US judge puts Amazon's challenge to Pentagon JEDI deal into force stasis US federal judge Patricia Campbell-Smith has slapped a hold [PDF] on Amazon's legal challenge to the $10bn Pentagon Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract to give the military time to "reconsider... aspects of the procurement" in the mega-contract. Microsoft was awarded the winner-takes-all 10-year contract to …
The Jedi would get their asses kicked. The Klingon commander would nuke their shit from orbit. End of story.
Anyway, my folks were horribly offended by "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" because it implied black people could be people too.
These were the same people that thought "Roots" was a comedy. "Beat that Kunta Kinte AGAIN! He's way too uppity" and that was the event where I went "huh? what?" and it opened my eyes to the hick hillbilly town I was raised in.
Personally I wouldn't trust either of them for urgent mission critical use, as both have broken down too often and services persist only at the whim of the provider..
The whole "cloud" concept is fraught with false assumptions. If you manage cloud services properly they don't save you money, and if you don't they'll fail you. So cloud is not a "cheap option" if you want to survive (as the military typically aim to).
Really, Cloud doesn’t save you money?
Try telling that to all the companies that can’t ramp up on capacity due to Covid as they are not in the Cloud. I had to wait 1.5 hours to logon to B&Q (UK Retail) this week because the website couldn't handle the load. They are losing 100’s of thousands in revenue as they can’t scale up to meet demand.. Compare that to companies like Netflix, Zoom who can scale up in minutes on AWS, and then back down when they don't need it.
I think you may be making a false assumption here. Just putting a "website" in the cloud doesn't make it scale. There may well be dozens of choke points which are design limitations.
Equally we're an on premise shop and we've scaled without any problem during the sudden up-turn in demand. Our design is a long way from perfect but it was good enough.
I'm afraid the cloud isn't a silver bullet and can cause more problems than it solves.
First, try telling any business that they need to design and build infrastructure based on a 'black swan' and you'll find yourself politely shown to the door.
Free clue. Why do you think AWS came to exist? Answer that and you should be able to see the
Second name a business which you need to scale during a Black Swan Event. Its few and if you follow Zoom, you have a couple of issues:
1) They have their servers in China.
2) They are not going to be able to convert their free accounts into paying accounts. (The conversion rate is for shit.)
3) Corporations are now telling their team no Zoom on corporate machines where their IT group is scanning and removing the app from their PCs. Vendors who are using Zoom... they are having their sales calls cancelled over it.
I'm sure I'll be down voted by commentards who are not in the position to worry about either security, or senior management where you make infrastructure decisions.
First, one has to ask which cloud provider is better. They will both claim that they are while Google will claim that it is...
When you consider the capabilities of staff within DOD, DIA, NSA, etc ... why do they need to go to an outside provider?
They could build it themselves for less money.
Oh wait, that would be too easy.
Its like having a guy sitting in the NSA who is an expert on Postfix and setting up a secure mail server.
Instead, the government will go out and hire Microsoft to morph Outlook to do it instead.
And I know the US is not alone in this stupidity. How many articles are in El Reg mocking the NHS and their outsourcing deals?
Or the Aussies? And NZ?
News flash: The DoD does not build their own cars. Or guns. Or rifles. Or uniforms. Or tanks. Or radars. Or ships. Or airplanes.
Never has. Never will.
It's not that they could not, it is that their core mission is to use these things, not build them. These are very different skills, and it doesn't make sense to attempt to create industries internal to the DoD when external ones work just fine.
The main exception is crypto, where, for generations, the DoD was not just the primary consumer of the industry, but had national security reasons to keep EVERYTHING about it in-house.
For a time, computer networks might have just barely fallen into the crypto regime. But ARPANET was contracted out! Moreover, the technology is way too useful broadly, and the DoD just does not have the money (really!) to keep up with the pace of development.
So outsourcing is not a horrible idea. There are some major problems, the main (unique) one being that the requirements for a DoD system are way, way different than for a civilian one. Then, of course, you have the entire ******** that military procurement has always been.
The DoD does make (some) of their own food. If you don't know how that goes, find a veteran and ask.
Giving military time to look at aspects of decision
Does Uncle Sam and the Military know exactly what they are jumping into bed with for Microsoft JEDI Services Exercising and Energising and EMPowering Almighty Tasks for Future Mediated TeleVisual Presentations/Augmented Virtual Reality Events?
My guess is that they haven't a clue yet, and thus are as easy prey and cannon fodder in the greater schema of things where they can be powerful pawns enabled to tempt bishops and knights and kings and queens in their castles alike.
I suppose the true reply to any of that is Classified Mk Ultra Top Secret/Special Compartmented Information somewhere foreign and alien.
Knowing all of what you know about Microsoft, do you imagine a JEDI Type Program being an Original or Cloned Operation of a Stealthy Gallant Competitor ? They are surely long enough and well enough known for their phishing and phorming proclivities and predilections, are they not?
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