[TUHS] Windows roots and Unix influence (was Re: Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!)

[khm@sciops.net (Kurt H Maier)]

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On Sun, Feb 04, 2018 at 03:05:11PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
     
>
> I think it was Lockheed Martin that ended up buying a ton of Alphas to run   
> NT for Exchange server. Shoulda stuck with sendmail....
>
                                           
With the advent of mail.mil, the entire DoD is on Exchange now.  Sure,
it sucks, but since there's no way to get equivalent functionality with
actual technical support for anything else, I'm not sure what anyone
expected. Until something like Red Hat, but with a willingness to address 
customer needs, comes around, it's going to be the same old story, ad 
infinitum.
                                           
That said, I've worked in a couple of DSRC sites, and at least one of
them explicitly considers Windows a security risk... but they still have
to keep workstations around because of the tight integration of the
Exchange ecosystem.  I don't know of anyone happy with the current 
situation.                         
                                           
At least ARL (née BRL, of course) still has a healthy awareness of the
architectural ins and outs of UNIX, if only they could get the free hand
to innovate in that space.         

It's the classic problem both inside and outside the military:  if too
many technical people turn down the management routes, you get paths
forward that don't involve any technical considerations...
 
       
khm