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Microsoft Vista, IE7 Banned By U.S. DOT
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Mar 02, 2007 02:38 PM
from the that-is-a-serious-buzz-harsher dept.
from the that-is-a-serious-buzz-harsher dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to a memo being reported on by Information week, the US Department of Transportation has issued a moratorium on upgrading Microsoft products. Concerns over costs and compatability issues has lead the federal agency to prevent upgrades from XP to Vista, as well as to stop users from moving to IE 7 and Office 2007. As the article says, 'In a memo to his staff, DOT chief information officer Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."'"
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Linux: FAA May Ditch Vista For Linux 359 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Another straw in the wind: following last week's news that the US Department of Transportation is putting a halt on upgrades to Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7, today comes word that the Federal Aviation Administration may ditch Vista and Office in favor of Google's new online business applications running on Linux-based hardware. (The FAA is part of the DOT.) The FAA's CIO David Bowen told InformationWeek he's taking a close look at the Premier Edition of Google Apps as he mulls replacements for the agency's Windows XP-based desktop computers. Bowen cited several reasons why he finds Google Apps attractive. 'From a security and management standpoint that would have some advantages,' he said."
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Microsoft Vista, IE7 Banned By U.S. DOT
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Nothing really unusual about it (Score:5, Informative)
Rear View Mirror Warning (Score:5, Funny)
(http://ofteninspired.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday April 01 2007, @05:49PM)
Operating systems may appear more compatible then they are...
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:5, Insightful)
"..there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."
The DOT is just figuring this out now? Hell, most of us knew this years ago.
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.networkboy.net/)
Then we'd have wGnome Vs. wKDE flamewars. That's the only damn thing I seem to like about windows is the unified desktop manager.
-nB
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday November 21 2005, @12:45PM)
Are you on crack? They're not in the same neighborhood, much less ball park.
All Xserves come with unlimited client licenses. And the OS X Server software comes in two flavors, unlimited clients ($1k) and 10 clients ($500). The 10 client limitation ONLY applies to AFP connections. Everything else - mail, web, smb, ftp - is sill unlimited.
Try putting 500 users on an Exchange server. Try putting 500 users on OS X Server. Spend the extra money on an all expenses paid conference trip to Vegas for two weeks.
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
unlimited license of server is $1000. it COMES with the xserve.
Maintenance (3 years of free upgrades, for 10.5-6, etc.) is another $1000, and entirely worth it.
So initial license purchase on top of the hardware is $1000 if you want 3 years of major versions of os x server. From past experience, that saves you $1000, because 2 more updates will happen in the next 3 years.
You are looking at $4,000 from apple vs $4313 from dell, but the dell only comes with 5 CALs (bare minimum 1u dual dual core xenon servers).
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday May 03 2006, @12:27PM)
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.outpimp.com/?x=57020 | Last Journal: Wednesday September 12, @09:15PM)
Don't most people actually turn their heads to LOOK before changing lanes?
That's the way I was taught to drive.....
I keep a constant eye on the mirrors while driving to have a good feeling where traffic is around me, but, I always turn to look before changing lanes...
Re:Nothing really unusual about it (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday March 26 2007, @07:57AM)
Oh, for Christ's sake, you're not turning around and staring over your shoulder, you're doing a quick eye flick to determine whether the space is occupied by A) air, or B) something large, metal, and opaque that may do significant body damage if you run into it. If this takes you longer than a fraction of a second, you're doing it wrong.
Re:Yes it is (Score:5, Funny)
1968: "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"
1996: "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft"
2007: "you're both fired!"
Re:Yes it is (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.halfy.net/)
As a webmaster (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.pembo13.com/)
Re:As a webmaster (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not unfair, it's just plain stupid.
Re:As a webmaster (Score:4, Funny)
If that were factual, Microsoft would make sure that all GNUs are extinct the day after the next Patch Tuesday.
Re:As a webmaster (Score:4, Insightful)
Browsers are still playing catchup to full XHTML/CSS compliance.
'Javascript' is a moving target, with incompatible dialects in each browser. ECMA standardized the language some years back but vendors keep adding new features [mozilla.org] that aren't available in other browsers yet.
It would be nice if web designers could at least use a baseline of available web standards of 2006 and know that all the major browsers would support them correctly. i.e. CSS2.x [w3.org], ECMA-262 v3 and E4X [wikipedia.org].
Sadly, today's web applications tend to implement workarounds specific to IE and firefox (gmail for example), leaving other browsers as unsupported.
So it's not about designing websites to run with any browser that will ever exist in the future but a battle creating ones that run using the standards of today. :( IE 6 is 5 1/2 years old and should be regarded as a legacy platform.
Don't worry, he's being fair. (Score:4, Informative)
(http://lists.clickers.org/linuxsig/index.html | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @11:00PM)
I wish they would at least move to IE7 if they are not going to move to Firefox/Mozilla. To stay with IE6 is just unfair.
From the fine article:
With an open mind like that, I'd be surprised if they were not running some kind of Netscape browser already. Give him some time and he's discover Firefox, Debian, Open Office and all sorts of great stuff.
What's that noise? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.dangercollie.com/music/)
It was like the sound of thousands of MSFT reps all calling their elected representatives at once.
Except the dead ones (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.a4fs.net/blog/)
Fixed. (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://blog.chase.net.au/)
Did anyone seriously think large enterprise level customers would be jumping to Vista immediately, or even worse, letting their employees arbitrarily upgrade their own machines?
Re:Seriously, so what? (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that there is a trickle down effect. Why do you think MS has fought the ODF issue in Mass. so hard?
Re:Seriously, so what? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~Shadow%20Wrought/journal | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @02:46PM)
Re:Seriously, so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.rapidweather.com/)
Mostly because of the price, and secondly, because the Windows XP computer works well for them. And, they paid a good price for it, and would like to see if they can get some more miles out of it. A third, and perhaps major reason is that they are unclear as to "just what Vista does", besides look pretty.
It would be Big News if Microsoft could say that Vista is a secure operating system, and that Vista spells the end of the viruses and trojans war.
The point is that there is a trickle down effect.
No one paid any attention to the individual or family that "decides not to run out and buy Windows Vista"
But, a major government department that has perhaps thousands of computers, making this decision not to upgrade, and giving reasons, gets everyones attention.
That individual or family now doesn't feel all alone, the U.S. DOT is on the same page as them.
It's a matter of money for the individual, and a matter of money for the U.S. DOT, not to mention the other reasons they have, that are much more serious for Microsoft.
Everyone thinks the Government has plenty of money, and "buys $100.00 toothbrushes", etc.
Money to burn, literally. So, perhaps their reasons are more about the "other problems", rather than the money.
What large organization or Government entity will be next?
Please don't let this story get on Drudge Report. [drudgereport.com]
Yes, I know Drudge Report has a little text box where one can send in story links.
Don't all rush in and do that at once!
A Nightmare on One Microsoft Way (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~eldavojohn/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @03:26PM)
Allow me to strike some real fear into Microsoft. I work for a large Fortune 500 company with six digits of employees. While it's not our primary product, we write software as a lot of companies do.
When IE7 came out, I decided to use my work legal machine to install it to try it out. This resulted in a next day 7 am nastygram from my system administrator stating that I am authorized to install any software that isn't married to the kernel. Not only were we told not to use it, we were threatened not to install it OR ELSE I wouldn't be able to enter my time or access shared community sites internal to the company.
Because a lot of our company's tools don't work very nicely inside of it. So I'm still using IE6 and my company sure isn't going to upgrade my MS Office suite. Did I mention I write web applications and I can only test them in IE6 and Firefox?
So what would scare Microsoft more? The fact that a government department isn't using it or the fact that many companies like mine are still writing stuff for the old software hence forcing our customers to stick with IE6 or any version of Firefox?
Re:A Nightmare on One Microsoft Way (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @10:09AM)
And you can make a business case for that. Face it -- you develop for your company based (hopefully) on a set of standards for what the company will use as its backbone technology. I worked at a Fortune 500 once, and they held on to Netscape 4.7 for the longest time, because it was deployed everywhere (globally), and everything was designed to work for it. It wasn't the greatest browser, but it was still better than IE5 at some critical things.
Change comes slowly at big companies/organizations, because it's due to economies of scale. The more machines you have to upgrade, the more applications you have to re-write to support the upgrades, the more the bottom line takes a pounding. Even if you manage to pull off a major, world-wide upgrade, you're going to spend the next couple of years fending off bugs that will turn up every day. Eventually you will get it stable -- just in time for the "next big thing".
Companies cannot afford to go chasing every new technology or upgrade that comes along, without risking the stability that IT works so hard to create.
Re:A Nightmare on One Microsoft Way (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
Re:A Nightmare on One Microsoft Way (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Well I set up a machine specifically for IE7 testing. This is on an Intranet that is isolated from everything.
After IE7 started it wanted to connect to the MSN site. I waited until it timed out, then set the start page to "about:blank".
The next time IE7 started, it again wanted to connect to MSN. In fact it ALWAYS wants to connect to MSN, regardless of the blank page setting.
Annoying as hell, and what is it reporting to Microsoft that is so important (to Microsoft)?
does not compute! (Score:5, Funny)
But the government never does anything right!
But MS is bad!
But the government never does anything right!
But MS is bad!
But the government never does anything right!
*head explodes*
Why it's news (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://seenonslash.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 11 2007, @04:02PM)
Good policy (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday November 09, @05:49PM)
IMHO, it's a sound decision, and isn't a slap to microsoft at all. Everyone has to evaluate their own situation and upgrade if they feel it benefits them. Hell, having a win98 box (non-networked) and running a robot safely for the past 8 years is certainly safer than upgrading it. TFA was clearly biased, and made some idiotic remarks like "ZOMG, if the government doesn't buy vista, MS will go broke!" as if the millions of XP licenses are suddenly free.
So, hold all the "haha" tags, because a thorough evaluation of major upgrades on critical infrastructure makes some sense.
avoid early adoption in production systems (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~davidwr/journal/ | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @09:19PM)
I wish I could say "never upgrade without a compelling reason" but time marches on and lack of new software and the approaching end of vendor support can be very good reasons to stop using a product.
With that in mind, don't even consider using a Windows-based system unless it's been around 6 months UNLESS there is a very good reason, and strongly consider moving away from it at least 6 months before end-of-life.
Machines which are in special-purpose environments, such as machines which are not connected to any network, or which are adequately firewalled and whose connections with non-firewalled machines are heavily restricted, can continue to be used after end-of-life, but even these should be migrated to a vendor-supported environment or at least one where you have source code so you can fix problems yourself.
I feel sorry for the guy who made this decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Have you ever thought about what you'll do after government service?"
non-story (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://agh2o.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 19 2006, @02:56PM)
This is not unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
Recently because of Microsofts crappy handling of IE7 upgrades (flagging them as "critical updates"), we had a number of remote users on IE7 and our SSL VPN appliances simply would not work. I had to call a moritorium on upgrading to IE7 and deployed the Microsoft "prevent IE7 update" patch in order to stop these critical updates.
Then, I had to use early-release code for our Juniper VPN concentrator, which broke about half a dozen other things.... Finally, after a few weeks, new a firmware revision for the Juniper VPN came out which enabled me to get the box back to a stable state AND allow IE7 to be used.
But if we had simply called a "ban" on IE7 upgrades in the first place, it would have saved me a lot of headache and our company a lot of productivity.
This is not a "Microsoft sux" decision, but merely a business-case against early-release software that they would likely take whether it was Microsoft or Juniper or Cisco or Oracle or whatever...
Now, Microsoft's handling of the IE7 "critical update" bullcrap.... that falls clearly in the arena of "Microsoft sux".
Stew
What are the Reasons for not Upgrading to IE7? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.apaddedcell.com/)
I can think of one very big reason to upgrade to IE7 (unless Opera/Firefox is an option) and that's better web standards support. The web development community is going to drop support for IE6 very quickly (I give it approx. 6 months) because the standards support is so bad.
IE7 has a long way to go with this, but it's a massive improvement [msdn.com] over 6. It's not as if it costs any money, aside from bandwidth, to download it.
Obviously I would advise them to just use Opera or Firefox and switch to Linux while they're at it. But if that isn't an option they should at least take the free IE upgrade. The decision to not upgrade Office is a sound one though.
Routine.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not about the features sometimes (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.geocities...riangle/Station/2266)
I really think a lot of nontechnical users couldn't care less about new features or redesigned interfaces -- what they've got works, and they don't want it messed with. So every time a software company adds a bunch of features or redesigns the interface, there's a good number of the user base that is going to be seriously ticked off because they have to retrain on all the new stuff.
Microsoft is one company that doesn't even come close to getting that. I've seen some of their smart house ideas for example -- their designs solve problems that people don't have to begin with. (Is anyone really in such a state that having the fridge track the RFID chips in your food packaging will improve things? Well, handicapped people and shut-ins, maybe, but for the vast majority of people it's overkill at best.)