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The US Navy's Warfare Systems Command Just Paid Millions To Stay On Windows XP
itwbennett writes: The Navy relies on a number of legacy applications and programs that are reliant on legacy Windows products,' said Steven Davis, a spokesman for the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego. And that reliance on obsolete technology is costing taxpayers a pretty penny. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which runs the Navy's communications and information networks, signed a $9.1 million contract earlier this month for continued access to security patches for Windows XP, Office 2003, Exchange 2003 and Windows Server 2003.
Is it just me, or does that not seem like that bad of a price?
They did that with OS/2 back in the day, too. They stayed on OS/2 1.2 a couple years past when the OS expired for everyone else. I guarantee you what they paid for this one was less expensive than changing all the documentation to reflect a later version of windows.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Office, though? What are they doing? Using a mail merge macro to address the nuclear missiles on said submarine? Why the heck can't they just replace that with minimal issues?
At the end of the day, though, I'm not that worried. $9.1 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly $700 billion DoD budget. There's a whole lot more pork in that barrel to be worried about.
"That reliance on obsolete technology is costing the tax payers". Do you have any idea how much it would cost the tax payers to try to *replace* all that embedded technology? Far, far more than $9.1M. I really wish that people wouldn't post articles with such blatant biases and so little background research.
The best thing that Microsoft could do for the world is put Windows 7 into perpetual maintenance and charge $50/year for the product. No more churn to replace hardware and software when they obsolete an old O/S. No more retraining costs to get IT personal who can manage the new O/S which does things just differently enough to trip people up.
At least MS isn't as bad as Apple where the literally force you to buy new hardware along with the new O/S (Ipad 1 anyone?)
This is peanuts. Obama paid a few hundred millions in January to keep Boeing making those VC-25s that nobody else wants to buy.
Honestly, with the speed they develop and certify critical software in the military, I'm surprised some of these systems are up to Windows XP.
the XP version of Minesweeper. Apparently they get a lot of use out of that one.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
'The US Navy paid $9.1M to insure that critical systems running an older OS are still supported while they continue to transition away from said older OS, a process that anyone with IT experience knows cannot happen overnight, and sometimes can take years, particularly when it comes to systems with potentially disastrous consequences at risk should you just slap updates on them willy-nilly.'
I do realize that we're talking about post-Dice Slashdot here, but this is one of the lamer website shillings I've seen in a while. Honestly, the article itself isn't nearly as sensational as this clickbait summary would have you believe.
They make more money in the afterlife...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Inside thousands of labs all over the world there are testing devices worth tens of billions of dollars running on XP
The OS upgrade path is next to none
Nails extra
Windows 10 is coming out pretty soon ...
I paid $520 Billion dollars, that's billion with a 'B', to have the most modern and well equipped military in the world. If you're paying Microsoft to keep Exchange 2003 up to day, I am starting to doubt that I'm getting my money's worth here. Hell, when was the last time you even won a war?
I think we won the cold war, but I'm not sure it was a victory for the better.
Be seeing you...
Sometimes the only way to win is to not play the game.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Uses DOS just to be safe.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The US Government in it's infinite wisdom, specifies details of exactly what hardware model and software version will be used.
With the usual delays between prototype, contractor selections, and funding delays, it may take years between initial contract bids and production.
So they get stuck running old hardware & software, because they can't change it and it is specified in the original contract.
My question when ever Windows is used. Why ?
The most insecure, poorly designed, cheap piece of poop is used to protect our country.
That OS can't protect itself from a poor programmer, let alone an actual threat.
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
I want that too!
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\WPA\PosReady]
"Installed"=dword:00000001
Leave it to the gov't to pay $9mil to a contractor who can Google the xp updates registry hack for free...
No they didn't. The Americans citizens paid $9.1 million. And they'd happily pay more too.
Windows EOL dates are known way in advance. 10 years from the date of release. Sometimes they do extend it (they did with XP) but you can plan on a decade. That really is a good amount of time to plan on the lifecycle for your products. It is not too much to say "about once a decade we are going to make sure that our code is up to date and compatible with the current version of windows, and then transition to that". Were you to transition to 8.1, you'd have support until 2023.
While critical systems certainly aren't something to move to a new platform right away, you have plenty of time to do it in. This is just a case of feet dragging.
'Davis wouldn’t provide more details about the systems or their use, citing cybersecurity policy, but an unclassified Navy document says the Microsoft applications affect “critical command and control systems” on ships and land-based legacy systems. Affected systems are connected to NIPRnet, the U.S. government’s IP network for non-classified information, and SIPRnet, the network for classified information.'
Well, not secure from outside attack, you can defend against that by not putting it on a network... KISS
Maybe everything after XP started phoning home to who knows what "area code" (206, NSA, KGB, unit 61398?)
Doing things right, and doing things cheap are two different things.The presumption was that "COTS" was both... maybe not so much anymore. (BTW the spirit of COTS means OSS is fair game for scrutiny.)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Why only the Navy?
Yes, and think of the money to be made from afterlife support if they kill it now!
And why would you expect any different, from an embedded device?
"Davis wouldn’t provide more details about the systems or their use, citing cybersecurity policy"
...on Windows XP?!
...WTF...
I'm a little peeved personally that they didn't *at least* come out with a "SP4" "end of life service pack", y'know, a final rollup of all the patches so if you do have some legacy stuff and for whatever reason wind up having to re-install at some point you can have the final rollup on a CD/DVD and apply it.
Not a great solution, but put all the fixes on it and keep it off a network is better than nothing.
How about a nice game of chess?
Note, there are "SP3" patches for Windows 2003. They were never rolled up, but you can read the details of them here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/yongrhee/archive/2012/04/01/list-of-failover-cluster-related-hotfixes-post-service-pack-2-for-windows-server-2003-sp2.aspx
As to contracting, that's a joke.
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/07/4-billion-military-emr-ahlta-to-be-put.html
"$4 billion+ EMR known as "Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application" (AHLTA) is to be declared a failure, and replaced."
I've worked on AHLTA, and it's a mess. $4 billion dollars! I heard there was a lawsuit against the contractors, but the $4billion contract was written so the military could never wiggle out of it, so the case was thrown out.
For AHLTA, just imagine a programmer that for every function needed, decides to call an external API from about a 1,000 random dll libraries that he had found on the internet. The install process was to "xcopy" those 1000 dll files to C:\windows\system32\ folder. MS Office, Adobe Reader, and a bunch of other software would then be broken, due to these old dlls being used. I remember that Adobe Reader 5 dlls were part of the list of dlls that were xcopy over. It seems that Adobe Reader X won't work with Adobe Reader 5 dlls. Ahlta "required" at least 4GB of memory just for itself, and it would only run on 32bit windows XP. This is just a few examples of many.
then get a patch and say OH LOOK MILLIONS ARE VULNERABLE....
GET OFF XP NOW, the us govt is up to serious bullshit
WSUSOffline will do what you want:
http://download.wsusoffline.ne...
You need an old version (9.2.1) to get XP support. Basically pick what updates you want, then it will download it, and build it in a form that basically you can double click the installer and it will run the updates.
it's not a hammer, it's a manual nail insertion device designed to provide application of no less than 5000 ft-lb of energy to a drawn steel fasteneing device of up to 0.162" in diameter and 3.5" long with swaged or pressed impact points. The design must be such that operation is possible by users which fall within the 20th and 98th percentile for size based on standard American male growth charts for all races. The device shall require low skill level for operation. Item must be maintenance free with no adjustment required for initial or long term operation. All materials shall be sourced in accordance with OPM regulations and include a certificate of authenticity for all natural materials and a certification of chemical composition for all non-natural materials. Chemical composition may be provided by certificates of origin and testing by third parties at the source of material, or through destructive testing and analysis of the 0.1% of the fabricated product quantity per lot. Each lot shall be identified using ONLY the military item number (no commercial numbers or identification shall be allowed), be marked "U.S. Military Use Only", and carry the lot number. Identification shall be integrally cast, impressed, and/or indelibly marked on the item, or on each part of the item if the assembly is separable.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You mean to rell me some of our critical defense systems are running on Windows? BSOD anyone!
My tax dollars are paying for the updates. Why can't the government share them?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Office 2003 is arguably still the best version of Office. I have co-workers who still use it and I've used pretty much every version since 4. I don't disagree with them, although I have personally transitioned to 2010 for compatibility. Newer versions don't provide much additional usability and make certain things more difficult such as removing the ability to select chart curves directly from the legend. Why??
WordPerfect 5.1 baby, WordPerfect 5.1. "Reveal codes" is/was the most useful feature ever.
a lot of outfits, including governments, run platforms as long as they can. see http://www.geek.com/news/commo...
I find Windows Vista-Win8.1 inferior with exception to the ability to use more ram.
I use a Winbook TW700 connected to 40" LCD as my main computer because of the power savings over an efficient older laptop.
Without legacy bIOS support on most all these efficient tablets/intel tech.(baytrail), I'm FORCED to use Windows 8.1; Man is it bad...
I would happily pay $100 MORE for the $70 tablet if it could run XP SP2 -(Tablet edition).
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management continues its contract for Windows 3.1 support.
Kythe
.
imo, it was a good decision, ==provided== there will be an effort to start moving off of Windows XP and on to a more sustainable environment than Windows.
Finally the update from NT.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
It isn't just the U.S. Navy, but the IRS and a bunch of other government offices that are still on XP for legacy reasons. Let's face it, Vista was an abortion from the get go, and Windows 8 wasn't much better. In fact every even numbered OS from Microsoft is horrid. Hence why business uses Windows 7 now.
You're a talented software engineer. You've just got a nice job working for MS. Your boss says "Bob, you're going to be assigned to WinXP maintenance programming." Every year, then, when review time comes around, you get asked, so what have you done this year, and you don't get to say "I developed a new feature that has increased MS revenue by $1324B", nope, you get to say "I helped support the ever diminishing number of whiney customers who insist on running XP"
For what they have now, there isn't really any better choice.
I've been in a similar situation working in telecom. My boss asked me to come up with a plan to replace WinXP with Linux a few years ago. This was for only 25K people, but the software running on the machines was highly specialized - we aren't talking normal desktops here. Think "device testing equipment and software to interface with it."
For us, the cost of WinXP licenses was just under $5M - peanuts - compared to the cost and time to migrate all the other custom software to Linux. Much of the interfaces were provided by 2rd parties for HW API access and that software ran $25M each - we had about 20-25 different SW packages like that. Basically, it was a very costly project and as long as phones are in grandma's house and people use 128Kbps DSL and ISDN connections, those tools will be required. I'd guess about another 20 yrs from today.
$9M/yr is a bargain when you start looking at these numbers.
So, I left that job and I've been a full-time Linux user and server guy for almost a decade now. I still think that decision was correct and I don't have a big issue with NWS paying for this either. I wish they'd used Linux initially and think all new systems deployed so mandate F/LOSS and open data formats.
Thermonuclear chess?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
The Navy purchases computers as parts of much larger systems, often ships. These things get assembled and their expected lifetime is much longer that the technology cycles we enjoy outside of their domain. Refit schedules are not driven by the computers on board but rather by much larger, more expensive and longer lived components like diesel motors. The Navy is just in the last couple of years starting to move some of their onboard computer systems to what they refer to as "Carry On" components. There are probably ships in the fleet that have 25 year old electronics on them because these components weren't ever expected to be replaced.
That would make sense if the $9 million meant they wouldn't have to replace all that technology.
But it won't. They're going to have to upgrade to Win 7/8/10 (...) eventually. Their old hardware will die off, they'll need compatibility with newer documents, protocols, and other applications. That bill is still coming due, and paying $9 million now doesn't make it any smaller.
It was $520 B in 2014 alone. What does that have to do with a Cold War that has been over for decades?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Here.
Inside thousands of labs all over the world there are testing devices worth tens of billions of dollars running on XP
The OS upgrade path is next to none
You don't update software on medical equipment anyway. That thing would have to be recertified.
The NMCI was supposed to be a manageable intranet, with the Initiative back in 2000 the first step, identifying apps, updating systems, blah blah blah.
Sort of got done. Sort of. The history of the NMCI is a study in vendor management, high expectations, and bureaucracy.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Ah, yes, SPAWAR...
Where wrinkly old generals sit around in a hot tub all day discussing their war plans.
At least that was my first thought when I moved to San Diego years ago and first spotted the sign on the huge complex.
Trivia: during WWI, the building they are housed in was an aircraft factory. The factory roof and nets covering adjacent Pacific Highway had painted scenery to fool an errant Japanese bombers.
Millions of mom-and-pop businesses thank SPAWAR for enabling their old inventory system sitting in the corner running on a PC-AT to continue to function!
Yes, plenty of other stuff like this as well.
A friend who is a Materials Scientist rues the day that they updated his electron microscope from Win XP to Windows 7 (or 8, forget which).
So I'm not raising the efficacy or exonomy of sticking with XP or not, if the navy wants to pay Microsoft for security patches instead of upgrading then that is fine.
No my question is, are the security patches the navy will get a federally paid for publishable items?
If they are then that means under current rules, once a piece of code is published to the navy, unless it is covered by a security mark then they and/or Microsoft is required to disclose it. Now this may not make financial sense to the big M, but how many times over are they willing to get paid for the same patch on an old OS.
I say, once the navy or any federal department who is paying for patches gets them then they should be released for public consumption, free of charge.
If $9.1M of "public" money is being spent to keep a Windows XP security stream going, then why can't the rest of the "public" that has paid for those updates have them too?
you're fussed about $9M for a MILITARY contract?
Holy shit dude.
...for 9 meelion bucks.
8588/78/8/