The US Navy's Warfare Systems Command Just Paid Millions To Stay On Windows XP 192
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.
Not a bad price (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me, or does that not seem like that bad of a price?
Re:Not a bad price (Score:5, Interesting)
it'll buy you nearly 1 hour of launches from an aircraft carrier.
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Nope, if the contract runs it's full length it works out to $270/machine over the next two years.
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$9m is cheap, and it might have been paid by EDS or whomever their IT contractor is now. The navy spends that much on ketchup every day.
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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!
Re:Not a bad price (Score:5, Insightful)
Different branches and divisions probably have different needs. The programs are probably purchased as binaries. Staff would need to be changed, software repurchased, data migrated, etc. This isn't unusual, and happens in most large and small companies, not just the military. For the longest time Law practices were stuck in DOS because of the Word Perfect software addons they used, for example. They worked extremely well, so there was no reason to change. 9 million is probably a lot cheaper than retraining all the employees, all the data migrations, hardware upgrades, windows upgrades, etc, etc. They can work on it slowly one department at a time.
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Only, they should have started working on it slowly one department at a time a few years ago...
They will probably end up finishing the migration to something else just before that too becomes unsupported and they're back in the same boat.
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Actually, software maintenance is a thing - software needs to be maintained just like a gearbox or an engine or a nuclear reactor. Here they're paying Microsoft to mai
Re:Not a bad price (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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In the 90s, they used to do much more *NIX. But, everyone wanted cheaper COTS products to lower their initial costs. This came at the expense of long term support and security, and left them in the hands of a single vendor...MS.
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>> . The programs are probably purchased as binaries.
Bad practice. Never purchase software without full sources. Especially custom made Software.
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This depends upon if you're planning to purchase continued support or not. Purchasing the source code can raise your costs dramatically...I know of a specific instance where it would have cost the govt. over $100M for proprietary code.
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Because it was very very simple to get exemptions from the POSIX standard. It was also very trivial to get exemptions about using Ada as well.
Remember the only reason that Windows NT has a useless POSIX subsystem was so that it could be submitted as being compliant with a wink and a nod. Then later when NT4 went away they probably migrated to XP by claiming that this was cheaper solution than to buy new POSIX systems.
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The POSIX compatibility is still there - just called 'Windows Services for Unix' now, and quite expanded with new essential utilities. I've never heard of anyone actually using it, but it's there.
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Hmm, wikipedia claims it's been removed. It was replaced with what you said, but it uses the "Interix" subsystem. These are not the same thing except for being superficially "POSIX".
The NT POSIX subsystem sat parallel to WIN32 and OS/2 subsystems but had no access to anything inside WIN32. So you could only do basic text based programs, with no networking, no graphics, etc. No one used it because it was useless. It didn't even have useful tools provided. So useless that no wonder Microsoft dumped it a
Re:Not a bad price (Score:5, Informative)
XP, being NT, still has the POSIX subsystem. It probably still works with NetBSD's pkgsrc, too.
Also, it's not so useless as you claim; Microsoft themselves used it internally for years to host Hotmail, and right up until Win8.1 it was a viable alternative to Cygwin for anybody with a compatible version of Windows (or who wanted to force it to run anyhow). It handles/handled some things, such as SetUID/SetGID, which Cygwin couldn't (and I believe still can't) emulate, supported case-sensitivity on NTFS (though this could be used to confuse the hell out of Win32 programs), had a couple of different choices of package managers available, and could compile and run most source code intended for *nix systems (third-party compatibility layers added support for some of Linux's extensions to POSIX).
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I wanted to use it so I can have a shell and grep, less, tail etc. (nothing fancy just desktop use) but I was dismayed that the Windows 7 pro I had installed did not have it. I could have gone over and reinstalled a warez Windows enterprise or ultimate but I did not bother, and switched to full-time linux instead. Well done Microsoft.
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Yeah, the limiting it to only the highest editions of Windows was stupid. It was in XP Pro, and in all editions of Server, but in anything non-server with an Enterprise or Ultimate SKU, it was only in those editions. You could force it to run, in much the same way you can trick Home editions of Windows so they'll join a domain, but it was a hassle.
For what it's worth, Windows has a built-in grep alternative. Findstr.exe (in System32, so it's in the PATH) has slightly different syntax than grep, but it's gen
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Probably the same reason I've got to keep a Win2k system around for a reporting system and a co-worker has Win98SE systems for data aquisition. The new versions are not actually fully backward compatible. Mostly is not good enough when your application is one of the few (or so the advertising says) that does not work on the new platform. WinXP to Vista/7/8 is an especially huge leap with a LOT of stuff that no longer works - think back to the days of Vista when it took we
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You can't go back and charge contractor many years after they sold you a product.
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Yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
Commander Adama (Score:3)
Uses DOS just to be safe.
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I guarantee you what they paid for this one was less expensive than changing all the documentation to reflect a later version of windows.
Except, they will still have to do this eventually, and now they are paying for both.
XP? OK. But, Office? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 $700 billion [wikipedia.org] DoD budget. There's a whole lot more pork in that barrel to be worried about.
Re:XP? OK. But, Office? (Score:5, Insightful)
Office 2003 is arguably still the best version of Office. I have co-workers who still use it and I've used pretty much every version since 4. I don't disagree with them, although I have personally transitioned to 2010 for compatibility. Newer versions don't provide much additional usability and make certain things more difficult such as removing the ability to select chart curves directly from the legend. Why??
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Newer versions don't provide much additional usability and make certain things more difficult such as removing the ability to select chart curves directly from the legend. Why??
Because for those people that need those new features, they are invaluable (note I don't use any of those features myself, but having been a part of a few migrations, with proper training courses for users, the end result was always positive). The people who complain tend to be the ones forced to figure it out themselves and so are frustrated with that, rather than the actual product.
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Now if the government is paying for the full cost of patching and bug fixes, why the fuck haven't they negotiated to release what citizens taxes have already paid for to the citizens that paid for it. Why does M$ get a role out a big ole fuck you to the citizens that paid for that work to be done.
Re:XP? OK. But, Office? (Score:4, Funny)
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You can also try to disable composition on a per application base, see compatibility tab.
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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.
If that's your only complaint about newer versions of Office, you're a lucky, lucky man.
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I use the most current version of Office (not by choice).
If you know what you're doing, you can make it look and operate exactly the same as Office 2003.
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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.
I agree - it was really cool to cleanup the mess it sometimes created. You can do this in Office as well. Unzip the docx, and with a proper XML editor you can do anything. Except.... the mess MS has made of that XML is unbelievable. The logic behind it seems to be to make it as difficult as possible to edit this manually.
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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?
I know of several government offices that still use Wordperfect 5.1 because it suits their needs perfectly for what they have to do, it would also be more expensive to change over, update all the documentation, and retrain everyone on a new system. Sometimes using something that's existing like that is far cheaper, not always but often enough. There's a realty office that I do work for and they're still using a 2.0 Novell NetWare machine, it does everything that it needs to do.
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Ribbon hate?
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We spent the last year doing the same thing and are down to about 400 XP machines out of 110,000. Why 2003? Here is why we didn't
1. Too much inhouse custom crap on user machines to go through the testing cycle to make sure it worked with 2010. Which equals more money spent
2. We are moving users to Windows 7 in a short time why go through Step 1 for practically no gain
3. We have enough protection on the desktop and procedures to not worry about an infection spreading if a machine was hit. Essentially things
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Re:XP? OK. But, Office? (Score:5, Funny)
What are they doing? Using a mail merge macro to address the nuclear missiles on said submarine?
Jesus, Duckman, what part of "Top Secret" don't you understand?
More stupid reporting on SlashDot (Score:5, Insightful)
"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?)
Re:More stupid reporting on SlashDot (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we shouldn't have bought the technology in the first place if we had no plan on how to effectively upgrade it.
(I'm an embedded SW engineer)
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At least someone here gets it. Even the industrial stuff is pretty much a figurative duct tape that loses support as soon as the last contract expires. And losing support on this stuff is catastrophic because most embedded SW products need persistent maintenance to keep going. I really do think the poor quality is an elaborate plan to for users to upgrade.
Instead of creating a building that stands for centuries or a machine that works reliably for decades, I get to design software for the technological equi
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MS would make money hand over fist by doing that. Look at OS/2. There is a company, EComStation still cranking out support and updates for Warp.
The problem is that XPe and other embedded versions can't be upgraded. Try that, and millions of dollars worth of equipment will be rendered into scrap. One can treat XPe like a broken SCADA system and firewall/airgap the living hell out of it, but the best of all worlds is to have MS continue supporting it (for a decent fee) which is a win/win for all parties i
Re:More stupid reporting on SlashDot (Score:5, Interesting)
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. :)
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I'm sure Microsoft would be happy to negotiate that deal too. It'd probably cost more like $9 billion though.
Jason.
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Given the installed base that fought tooth and nail to stay on XP even when the end was near, I'd hardly say that few people wanted to run it. You might make that case now since there has been such a long gap since any security updates have been released.
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Because you aren't paying for it.
Actually, one of my premises, is that as the government is paying for it, we ARE paying for it.
Should a Amazon give out all their ebooks for free because someone already bought a copy of one of them?
When that someone is the governent, then yes? Isn't that what a library is?
It's not like these are businesses that rely on paying customers to run or anything stupid like that.
Again, we are the paying customers.
Plus, MS wants to move away from XP. It takes away from their talent pool to work on a 15 year old operating system that very few people actually want to run.
But Microsoft set a price for doing so, and then it was paid. Its not taking away from anything, its a whole extra revenue stream.
If they are going to keep patching it, they are going to want a bunch of money to compensate for the time and money sink that it is.
Yes. They set a price to compensate themselves for the time it would take to do that, with enough profit built in to motivate them to do it. Then we paid it.
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The best thing that Microsoft could do for the world is put Windows 7 into perpetual maintenance
That's sort of what they are doing with the free upgrade to Win10
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Do you have any idea how much it would cost the tax payers to try to *replace* all that embedded technology?
A lot less then trying to work around systems that cannot be maintained, let alone be repaired and are therefore utterly broken. Have you any idea how many security leaks their software must have? Even if they upgrade Windows for a few MegaBucks, all the libraries used inside the software remain unpatched. Heck, if somebody from China wants to be anonymous on-line, it is probably easier to do through the US Navy than through any Chinese server.
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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?)
You seem to be under the impression that backward and forward hardware compatibility are easy things:
1) That an arbitrary OS could be expected to run well on hardware made many years in the past and many years in the future, and
2) That arbitrary hardware can easily support ancient software.
Suppose you'd said this about DOS. Microsoft should support it in perpetuity! OK, then, but where are you going to buy a mouse today that supports the hardware ports that DOS knows how to handle (or would you think mou
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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?)
A little harsh, there, don't you think? Apple's not literally forcing anyone to buy new hardware. My iPhone 3G (released in 2010, just like the first iPad) is working just fine, even though it's stuck at iOS 6. Pretty good for a 5-year-old consumer product. Do five-year old Android devices run Kit Kat? Any five-year-old Windows phones?
The upcoming release of OS X, just like the current one, supports machines all the way back to 2007 (that's a core 2 duo machine with 1GB RAM).
OTOH, my copy of Windows XP
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Huh? Your "all that embedded technology" comment likely refers to *old hardware* too. It's (likely) not that they're trying to continue to run XP on completely new hardware... They're trying to run it on whatever ancient hardware (including weird custom peripherals)...
Which is JUST like keeping an original iPad running to run some old iOS app that doesn't run on the current OS on curr
Windows XP? (Score:4, Insightful)
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2008 IBM was banned from bidding on government contracts with the EPA, and it took until last year before we started seeing significant contracts come back in.
One of which was to do Application Rationalization for SPAWAR, funny enough.
http://www.federalnewsradio.co... [federalnewsradio.com]
To be fair, $5M of it was to restore (Score:5, Funny)
A more accurate summary might be: (Score:5, Insightful)
'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.
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<3
Re:A more accurate summary might be: (Score:5, Funny)
10 secrets the Military don't want you to know!
This one simple trick made $9 Million!
It's not funny, it's sad.
Re:A more accurate summary might be: (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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It's not as if anyone knew years ago that XP would go EOL and a migration would be needed .... oh wait!
More seriously, while this may represent a rational and cost effective solution in this instance, what about the future in which Microsoft will releas
Well to be fair, this really is taking too long (Score:3)
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 certainl
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Why follow Microsoft's arbitrary release cycle if you don't have to?
The software they are using is just as functional now as the day it was installed (more so if you count bugfixes installed since) and the system integrations, testing and validation they have done are not inexpensive to repeat with a new operating system because Microsoft stopped supporting something, not because they had to -- but because they need to, to keep revenue flowing.
It's not hard to imagine complex installation scenarios where th
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xp was released in 2001. mainline support ended in 2009 and extended support ended over a year ago. sure, they need to insure critical systems stay online but they've known for the better part of a decade that this day was coming. it's maybe "only" nine million dollars, but it's a nine million dollar bandaid on an issue that they'll still need to address in the near future.
Re:A more accurate summary might be: (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh, my experience is that a lot of things in the military are sold as systems, and that includes the OS that goes along with it. You'd be bitching more if they had to rebuy all their systems, and pay contractors and subcontractors to develop for and test on, the latest windows OS. Since some components still use XP, they will need XP to stay up to date. That's not really a shock.
Again, I want to EMPHASIZE, these aren't just a bunch of desktops with people clicking on shit, or an OS that does a generic job. The whole damned piece is certified for a specific purpose, in many many cases.
This is not government waste, this is the opposite. I mean, everything else in the military is expected to function for more than the fart of a silicon valley billionaire, and paying for maintenance is far cheaper than buying a whole new All The Things.
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So fire, or demote, the idiots who did not plan for a known future event (EOL of XP) when purchasing these systems. That includes the Generals, Admirals, etc..
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Eh, my experience is that a lot of things in the military are sold as systems, and that includes the OS that goes along with it.
So fire, or demote, the idiots who did not plan for a known future event (EOL of XP) when purchasing these systems. That includes the Generals, Admirals, etc..
It's not that easy. If they were migrating the OS and OTC software, it wouldn't be so problematic.
But they run millions of lines of custom code, purpose written for specific devices.
Changing OS would also require rewriting (and testing) all those specially apps.
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Re-writing and testing the apps to ensure that they continue to run on a fully supported OS should have been in the original contract.
EOL for Windows XP was a known event (if anything, it happened later than expected). Those people who failed to plan for this known event in the acquisition process failed to do their jobs properly.
Re: A more accurate summary might be: (Score:2)
Would firing them automatically upgrade all the machines?
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Who says they didn't plan to Microsoft for patches?
Jason
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And then Windows 8 came out and they decided to wait for Windows 10...
Expensive? That's the cost of one hammer (Score:2)
It's not a hammer (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Oh god. Don't *do* that. The nightmares - they keep on coming back!
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You know full well that's just the executive summary. The actual procurement spec is 143 pages long, excluding the appendices.
Danger Will Robinson .. (Score:3)
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It was already a problem when they first replaced Unix with Windows:
http://archive.wired.com/scien... [wired.com]
Last secure MS OS? (Score:2)
Maybe everything after XP started phoning home to who knows what "area code" (206, NSA, KGB, unit 61398 [wikipedia.org]?)
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?
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OSS? You mean that stuff hippy cormanusts give away?
Why not Share? (Score:2)
My tax dollars are paying for the updates. Why can't the government share them?
In other news... (Score:3)
Better than paying to upgrade to Windows 8.1 (Score:2)
.
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.
wow about time. (Score:2)
And I'd be willing to bet (Score:3)
Computers are just components to Navy (Score:4, Informative)
Not a new problem at the Navy (Score:2)
The NMCI [navy.mil] 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 [wikipedia.org] is a study in vendor management, high expectations, and bureaucracy.
Ah, yes, SPAWAR (Score:2)
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
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Eek, typo. Of course, WWII, not WWI!
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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.
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Sometimes the only way to win is to not play the game.
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Thermonuclear chess?
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It was $520 B in 2014 alone. What does that have to do with a Cold War that has been over for decades?
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That opens up the can of worms of campaign finance money and lobbying.
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Ah....how come companies world-wide rely on MS Malware? Because it does what they need it to do. Yes, it is inelegant, yes it is buggy, yes it is a pile of insecurity that could knock a dead buzzard off a shitwagon at 20 paces. Until recently, there's never really been an alternative. Much of the military is doing the usual kinds of things it takes to keep a large organization functioning, i.e., payroll, retirement plans, accounting, etc.
Wot? That's not related to national security? Yes, it is. That's what
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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.
... and electron microscopes (Score:2)
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).
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WSUSOffline will do what you want:
http://download.wsusoffline.ne... [wsusoffline.net]
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.
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Good point. That does, however, qualify him for being the contract manager on the government side.
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