Comment by alexjplant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexjplant | Hacker News Reader

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> . I disagree that NMCI was "damn near treasonous levels of awful."

In 2018 I was issued an NMCI laptop with a hard disk drive in it... with platters and a spindle and everything. Each time I powered it on I spent 20 minutes being serenaded by its deliciously clicky retro soundtrack as I waited for a desktop with a working Start menu (and I use the term "working" loosely since it took 5 seconds to appear when clicked). If I didn't have work to do it might have been comforting - it kind of reminded me of my old Presario V2555 from the late 90s. Constant McAfee updates and poorly-designed bespoke MFC management apps completed the aesthetic nicely.

"Treasonous" might be hyperbole but it isn't entirely unwarranted.

I have had similar experiences, however, it's important to be specific: the NMCI contract ended in 2010 and DoN moved to the Continuity of Services Contract where we bought services piecemeal until we could fully take it over. The Navy and Marine Corps tried to transition to NGEN during this time but mostly failed and each service ended up taking different paths. Now, the two services operate their networks differently: the Marine Corps, for example, runs it as a government owned and "shared operations" model where it's mixed government and contractor.

I imagine that the laptop you were given in 2018 was not an NMCI laptop, but instead a laptop from either the Navy or Marine Corps' new ownership/operations model which is incredibly flawed. Also, HBSS was poorly implemented in the 2010 time frame and Tanium was introduced (at least in the Marine Corps networks) around 2017. Both are major contributing factors to the issue you're describing.

In short: the current state is that computers are barely usable and that is not NMCI from yester-year.

This was 100% my experience. It was a standing joke in our Navy command of ~1200 people that the morning routine was to get into the office, type username/pw, then go get coffee and BS with co-workers for 30 minutes and by the time you got back, Outlook would just be finished coming up.

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