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China to Develop Windows Clone
jimmu writes "According to both The Register and The People's Daily
China is set to develop a windows workalike equivalent to Win 98, with full compatibility with Office 200 and Word. Apparently, 18 companies and universities have been working on the 2 initiatives, with a 1.0 version supposedly already released to certain government offices."
Maybe they can smell the change in the wind with Palladium and 'secure computing'.
You might get a copy eh ?? Well I wonder if it'll even have english language support or just chinese.
I don't know about the rest of the people commenting here, but I think that, if this is true, it's absolutely fantastic. Being a computer technician myself (who is devoted to Win2k when it comes to M$ operating systems), I can't say enough for the power of Windows 98 on low-end client workstations. As the Register article says, give it some halfway-decent memory management and you've got yourself a damn good OS.
I'm interested to see the specifics on this. Will it be free? Will it be horrifyingly illegal? Did they set this seemingly unmeetable goal because a hacker stole Microsoft source code during one of the much-publicized raids on the Super-Secret Code Vaults buried hundreds of miles below the surface of Redmond?
The main reason this interested me so much was what, I believe Bill Gates said about Windows in some interview that I'm too lazy to go look up... Windows isn't about the OS itself, it's about the API... give him the API spec, a handful of programmers and a year and he could recreate it in all it's glory, basically. Looks like someone is actually trying.
Well, i think part of their objective is to eliminate North American dependence and security risks. I bet you five bucks that there really is an NSA security backdoor in Windows.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
I read it in, of all places, a glamour magazine in a physician's office (hey, it was a choice between that and back issues of Highlights - a children's reader). I remember that vaguely the quote was in answer to the question, "What is your largest fear?" Gates replied appoximately, "That someone will take Windows and go to China or India where programmers are cheap and hire them for a year to clone it."
Does anyone remember from where this quote was sourced? The date was sometime between 1995 and 1997.
Something like the debate back in '99?
Some links about the alleged backdoor in Windows allowing the NSA access to your computer are here, here and here.
Think about this:
Microsoft plans Palladium, essentially hardware-locking our boxes and software-locking the code that runs on it. Capitalist company exerting tight control over consumers.
Chinese government has invested in Linux and open source - even if they won't embrace the GPL. If they keep to standard hardware, then we'll be assured of a cheap source of Linux boxen. Communist government producing "free" (as in freedom) boxen, leaving control in the hands of consumers.
Even if their distro is rife with spyware (who thinks it isn't?) you can simply bleem the box and start fresh.
It would be ironic, no?
Well, Win98 is the favorite of some Windows using friends of mine... so they have the right idea there. Minus the DOS instability (which is a big leap, I know), its fairly decent feature wise. I guess, switching back from KDE 3.0 it would seem a little feature deficient, but anyway...
I'm sure this closed source Chinese OS will fit in closely with their desire to control the internet? Ie, contain convenient spy abilities and maybe special Great Firewall of China Modules. how does Red Flag linux feel?
Maybe they decided that they couldn't create a linux distro with closed source Opression kernel modules, they'd rather ignore Microsoft's lawyers than have the FSF breathing down their necks!!
I think what you want is:
in the SYSTEM.INI file.Why are they re-writing only the OS? It sounds like they still want to run ms office. Are they going to buy this? Probably not. So if they are going to run stolen office packets, why do they bother about the OS?