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IRS Misses XP Deadline, Pays Microsoft Millions For Patches
An anonymous reader writes "When Microsoft terminated official support for Windows XP on April 8th, many organizations had taken the six years of warnings to heart and migrated to another operating system. But not the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Only 52,000 of their 110,000 Windows-powered computers have been upgraded to Windows 7. They'll now be forced to pay Microsoft for Custom Support. How much? Using Microsoft's standard rate of $200 per PC, it'll be $11.6 million for one year. That leaves $18.4 million of their $30 million budget to finish the upgrades themselves, which works out to $317 per computer."
right into the pocket of microsoft thanks to mismanagement
Shouldn't that result in the patches being released for anyone to use?
AHAHAHAHA, sorry. Had to make the joke.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
So the IRS missed a deadline they knew was coming... I wonder what they would do to any of us in a similar but different situation?
Windows XP did not instantly become unsafe on April 8, 2014, the date Microsoft calls the "end of life" for Windows XP.
Governments and big corporations are often influenced by people with no technical knowledge. Because of their ignorance, governments have already paid Microsoft probably more than it costs to fix the few security defects found each year. However, the taxpayers of those governments will not be allowed to have the fixes. "End of life" is a way for Microsoft to make more money.
It's like Toyota told all owners of older Toyota vehicles that the vehicles are unsafe now and owners must buy new vehicles or pay millions of dollars to keep them. Except its worse: Software doesn't have mechanical wear.
This article contains tips about how to use any version of Microsoft Windows safely that can be shared with people you want to help. Unnecessary computer maintenance is an ugly way to make money.
Every corporation and agency is independently paying millions and millions to have them continue to patch their computers. I would not wager a guess at how much it costs to continue producing patches, but I cannot imagine it is more than a handful of full time devs.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
XP Works. Vista, 7, and 8 really don't
Wow, this has got to be one of the most opinionated and/or misinformed things I've read in quite a while. XP was the last consumer Windows that was more or less designed for the "isn't everybody an admin?" mindset. Part of Vista's bad reputation was due to it being the messenger that got shot while delivering the "hey guys, the party's over. We really need to stop assuming every user can write to system locations. This time for real." message to developers and users. Naturally the ultra-paranoid UAC settings didn't help with that. In 7 and 8 the new security model was fine-tuned to actually work instead of bombarding users with multiple confirmations for the same operation and as a result the modern versions of Windows are reasonably secure, especially when compared to the security nightmare that XP was prior to SP2.
What makes XP so great to them? The ease with which software may be installed and configured. The stability of the platform to play Grand Theft Auto, et. al. What makes XP so terrible to technically knowledgeable people? The ease with which software may be installed and configured. The stability of the platform to provide elevated privileges and get an open connection on port 113 and run Sasser, et. al.
The amount mentioned is not what the IRS pays. It is what the article assumes, based on number of PCs running XP and an estimatd average price of $200 per PC. But contracts are negotiated individually. The British government pays less than $10 million for all their computers, which includes about 650,000 PCs running XP in the health service, more than 10 times as many as in the US IRS.
If the IRS does decide to pay Microsoft for continued support of XP, the chances of it paying the standard $200 per PC rate is effectively zero.
The numbers in the summary are total fantasy.
Thats how RHEL does it-- RHEL 5 (released in 2007) goes out of support in 2020. Apple doesnt provide support nearly that long for OSX-- they EOL'd Snow Leopard (2009) in 2013, so they have approximately 1/3 the product lifespan that MS or RH does.
Based on your other comments, though, you really just have a personal axe to grind against anything Microsoft for no real (that I can discern) reason.
All software has defects, it's the nature of the beast. If vendors were liable for every last bug in their software, the commercial software industry would not exist. (I'm sure there are freetards who feel that would be a good thing, but let's not go there.)
It's not like Microsoft deliberately released XP with 2,722 flaws with the intent to fix them gradually over the next ~12.5 years. That's the problem with security vulnerabilities- they need to be discovered. Odds are, there are plenty more in Windows XP that have yet to be found. XP EOL isn't going to make your XP machine explode and kill your family. Before long, though, unpatched XP systems will be rife with exposed vulerabilities. Browser updates will drop support for XP. It will become unsafe to use any XP machine in any capacity that involves internet connectivity. Advising your clients to continue using XP is irresponsible at best.
Really, since you're so convinced that MS is outright evil, I'm surprised you're not trying to push some linux-based XP replacement. Though, for what it's worth, even free operating systems often have an end of support life, absent any profit motive.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
Hypothetical situation. I am an IT director. I track trillions in revenues and hundreds of billions in taxes. Do I 1)
switch to a new system with unknown security risks and associated costs in upgrading in house systems and applications?
or
2) Do I stick with a true and tried system for a few tens of millions more?
No brainer. Stick with the devil you know. This is not some happy little mobile app like the "Annoyed Nematode" you are dealing with the financial futures of both the US government and each and every person who must file taxes.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think that any organization still using XP has failed an IT test. This does not mean that the IT people suck but that some aspect of IT sucks. It could be that the IT people can't proactively spend money to avoid expenses such as this and can only spend money when they have to. This is broken. I wouldn't be surprised if some dolts in these organizations are now saying that the budget to upgrade from XP has been eaten by these licensing costs.
What I have seen before is that some minor OS upgrade comes along and the various parties say, "Hey we need a minor upgrade to our software to keep up." this is then refused so after the next OS update they say, "He we pretty desperately need a medium sized upgrade to catch up." this is refused. This goes on and on until basically they are screaming, "We MUST upgrade now and the upgrade is a major overhaul of how everything works." then the worst thing in the world happens, they agree. The problem being that some sleazy mega-sized consulting company comes in and starts throwing around "best-practices" and $50 million later a completely useless system that is actually far worse than the 12 year old pile of crap they have is born. Then another $50 million is spent getting it to barely work.
The probable cost to have had a continuous stream of upgrades in the first place? Maybe $500,000 per year.