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Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

propublica.org

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Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#181

Post by DrewADesign »

jeffrallen wrote: post #141
DrewADesign wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute contempt for their users at every level. It’s so transparent. This is the end game of anticompetitive practices for decades— they just don’t have to try anymore… for now. Some day they’ll either have to compete in good faith or sink. I doubt that will happen soon, but someday.

They have to compete in good faith for developers, which is why VS Code does not suck. But yes, normal Office users, where the company pays the bills, pay the price.

I agree that VSC is solid for web dev or other script language workflows, and VS is fine, if a bit heavy-handed. That said, Windows native development is a freaking mess. Try figuring out what their recommended native UI kit is these days. Everything is half-assed and half-supported at best. Unless it’s going to either feed them a ton of marketing telemetry or let them bump up their supposed copilot adoption statistics, you’re yesterday’s news to MS.

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#182

Post by DrewADesign »

pluc wrote: post #98
DrewADesign wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute contempt for their users at every level. It’s so transparent. This is the end game of anticompetitive practices for decades— they just don’t have to try anymore… for now. Some day they’ll either have to compete in good faith or sink. I doubt that will happen soon, but someday.

It's hard to argue against contempt but... I'm gonna try. It feels like at the end of the line it's just a checkbox someone gets without having to consider the consequences of the changes. Either it's too big or there's too many levels where decisions get made and handed down to drones (or AI), but the people who decide seem to have no concept of what their products are used for and the people who implement features…

I don’t perceive benign neglect when they disregard UX for a product they’ve positioned so people essentially have to pay for and use it, while force-feeding them features they actively and vocally hate. Treating your customers as cash cows is fundamentally contemptful.

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#183

Post by BizarroLand »

Spooky23 wrote: post #177
BizarroLand wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is sad because the CEO's job is not to focus on the individual body parts but to make sure that the whole system is strong, beautiful, and healthy. They can afford people who would do better. Windows 11 is trash. Azure is trash. Onedrive is trash. Outlook is trashier than it has ever been before, but it's not quite trash yet. Word is trash. Excel is rapidly enshittifying. Copilot is hot flaming radioactive tar…

> Outlook is trashier than it has ever been before Which one? There’s two now! Lol

Both. "New" outlook doesn't work with all of the add-ons and plug ins that "classic" outlook did. Both new and classic have copilot wedged into them. Classic has unasked for and unwanted Linkedin integrations that have to be turned off on a per-user basis, and it is patently clear that microslop has every intention of abandoning classic outlook the instant they believe that they can do so without severely alienating their userbase.

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#184

Post by ContDestroyer »

ddtaylor wrote: post #12

The government does most things poorly and with little regard to budget or quality. They can't solve problems that are much simpler than cloud computing, so why should I expect them to perform better at a more complex problem?

[flagged]

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#185

Post by sysops9x »

The vendor lock-in angle is the real story. Once you have AD, Exchange, Teams, and Azure all tangled together, the exit cost is enormous. I've watched orgs get approval for a full cloud migration based on cost savings projections that completely ignored the engineering cost of the decade-long migration that follows. The security issues are real but the procurement inertia is what keeps them renewing.

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#186

Post by siva7 »

everdrive wrote: post #51

The experts were correct. Azure is the biggest pile of shit I've ever had to work with. Everything feels evolutionary. In other words, a new product in azure is barely a product at all, but a small appendage which totally inherits a bunch of preexisting Azure "stuff." And all this preexisting stuff may not really make sense for the product, and it might inherit stuff that makes the product much worse. But, it doesn't…

Did someone say Active Directory?

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#187

Post by gambiting »

Spivak wrote: post #155
BizarroLand wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of that is done on Macbooks by people that either can not or will not use Windows OS.

I don't mean this as a jab, but would you use Windows to develop software? Especially Windows that has AD teeth sunk into it where everything is "managed by your organization." It's just a thousand small cuts for seemingly no good reason.

>>but would you use Windows to develop software?

I'm a c++ developer and I wouldn't use anything other than Windows to develop software, for one reason alone - Visual Studio is a fantastic tool that is better than any IDE I have ever tried it and imho it's the best product Microsoft makes. It just works and works well. And most console toolchains are only on Windows, so outside of iOS development I don't really have a choice.

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#188

Post by BizarroLand »

chokolad wrote: post #166
rdtsc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is this true? I would have imagined unless it’s about porting software or testing it, everyone would be forced to use Windows. If it is true, wonder what the proportion is then: 25%, 50%?

It's not true. Source - me, MSFT for 25 years.

Yes, because you know what all of the 200,000+ employees are doing in every wing and branch of the entire company.

Then again, Microsoft themselves directly dispute your statement:

Across the landscape of more than 750,000 devices in use at Microsoft, we support Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS devices. Windows devices account for approximately 60 percent of the total employee-device population, while iOS, Android, and macOS account for the rest. Of these devices, approximately 45 percent are personally owned employee devices, including phones and tablets. Our employees are empowered to access Microsoft data and tools using managed devices that enable them to be their most productive.

https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/evolving-the-devi...

Not to mention that most app designers use OSX for the design tools, which means that there is going to be by default some bleed between the two systems on design choices alone.

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#189

Post by jiggawatts »

chokolad wrote: post #166
rdtsc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is this true? I would have imagined unless it’s about porting software or testing it, everyone would be forced to use Windows. If it is true, wonder what the proportion is then: 25%, 50%?

It's not true. Source - me, MSFT for 25 years.

I’ve seen Microsoft employees run public presentations from MacBooks on multiple occasions.

Re: Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service

#190

Post by kajecounterhack »

+10000 that Azure is a steaming pile of shit. Like what's this -- `azcopy` broken at head, and the working one doesn't guarantee correctness after a copy (99.6% copied successfully! good luck figuring out what went wrong!) compare that to migrating data with GCS or S3 -- they provide first class tools that do it right quickly (aws-cli, gsutil).

Want a VM? You'll also need this network security group, network interface, network manager, ip, virtual network... and maybe it'll be connected to the internet so you can SSH in? Compare to GCP or EC2 -- you just pick an instance and start it. You can SSH in directly, or even do it in the browser.

Billing also a nightmare: if you're running a startup, AWS and Google make it relatively easy to see how many credits you have left. The Azure dashboard makes you navigate a maze, and the button to click that says "Azure Credits" is _invisible_ for 30s until ostensibly some backend system finds your credits, then it magically shows up. Most people don't wait around and just assume there's no button.

And if you click it, maybe you will happen to be in the correct billing profile, maybe not! Don't get confused: billing profile and billing scope are different concepts too! And in your invoice, costs just magically get deducted, until they don't. No mention of any credits. Credits inaccessible through API (claude tried everything).

VMs, bucket storage, and copying data are the _simplest_ parts of the stack. Why would anyone bother trying to use other services if they can't get these right?

They literally give startups 2x the credits as GCP, 20x the credits of AWS and nobody wants to use them.

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