The Navy's ERP system has already been "deployed" at certain commands such as NAVAIR and SPAWAR, so it isn't like they have spent this money and not produced a product. The system has issues, some of which are outright bugs (e.g. losing employee time sheets), some are poor design choices (e.g. the purchase request part of the system had issues with $0 line items on orders, previously we had to put in $0.01 to make it work), and some are dumb policy choices by the DoN or the local command (e.g. we are not allowed to use the built in leave request system, we still pass around e-mails or signed PDF documents).
Overall it is an improvement over the systems it replaced - for me that was a series of in house systems that essentially emulated the original WANG environment and re-used COBOL code. It does make it more difficult to fix things and I still believe the system has a hard time working with the DoD's "accounting" system i.e. different colors of money, lines of accounting, money that expires, etc.
Most, including middle management, refer to NMCI as No More Computing In-house. Locally, we say "Needs More Congressional Investigation" or "No More Communication or Interoperability".
The core OS was based on FreeBSD/NetBSD was easily portable, the microkernel also made ports easy. Fat binaries that ran on any platform were also the norm.
Lots of the technology from NeXT OS (aka NeXTStep) went into Mac OSX - from the NetInfo database, the dock concept, to the file system layout.
The US Navy bought hundreds of these, the NSA *has* hundreds of them, and a particularly large telcom provider in the southwest US used them for all of their billing systems. They were never intended to be used as a home user system so you're comparing apples and pickles.
Not to mention that NeXTStep was a good OS - it now lives on in OSX.
I think they are saying that the Intel hardware is less expensive and that those customers will prefer Solaris over Linux. The phrasing is confusing.
Solaris could be less expensive if you had lots of R&D dollars tied up in hardware drivers written for Solaris. Not that a port of most things wouldn't be trivial, but convincing management of this would be the tough part.
Ever tried their support ? They suck. I've been waiting over two months along with a host of others on their support forums for somebody from Connectix to answer a list of problems. They might read the forums but I'll be damned if they actually answer posts there.
See the forum pages at Connectix and read the tales of woe. I've got an HP printer whose software can crash the VPC repeatedly!
Disclaimer - I work for the DoD but i don't speak for them.
"Segments" are basically customized software installs for COE. This includes Government produced software (Government Off the Shelf, GOTS) and commercial software (Commercial Off the Shelf, COTS). For instance there is a "segment" that installs Netscape.
These segment installs basically install the software such that it conforms to the COE environment. For example, applications must live in a certain path, follow a certain naming scheme, use certain environment variables to find things, only put user data in a certain place, etc, etc. Think "rpms" or FreeBSD packages - segments are just big tar balls with a standardized format and install scripts:)
The segments are available via DISA to those programs that are developing COE software - you have to show proof of need and sponsorship (i.e. somebody has to pay somewhere along the way for you to have access). Basically if you are developing applications for the DoD, you can get them - we have to get them through a certain chain of command. I think vendors can get access, but you have to talk to the DISA folks about how that works.
NeXTSTEP on Intel was pretty cool too. It required some pretty specific hardware at times or at least high quality parts (video cards in particular).
But it inspired some cool PC hardware. I LOVED the all black Canon ObjectStation - the model 41 looked just like a NeXT slab. If I recall, even the floppy and CDROM were mounted on the side instead of the front. I'd KILL to have one of those now or to be able to build one!
I have this book - it turned out to be a nice read. Most of the chapter notes also point out other sources of information that can be used for the reader who wants to dive in deeper.
I also agree the later chapters tended to drag a bit here and there - probably too much math for the average reader.
I also strongly urge anyone that has a chance to see the author give a lecture to do so - he has toured the country giving short talks on this book and the talks are very entertaining (at one point using a 'string' quartet to make a point).
And this machine has spent 35 days doing what exactly ? Running idle ?
Show me a W2K box that is getting hammered day in and day out and I might be impressed, but any old OS can just sit there doing nothing (or mostly nothing).
>We recently had several clients start running >Office 2000, and were amazed to note that it >added several Unix-like features to the *OS*, >mostly as services on known ports - like Quote of >the day! QOTD is part of the Simple TCP/IP service - located on your NT CD and available as an option for install since NT 3.5 or maybe earlier. It adds some other functionality - like the time/date port (port 13).
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The Navy's ERP system has already been "deployed" at certain commands such as NAVAIR and SPAWAR, so it isn't like they have spent this money and not produced a product. The system has issues, some of which are outright bugs (e.g. losing employee time sheets), some are poor design choices (e.g. the purchase request part of the system had issues with $0 line items on orders, previously we had to put in $0.01 to make it work), and some are dumb policy choices by the DoN or the local command (e.g. we are not allowed to use the built in leave request system, we still pass around e-mails or signed PDF documents).
Overall it is an improvement over the systems it replaced - for me that was a series of in house systems that essentially emulated the original WANG environment and re-used COBOL code. It does make it more difficult to fix things and I still believe the system has a hard time working with the DoD's "accounting" system i.e. different colors of money, lines of accounting, money that expires, etc.
The core OS was based on FreeBSD/NetBSD was easily portable, the microkernel also made ports easy. Fat binaries that ran on any platform were also the norm.
Lots of the technology from NeXT OS (aka NeXTStep) went into Mac OSX - from the NetInfo database, the dock concept, to the file system layout.
The US Navy bought hundreds of these, the NSA *has* hundreds of them, and a particularly large telcom provider in the southwest US used them for all of their billing systems. They were never intended to be used as a home user system so you're comparing apples and pickles.
Not to mention that NeXTStep was a good OS - it now lives on in OSX.
I think they are saying that the Intel hardware is less expensive and that those customers will prefer Solaris over Linux. The phrasing is confusing.
Solaris could be less expensive if you had lots of R&D dollars tied up in hardware drivers written for Solaris. Not that a port of most things wouldn't be trivial, but convincing management of this would be the tough part.
Ever tried their support ? They suck. I've been waiting over two months along with a host of others on their support forums for somebody from Connectix to answer a list of problems. They might read the forums but I'll be damned if they actually answer posts there.
See the forum pages at Connectix and read the tales of woe. I've got an HP printer whose software can crash the VPC repeatedly!
Disclaimer - I work for the DoD but i don't speak for them.
:)
"Segments" are basically customized software installs for COE. This includes Government produced software (Government Off the Shelf, GOTS) and commercial software (Commercial Off the Shelf, COTS). For instance there is a "segment" that installs Netscape.
These segment installs basically install the software such that it conforms to the COE environment. For example, applications must live in a certain path, follow a certain naming scheme, use certain environment variables to find things, only put user data in a certain place, etc, etc. Think "rpms" or FreeBSD packages - segments are just big tar balls with a standardized format and install scripts
The segments are available via DISA to those programs that are developing COE software - you have to show proof of need and sponsorship (i.e. somebody has to pay somewhere along the way for you to have access). Basically if you are developing applications for the DoD, you can get them - we have to get them through a certain chain of command. I think vendors can get access, but you have to talk to the DISA folks about how that works.
In other words - Steve Jobs ?
NeXTSTEP on Intel was pretty cool too. It required some pretty specific hardware at times or at least high quality parts (video cards in particular).
But it inspired some cool PC hardware. I LOVED the all black Canon ObjectStation - the model 41 looked just like a NeXT slab. If I recall, even the floppy and CDROM were mounted on the side instead of the front. I'd KILL to have one of those now or to be able to build one!
I have this book - it turned out to be a nice read. Most of the chapter notes also point out other sources of information that can be used for the reader who wants to dive in deeper.
I also agree the later chapters tended to drag a bit here and there - probably too much math for the average reader.
I also strongly urge anyone that has a chance to see the author give a lecture to do so - he has toured the country giving short talks on this book and the talks are very entertaining (at one point using a 'string' quartet to make a point).
And this machine has spent 35 days doing what exactly ? Running idle ?
Show me a W2K box that is getting hammered day in and day out and I might be impressed, but any old OS can just sit there doing nothing (or mostly nothing).
>We recently had several clients start running >Office 2000, and were amazed to note that it >added several Unix-like features to the *OS*, >mostly as services on known ports - like Quote of >the day! QOTD is part of the Simple TCP/IP service - located on your NT CD and available as an option for install since NT 3.5 or maybe earlier. It adds some other functionality - like the time/date port (port 13).
I actually have had good sucess with them. They have always taken care of any DOA equipment or other problems quickly. I guess YMMV.