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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.
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?
Wasn't the military complex all about POSIX standards? Why are they so suck on a *particular version* of Windows??? ALL of their programs should just recompile and work---and if not, they should charge back the contractors who created those programs!
I could say a lot about what happened at SPAWAR and why it is going the way it is going but I can't.
I might say that there was no technical reason and it was all just internal politics, but I could not say that either.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
it'll buy you nearly 1 hour of launches from an aircraft carrier.
In the 00's you needed Windows for a lot of stuff...not so much anymore. IMO they ought to just move to xen or vsphere, and try to code a lot of that shit for minimal OSes (CoreOS is looking good) that way when shit needs to be replaced:
- Very little concern for long-term hardware obsolescence
- Can continue using all of the same software
- Only minimal changes will need to be made should your hypervisor stop being supported (mainly just drivers in the guest OS.)
- Sandboxing for better security (which it seems the US government has been lacking lately) even if they fail to patch something.
Hyper-V works as well, however personally I don't like it because it's not only bloated, but it's known to BSOD during e.g. VM migration even with a Windows guest, (this is widely blamed on Microsoft attempting to use better hardware compatibility as a selling point, because they frequently rely on drivers that are often meant for consumer type uses and aren't tested for this kind of thing by their vendors) and it always seems to be several steps behind the competition.
The thing that irks me is that once various governments and organizations have "sucked-it-up" and ponied up the "ransom" to keep XP going -- why cant the public at large benefit from this. Especially given that we are the ones literally paying for it.
Once the patches are written, tested, and released why aren't they available on Windows update?
Don't get me wrong, I want XP to die in a fire. Cutting over to Vista onward, embracing 64 bit*, leaving the days of "administrator by default" behind, etc were all good things. But still if my government dropped 9 million bucks to get MS to develop some more security patches for XP; it'd be nice if the lathes at work could have them too.
* (yes, yes, i know xp 64 bit existed. shut up. :)