really drunk but my post was about the fact if you wait 10 or 11 years to upgrade your system..... well it will cost you.... alot... I think that cost is OS independent. Just the way the world works. They had more than enough time to know that updates would stop.
From what i know chromebooks is a joke... They are all online... Even google online services have proven to not work 100%. You need a physical storage system. Not some cloud storage crap. Cause it will go down and it will go down at the worst time. Ohh you want to access that bill you wrote sorry google services are dont try back in a hour. Just wont cut it. For that reason London council is stupid. I would never trust my important data to a cloud service cause when i need it most it wont be there.
Okay, smartarse.
You have a lab microscope that costs £100,000. It's been working for 10 years and does exactly what you need. Attached to it is a PC to do image processing. That PC is supplied as part of the machine and includes one-off software to operate the microscope.
Now you say, of course, just ask how much it costs to get the equivalent software for 7, eh? Simple. But the microscope manufacturer hasn't sold anything to you in ten years. So they'll sell you a Windows 7 version. They'll charge you £90,000 for it. Or for £95,000 they'll sell you it attached to a new microscope worth £90,000 on it's own.
What do you do?
Well, actually you work for the NHS. Which had fuck-all money as it pisses it away on management consultants. So instead of either option, you get fuck-all. Now when the attached PC dies, you need to hope your IT guys have an image. When your IT guys move to Windows 7 for the central system, you better hope it can connect to it to store the images. You can't virtualise it because the DRM on the interface cost the manufacturer at least £10,000 to implement to stop you doing precisely that.
Now you're screwed. You can't put your lab slides into the national health system without a lot of manual pissing about. You can't justify buying just the Windows 7 version of the software / drivers (because you might as well just buy a new microscope, and that would come under buildings budget or medical equipment, not IT upgrades). You can't negotiate them down anywhere near sense. You can't replace the machine and - eventually - it's going to die.
And every year the microscope manufacturer puts up their prices by £10,000.
Now multiply by every hospital in the country.
Now multiply by every piece of large equipment (genetics machines, blood samplers, X-Ray machines, ECG's, MRI's, etc.).
Soon, it just becomes better to leave it the fuck alone and wait until you NEED to do something. Then you can justify it, now that it's broken and you need it. And then you can get the government to step in and negotiate a deal. That's what's happened. And the government have said "For fuck's sake!" and gone to MICROSOFT rather than the multitude of equipment manufacturers.
Think I'm exaggerating? My girlfriend is a geneticist in an NHS hospital. The machine she works on is 15 years old, dog-slow compared to the state of the art, and runs off Windows XP embedded. When it dies, the IT team has to track down an old IDE hard drive to fit into it and image it back. And she has to manually transfer images to the "real" integrated system to put them on patient records.
And the NHS haven't even BEGUN to get off Windows XP on the desktop where she works. Precisely because of, and a contributing factor to, this shit.
Switching to a new operating system is simple in theory but difficult in practice. I work at a company that delayed an upgrade to Windows 7 for several years because critical applications would only work with Internet Explorer 6. Linux is free but there are other costs associated with switching to Linux. I suspect that the training costs alone would be an enormous part of the project budget.
The UK government should follow the example of the London Council and upgrade to Chromebooks and Chromeboxes. London Council Dumping Windows For Chromebooks To Save £400,000
Let's see: the summary mentions that "last September 85% of the NHS's 800,000 computers were running XP" which translates to 680,000 computers. A Chromebook is like $200 a pop, so migrating all of them would cost $136,000,000. Not such a big saving, is it?
Not to mention that being tied hands and feet to [insert any company here] is no better than being tied hands and feet to Microsoft, you'd have a ridiculous amount of local storage and no control whatsoever over how (and where) your other data is stored. And I can easily imagine that they also have lots of custom-made applications that wouldn't run in Chrome OS anyway.
RT.
The Linux desktop environment holy wars are almost as bad as the operating system holy wars. Linux Users Have a Choice: 8 Linux Desktop Environments A lot of companies have adopted Linux in the data center but don't use Linux on the desktop. I suspect that the uncertainty around the future of any given Linux desktop environment is a good reason for companies to stick to Mac OS or Windows.
Shouldn’t these negotiations happen between the government and the vendor before the original contract is ever signed, instead of between the government and Microsoft in sudden death overtime? It’s just as negligent to lock yourself into a rapacious business relationship as it is to put off necessary upgrades until vendors have you over a barrel.
My guess is that the government cuts to the NHS have led to a situation where they do not have enough skilled engineers with time to support any change to the status quo. The current governing party is ideologically opposed to the NHS and is unlikely to support anything that would improve matters.
Korma: Good
"...We recommend that Microsoft Access be used solely for development purposes and not for production." - Microsoft
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
There are lots of companies that provide tools to secure Windows XP. If I don't upgrade my work computer to Windows 7 by Tuesday the IT department will lock it down with Bit9.
Switching to Chromebooks might not be the best plan for the NHS but it was the best plan for the London Council. The conversion from XP to a new operating system is more likely to be driven by business requirements than it is to be driven by FOSS ideology. Large organizations may prefer to be bound hand and feet to Apple, Google or Microsoft if it meets their business requirements. It's the modern day version of "No one was ever fired for buying IBM."
When a hammer works, you don't get a new one just because there is a new one. Upgrades cost a fortune for most businesses and upgrades nearly always break some part of the business process. Most businesses have been burned by the upgrade process in the past and when they start putting a dollar figure on the upgrade vs the cost of not doing the upgrade, it is often cheaper to not do the upgrade.
I have a perfectly functional laptop that is running Windows XP. The reason I haven't upgraded is that Windows 7 will not run on it. I am not interested in Windows Vista or Windows 8.
And, it isn't 13 years old. Vista was available when I purchased the laptop, but I preferred Windows XP.
I would say that as far as the U.K. government goes, the OS is about £5.5M/year worth of relevant.
That's a lot of relevant.
What uncertainty?
Sure, but at this point, an OS change is inevitable for any organization running on XP. Why jump right into the next trap?
£5.5M for a year's support for hundreds of thousands of of XP systems is extremely good value, and far cheaper than any other option.
Of course, they'll still be in the same position a year from now. But in government, if you pass the buck for long enough, it becomes someone else's problem.
Hammers don't start hitting your thumb more often if you let the support contract lapse.
Why is no other company writing patches for an operating system they don't have access to the source code for? Gee, I wonder.
I suspect that the uncertainty around the future of any given Linux desktop environment is a good reason for companies to stick to Mac OS or Windows.
So ........ please tell us more about the certain future of the Windows desktop.
The only thing windows does that linux doesn't is directX and better gaming support, which will soon change if valve is sucessful, people will switch because they don't want to pay $200 a year just to browse the internet
And that relevance pales into insignificancy when you consider what you would have to replace application wise, as in the real world people dont just boot to a desktop and then sit and stare at it for their working day.
Office applications might be easy to replace, but how about certified xray or MRI viewers, medical record viewers etc?
I suspect that the training costs alone would be an enormous part of the project budget.
Yes, I paid thousands to be trained to find that KDE start button, and thousands more to find that "Libre Office Writer (Word Processor)" entry in the menu. Then I needed to be shown where all the letter keys were again. Then that Ctrl-s to save what I'd done - took me months on courses to get the hang of it.
So what you're saying is that you're fine with money going to Red Hat but not Microsoft?
Definitely. Microsoft are douchebags.
what you run as an OS has as much relevance to anyone else as what my next door neighbour had for lunch 3 weeks ago.
Three weeks ago your neighbour had packed lunch which was overpriced , had an attractive wrapping but tasted average, he had to buy salt and spices seperately ( overpriced ) . The nutrition profile was so unhealthy that he'd need to be an Arnold Schwarzzenegger to digest it. After three weeks of eating that meal your neighbour started sending junk messages to all the people he knew and doing other strange things.
Now he wishes he'd just RTFM and cook his own meal.. Or maybe just eat some Ubuntu
... an internal 'computer consultancy and advisory unit'. It did things similar to NIST in the US, and it was called the "Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency" (CCTA).
CCTA was where the UK Government put staff who were the equivalent of people like Alan Turing or Tommy Flowers, so they could be of general use to all government departments. It produced early 'Open Source' standards, amongst lots of other work, and was a leader in developing the current world IT Security standards of ISO 27001/2. It was HATED by the computer industry, who had to negotiate with it when proposing big government computer projects, and who found that CCTA knew what they were talking about.
They lobbied intensively against it, and in the 1990s it was closed down, with big computer consultancies taking over its position. It has now been airbrushed out of history. If it had stayed, the UK Government would have had an Open Source internal procurement standard....
No excuses! IF the UK government can pay for continued support, that means you still have to develop and test the updates anyways.,
You should offer users (who are not upgrading anyways) continued security updates for $20 per XP seat per year.
The new version still does not deliver the promised features from ten years ago so why not keep the one with the bigger theoretical feature list :)
To be honest, the 2003 version is far less of a piece of shit than earlier ones. I did a bare metal recovery drill with an earlier version which demonstrated very clearly that it was a shambolic pile of barely communicating different programs as fragile as glass, slow as a dead dog, and only truly reliably backed up with just about all of it shut down. Open relay by default after one patch and some options were only available with registry hacks - it should never have been released in such a state. The only sane way to operate it for only 100 mailboxes was two servers (for when one went down, which happened every couple of weeks due to a memory leak, and for enough speed at peak times) and a real mail transfer agent in between it and the wild internet.
You isolate it from the general users production network and the internet and move on. From the sounds of it, that device should be running an embedded OS and should be treated as such.
You no longer have support for bugs, etc. deal with it.
However, you have had better learn for next time that when you purchase a device worth 100k pounds there sure as shit better be some sort of support contract in place. Or you're going to end up in the same situation next time.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Also... it is a cost of doing business. We all have the same issues. If you're not going to be bloody careful to isolate it, you are running the gauntlet and need to do a risk assessment and come up with a contingency plan for when it all goes pear shaped. Once you've done the risk assessment, you make the call on what to do. That may be upgrade, it may be isolate until the equipment goes end of life.
Sitting on your hands and whining "waaah it is too expensive" is a cop out - not an action plan. You need an action plan.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
No, but XP isn't a hammer. It's a much more complicated piece of equipment than that. To use a workshop analogy - it's say, a bandsaw or hydraulic press that no longer meets any current safety standards. It is end of life and either needs to have safeguards installed (in XP's case, isolation from the internet and the rest of your production network) or be replaced.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Add the cost of re-training, software compatibility testing, a pilot program, etc. and those costs will blow out MASSIVELY.
Anyone in IT worth their salt knows that the software license cost is a tiny part of the TCO or cost to change. There are huge amounts of other costs involved and they are really hard to calculate. Switching platforms is a risk. Switching from XP to say, 7 is a big enough risk with big enough costs and there's a high level of application compatibility there. Switching to ChromeOS? Lol. Even if the software and hardware was FREE, it would still cost money. A lot. A very difficult to calculate number. Business decision makers do not like large, difficult to calculate $ values for risk. With good reason: being able to budget effectively goes out the window.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
An organisation the size of the NHS can demand better prices, which we see in what it pays for drugs.
This is political... now the problem has been pushed until after the next general election, so this government has successfully delayed a big expense whilst trying to slash the funding to the NHS.
Should have stuck with the original sh(), and not had a choice of csh, bash, etc, thats what I say.
Gert off me lawn
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
If I had a dollar for every time I have heard of someone that has used a Microsoft product (Access included) for the wrong thing (or used the wrong Microsoft product) I would probably have enough money that I wouldn't need to work for such people anymore (to be fair, the last job I had was a job replacing an Access based system with a much better VB.NET/SQL Server system (my part was converting reports from Access to SQL Server Reporting Services)
Schools eh? That makes me wonder how many of those they're factoring into their costs!
I work in a school and we switched away from Windows XP (to 32-bit Windows 7) around three and a half years ago, with an added twist of moving to a VMWare ESXi server to host our new virtualised servers.
My job was to make all our existing software work, even the crummy old educational programs that we couldn't afford to upgrade. There actually wasn't much in the way of problems, mainly because we were going from a 32-bit XP install to a 32-bit Windows 7 image. At the time we had different build images for each department (so IT machines would have Photoshop baked into the image, the special educational needs computers would have dyslexia programs baked in etc). We moved from Office 2003 to 2010 at the same time, with Exchange also going from 2003 to 2010. We changed our licensing with Microsoft too, so we pay based on the number of staff in the school each year - that gives us access to pretty much everything, including SCCM (which we use for pushing out updates, installing programs and building PCs).
My job over the last year has been to migrate to 64-bit Windows 7. This proved more of a problem, as some software (such as Successmaker - we use an ancient version) really isn't happy in a 64-bit world, as it makes assumptions based on 32-bit directories etc. In the end Successmaker was made to work by writing some batch files and some kludging to run Java directly rather than via their wrapper. It all works, which is the main thing, and the users wouldn't even have noticed a thing.
As an added bonus, we now have one build image (pretty much vanilla x64 Windows 7) with SCCM pushing out all the custom programs depending on where the PC or laptop is going to be used. It all works very well and although it took a fair bit of fiddling to set it all up it was well worth it. We're already planning our next move, which is likely to be to Windows 9 when it comes out.
I'm sure we're not the only school who, knowing that XP was dying in 2014, decided to move over a few years in advance. Hopefully that money being paid to Microsoft doesn't include anything for our 800 or so PCs!
"Negotiations" were completed on the basis of a thick brown envelope handed to a party now living in a warm climate. Documentation relating to "performance criteria" were handed to the police sone years ago, but have since been "accidentally" shredded. News at 10.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I agree with the poor MS documentation. IMHO most of the relevant docs are by 3rd parties. There is a huge document gap between "How To...." and technical reference. You really need to be MS trained in the MS ecosystem and even then you are forced into some form of specialty. Trying to get to grips with MS speak is another issue. Mind you, YMMV - but there are quite a few entry points that promise a lot in introductory documentation, but fail to deliver specifics or solutions, forcing the user to scrounge forums etc.
I'm reminded of Monty Python, describing how to play the flute (paraphrasing) "Blow into one end and move your fingers up and down on the outside."
Not all MS programs are that bad, but what saves it is the knowledgebase that develops for it, until it goes critical, too large and complex to be of practical use.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Problem is - it's government. Every proprietary app they need is going to cost them 10x as much as any normal enterprise business, suck 10 times as bad, and require massive re-training. Someone above gave a great example where the manufacturer requires you buy a whole new set of medical equipment on upgrade, not just replace the software on the controlling PC or firmware. In the US, they spent like $70 million on healthcare.gov and look how they turned out. They should have required Open Source from the beginning, but since they didn't, I'd reckon L5.5M/year is a total bargain. They'd probably love to keep extending it every year it if Microsoft lets them.
800K PCs is a lot of stuff.
I wonder if anybody tried to calculate the costs of migrating that to a server farm with XP running in VMs?
If they use old hardware , then the RAM shouldn't be a problem.
If they use mostly the office software, then the CPU performance also shouldn't be a problem.
One can theoretically pack few dozens of those on a single blade.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Hell, if you paid me nine million dollars, I'd support the damned thing!
How much of a security risk is this lab microscope? Yes the lab tech will email the images to the doctor responsible for the case, or copy them onto a shared network drive, so there is some outside connection, but the risk can be managed.
A couple of things.
1) White space is your friend.
2) Don't abbreviate the word people. It makes you look like an 16 year old. Oh, and capitalize the word "I".
3) Take your meds, you are obviously having some kind of breakdown. Calm down.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
One London council. There are about thirty of them covering different areas of Greater London.
[FUCK BETA]
If Microsoft has half-a-brain, they will see this as the business opportunity it is. Charge a fee for additional support from every government and organization that will pay, and it's quite the business model
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
It's okay! Lots of the NHS has upgraded ... to Vista.
Yeah, I was so happy going into a consultation at Whipps Cross and seeing they were running Vista.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
From the vaults:
REAL VIRTUALITY, Seattle, Thursday 2099 (NNN) — Microsoft Corporation has announced a limited one-off extension of availability of its Windows XP operating system to April 2101 after criticism from large customers and analysts. This is the fifty-sixth extension of XP’s availability since 2008.
Through successive releases of Microsoft’s flagship Windows operating system, demand for XP has remained an important factor for businesses relying on stable XP-specific software and installations, who have pushed back strongly against the software company’s attempts to move them to later versions. Windows administration skills have become rare in recent years and consultants have demanded high fees. Reviving Windows administrators from cryogenic freezing has proven insufficient to fill the market gap, as almost all begged to work on COBOL instead.
“Windows XP is currently in the extremely very prolonged super-extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to Windows for Neurons 2097 as soon as feasible,” said William Gates V, CEO and great-grandson of the company founder. “Spare change?”
Microsoft Corporation, along with Monsanto Corporation and the RIAA, exists as a protected species in the Seattle Memorial Glass Crater Bad Ideas And Warnings To The Future National Park in north-west Washington on the radioactive remains of what was once the planet Earth, under the protection of our Linux-based superintelligent robot artificial intelligence overlords. Company revenues for 2098 were over $15.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
There are tons of documentation for Linux. The problem is it is scattered all over the place, written by thousands of volunteers in nearly as many different styles, non-uniform structures, various degrees of success and thoroughness at cross-referencing other relevant documentation, etc. which makes getting things done under Linux a lot more frustrating for the uninitiated than it should be when compared against VisualStudio and MSDN.
Microsoft's APIs might not be the prettiest or cleanest but they are quite well documented in a very uniform and coherent manner, which makes them relatively pleasant to work with.
In either case though, most people end up writing wrappers to take care of the redundant, tedious and unintuitive bits so they only need to worry about them once so it is not too much of an issue either way much beyond the first time.
You think that I'm starting to save money for my new car only after my old car breaks completely?
Ah. You almost got me.
The Steambox will fail. A console is a console *because* they are all alike. For Steam to succed, all those console must be identical
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I'm sure for 5.5 million they could get the Mono project fully compliant. That's a team of 50 software engineers and 5 managers.
moox. for a new generation.
Because, assuming that all the industry (in my case, hospitality) specific software works in wine, then between the hurdles of convincing upper management to switch to Linux, training every user how to use a new operating system, and trying to convince tech support from our vendors to help us even though we are on a technically unsupported operating system, it's honestly cheaper just to upgrade to Windows 7.
We have 8 Windows NT4 machines where I work. Although we are upgrading one next year. The cost isn't too bad, $180000 will get us a Windows 7 machine. The machine runs software which is tied to specific and very expensive hardware via very restrictive certification from TUV. The software runs just fine on Windows 7 and I've even got a 10base2 network card working to connect to the old system, however doing so would be illegal. So we're stuck with it.
The old system works well. It's no longer supported but with each system we upgrade we get a shitton of spares to support other old systems. I vote you get to tell management we want to spend $1.4m just to upgrade 8 perfectly working machines because you don't like the fact that they run an out of date OS on them.
There are tons of documentation for Linux. The problem is it is scattered all over the place, written by thousands of volunteers in nearly as many different styles, non-uniform structures, various degrees of success and thoroughness at cross-referencing other relevant documentation, etc. which makes getting things done under Linux a lot more frustrating for the uninitiated than it should be when compared against VisualStudio and MSDN.
Microsoft's APIs might not be the prettiest or cleanest but they are quite well documented in a very uniform and coherent manner, which makes them relatively pleasant to work with.
In either case though, most people end up writing wrappers to take care of the redundant, tedious and unintuitive bits so they only need to worry about them once so it is not too much of an issue either way much beyond the first time.
When Linux was still fairly new to me, I got my "one-stop shopping" for Linux documentation from the Linux Documentation Project (tldp.org). For major program products - the kind that you'd have to pay extra for in Windows - I'd get books from O'Reilly.
These days, I'm as likely to google for help, but even today I sometimes arrive at tldp.
Microsoft docs have generally been good, but about the time I was beginning to leave that scene, they moved them online and prioritized stuff so that that WinCE API docs came in ahead of the desktop docs. Which was really annoying.
The only thing windows does that linux doesn't is ...
This is just completely wrong.
The biggest thing that windows provides to the NHS is continuity. The second most important feature (a corollary) is a trained user base - one that knows the in's and out's, bug, vagiaries and shortcuts of the existing system. Following on from that is a known, compatible set of hardware that interfaces with all the other systems (after years of development, testing and debugging) and importantly: is reliable in a life-or-death environment where patients wellbeing is at stake.
which will soon change if valve is sucessful
Valve? Seriously? you're talking about playing little computer games in a hospital environment?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Which Microsoft compiler is fully compliant with the current ANSI C or C++ standard?
So why they choosed proprietary solution? Why they want vendor lock-in?
It is always choise of some very clever manager.
Actually, no, a lot of times, it's because some superstar get-er-dun programmer starts spinning out results in a hurry using proprietary solutions.
Switching to a new operating system is simple in theory but difficult in practice. I work at a company that delayed an upgrade to Windows 7 for several years because critical applications would only work with Internet Explorer 6. Linux is free but there are other costs associated with switching to Linux. I suspect that the training costs alone would be an enormous part of the project budget.
The training costs for switching to Windows 8 would be an enormous part of the project budget, too.
That's what's really killing MS. They've gotten to the point where it's just as expensive to keep riding the MS train as it is to bite the bullet and switch to Linux.
What gives Linux the competitive avantage there is that Linux doesn't have to look and feel different in major and minor ways every time you upgrade it, thus requiring expensive retraining. They're not driven by a marketing department. What do they call the "Network Neighborhood" in this release???
The only problem with switching to Linux is the applications. Most governments and companies have applications they rely on and sadly they are only on windows.
The sheer amount of utter crap VB6 stuff that is STILL in use inside corporations is mind boggling.
If someone was serious about linux adoption they would dump several million into having applications written for linux that businesses would use. There are no useable linux accounting packages. everything is absolute garbage in the FOSS world. There is ZERO asset management software applications for linux ,etc....
It's the apps man. It's the apps.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The training costs for linux will be equal to the training costs for Windows 8.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As long as we're nit-picking:
"An" is used before words beginning with a vowel sound. An apple, an hour.
You want "a", which is used before words beginning with a consonant sound or semi-vowel. A post, a yacht, a window, a horse, a 16 (sixteen) year old.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It is sll the next trap. Linux fistros EOL their versions too. Some times its a lot quicker then 8 or 12 years. And whatever the lifespan of a version is today, it can change on a whim next month. I have seen it happen first hand.
Even the open sorce web browser thst claim you are free but turns out to be only as long as you agree with them politically has dtopped support for OS versions on a whim with little notice forcing the same.
At least with MS, you have a fixed time line that you csn realistically expect to hold. And if it does end up changing, history shows up it gets extended which work with you instead of against you
Why are you wasting money on 5 managers? 3 managers would be plenty for a team of 50 and hire 2 QC testing people so that you have someone telling the developers what they are doing wrong.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What's that got to do with it? You can install .Net 4 on XP, but it isn't fully compliant with the spec. For a start, it doesn't provide all of the documented cryptography primitives.
like the people in various UK goverment offices have any idea what "vendor lock-in" even is...some of them have been using Office since it first came out, no one outside of us techies cares about "proprietary" vs. open-source. Often, a corp will go with the proprietary software because there is a vendor they can engage in a 24/7 SLA. Linux has Redhat under Novell, I don't know of any other company that can provide 24/7 under 30 minute support. This isn't some private company that can call up their local tech shop...they have to have SLA's with certified vendors, lists of phone numbers, etc.
I do ITSM for AA, if it can't be nailed down in a run book then it's just not done.
Bear in mind that the article is about a 1 year extended support contract. They still have to migrate away to something, this is just a delaying tactic.
the last thing is the big issue, tech support from vendors. That is a major influence on your management too...they know they have to maintain their SLAs!
zontar isn't mentally stable or competent and admits it http://slashdot.org/comments.p... so wasting time arguing with a mentalcase isn't a good use of your time. He won't be able to digest and understand logic or reason. He's a nutjob.
This is exactly it. I know one hospital that recently "refreshed" their hardware to new Quad core 4th generation i5 desktops. The OS - Windows XP SP1. Why?
The specialist medical applications that they run are too expensive to upgrade, and the version they run doesn't support XP SP2. Medical software is not cheap - something like a "results reporting system" which aggregates test results from multiple departments (e.g. blood chemistry, hematology, MRI, ultrasound, physiology, cardiology, etc.) and presents them to a physician - can cost $1million for the license. For a PACS (X-ray viewing and archiving) software, the license could easily cost $10 million for a large hospital (or group of hospitals).
If it would cost you $2 million to replace a specialist app, then you may be stuck with having to use an older OS - especially, if the app developer has gone out of business and you no longer have any support (very, very common in the medical industry).
Some of the more forward thinking IT departments have started rolling out Windows 7, and using some sort of virtualization service, to run the specialist apps under the appropriate OS/IE version/Java runtime/.NET runtime that each one needs. The difficulty with this, is that you essentially have not just your Win7 environment to manage, but also all the individual virtualized run time environments. The administrative burden that this requires can be substantial.
In the hospitaliy inndustry, some of the better application suits run in a browser session hosted off site by the company who sold it.
Not that it negates anything you mentioned. I just wanted to point you into that direction. I had a site with over 300 rentals at 4 locations surrounding state and federal parks spanning about 5 miles at each. Switching apps for the management of those to one of the web base ones was the smartest thing we did. It was a pain at first and we ran the old system along side the new for a little over a year because we couldn't migrate the data, but after ghe initial OMG everyghing looks different was over, it actually worked better.
I cannot give names. But you sbould look outside in house apps if you have any pull at all.
Please. As cool as the project is, it's not even in beta yet
"ReactOS 0.3.16 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes."
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Actually, they often do care about open-source, but in the wrong way.
I was recently purchasing some specialist medical software, and one of the key terms in the contract specified by senior management, was "the software should not contain any open-source components, except where no close-source alternative exists, and the vendor must ensure that appropriate restrictions over access to the source code are maintained at all times during the duration of the contract".
I managed to get that one negotiated to something less unrealistic (i.e. open source 3rd party libraries permitted), as the only realistic product choice made heavy use of technologies such as xuggler, libpng, openjpeg, etc.
The reason for this, "security". The management were adamant that "open source" was a catastrophic security risk, because "it exposed vulnerabilities in the software". They could/would not be educated on this matter.
If these expensive "specialist" applications only run on Windows XP SP1 then they are not worth it. Whoever purchased high-priced software with such a ridiculous restriction made a big mistake.
Its a chicken and egg question. Which came first .net4 or the need for it.
The answer to that likely could save the money but it rests on developers and maybe replacing spme of them.
But on the other hand, this can be avoided by requiring cross platform development or functionality for all software government uses unless it can be demonstrated to be impractical. I say that not only with linux in mind but apple and ever newer versions of windows that seem to break compatability to some things in older versions.
There may not be a satisfactory alternative.
I was last month negotiating over the purchase of a results reporting and communication system. I spoke to one of the biggest suppliers and asked what platforms they supported: "We support Windows 7 with IE 8." "We're increasing moving to mobile devices, what support do you have for Windows 8, IE9, Mac OS, Android, iOS and other browsers such as Safari, Chrome and firefox". "We will be adding Windows 8 support in our next annual update, which will be available for the standard version upgrade fee. There are no plans to support any other browsers or OSs".
There are a variety of other products in this field, but they all have widely different features, integration capability (can it integrate with neighbouring hospitals systems, or primary care physician systems), etc.
If the only product which can provide your "core specification" is restricted like this, then you can't just go elsewhere.
What do you do?
disconnect it from the network
promote the guy that said 5 years ago that you need starting to save money for replacement
fire the guy who blocked that
start saving the money for the replacement
You think that I'm starting to save money for my new car only after my old car breaks completely?
Hi and welcome to the government. In general, we don't get to save money. Each year we get a budget, at the end of the year they gather it all up in the national surplus/deficit and we start over at zero with a new budget. Without acts of the relevant national assembly to create permanent funds what you are suggesting is illegal. Even transferring funds from one year's budget to the next because the project as suffered a delay is bureaucratic and risky - anyone higher up might decide to ax the project to reach their budget. This is why so many public offices go on a spending spree at the end of the year, if you don't use it the funds will be gone and on top of that next year's budget will probably be cut since clearly you don't need that much money.
The goal is of course to keep oversight, if the government's money went into thousands of small slush funds kept by various departments for various reasons there'd probably be a lot of hoarding and questionable re-purposing of funds and no real guarantee that they'd actually cover the major investments needed anyway. Instead the government believes they are so big that the year to year variations on the total is negligible, every year so many buildings must be renovated, equipment replaced, maintenance performed in all branches of government that all report in their needs and all get their share in the national budget. So in theory you'd put in a request for replacement funds when it needs replacing, it gets rolled up from your department, your hospital to the national healthcare service to the national budget, and funds are awarded down the same line.
Of course there are far more wishes than money so in reality each level down the chain only gets so much money and has to prioritize and more likely than not somewhere along the line your request for replacement will fail to make the cut. And that's where you are in the IT department, it's not going to be replaced and you may try again next year but that's not your call. You are just stuck trying to make the best of it and hopefully not be the cause of any major outages or putting patients at risk. I guess if shit hits the fan you can always say "I told you so", but you'll be the one taking most of the shit anyway. It's the way governments do business, if you want to make it different you'd have to redo the whole system not trying to find one scapegoat.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If it's behind a firewall and the computer is single purpose then I don't see why the OS should matter as long as you can replace the hardware when it fails.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Well, sometimes. Hello, Ubuntu!
No they will buy cheap ass tablets/phones to do that for them and keep a Windows desktop for business/enterprise. The bottom line is that the standard Linux distributions currently out there will never be *on the desktop* popular it's pretty much a moot point.
There goes the neighbourhood.
Your argument breaks down as soon as the boss buys the new, improved Hamm-R-Matic with improved Head-hitter aim control, and the exclusive Whack-Tracker (using a standard ultra-speed parallel interface), that is both manageable and scalable, and sports the new laser guided "Nail Head Finder" front-end with indestructible low-power LED success indicators. Updates are continually provided directly from the manufacturer on convenient High Density diskettes.
Within two years, no one is left on the staff who can still operate the "big iron" interface of the old "nail smashing devices" and now there's system-wide version lock-in. The boss bought in because of the blinky lights, reduced training time, highly-granular tracking, and the cost was only $15.00 more per unit than the manual version. He has already been promoted for his perspicacity. Capital equipment purchases nowadays tend to be for processes rather than actual equipment. I don't believe this is a great state of affairs, but I believe it's the true state of affairs, and people ignore it at the risk of their own irrelevance.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
Of course you're going to lock people in. You need the business and don't want some other fucker coming in and eating your lunch.
Considering the costs in downtime, training, lost productivity, user frustration, etc., £ 5.5 million is probably the most cost-effective response to XP end of life I've heard of yet. To say nothing of the lost brain cells.
This would be the best solution. Better than investing money in a dead, closed source operating system.
Apparently the US is the country in the world that issues a national ID number that's supposed to be some sort of secret.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Bit9? Seems to ring a bell... Oh, yes, aren't they the illustrious security firm whose site got hacked and turned into a malware redistribution centre about 6 weeks back?
Hey, whaddaya know, they are.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Or maybe just eat some Ubuntu
Ahhh, yes the Ubuntu meal analogy.
Where the cooking instructions are vague, wrong and refer to an early beta version of "grub" and only work if you have exactly the same cooker as the inventor. Where you have to spend half a day growing your own ingredients, just so's it is "free". Where the size and shape of the plate you need changes every 6 months and none of the cutlery matches. As for the list of contents, all it says is:
may contain nuts
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No, I've acquired a little stalker, and I am 99.999% sure that it's not Cwix.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
This is correct.
This what you nerdholes continue to gloss over: There is a lot more to a successful OS then its technical capabilities.
Technical capabilities has nothing to do with it, it was backward compatibility.
The PC won the computer wars (the players being Atari, Amiga, and the Mac which ran the Motorola 68000 chip) because it was backward compatible (to the 8080). That compatibility was broken in the early 2000's by both IBM and Microsoft due to AMD and the 64 bit architecture.
http://books.google.com/books?...
There was a chance in the early 90's to take make the 68000 chip the processor of the masses, but backward compatibility is what won IBM the market, and the chip Apple, Windows, Linux, and AMD now use.
The reason was software, no matter what chip IBM came out with peoples older software would work with it. And the wall the computer wars hit everytime.
Why do you think switching to linux would be much more simpler?
I'd have said FreeBSD not Linux, but the question still remains. For an answer, how about £5.5M? To put that in perspective, the annual budget of the FreeBSD Foundation is about a tenth that, which funds new development work, subsidises some conferences and so on. The UK government is paying £5.5 just for security updates. I can point you at several companies who'd be happy to provide extended support for a particular branch of FreeBSD for a fraction of that cost and an even bigger number who'd do it for Linux. £5.5M, even including overheads, will pay for 50 developers working full time. Let's assume that there's a lot of overheads, shareholder profits, and so on and call it 20. Do you really think it takes 20 developers to backport security fixes for Windows? Oh, and if they were running FreeBSD then I can point them at a couple of UK companies who would happily take half that money, provide the same support, and keep the money in the local economy. Want to take a guess about where Microsoft will be spending that £5.5M?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
These economies work differently for a government. When you're spending am amount measured in hundreds of millions a year on software, then you don't complain that an open source program misses some features you need, you just ask for them and either your supplier provides them or you get a new supplier. You don't have to worry that you can't open MS document formats correctly, because you are the one defining what the interchange format is. If other companies buy MS products and they can't open the documents that you send them, or you can't open the ones that they send you, then that's their problem, not yours.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Strangely enough that is the state of play a few years back - when MSDN and Technet really described everything, and did it really well.
Nowadays, there's so much crap on there, mainly caused by Microsoft changing the format every year, but also adding so much new product and new incompatible versions, that the documentation isn't nearly as good as it used to be.
I remember the days when you could buy a 5-volume Windows NT manual that was awesome. Not any more.
On the other hand, take the documentation from someone like RedHat, that is really good, all-in-one and very comprehensive, just like the old days of Windows.
I think part of the problem is that Linux can have many "3rd party" features added to it, so when you step away from what RH ships, then you're on your own, but everyone assumes that it should have the same level of documentation.
They should revoke all copyrights and patents instead if Microsoft won't sell, license, or support the software.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You needed to show then the Government's own report on OSS and security
particularly note 2:
Given that no one type of software is inherently more secure than another, neither open source nor
closed proprietary software should be excluded from an options analysis for security reasons.
pfffft. .NET 4 - obsolete. In a few years, you'll be the first saying "which Linux/FOSS distro is fully compliant with .NET native WinRT spec?", conveniently forgetting that you were advocating .NET 4 in 2014.
Right - which is why nobody ever buys pre-built Windows PCs either. Believe it or not a lot of people, even gaming geeks, just don't want to spend the time and energy building and configuring a PC. They'd rather spend a little extra to let someone else deal with the headaches - witness the long run of Alienware. The big difference with Steambox is simply that it's designed to be a living-room/entertainment PC, which changes the visual and acoustic design considerations. And yeah, you have to expect to pay extra for that - for a given level of gaming performance sticking the components in a beige box with fans that sound like aircraft engines will be the cheapest route. On the other hand there's no Windows license to pay for, so things may balance out a little, depending on just how profitable shovelware is to pre-install.
I agree about Steam OS though - if Valve can pull it off gracefully then they can potentially give Windows a run for its money as a gaming platform.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
you assume that the cost of training users to use Windows 7 is less than the training cost of Linux. Generally they're exactly the same.
Tech support and application availability - that's a different story.
Probably OT, but I just upgraded my ~8 y/o XP laptop with Mint Linux, and I am quite happy with it. The trackpad support is much better, and the SSD driver is much better. That said, it's not my only PC, and I did have to give up some "good-enough" windows software in the process. I gave away my old Canon camera whose software only ran on XP, I've not yet found how to make Mint talk to my very old parallel port scanner, and I still haven't gotten it to work well in the docking station (which is hooked to a KVM switch to the monitor, keyboard, mouse on my desk). I am comforted by knowing if I had $10 million, I could get Microsoft to support my XP laptop for a few more years so I could continue to use my obsolete camera, scanner, and dock.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
Why do you think switching to linux would be much more simpler? Every one says they should use linux. I have yet to seen a good reason why they should switch.
I can think of about six and a half million good reasons. The fact that you can't even think of one shows lack of imagination on your part, I think.
I love MS i really do.
Multiple Sclerosis is a bad thing, and I am shocked to read that you love it.
I think there IDE software is a 100x times above any thing open source can produce(Eclipse is a fucking joke).
Know what else is a fucking joke? The fact that you don't seem to know the difference between the words "there" (the word you used,) and "their" (the word you MEANT to use).
There documentation is 100x better than any other language or API i have ever seen.
THERE it is again.
Every time i look at the android api it makes me fucking cry. Its pathetic.
ANDROID IS NOT LINUX!!! More to the point, Android/Linux is NOT GNU/Linux. When people say, "Why the hell doesn't the UK switch their government computers over to Linux," I'm pretty sure they mean "GNU/Linux," as distinct from Android/Linux. While both share the Linux kernel, you don't generally interface with the kernel, you interface with userland utilities, the "rest of the OS" that the good people of GNU provided to make "Linux" a fully functional operating system. Not to put too fine a point on it, but complaining about Android is a bit like saying "I hate Golden Retrievers because a wolf ate my grandmother." It's nonsense, they have virtually nothing to do with each-other.
Every one hates MS
Though technically hyperbole and exaggeration, you'll get no argument from me on this one.
but Linux is no better.
The irony of shilling for Misrosoft for crack money is that if you didn't use crack, you wouldn't need to blow Seve Balmer for cash... as I'm sure you're aware, it's a viscous circle... get help.
There is no documentation there is no real help for new users.
Do I need to reiterate my remark about your crack use? There is tons of help and documentation for new users, but most Linux communities humbly ask that new users don't waste people's time asking questions that someone has already taken the time and effort to answer. Try "# man man" if all else fails. But seriously, there are even companies, "Red Hat Software" comes immediately to mind, that, for a fee, I understand will hold new users' hands if necessary, there are classes, there are books... one need merely expend a little time and effort.
People dont want to use linux cause ppl on this site see them as lesser ppl
Non-sequitur. Do you SERIOUSLY think a supercilious attitude held by users on Slashdot causes people not to want to use software that though popular on the site, is in no real or meaningful way associated with the site? Kind of like saying people don't want to buy a Ford because guys who hang out at the quarry on Friday and Saturday nights all drive Chevy's and would talk shit... What does the attitude of people on Slashdot have to do with whether it would be not only advantageous, but indeed BETTER for the government to invest in ITSELF by switching to FL/OSS software alternatives to their LOCK-DOWN-CRIPPLE-WARE they've been paying through the nose for? What does the attitude of Slashdotters have to do with the proverbial price of rice in China? The same thing: NOTHING.
The differance between linux and MS is price.
Spell Check is your friend. The DIFFERENCE is more than just price. Linux was built from the ground up as a freeware reimplementation of Unix, a multitasking, multiuser, security-enabled professional-grade operating system. Its str
Fortunately there's WINE. It's not perfect, but most of the applications I've tried have run without issues, and even if it's only an 80% solution that reduces the up-front cost of finding/making new apps dramatically. Now if only the font rendering weren't so ugly - can't say I'd be thrilled to do any serious programming or typing in a WINE-supported application. But then maybe that's a configuration option I've missed somewhere.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Now we know what happens to old, un-supported commercial software: It morphs into extortion-ware.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
The difference is that you (or someone with a clue) are STILL FREE to patch/fix every single part of the OS, it's tool chain and applications at EOL. It doesn't matter if Ubuntu or RedHat won't allow you to pay them for support for a particular version.
You seem to confused over what "free" means when it comes to open source.
So you would be OK if cars made before the turn of the century were not allowed on the roads anymore?
Excuse me but has something changed that i can install all my programs on linux now??Linux natively supports all windows programs?? When did that change??
Jack of all trades,master of none
I quite like how the Chrome OS works, although I'm probably going to do a factory reset, pull the drive, replace it with a larger one, and install a real Linux -- running Debian via crouton doesn't seem to be stable.
I know you have a not-entirely-retarded axe to grind about cloud services, but let's think for a minute about how this must have been implemented. This device is not a thin client, and it does not boot off the network nor Internet. In point of fact it does have local storage, albeit not much, and in no sense is it "all online". The apps are written with HTML/CSS/JS, but you can certainly run them offline, and create and save documents as you like. Documents you create are associated with your Google account, and they are generally mirrored to Google Drive. This allows one to reset the system more or less at will.
There are a lot of dumb people in the world, and before you start labelling others as such you might want to check your assumptions. Unless you just like tilting at strawmen, of course.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
XP SP1 is so obsolete the only way to run it is on a virtualized terminal server which is on it's own, carefully monitored, network segment and that does an automatic OS and application restore just before opening a session. Even there, expect the machine to get owned.
Once you move problem software onto a terminal server it no longer matters much what OS your average client uses.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This situation is far from uncommon. I work in a big UK bank and until very recently we were paying MS for NT4 support because it was a hell of a lot cheaper than migrating the NT4 based systems. We had maybe 100 systems, each of which was coming up with estimates of £1-2m each to move to a modern platform. MS wanted 3.5m to support NT4 for another year. No brainer. Then MS got fed up with that and said next year it will be 7 and the year after that 14 etc which focused people's attention.We did eventually get everything off NT4 but it was a lot of pain. The system I work on ended up costing £4-5m on it's own, no idea on the others.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The only thing windows does that linux doesn't is directX and better gaming support, which will soon change if valve is sucessful, people will switch because they don't want to pay $200 a year just to browse the internet
Which is why this story is about gaming systems the NHS has in use, obviously.
Actuallym, they're MORE likely to get the SLA they want from Free software. Simple reason, the vendor can always dig in to the code themselves. They don't have to depend on a company an ocean (and 7 time zones) away that may or may not respond, may or may not accept that the bug really is a bug, and *IF* they fix it, it will be when they damned well feel like it and not a moment sooner. Also because of Free software, there can be many choices of vendor. With proprietary software, there is exactly one choice for who can actually fix the bugs.
It's still a cost though. It is the same thing.there is no technical advantage to OSS in this instance.
If it costs that much for the license for just one app and you have many,, it starts to look really attractive to bring the development in-house.
With a Free OS, all you have to do is find one vendor that wants your money. With proprietary, there is only one vendor and if they say no, you're done.
While AMD broke native 16-bit compatibility while in 64-bit mode, it wouldn't have been that hard for MS to add a 16-bit emulator in windows to support install of 16-bit apps on 64-bit machines.
The fact that you have to run a full blown VM for it, sort of speaks to the level of backwards compatibility that MS puts into recent versions of windows. Sort of sad that even Apple put 68k and PPC emulators into some of its OS's.
"Consoles bearing the same name have not all been the same for a long time. The last generation and current generation allow you to choose between a few different ones, though hard drive space is usually the primary difference between the same versions. Yet some have differences in physical size, shape, colours, etc."
A PS2 built in 2001 (mine) runs at the same CPU speed than a slim built in 2009. A XB360 Arcade has the same CPU as the first one. The latest PS3 has the same CPU as the first one.
"Then there is the incremental hardware versions over time. Just looking at the PS3 as an example, the first version supported backwards compatibility with PS2 games at the hardware level. One of the next versions only supported PS2 games with software emulation. Eventually, PS2 backwards compatibility was dropped completely from the later versions."
Same RAM, same GPU. Giving the *exact* same performance between versions meaning a game that came out in 2014 (FIFA 2014) *WILL* run on a 2001 PS2.
No the PS3 can't run PS2 anymore, but it can run any PS3 game (which it was designed to do)
Yes, hardly identical indeed
Try running even a 2008 game on a 2001 PC. That's where the Steambox will fail if they don't all have the same performance.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The reason to switch is to gain control of the software that runs your business.
Switching to Linux would, indeed, be more difficult. But after you've made the switch, you are no longer locked into proprietary file formats, and this means that you aren't locked into any particular version of any particular software. Even if you're using a product that is closed source (bad idea) you have tools available to parse the files. For most purposes you are NOT locked into something that is closed source, and multiple applications can handle the same file type. In that case, even if everyone else decides to drop the project, you can spin up a virtual machine with an old version of the OS and run the version that you are familiar with...or hire someone else to reverse engineer the code.
P.S.: The same is true of the BSDs, but the number of applications isn't quite as large. Still, there are a few BSDUnix applications that nobody has ported to Linux.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Actually, MS has a worse reputation for abusing its customers than do most other companies. So being tied hand and foot to MS is worse. It's just that the proposed alternative isn't that much better.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Considering just how many Windows XP systems the must have, with a sizable fraction of them being the sort you CAN’T upgrade (due to there being no Linux or Win 7 version of some software packages, literally or practically), this was probably the best option.
From Microsoft’s perspective, they want to stop supporting an ancient OS. So it’s reasonable for them to charge for additional support. It’s actually probably the UK government that got the better deal here, since Microsoft would be able to function a bit more efficiently if they could just chuck it.
Someone else mentioned DRM for old software that you can’t virtualize, like those old printer port dongles that were required to run some software. I don’t know UK law, but I’m betting it’s illegal right now to crack or reverse engineer those things, like the DMCA in the US. If I were in parliament, I’d be about ready to propose a bill to make it legal to crack them in just this sort of situation, where you’re not violating the original intent of the license agreement. Just one license to one machine. In some cases, the DRM was moronic anyway, because the software is useless without the much more expensive piece of equipment it was attached to.
It goes both ways, though. At a company I once worked for, we sold some recording software that worked with our graphics cards. It turns out that since it was just an X11 extension, it would work with other graphics cards, so one govermnent entity started making unlicensed copies and using them with competitors’ cards. We were pissed. We were pissed that they were violating the licensing agreement, and we were pissed that we had to add some bullshit license key system to ensure that they complied with our contractual agreements. We didn’t believe in it, and we didn’t want to waste the resources on it. (And we all hated things like Flex LM with a passion. Most unreliable and brittle system on the planet.) But it was easier than trying to sue them or even just argue with them. We used a technological means to make it super inconvenient (not not impossible) to not comply with already-agreed licensing terms, and they kept buying more of our products without so much as a minor disagreement (because they knew they were in the wrong in the first place and were in no position to complain). It also means that when they want to migrate a copy of the software from an old machine that died to a new one, it’s inconvenient for both them and us. But they made their bed.
Where I work, we have a Server 2012/Exchange 2013 setup. It uses an insane amount of resources for a mailserver that supports about 30 mailboxes. It's not even doing spam filtering (it's behind a spamassassin relay) and we had to turn off the built-in malware scanner, since that would regularly die, causing the incoming mail queue to hang.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
A copy and paste that went bad, one more attempt
The PC won the computer wars (the players being Atari, Amiga, and the Mac which ran the Motorola 68000 chip) because it was backward compatible (to the 8080). That compatibility was broken in the early 2000's by both IBM and Microsoft due to AMD and the 64 bit architecture.
http://books.google.com/books?...
There was a chance in the early 90's to take make the 68000 chip the processor of the masses, but backward compatibility is what won IBM the market, and the chip Apple, Windows, Linux, and AMD use.
The reason was software, no matter what chip IBM came out with, ones older software would work with it. And the wall the computer wars hit everytime.
----
I found the link through a search but "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" By Scott Mueller - is a hell of a good book, whatever version.
A copy and paste that went bad, one more attempt
I don't know what to say. I read my POP'd e-mail with Agent 1.93, which opens Firefox when I click on links - Firefox only showed half my post. I use Opera as my browser, came back to made the "woops post" -then saw both were the same. My bad...
Every time FireFox only gets this far:
There was a chance in the early 90's to take make the 68000 chip the processor of the masses, but backward compatibility is w
(Going from http://slashdot.org/comments.p... then up to my post - Even Opera 12 stops at that point but continues on).
This runs contrary to the parliament's wish to use open standards for file exchange with the population.
I'd be surprised similar abject rules aren't in the UK deal...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Plus this is not the only such contract, the Dutch government was stupid enough to get a similar deal.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
But this article is about the vendor saying yes and taking the money.
Its all the same trap. The only real difference is ideological. You could also pay a third party vendor to firewall off the systems making the unsupported systems someehat secure in the absence of vendor created support.
The only way it would make a difference is if the government is already either developing it or paying for someone else.to do it. I'm not apposed to that either
Its irresponsible for Microsoft to not release them and knowingly put millions at risk.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, this year, they took the money. Presumably next year they will too, but they'll want more.
The government would do well to move to something that upgrades a bit more gracefully or that can be maintained indefinitely. If instead of licensing, they had a group of Linux maintainers on the payroll, the cost next year would be no different than this year. And it could go on as long as necessary.
I agree that isolating things can help it limp along for a bit, but then they'll be one bad USB drive, unauthorized WiFi, or careless consultant with a laptop away from disaster.
Hi, apk!
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
" Like the Play store, Steam could check hardware compatibility among all registered devices before even purchasing a game. They just have to be compatible with what they say they will be compatible with"
Hopefully it will be less hit and miss than minimum requirements on PC. Yes, Fall of Cybertron technically runs on a Core2duo, just not at playable framerates.
" Valve can just make a different list of hardware and minimums for a Steam box to be called version 2. That is not unlike the steps with XBox->XBox 360->XBox One, except the Steam box would have complete backwards compatibility."
XB/360/XB one are different consoles, just as PS1/2/3 are. What I'm saying is they are different Steamboxes with different cpus, gpus, RAM, which is a no-no in consoles (the only big difference between a Fat and Slim PS2 is the CPU speed, Fat is 294Mhz, Slim is 300, so technically the same speed. Yes the Slim has the network port, so does my Fat (and a HDD) but *same* performance specs. Valve should set the specs (ie: x-core y-speed cpu/z amount of ram and leave it up to manufacturers to put different capacity hard drives in them. That's the only way to succeed. If they're not all performing the same, they are *not* consoles.
" This will also give PC game makers targets to hit instead of shooting blind: make the game requirements too high and you cannot hope to be Steam box compatible."
That I agree 100%, and will help ditch DirectX, making games easier to port to OS X and Linux and (hopefully) remove the need to run Windows for gaming...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
All of them?
Mono will happily run MS .NET dlls which are already available.
Its own library is rather lacking, but you don't have to use your own, as the software should come with the .net framework it requires as a distributable and the license to use it.
I run .NET apps on my Raspberry Pi ... .NET 4.5 apps. .NET is what Java wanted to be and failed utterly. Mono is the OpenJDK equivalent.
MS has also open sourced pretty much all of the core components of the .NET (not the libraries), so its not exactly like you can't fix bugs yourself.
Whats that? You had no idea that the .NET CIL and CLR where open sourced by MS IN 2002? You even missed the slashdot article a few days ago about the C# compiler and backend being OS'd? Whats that? Yes, I agree, you should shut the fuck up until you get a clue.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Exchange IS NOT A MAIL SERVER.
THAT is where you are going wrong.
If you think Exchange is a mail server you have no idea what the software you run is doing.
Exchange is a collaboration server, mail isn't even anywhere NEAR its primary function.
Outlook is NOT an email client, its an exchange client and a DAMN powerful one at that.
Yes, they do email. If you're using exchange and outlook just for email you utterly fail at IT and should have your ass handed to you.
To further that point, you can't make a Linux box do what Exchange does (or FreeBSD or OSX for that matter either), and NO, Zimbra IS NOT AN EXCHANGE replacement.
If you think I'm wrong on any of these points you're just showing exactly how little you know about the product. You're using the space shuttle to ferry a stick of gum to your neighbors house.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So, your argument is that, because Exchange is a "collaboration server", it's OK for it to use an insane amount of resources even when supporting a very small number of users? That's a ridiculous argument.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yes we know that email is just a small neglected part of it even if the guy that made the mistake of closing the deal did not.
Some people just want an email system and they get sold MS Exchange. While the mail transfer agent and various other email aspects in the MS Exchange collection are not ideal they are there and people do use them. Various tricks and third party additions can be used to make it work in such an environment but the best choice IMHO is to take the advice of the name and exchange it for something else.
In larger operations where email is only the icing on the cake as to why MS Exchange is there then it is a totally different story. However, many of those portions have not progressed much since 2003 and many of them were utter crap before that. People had a good reason to upgrade a decade ago but not much reason since.
Ahhh, yes the Ubuntu meal analogy.
Yeah i know .. but still better than wondoze chowder no. 7
And this is actually a fairly small amount of money. The UK government spends some number of hundreds of millions a year in license fees for Microsoft. I'd love to see that money spent in the UK, rather than being shipped to the US. It would do a lot more than all of the government's other initiatives to improve the state of the tech industry in the UK.
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I love it
When your IT guys move to Windows 7 for the central system, you better hope it can connect to it to store the images. You can't virtualise it because the DRM on the interface cost the manufacturer at least £10,000 to implement to stop you doing precisely that.
Sooner or later, you develop institutional memory, and every hospital in Britain refuses to buy any medical device that implements DRM, so you never get into that situation again.
Or at least, that's what would happen in a sane world, where technical decisions were made by technical people.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
And XP doesn't magically get more broken when its not on a stand alone machine not connected to any network or on a secure network.
What was your point?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
When the standards change, that doesn't make the old equipment more dangerous, it just means we try to not be as dangerous in the future.
When safety standards change, RARELY do they require everyone to immediately replace whats already working. There are exceptions for extreme cases of course, but we're talking about XP, not Windows 95/98.
XP can be made safe if you have half a clue.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
That wasn't an upgrade, sorry to burst your bubble. You at best end up with KDE, at worse ... Gnome. How you can consider either of those an upgrade is beyond me.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Some devices do OK when isolated from the network, some lose functionality when you do that. In a hospital, secure network is a relative term.
So what do you get for 9 million dollars? A phone call? "HELP! I've lost my folder!". Come on give me a break. The UK govt. has an IT dept. for nearly anything that's going to currently happen to XP. Virus? Microsoft's not helping there really. An AV company perhaps. Microsoft shutting the door on the virus through the OS? Truly if the XP doors haven't been shut by now, there's no shutting them. There's something else going on.
I think there IDE software is a 100x times above any thing open source can produce(Eclipse is a fucking joke).
Know what else is a fucking joke? The fact that you don't seem to know the difference between the words "there" (the word you used,) and "their" (the word you MEANT to use).
but Linux is no better.
The irony of shilling for Misrosoft for crack money is that if you didn't use crack, you wouldn't need to blow Seve Balmer for cash... as I'm sure you're aware, it's a viscous circle... get help.
No, the real irony is your tirade including how it's a joke that the poster you replied to (who is apparently the devil for having a differing opinion from yours- seriously, get a grip) doesn't seem to know the difference between "there" and "their" when you don't seem to know the difference between "viscous" (the word you used) and "vicious" (the word you MEANT to use).
The differance between linux and MS is price.
Spell Check is your friend. The DIFFERENCE is more than just price. Linux was built from the ground up as a freeware reimplementation of Unix, a multitasking, multiuser, security-enabled professional-grade operating system. Its strength and robustness are derived from people being able to review the code, and it's popularity owes much to the fact that its users know that they will NEVER find themselves in a position LIKE THE ONE THE UK FINDS ITSELF IN RIGHT NOW of having to pay ransom-money to continue using something THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY FUCKING PAID FOR. If Linus Torvalds retired, and said, "I'm not developing Linux anymore, I'm DONE!" enthusiasts would FORK it, and DRIVE THE FUCK ON. The life of FL/OSS software is dependent only on having enough competent, dedicated people willing to devote time and effort to creating and maintaining world-class software. CLOSED-SOURCE, "Security" (hah-hah-hah) through obscurity-based software like the garbage Misrosoft pedals and has the temerity to label "software" only lasts as long as it is in the best interests of the bottom line of the corporation that owns it.
And... well, Spell Check is your friend. You managed to misspell Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, "multi-user" (yes, it's hyphenated).
To be honest, the most harmful thing to the FL/OSS cause are... well, its advocates. Instead of extolling the benefits of Linux (of which there are indeed many), they spend the majority of their time decrying Windows as the hell-spawn of Satan (as you have done through your entire monologue). While I realise you were responding to a rather vitriolic rant yourself, replying with even more vitriol does not do yourself or your cause any good. So do yourself (and your cause) a favour. Calm down, and respond thoughtfully and respectfully.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Or Gentoo, where all you get is seeds, and the ingredients list is simply a molecular analysis of each component.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
The problem is that the Free OS vendors also charge a metric shitload. You seen the cost of a Red Hat Workstation license? It's actually more expensive than Windows! Red Hat Server? Also more expensive than Windows!
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Fortunately, RedHat isn't the only game in town.
Your statement is patently false. That one investment would need to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, to produce every piece of software for which no Linux option exists... PACS software, laboratory information systems, radiology information systems, clinical portals, clinical coding applications, MRI controller software, linear accelerator controller software, haematology analyser interface software, EMR software, patient administration systems, and THAT's just for healthcare! Imagine the rest! On top of that, building all this software would take at least a decade.
So no, they can't switch to Linux and open source freely. In fact, it'd be bloody expensive and an incredibly long process - that would divert billions of dollars away from front-line operations (and stuff like pharmaceuticals etc) for no good reason.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
No sarcasm here (really) -> You have to remember that not everyone is as smart as you.
Lots of folks only know enough to realize they'd bankrupt and lose their medical business trying to reverse engineer and develop software.
Sometimes 'in-house' just isn't an option. An unbelievable amount of the time, it's as unworkable as in-house developing your own transport vehicles instead of buying them from car manufacturers.
I know of a critical application to an eye surgeon practice (2 surgeons) that scans the retina and 3d maps it for the surgeons to track swelling measured in single micrometers. Happily for them, it's running on 7 (this decade's XP). Unfortunately, the 'house' to 'in-house develop' in is a medical outfit that knows nothing about how to do in-house software/hardware/optics development..
Regardless of the price, there is simply no way on earth they're going to be able to reverse engineer that machine/software setup, build the machines and write the software. They're doctors, and the imaging machine development had to cost at least a million, minimum, before you even start talking about patents to license. Hell, reverse engineering and replicating a 1960's sports car is a 1/3 million dollar project, and that is for a company that has already done it and knows exactly what they're doing. Learning how to do their first car cost several million dollars in real money through the bank account.
Even when you start talking about something as simple as billing systems, you still have metric f***tons of paperwork and legal crap for HIPAA compliance, and you have to spend another few tens of thousands of dollars in brib..., er, compliance studies and certifications, with approved Health Department pet consultants who are often relatives of DC power brokers.
It's just a mess.
And all the above assumes that the doctors WANT to become software developers.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Why do you think switching to linux would be much more simpler? Every one says they should use linux. I have yet to seen a good reason why they should switch. I love MS i really do. I think there IDE software is a 100x times above any thing open source can produce(Eclipse is a fucking joke). There documentation is 100x better than any other language or API i have ever seen. Every time i look at the android api it makes me fucking cry. Its pathetic. Every one hates MS but Linux is no better. There is no documentation there is no real help for new users. People dont want to use linux cause ppl on this site see them as lesser ppl The differance between linux and MS is price. How many of you ppl actually contribute to linux? I doubt many if any of you do a damn thing for linux. Yet your all here to bitch how MS is so fucking evil. They are doing what linux will never do. That is called market share. It will always be Mac or windows. There is no community for new ppl for linux and it will fail. Fuck it i love Microsoft cause it will do things things that you linux butt buddys will only wish it could do. Its called market share and usability. Nothing linux can do till they work together and make one or two gui and work as one. Till then keep bitching. There is a reason in the last 20 years linux has done shit on consumer market... beside linus
Cannot believe this wasn't entered as an AC. Kudos for having the balls to do that, even though you clearly are a fanboy that has not actually seriously tried any Linux distros with an open mind.
Opposite of what you seem to believe the difference between M$ and Linux is *not* just price.
We have switched to Mint in our office, and there are only two things we cannot do:
(1) GoToMeeting, and
(2) run a (very few) proprietary Windows XP-only custom applications that also do not work on WinV,7, or 8.
Everything else has proven to be faster and more reliable on Mint than Win XP, V, 7, or 8. By FAR. Especially Java-based apps. My laptop boots and I am logged in in under a minute, while in Windoze it is 4 or more.
Installation is maybe 1/16th the amount of time, even by someone who has NEVER installed Mint, and has many years of (re)installing Windows. No drivers to look for, all the software needed is either there or so supremely easy to find and install that it is not even worth mentioning, and the install takes way less space than Windows, leaving more userspace available.
Why the lack of help (as you so strongly seem to believe, not that I have experienced except in the M$ world)? Because it's not really needed. Mint, for one, is a very easy distro to use. No help needed. However, I have, in the past, needed help with a Windows issue, and even though I paid for the damn software, I couldn't call the M$ help desk without a CC in hand. Typically, if I need help with Mint, the forums are a click away, and people that frequent them are supremely helpful. I try to return the favor, so it makes it a better world. So, your "help" arguement, from my personal experience, is gone.
Market share is nothing to me. I don't really care what others are using. I want an easy-to-use OS, fast, light, and with enough software to make things that I do work. I have found that in Linux, and as a bonus I don't need to help Bill with his retirement for nothing in return.
There are some legitimate reasons to continue using M$ desktops: proprietarily written software with no FOSS equivalent being one of them. That reason has deflated by leaps and bounds in the last 3-5 years. Other than that, Linux is outperforming M$ in every category.
BTW, sorry about this as it has nothing to do with the conversation, but the grammer nazi in me is screaming "For the love of GOD, 'their', not 'there'!"
If government busybodies in the UK are anything like they are here in the US, all this means is this:
"Horray! Another year of not having to do anything to fix the problem!"
That's true. But the problem is that at the prices any of the Linux vendors large enough to support this kind of environment are charging, Windows is actually the cheaper option (Microsoft gives Windows etc for practically free to government, let alone education and healthcare organisations).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You're confusing license costs with support cost. You can install Debian for free. Or you can pay MS and install that. Either way, you'll need to pay more if you want actual support beyond "have you tried rebooting?".
You don't think MS is going to produce a custom kernel for your institution for that discounted license fee, do you? But if you're large enough to get a discount out of MS, take all that money and pay it to a small consultancy and if you need a custom patch, that's what they'll do.
Very wrong - MS Exchange is a mail server plus a LOT of other things.
Early on (eg. before the 2003 version) the mail server and database to hold email were IMHO the main functions of the collection. Both were IMHO far below the usual Microsoft release quality and an utter joke but obviously some work went on for the 2003 version.
Or your users have not shown much interest in the calendar functions etc.
Zimbra, google whatever or even just plain old sendmail can replace MS Exchange depending on what subset of the features the users are actually using. If they are using 100% of the features in MS Exchange then it's a good fit and there is no point in exchanging it for something else, but some places only use a tiny fraction of what is in there and can go with something else.
Sure. And the lowest risk option is Win7 32 bit. ChromeOS is a huge gamble.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Um. When safety standards change in the industry I am in (Mining) they do actually require everyone to immediately replace what is "working" with something deemed to be safe against the particular mode of catastrophic failure that has been observed.
XP can be made safe if it is kept patched or isolated from the network. Choose one. If it is isolated, who cares. If it is not, then you're simply rolling the dice.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The problem is that if you want an organisation large enough to support a really large client, you're quite limited - Red Hat is probably the only one that will bother submitted a response to the RFP (remember, governments only sign vendors that respond to the RFP... no tender, no appointment. Most Linux consultancies very likely eliminate themselves by never participating in this process).
And Redhat provides no support for the license cost - you pay extra in the form of a per-CPU support fee if you want that.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Perhaps they should make the RFP process tractable for a smaller organization. Or they could actually hire people and form an internal support team.
I don't fully understand it myself, but option B isn't even an option because hiring an internal team means operational expenditure to pay for it, while contracting an outside agency means capital expenditure is used to pay for it. No government or large corporate will do what you're suggesting due to this, even though to those who aren't accountants it makes absolutely no sense.
I'm not sure how much easier the RFP process could be as well, either. At least here, it's just a matter of looking at the detailed RFP, and submitting a tender into the box with your estimates of cost/timelines/product options, and just make sure to check everything off on the checklist. Now, I have heard of instances where the checklist is written in such a way that they may as well have an unspoken checkbox that says "be Microsoft" or "be IBM", but those are fringe cases.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Now, I have heard of instances where the checklist is written in such a way that they may as well have an unspoken checkbox that says "be Microsoft" or "be IBM", but those are fringe cases.
They're not really as fringe as you might think. I have actually seen examples. Then there's the bidding process. The large vendors who have an army of bored lawyers will inevitably under-bid and when they win, lawyer their way into supplemental payments to make up the difference. Meanwhile, the small vendor sees that the slightest slip will make the whole venture unprofitable (perhaps ruinously so) and leave key resources chained to it long after it should have paid. In a negotiation process, they could fix that up in a way that's fair for both parties, but an RFP isn't a negotiation. There *IS* a reason smaller vendors aren't all over those simple RFPs.
It would also help if they would fix their rep for paying *eventually*. IBM and MS can wait 6 months to a year, but smaller shops need reasonably prompt payment.
In other words, it's self-inflicted brain damage and it costs a lot in the end.