Spencer, I’ve been tackling this issue for a while. I’m also looking at using Google Wave to help construct a “COIN for Aviators” class. Unfortunately, I have to keep the “COIN for Aviators” class in PPT, since I think that’s the only way it will be read/viewed. I intend to use a Word document to compliment it.

… did you actually go there? Do I have to fly to DC and hit you with the Clue Stick for this post? And this is coming from someone who hates Windows Vista with a white-hot burning passion.

Oy, I’m out of my depth! Getting schooled not just by Nick but on Twitter for this…

I do want to say Thank the Maker for generals who understand that using PPT as a primary form of communication is a serious problem. That part of the analysis is correct.

But it’s entirely unclear that the Army could meet its IT needs at lower cost or with higher productivity if it used Macs or Linux machines.

I’m sure I’ll be harangued for this comment, but Spencer just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m really sick of people who’ve never been part of a large organization extolling the virtues of Macs. Don’t get me wrong, Macs are great (as are all those Linux machines, etc.). But for an organization as large and, ahem, structured, as the U.S. Military, Microsoft products have many good points that individual users will never see. Active Directory is one such advantage.

Now, I don’t care to have an argument with any you Linux nerds out there, I’m sure you could put together a network for the military that would work great. However, Spencer couldn’t. Spencer should spend about 30 seconds considering whether or not he’s even remotely qualified to advise the military on its computing needs.

Now, as to the generals actual position on PowerPoint, I would agree that the way that the military and most corporations use PowerPoint does seem to make people stupid. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you apply the same modes of storytelling that have been understood since Aristotle (who, I might remind you, was an important tutor of Alexander the Great,one of the better military minds of all time), you can create engaging and useful presentations. I direct you to http://www.beyondbulletpoints.com/

Seriously, it will totally change the way you think about PowerPoint.

You won’t get harangued! I probably don’t know what I’m talking about, I know what I’d like to be talking about. You’re in good company pointing this out because I’m getting killed for this post on Twitter.

Not unclear at all.

Studies have already been performed on a rolling basis over the last eight years by a number of other governments who’ve moved away from a proprietary model. Public schools are frequently the first organizations which moves away from proprietary software, but some countries actually have modified their constitutions to prohibit the use of proprietary software anywhere in their government because their values system advocates that information must be free (not free like beer, free like a puppy) and not dependent upon corporations.

Let’s put aside cost for a moment: why is it appropriate for the entire military to be locked into a single proprietary model to the benefit of a single corporation?

Longtime reader, first time commenter. I would like to second WilliamOckham. I work for a defense contractor and part of my job is developing software.

Macs are awesome, but Macs are closed ecosystems as far as software goes — they have proprietary development environments and things like that. Plus they cost quite a bit more for an equally capable system.

Google stuff is awesome as well. I use it myself. However Windows is rapidly implementing some of the same capabilities and there are as yet untested security issues with the cloud — not to mention the bureacracy of old-fashioned SCI data … S, TS, etc. Being the biggest software platform makes you the biggest target for hackers — which is a double edged sword. Hackers are constantly trying new attacks. You can find and patch stuff quickly, but ubiquity means larger swaths of your network are vulnerable through the same hole.

Plus, we do work with all kinds of platforms. PowerPC, Intel, Sun (and now nVidia) running various installs of Linux, Unix and Windows.

I hate Windows, too. Mostly because it is a resource hog. Apparently that is getting better in 7. Still, if you want windows to run on a cheap/small chip, you head for XP (like netbooks do — q.v. Dell).

And on PowerPoint: it is essentially a blank sheet that can be filled with whatever you want. I think it is the number of meetings that organizations have that make them rush their presentations and choose bullet-point defaults.

But yes; there needs to be something done about the current powerpoint culture in the DoD. Maybe they should go to Tufte’s classes … http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Thanks for the education on all of this. As you can tell, I’m out of my lane here… Should I just scrap the post or was there value in bringing up the issue, however ignorantly?

Regarding your initial point, the military doesn’t use boutique software for the same reason they don’t use boutique firearms.
But as for the larger static document vs. dynamic document and hierarchical presentation vs. socially networked document point; the approach you prescribe is very similar to that used by Obama’s electoral campaign in 2008. And there was not a wholesale transfer of people from the campaign to the war effort after his inauguration (a bit of a hard break there from the previous Admin), which is unfortunate because through your reporting I’m watching the counterinsurgent theorists reinventing all this stuff. Hell, the ratio of those new civilian development staff coordinators in Afghanistan to local population was roughly the same as the ratio of Obama campaign community organizer staff to local population! But in the case of the campaign–you may have seen the picture of the President with his MacBook; well, he’s the only one, the staff laptop was a Windows ThinkPad and everyone at the paid level got a campaign email run through Outlook. We incorporated a lot of other technology and a lot of Google and other applications on an individual and regional basis (free was more important than optimal utility) but the value of having a universal standard (even if it required the occasional conversion)was just too important. No PowerPoint though, all PP is for is depersonalizing unconditional respect for authority; it doesn’t surprise me that the Military relies on it.

Well, I got to bring up my Counterinsurgency=Community Organizing theory again, so I liked it.

You’re right in bringing this up, because everything the government purchases which requires a proprietary lock-in is an inherent security risk as well as a political risk.

As for Endymion’s comment about “boutique software”: Linux and Apache are hardly “boutique” software. One might think that if they only looked at desktop/laptop applications instead of server installations.

And check your desktop/laptop/netbook — chances are awfully good if you surf the internet you’re using Java.

FWIW, I worked for a number of years as a DoD ‘consultant.’ While employed by Papa Booz, we installed a Mac based, closed network between our offices and the client offices at Rome Lab.

But there was absolutely no classified processing or support. We just had a fairly standard OTS package of software and network stuff (including a mix of MS Office for Macs and MacWorks packages.)

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2006/02/21/2003294021

As a result, new mechanisms are needed for regional and global governance that include actors other than states. This is not to argue that Microsoft, Amnesty International, or Goldman Sachs be given seats in the UN General Assembly, but it does mean including representatives of such organizations in regional and global deliberations when they have the capacity to affect whether and how regional and global challenges are met…

Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker. States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves, because they cannot insulate themselves from what goes on elsewhere.

Macs are awesome, but Macs are closed ecosystems as far as software goes — they have proprietary development environments and things like that.

This is just flat-out wrong. I can only assume you’re confused because of the admittedly awful dev policies surrounding the iPhone and iPad. Developing for OS X is nothing like that. Xcode comes on every OS X install DVD. This is emphatically not the case for Windows dev tools, which cost hundreds of dollars — though if you work for a contractor, you (and maybe your employer) almost certainly get them for free.

As far as openness: OS X is based on BSD, and a surprisingly large amount of *nix software will compile on it just fine. It doesn’t get any more open or free than that. When it doesn’t, porting it is typically much simpler than it is for Windows.

But you’re right that it would be a waste of money for the government to buy Apple products. Frankly, I doubt that Cupertino wants that business. Marketing problems, you know?

Still, as far as MS goes — there are three (and only three) things that they do substantially better than the open source world: spreadsheets; enterprise email clients; and management of the procurement process (I include deliberate compliance with regulations as part of this effort).

To my knowledge they have never produced a best-in-class server product of any type. Certainly not database, email, file, web, ftp or source control. Maaaaybe their directory server and/or streaming media servers are competitive — I don’t know how the FOSS stacks up. And you could make a case for their remote administration GUI stuff, though now we’re getting fairly specific.

I hasten to add that Apple’s servers are also wastes of money. I’m saying this not as a fanboy, but rather someone who’s done a lot of work with all three of these platforms. The DoD’s path dependency makes MS inescapable, but the people beating Spencer up about this stuff clearly don’t know very much about the alternatives. And being around DC, I can say that this is not atypical for MS engineers, whose professional ecosystem is strangely closed off from the larger world of software.

Linux is not a monoculture. That’s kind of the point of Linux.
Java, on the other hand, basically is a monoculture.

Agree that Linux isn’t a monoculture, but Java is not a mono-platform, either. The problem with Java has been 12+ years of proprietary existence; it should have been released much earlier as a true GPL.

But that’s partly the why of Android.

In 2000 I was working on projects linked to the Advanced Distributed Learning lab, a part of DoD that’s trying to anticipate/steer/develop e-learning systems to meet the increasingly onerous need for training and, in my case, joint-force training. I in fact bought a machine running Windows 2000 because at that point it was challenging to get Macs to interoperate with “the enemy.”

Defense Intelligence Agency, however, was solidly rumored by ADL to be running all Macs all the time, purely because they were so much less vulnerable to general malware.

(Java, IIRC, was not allowed on any .mil Web pages.)

My bad; you are absolutely correct about writing code for a Mac. It is only the iPhone/iPad that has the proprietary development environment.

I’m sure to be blasted but would like to offer a slightly different viewpoint from the previous debate.

Let me start with just one example, like word processors. At a point in time (say around 1996) the US Navy had just transitioned from Wordstar to Word Perfect. The US Marine Corps was using Ami Pro, the USAF was using Word, and I cannot remember what the US Army was using. Sharing was even more challenging, since not only did the different services employ different software, but the joint headquarters also varied around the world. Basically the method was, print a hard copy, get the boss to sign a cover letter and use the US mail to send it on. SIPRNET and NIPRNET did not exist, although there were rumors that the intell world was able to do computer based collaboration.

Imagine my surprise when I reported in to NATO in the same year, where every headquarters was using Office and all were connected by CRONOS (now called the NATO Secret WAN). No problem at all with sharing, although major discussions over spelling between Brits, Canadians and Americans.

Bottom line from my feeble point of view. I don’t care that somebody thinks that Microsoft Office isn’t the best tool for the job. Pick one as a standard for everybody within the military and stay with it. Every piece of software has pluses and minuses. Use what you think is best at home. Open architecture sounds wonderful, but who has time to play around with the underlying software? It’s a tool that I wasn’t to pick up and use for my day job, not something that should become my job.

On the other hand, the dependence of the military on Power Point for the presentation of ideas is well known and the point made is accurate. Would be much more interested in thoughts on alternatives than a Linux versus Mac debate.

PS: Oh, by the way, has anybody thought about the cost of replacing every computer in the military with a Mac? I’m sure that Apple would love it but I don’t think it is affordable.