Clinton on FireFox in State Department "Town Hall" meeting (link and excerpt)
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http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/125949.htm[^] "MS. GREENBERG: Okay. Our next question comes from Jim Finkle: Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just – (applause) – I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.) SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.) UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: The answer is at the moment, it’s an expense question. We can -- QUESTION: It’s free. (Laughter.) UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Nothing is free. (Laughter.) It’s a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we’re looking at. And thanks to the Secretary, there is a significant increase in the 2010 budget request that’s pending for what is called the Capital Investment Fund, by which we fund our information technology operations. With the Secretary’s continuing pushing, we’re hoping to get that increase in the Capital Investment Fund. And with those additional resources, we will be able to add multiple programs to it. Yes, you’re correct; it’s free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you’re running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs and other devices, you’re caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can’t do everything at once. SECRETARY CLINTON: So we will try to move toward that. When the White House was putting together the stimulus package, we were able to get money that would be spent in the United States, which was the priority, for IT and upgrading our system and expanding its reach. And this is a very high priority for me, and we will continue to push the envelope on it. I mean, Pat is right that everything does come with some cost, but we will be looking to try to see if we can extend it as quickly as possible. It raises another issue with me. If we’re spending money on things that are not productive and useful, let us know, because there are ten
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http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/125949.htm[^] "MS. GREENBERG: Okay. Our next question comes from Jim Finkle: Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just – (applause) – I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.) SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.) UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: The answer is at the moment, it’s an expense question. We can -- QUESTION: It’s free. (Laughter.) UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Nothing is free. (Laughter.) It’s a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we’re looking at. And thanks to the Secretary, there is a significant increase in the 2010 budget request that’s pending for what is called the Capital Investment Fund, by which we fund our information technology operations. With the Secretary’s continuing pushing, we’re hoping to get that increase in the Capital Investment Fund. And with those additional resources, we will be able to add multiple programs to it. Yes, you’re correct; it’s free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you’re running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs and other devices, you’re caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can’t do everything at once. SECRETARY CLINTON: So we will try to move toward that. When the White House was putting together the stimulus package, we were able to get money that would be spent in the United States, which was the priority, for IT and upgrading our system and expanding its reach. And this is a very high priority for me, and we will continue to push the envelope on it. I mean, Pat is right that everything does come with some cost, but we will be looking to try to see if we can extend it as quickly as possible. It raises another issue with me. If we’re spending money on things that are not productive and useful, let us know, because there are ten
you've got to be kidding me. what a bunch of morons.
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you've got to be kidding me. what a bunch of morons.
For very large organizations, the cost of support is no trivial thing, so in that respect at least they were correct. Also assuming that there was no advanced warning of the questions, who but a moron would actually expect to get an answer on a technical subject from two politicians?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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For very large organizations, the cost of support is no trivial thing, so in that respect at least they were correct. Also assuming that there was no advanced warning of the questions, who but a moron would actually expect to get an answer on a technical subject from two politicians?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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you've got to be kidding me. what a bunch of morons.
The real support cost is probably more in terms of making all their intranet sites work with FF, not in supporting the browser itself. Again, do you really expect a pair of suits to know all the details of a technical question when blindsided?
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
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http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/125949.htm[^] "MS. GREENBERG: Okay. Our next question comes from Jim Finkle: Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just – (applause) – I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.) SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.) UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: The answer is at the moment, it’s an expense question. We can -- QUESTION: It’s free. (Laughter.) UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Nothing is free. (Laughter.) It’s a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we’re looking at. And thanks to the Secretary, there is a significant increase in the 2010 budget request that’s pending for what is called the Capital Investment Fund, by which we fund our information technology operations. With the Secretary’s continuing pushing, we’re hoping to get that increase in the Capital Investment Fund. And with those additional resources, we will be able to add multiple programs to it. Yes, you’re correct; it’s free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you’re running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs and other devices, you’re caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can’t do everything at once. SECRETARY CLINTON: So we will try to move toward that. When the White House was putting together the stimulus package, we were able to get money that would be spent in the United States, which was the priority, for IT and upgrading our system and expanding its reach. And this is a very high priority for me, and we will continue to push the envelope on it. I mean, Pat is right that everything does come with some cost, but we will be looking to try to see if we can extend it as quickly as possible. It raises another issue with me. If we’re spending money on things that are not productive and useful, let us know, because there are ten
So my tax dollars are going towards upgrading people to Firefox. I guess I've seen worse uses of my money.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
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For very large organizations, the cost of support is no trivial thing, so in that respect at least they were correct. Also assuming that there was no advanced warning of the questions, who but a moron would actually expect to get an answer on a technical subject from two politicians?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
How could they possibly be worried about costs when they are spending trillions like its nothing, we are almost 12 trillion dollars in debt. Most of that debt came from the printing press in the first place.
"The task of saving the earth's environment must and will become the central organizing principle of the post-Cold War world." Senator Al Gore Putting People First 1992 ------ "The sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to secure the preservation of the species." Adolph Hitler Mein Kampf 1923 ------ If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." O'Brien to Winston George Orwell 1984 1949
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How could they possibly be worried about costs when they are spending trillions like its nothing, we are almost 12 trillion dollars in debt. Most of that debt came from the printing press in the first place.
"The task of saving the earth's environment must and will become the central organizing principle of the post-Cold War world." Senator Al Gore Putting People First 1992 ------ "The sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to secure the preservation of the species." Adolph Hitler Mein Kampf 1923 ------ If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." O'Brien to Winston George Orwell 1984 1949
Who said that they were worried about costs. Why they did of course. They are politicians, they HAVE to appear concerned about costs when in public, regardless of how many trillions they are actually wasting. With a few notable exceptions "politician == liar".
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Who said that they were worried about costs. Why they did of course. They are politicians, they HAVE to appear concerned about costs when in public, regardless of how many trillions they are actually wasting. With a few notable exceptions "politician == liar".
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
Henry Minute wrote:
"politician == liar".
Agreed. I'd go a bit further and call them criminals.
"The task of saving the earth's environment must and will become the central organizing principle of the post-Cold War world." Senator Al Gore Putting People First 1992 ------ "The sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to secure the preservation of the species." Adolph Hitler Mein Kampf 1923 ------ If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." O'Brien to Winston George Orwell 1984 1949
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Henry Minute wrote:
, who but a moron would actually expect to get an answer on a technical subject from two politicians?
FTFY.
Rob Graham wrote:
who but a moron would actually expect to get a truthfull and short answer on a technical subject from two politicians?
FTFY. :laugh:
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced. This message is made of fully recyclable Zeros and Ones
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Who said that they were worried about costs. Why they did of course. They are politicians, they HAVE to appear concerned about costs when in public, regardless of how many trillions they are actually wasting. With a few notable exceptions "politician == liar".
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
Henry Minute wrote:
With a few notable exceptions "politician == liar".
"How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips move."
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced. This message is made of fully recyclable Zeros and Ones
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So my tax dollars are going towards upgrading people to Firefox. I guess I've seen worse uses of my money.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
I guess I've seen worse uses of my money.
Heh... i thought of one immediately when i saw this post... I remember a time i was in some Gov't office, where the woman working there was trying to describe to me a website i was supposed to visit. She showed me the login page, but was unable to go past that - the site would log her in successfully, but immediately forget that it had done so. So i took a look... The browser had been configured to refuse cookies for any site not on the local intranet. I changed it, the site worked, i restarted the browser, it reset to not allow cookies again. Changed the setting, had the gal show me the rest of the site, and walked her through the process of changing the option so she'd have less trouble helping the next person. I can only imagine how much of that public servant's time (not to mention that of the public she was there to help...) that local Gov't's IT agency wasted with their paranoid configuration.
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The real support cost is probably more in terms of making all their intranet sites work with FF, not in supporting the browser itself. Again, do you really expect a pair of suits to know all the details of a technical question when blindsided?
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
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The real support cost is probably more in terms of making all their intranet sites work with FF, not in supporting the browser itself. Again, do you really expect a pair of suits to know all the details of a technical question when blindsided?
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
the State Dept has 25,000+ employees - many of whom deal with extremely sensitive info - with offices in every country (embassies). that's a logistical nightmare. i would not want to be in charge of pushing new versions of anything out to that kind of group. :omg:
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the State Dept has 25,000+ employees - many of whom deal with extremely sensitive info - with offices in every country (embassies). that's a logistical nightmare. i would not want to be in charge of pushing new versions of anything out to that kind of group. :omg:
Deploying an app to all the normal workstations in the state dept would be no worse than doing the same to all the work stations in a large company with numerous branch office locations. Doing the same to secure workstations is probably a lot harder, i doubt you can run an enterprise windows update server over siprnet, but the security constraints/overhead from them shouldn't be driving the maintenance program for the rest of your systems.
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
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I would disagree. I believe most of the cost is testing patches before deployment to make sure there are no "gifts" from the vendor, then pushing "approved" patches to clients. Support for FF is assumed by page developers.
Unless all their devs were serious about maintaining cross browser compatibility despite an official ban on non-MS browsers*; I'm almost certain that the cost of unbreaking the intranet will dwarf that of support. * if you believe this I've got some ocean front property in Nevada I want to sell you. :rolleyes:
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
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the State Dept has 25,000+ employees - many of whom deal with extremely sensitive info - with offices in every country (embassies). that's a logistical nightmare. i would not want to be in charge of pushing new versions of anything out to that kind of group. :omg:
don't know about that, it's a very interesting challenge!! :omg:
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Who said that they were worried about costs. Why they did of course. They are politicians, they HAVE to appear concerned about costs when in public, regardless of how many trillions they are actually wasting. With a few notable exceptions "politician == liar".
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
With a few notable exceptions "politician == liar". Fixed. Though I can't imagine, what if anything you'd have to pay for (I'm in no means versed in a large deployments of programs) when "upgrading" to Firefox. Don't yell at me, I just think it'd be as simple as just instructing people to download and install it. EDIT: Unless, you'd have to fix all the internal sites and crap to work with it. Then it might be a problem.
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With a few notable exceptions "politician == liar". Fixed. Though I can't imagine, what if anything you'd have to pay for (I'm in no means versed in a large deployments of programs) when "upgrading" to Firefox. Don't yell at me, I just think it'd be as simple as just instructing people to download and install it. EDIT: Unless, you'd have to fix all the internal sites and crap to work with it. Then it might be a problem.
robertw019 wrote:
EDIT: Unless, you'd have to fix all the internal sites and crap to work with it. Then it might be a problem.
Well there could indeed, be some of that, but mostly the costs revolve around training support staff to deal with the thousands of queries that would arise with the introduction of a new product. Also they would have to insist that all users had the same version, so they (the users) would probably not be allowed to download it like we all do. It would either have to be distributed on some form of storage media, or over their internal network, both scenarios involving costs. Then of course is the installation. Many of the users would not be able to do this unassisted.
robertw019 wrote:
Don't yell at me
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I'D DO THAT?????:mad::mad:
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Deploying an app to all the normal workstations in the state dept would be no worse than doing the same to all the work stations in a large company with numerous branch office locations. Doing the same to secure workstations is probably a lot harder, i doubt you can run an enterprise windows update server over siprnet, but the security constraints/overhead from them shouldn't be driving the maintenance program for the rest of your systems.
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
:wtf: Stop and think about what you just said for a second. Do you have any idea what their IT guys must make? I don't either but I bet it's a *lot* more on average than any random large company. The person in the quote gave an entirely correct answer about the cost, in fact they actually understated it quite a bit.
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