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Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

thehill.com

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Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#61

Post by Beltiras »

flatline wrote: post #33
kick wrote: post #27

This thread is kind of chilling, because everyone within is treating it like it's just chat software or something. With quotes from this thread like "in the meantime the work doesn't get done," and "bid for contracts that [enable] government to make some real progress," you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder. So many people were focusing on how Microsoft Ɛ> Linux or Open Source or wh…

Is all defense-related work complicit in murder? Do we not need a military? Nothing is perfect, but we are trapped on a planet with a bunch of violent, highly intelligent apes. Certainly the military does things I disagree with, and things could always be improved, but generally what is the alternative?

Less empire, more democracy.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#62

Post by corporate_shi11 »

james-mcelwain wrote: post #45
flatline wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is all defense-related work complicit in murder? Do we not need a military? Nothing is perfect, but we are trapped on a planet with a bunch of violent, highly intelligent apes. Certainly the military does things I disagree with, and things could always be improved, but generally what is the alternative?

There's a huge, gigantic difference between not having a military at all and spending 1 trillion a year to be an imperialist superpower. It's almost like... there's a middle ground.

The US is not imperialistic, that's just a cute talking point.

That said I do agree we spend too much on our military. We should always spend more than any other nation to ensure dominance, but I'd imagine cutting the budget down would force efficiency and actually improve the military at this point.

However it seemed the person above was saying that militaries in general are bad or murderous which is very different from saying the budget just needs to be reduced.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#63

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

kick wrote: post #27

This thread is kind of chilling, because everyone within is treating it like it's just chat software or something. With quotes from this thread like "in the meantime the work doesn't get done," and "bid for contracts that [enable] government to make some real progress," you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder. So many people were focusing on how Microsoft Ɛ> Linux or Open Source or wh…

Differing views I suppose. To me I look at the new type of weaponized technologies coming out of China (that we know about) such as hypersonic missiles able to defeat most conventional mission defenses. Then I look at the salary differences between “defense” work and adtech, and I worry that our best and brightest are not working on deterrents the same way our rivals are.

Combine that with a persistent stigma against working in defense and we have a recipe of losing our technology edge within the this century if not sooner. What will our rivals decide to do once that happens?

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#64

Post by anthonypasq »

koheripbal wrote: post #36
kick wrote: post #27

This thread is kind of chilling, because everyone within is treating it like it's just chat software or something. With quotes from this thread like "in the meantime the work doesn't get done," and "bid for contracts that [enable] government to make some real progress," you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder. So many people were focusing on how Microsoft Ɛ> Linux or Open Source or wh…

Is all war considered murder?

No, but the majority of US foreign policy is.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#65

Post by jszymborski »

siffland wrote: post #43

After 15 years of being a DoD contractor, it is frustrating to see yet another sole source entity getting the contract. Prices will inflate and there is no competition. HP and Oracle have been reaping the benefits of this for at least two decades now. We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB since DoD prefers Oracle. We would buy useless HP software because we were a HP shop. I fought…

I understand that the existing approach results in a worse and more expensive product, but doesn't this approach also allow agencies to focus their efforts on assuring the vendors of their critical infrastructure aren't comprimised by bad actors etc...?

(This isn't my area expertise, so I'm open to the idea of being super wrong)

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#66

Post by kick »

nova22033 wrote: post #52
kick wrote: post #27

This thread is kind of chilling, because everyone within is treating it like it's just chat software or something. With quotes from this thread like "in the meantime the work doesn't get done," and "bid for contracts that [enable] government to make some real progress," you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder. So many people were focusing on how Microsoft Ɛ> Linux or Open Source or wh…

you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder. DoD uses a lot of linux and other open source software. Should we stop working on that too since, according to you, it's "enabling murder"?

Last I checked, Torvalds wasn't getting billions of dollars from the DoD to install Linux on servers. That's a false comparison, and a lazy one at that.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#68

Post by akiselev »

siffland wrote: post #43

After 15 years of being a DoD contractor, it is frustrating to see yet another sole source entity getting the contract. Prices will inflate and there is no competition. HP and Oracle have been reaping the benefits of this for at least two decades now. We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB since DoD prefers Oracle. We would buy useless HP software because we were a HP shop. I fought…

Is it really unusual or inefficient for the Department of Defense logistics chain to have lots of spare capacity all over the place w.r.t the Cisco chassis? Especially with global force projection, I'd expect there would be massive, unavoidable waste just to maintain operational capabilities, stretching into every corner of the industry.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#69

Post by Iwillgetby »

siffland wrote: post #43

After 15 years of being a DoD contractor, it is frustrating to see yet another sole source entity getting the contract. Prices will inflate and there is no competition. HP and Oracle have been reaping the benefits of this for at least two decades now. We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB since DoD prefers Oracle. We would buy useless HP software because we were a HP shop. I fought…

My cubicle at my last job was surrounded by a mountain of expensive printers because they would loose some funding if they didn't spend all of their budget each year.

If we ordered a server it would show up in 6 to 12 months and sometimes would be sent to the wrong place. The people in charge of ordering would replace SSDs with spinning disk and we wouldn't know about the change until the wrong parts arrive months later. Fun times.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#70

Post by sysadmindotfail »

siffland wrote: post #43

After 15 years of being a DoD contractor, it is frustrating to see yet another sole source entity getting the contract. Prices will inflate and there is no competition. HP and Oracle have been reaping the benefits of this for at least two decades now. We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB since DoD prefers Oracle. We would buy useless HP software because we were a HP shop. I fought…

As a former longtime contractor I totally agree. One thing often overlooked is this 'Silver Tsunami' that will wreak havoc on the old guard (existing giant contracting companies). The existing workforce is aging, the new blood is uninterested in the old ways (cruft, old tech) and frankly there's tremendous opportunity for a 'Space-X' style small contractor to get a serious foothold.

Some of these companies need to replace 40% of their workforce in the next decade. Who would a new grad choose?

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