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China Prefers Sticking With Dying Windows XP To Upgrading
tdog17 writes "China says it wants Microsoft to extend support for Windows XP because that will help in its fight to stop proliferation of pirated Microsoft software. A state copyright official says the release of Windows 8 means a substantial increase in the selling price of a Windows operating system, especially in light of the upcoming end-of-life of Windows XP, which is still used by a large percentage of Chinese. That could drive users to buy pirated copies of a new operating system because they are cheaper, he says."
Why is Microsoft selling Windows 8 for so much more than Windows XP? For most uses it's not significantly better.......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Chinese government wants XP's support extended because now that they have shown knowledge of widespread OS pirating they don't want to get caught doing it again.
For now they're still under the delusion that saving money and not needlessly upgrading are virtues. With time they'll learn to throw away perfectly good computers and millions of hours of training for shiny things.
Isn't Windows 8 the cheapest one they've ever released (to buy)?
I live here (see IP) and I have NEVER, EVER seen a legitimate copy of XP.
Did they find out that people just couldnt use it or was it so full of spyware that noone wanted to use it? Last time i heard a few years ago that was the official government mandated OS for China's government computers and schools.
Here in China, it is not really possible to even find a normal "legit" version of Windows. All versions found at any normal store will be pirated. A typical price for pirated Windows, sold in a professional looking box, will be about 18 yuan (~3 USD). There is even a common software program used to deliver updates to pirated XP machines. This software also comes with anti-malware tools, and is called "360." This program is the only way that China is able to keep going with Windows, circumventing copyright protection while still receiving regular updated from this service!
A few months ago I was talking to a sales clerk at a computer market. I saw stickers for Ubuntu on the laptops there, yet the operating system was obviously Windows. I pointed at the sticker with a smirk, and asked him about it, already knowing the answer. He sheepishly tried to tell me how they put on Windows because that's the standard in China. Obviously they were getting discounts from the manufacturers for dumping the Windows tax, and then turning around and installing pirated Windows on these computers. By the way, these were big brand names like Dell, HP, Samsung, Lenovo, Asus, etc. Out of curiosity, I asked him if many people in China use Linux, and he said it is used mostly for servers (he mentioned Red Flag Linux specifically).
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
...in light of the upcoming end-of-life of Windows XP, which is still used by a large percentage of Chinese. That could drive users to buy pirated copies of a new operating system..
You mean to tell me the are paying for pirated copies? Why? Honestly can't they just torrent it just like everyone else on the planet?
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Microsoft "Hmmm, so... we can spend money to not get money. Or not get money. Reeeeal tough choice."
Heck maybe it'll drive Linux adoption!
windows 8 actually cost less than windows 7... and less than what Windows XP was priced at.
Microsoft NEVER lower the price of the OS, so even if they release Windows 8, the remaining copies of Windows 7 won't go down in price.
Go back to bed China, you're obviously drunk what with everything you're doing lately.
I say Microsoft should just release an update that borked every pirated XP machines in China. Not like they owe them anything, since the software wasn't even bought from microsoft to begin with. Pirates asking for better treatment... I've seen everything now.
The real reason is that there are many computers that have hardware that is not able to run recent versions with adequate speed and upgrading them with or without pirated software is too costly and they are filling their place more than well.
The only reason software companies have the new model mentality is to make money off what they push as a new model. Software companies would be better if they shifted away from that and to doing just version updates. 90% of the development costs are paid for on an existing OS, the rest is doing bug fixes and enhancements. I personally see no reason to go to Win8, I don't care for the interface. I tolerate Win7 because I can make it mostly like XP but wish I didn't have to add software to fix the start menu. I think the drive away from the standard desktop is partly killing the desktop PC. The standard XP style desktop works. Changing it makes no sense on a desktop PC. It requires people relearn things, increases IT support costs and slows down productivity. At work my productivity has slowed down going from XP to Win7 because on Win7 I have to deal with more of the little popup context menus that get in my way no matter how much I tweak it and the copy/paste issues of Win7 drives me crazy. I don't like to side with the Chinese government on anything but on this I agree... On windows, upgrading to Win8 doesn't make much sense.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
India which is much poorer:
Win 7 & 8: 58%
WinXP: 30%
China:
Win 7 & 8: 43%
WinXP: 50%
Africa, South America, everywhere else that is poor XP is in massive decline. This is basically China being the odd man out, they're the only ones who want to stick to XP. Now I'm guessing most of those copies aren't legitimate, but I don't see why that should be any different in China than the rest of the world. It's just that XP is the de facto standard I guess.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Another reason for keeping xp is that they very likely have the xp code audited and custom patched to their liking.
I don't see the problem here. The price of Windows 8 is not more than Windows XP. And if the price is still a problem, just use a cracked copy like they did with huge amount of XP installations.
Or just use the old negotiation tactic:
Microsoft: XP support is ending but we are selling you this magnificent new operating system called Windows 8.
China: Gee, I dunno, the price is kind of high. I think we'll just go with Linux...
Microsoft: *gasp* Well, well, I believe we can negotiate something. Please, sit down, and would you like a cup of coffee? How about this new special price for you...
China: Ok!
I live in China but don't read Chinese. Last year I brought a netbook here with the intent of running Linux Mint. Because I wanted more than the 2GB RAM limit on the knock-off models I brought a genuine Samsung which came with Windows 7. Having paid for an unwanted copy of Windows I thought I would look at dual booting it. It's been a long time since I used Windows so I had a play to see what Windows was like. I found I could not change the language from Chinese. Some research showed I was expected to pay for an upgrade to get Windows, that I paid for, to actual be usable. Microsoft really don't promote legal use of their products with such attitudes! I personally didn't mind as it just meant Linux got 100% of the HDD.
In fairness to Microsoft I suspect Windows would be pirated here unless it was free or very close to free. People here don't seem to care. I guess it is one of the reasons for the low uptake of Linux here, no price difference so less motivation to investigate alternatives.
Translation: Please keep supporting Windows XP because...
1. All the Rootkit XP's out there have China backdoors in them that we don't want closed
2. Counterfeit Windows has rootkits installed by identity thieves, NSA, Russian hackers etc
3. Windows 8 is too expensive, unwanted (or both)
4. Chinese can't crack the Activation mechanism to Win8.
Like the legitmate answer is 3, but if you've ever lived in ... oh any city on the Pacific coast (either in Korea/Japan or Vancouver/Seattle/SF) you'd notice that the most pirated versions of Windows are in fact Windows XP Chinese versions (eg Taiwan)
Likewise, anytime I've fixed a computer for someone... even though it has the English interface, it's always a Chinese copy. It's that prolific.
Microsoft should actually take this opportunity to open some pieces of XP and hand it to ReactOS, or maybe just BSD licence the parts needed for better compatibility.
This solves two problems
1. Pirated/Counterfeit XP copies are no longer needed to run XP legacy software
2. Microsoft could in fact completely drop all backwards compatibility for 32bit software in the next version of Windows (installable as a "extra" cost) and force developers hands to finally develop software in 64bit mode.
Yes I'm talking about fragmenting the desktop OS on purpose, or haven't you noticed how bulky Windows is? The type of fragmenting I'm talking about is having developers build AMD64 versions for windows 8+ using secure API's instead of legacy ones. (The C runtime itself has _s versions that take a size parameter just to avoid the buffer overflow problems)
They're going to be pirating the software anyway, so claiming MS needs to extend XP support as an anti-piracy measure is laughable. It's bad enough that they are responsible for so much of the spam and virus crap. I'd love to see their government somehow do what it wants, and completely isolate the people from the internet entirely, spam and all.
Wishes and horses.
Used to that Microsoft can sell anything.
Used to that anything with the Microsoft (c) brand on it, no matter if it's the OS or mouse or keyboard or office suite, they are guaranteed to sell like hotcakes.
No more.
With one fumble after another, with more and more alternatives to Microsoft's products (of which many of them are free), Microsoft is running out of cash cows.
Right now they are so desperate that they are trying to milk Windows 8 as much while the going is still good.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Ferrari cars cost just as much to develop as your average ford. However, the number of cars being sold, will make the development cost per car much higher. Add much higher production cost because of materials used, fabrication methods used, number of actions to produce a certain part and yield to the equation. Even if Ferrari would make a bold move and decide to sell their cars at the same price as Ford, they would still have to buy more expensive materials and do more to those materials before they are a car.
MicroSoft may have put more money in developing Win7 initially than they did in XP, I wouldn't know if that's the case. The real thing is that the production cost per copy is negligible; they just turn a knob and come up with a sales price based on a marketing model.
The home PC market is crashing since most people don't need a PC anymore to watch movies, communicate with their family or play games. The introduction of the computer in the home has moved from the single device to smart phones, tablets, media players and game consoles. People hardly need a "real" computer anymore and the budget for one has moved on to other devices. School going kids and students may need one to do school work on and learn, but the requirements for that sort of machine aren't that exciting usually and an older model or really cheap new hardware will do just fine.
Offices don't really need PCs to do more than office work. To be honest, typing a letter or stuffing things in a spreadsheet hasn't changed much over the past ten years or so. Offices tend to move towards VDI where the machine the user has is only an input/output device and the "desktop" is actually running on a server, often not using a desktop OS in a VM, but simply a session on a server OS.
MicroSoft is losing their monopoly in office suit software, server software, e-mail platforms and such. Several attempts to get new markets like search engines, media and music players, have failed to yield any profit and are costing them money. Depending on how you look at it, their game console business is a success, but the net profit they got from it is either not fantastic, or they are still in the red and it's not a commercial success at all. They have a large part of the market, but it's still not clear how much they have spent to get that and if they actually have recovered that money. The desktop PC market is shrinking rapidly and they need some way to keep all those developers paid and shareholders happy.
With the current stock price and results they had in the past, shareholders have very high demands. This makes that they are turning the knob for the Windows7 and 8 desktop OS prices way up. This makes people either pirate it, or buy a PC that comes loaded with crapware to sponsor the price of the OS, or they move to another OS because they are tired of the whole windows clutter and viruses.
In China, crapware sponsorship is worth next to nothing because piracy is much more prevalent there and sponsors expect very little return on the installations. That makes the OS very expensive to put on legally for vendors or end users, resulting in even more piracy.
China has the power to convince MicroSoft to extend XP life and even sell it for a lower fee. If the Chinese government would decide to move to Linux as the OS for all official government desktops, home users will follow that sooner or later, especially if it was free and there would be less malware. It wouldn't be easy or cheap to do so for China, but this XP retirement is an event where they have a clear cost/benefit model that has a pivot point that is an actual threat to MicroSoft. If China would migrate to Linux, it'd give a much bigger threat to MicroSoft than a few German cities doing it. Even the cities migrations have already resulted in quite a few enhancements that make Linux a more viable desktop alternative. Once China puts their weight in, the reasons that keep linux away from the corporate desktop will disappear rapidly. Given the recent revelations
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
He linked the demise of XP to China’s efforts to stem software piracy by making pirated software seem a better option. “These practices affect the smooth operations of genuine software in China,” Yan Xiaohong is quoted as saying.
Windows XP is easy to pirate but Win 7/8 is a total pain in the ass and updates thwart previously working cracks. Wouldn't this mean that moving to Win 7/8 would be more likely to prevent piracy? Then again, they could just help ReactOS, they sure as hell have reverse engineered Windows enough to make a proper implementation.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Upgrade to Vista.
IMHO, This is exactly where ReactOS will help, and run a generation of applications without Licensing nor waiting for Microsoft to patch stuff.
Keep using what works.
I hope Microsoft does NOT give in to the demands of China for extending XP support, that OS (and the ancient broken version of IE it shipped with) need to die and ending security updates for it will be a good way to help do that.
LOL funniest thing I heard all day
And the mouse should not go through the batteries that fast, if it does, then it's broken.
Lobby, Mezzanine and Penthouse properties.
I come here for the love
XP is not "dying" I have servers running Windows NT 3.51 that still make more money an hour than 100% of the people here on slashdot. and they are 100% secure because they are on a segregated and airgapped lan.
When you have something working and you have enough spare hardware to keep it working, why waste money and time "upgrading" simply because some idiots think you need to. Short of someone doing a "mission impossible" break in my servers are 100% hacker proof. Oh and here's a tip they ALL have the administrator password set as password1234.
They are specialized servers that can play back 16 broadcast quality MPEG2 streams into digital video in CATV headends. 16 at the same time all from a single pentium 1 processor and barely any ram. the playback cards play the video directly from the SCSI hard drives. The replacement today from Seachange are less capable and break down more. These require nearly ZERO attention and continue to run year after year just printing money for us. and we have enough spare parts to handle any issues and give us a year lead time if we ever needed to do a complete upgrade to current tech. If an OS if supported means nothing at all if you have sysadmins and network people that actually have a clue as to what they are doing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
""In our article, we describe how the complete concept of air gaps can be considered obsolete as commonly available laptops can communicate over their internal speakers and microphones and even form a covert acoustical mesh network,"
This is 100% bullshit.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Their argument is basically, "Everybody is going to pirate the new software anyway, so please continue to sink money into supporting the old software that we've already pirated." Is that how I should be interpreting this?
...do the same? And why is there an expectation that a country can drive policy of private businesses? Is like it if Porsches were cheaper. However, I doubt that American consumers banding together in this would be given cheaper cars. The "it's a huge market and we have to bow to it at the expense of the locals" argument carries no weight in manufacturing any longer (e.g. coffee, textiles, clothing), so why do we unthinkingly give it a pass here?
More likely Win7 and Win8 are much harder to pirate, so a huge portion of the chinese economy is faced with either going without updates or actually paying for windows. Either way it's going to have a negative impact on the Chinese economy. Pay Microsoft (the Americans) or pay the hackers.
Lot's of cable systems are loaded with MPEG2 but some have stared to move stuff over to mpeg4.
Dish and directv dumped MPEG 2 HD a few years ago.
I gather from reading your comment and GP that we could actually be seeing M$ pirating its own software.
Right. This makes complete sense given the way we've seen M$ for the last 30+ years.
I can completely envision a scenario where M$ releases pirated versions of XP through 3rd parties...lets say 'facilitates' it...
Which explains this:
why else would *software pirates* take the time and effort to release updates? It takes manpower, people who have to be made to do the work. I know this is a bit easier given its China but still, pirates don't use resources this way.
Thank you Dave Raggett
They could sell the Chinese XP rights to a company in cahoots with the government (and once you get above a minimum size in China, you're with the government or out of business).
The government company would have the incentive and the government backing to get everyone in China on "legit" XP.
MS gets money now. They get to transfer blame for XP support to someone else. They could encourage the Chinese to essentially fork XP, so the supported Chinese version wouldn't compete with recent Windows.
Sounds win-win to me.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I just checked the price of Windows 8.1. It costs only $109 on Amazon.com. is that expensive? Please enlighten me.
The real reason is with the improved security they are having a hard time getting a tracking virus to install consistently on windows 7/8 and to hook into IE11 properly so they can monitor everything their citizens do. Its working just fine on Windows XP and IE6.
That could drive users to buy pirated copies of a new operating system because they are cheaper
What percentage of China is using pirated copies of XP?
Aren't most copies of XP in China pirated?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I am not moving from WinXP64 for my developer work, the winserver 2003 kernel and the XP tunning... whats not to like?
Cero days arent really such a great risk with safe habits, and rollback rx and eset ss set up and updated inside virtualbox on kubuntu.
Using wsus if i whant it, can reinstall from original cd and upgrade the installation to the most current updated state, no internet required
WinXP is simple enought, very well known, easy decomposed using litepc xplite, and with asio and nvidia drivers does everything i need better and lighter than Win7
My next reference platform for releases will not be vista, seven, eight, etc... suported and tested yes, but not required, I am now targeting Wine (and latter reactos i hope)
China wants it extended so they can mine XP's bugs longer...
I can see it. When every single new version of IE breaks all of our web applications (notably not developed by us, all third party), I often wish we could go back to XP also. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I tell our computers not to install updates automatically, and not to update IE automatically, somehow we always get the latest and "greatest" version of IE installed on a bunch of machines. I kind of like our few remaining XP machines, because they can't get anything higher than IE8 which works just fine.
Doesn't matter how cheap XP is, Chinese companies still pirate it. Last company I was at had an office in China with a little over 200 employees, of those, 187 were running illegal copies of XP and Office. If anything, dumping XP and forcing people to switch to an operating system that is a little more robust in its anti-piracy measures will have a greater effect against piracy. Companies that cannot afford a Windows 7/8 license can use the official State sponsored Linux distro.
No, it isn't. Communicating using internal speakers and microphones can certainly happen, and can be used to form a covert network. The bullshit part is claiming microphones are an initial attack vector. From what I've read, the virus can't jump the air gap to an uninfected machine, but it can communicate with other instances of itself over air-gapped machines using the acoustic network. It's at least plausible.
The basis for my statement there is simply because I know that XP only asks for a product key and I don't recall in recent history the activation mechanism being particularly strict. Vista/7 seems to start disabling itself after a while without a properly activated key and 8 seems to want an email address to tie your license to (from the one time I played with it out of curiosity). I'm figuring the Vista/7/8 mechanism is just tighter?
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
YOu guys are so resistant to change and that is dangerous in a field like IT where you are expecting to know everything about anything technical.
I have no problem with as I use the Metro tiles ONCE. After that it is the MMC on the clients and powershell.
The tiles are only bad if you need to multitask and do not want to be interrupted each time with a new screen each time you want to launch a new app. With a server you run a shell and maybe server manager and go away.
http://saveie6.com/
I find most any new feature in Windows since XP SP2 has just been a token/marketing ploy to try and sell newer... I still run XP SP2 on all my systems, giving Windows Vista, and 7 a try for a weekend before reverting to XP for improved speed(yes even 32bit vs 64bit chips). The only real lacking is large memory support, but without new bloated apps who needs the additional memory.
Everything newer seems to have fewer options/features; requires more computer to do less.
I believe MS only added SP3 to XP to propagate .net framework and slow XP down to not make newer versions of Windows look so bad.
Don't have any known security issues, only virus I ever had was let in by Windows Update taking the firewall down to apply the fix for the virus in question(MS Blast).
Yes it is, If you knew anything AT ALL about computers or electronics you would know that. Go look up how audio pathways work in a computer kid.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Microsoft can charge the rest of us dinosaurs who like XP $15/yr for extending the usable life of this os that does everything we need, am I right?
Windows XP is one of the easier-to-pirate Microsoft OS'. Actually you just need to put in either all 1's or all 9's.
So, the premise is total horseshit.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
It continues to run just fine on all of my machines.
What is China going to do when Microsoft tells them, as politely as possible, to go fuck themselves?
Last time I checked, Microsoft was a US company and wasn't under any obligation to listen to the Chinese Government. I suppose China could say "Well, in that case, we won't sell Microsoft Windows [Insert number here]". However, considering China leads the way in copyright infringement and human rights violations, how much of a threat is that really? They could stop the sale of legit copies but that won't stop the pirated copies to be sold. To which Microsoft will create new ways to stop it. To then which means those who legitimately bought copies have to endure draconian anti-piracy things like always on DRM, etc
In the end, no matter what Microsoft does, it won't change the inevitable outcome. China gets what they want (Microsoft bending over and taking it be it from piracy or doing as asked [dare I say: Demands?]). Microsoft comes up with an excuse for imposing their will on those who play by the rules (whether by DRM or by delaying the inevitable death of XP). Meanwhile, those who play by the rules get hosed and must endure it, less they change their perspective and get Linux or Apple.
I still have plenty of customers in Asia still running Win2K. Most likely because of avoidance of "Windows Activation" as far as I can tell. The concept that you should pay for something you can't see runs deeply against the grain in many Asian cultures. This is why the entire "IP" protection thing is such a "pushing a noodle uphill" level of effort over there.
Most copies of Microsoft _ANYTHING_ (and Adobe, and... well... almost every piece of software) is pirated inside China. Despite the government's assurances that things are getting better. I've been in China. I go to work centers and I see hundreds upon hundreds of machines that have disabled updates. Why? because if the updates were on, then their patches to get around authentication wouldn't work, and Windows would stop working, because it was a fake/stolen license. I've seen 5 legal copies of Windows in China, and 2 of them I bought and brought in myself. I've seen nigh over a thousand machines that all have illegal copies (aforementioned hundreds upon hundreds). Just let them stay on Windows XP and find ways to botnet them all to hell (oh wait, major Chinese companies HAVE ALREADY DONE THAT with their supposed security software).
>Yes it is, If you knew anything AT ALL about computers or electronics you would know that. Go look up how audio pathways work in a computer kid.
Two computers sitting in the same room, with both speakers and microphones, could easily communicate by emulating a 300 baud half-duplex modem, for example.
For even lower bit rates, use something like DTMF tones.
What is it that you find implausible about computers using sound to communicate, considering we've been doing it for decades?
Dangerous? How about massively increasing the time it takes to do basic administrative tasks. I've spent so much time trying to do things in Server 2012 that were absolutely simple from NT 3.5 to Server 2008 that I am officially now rebelling against their stupid Metro interface. Everything is fucked up.
Try debugging an L2TP VPN connection using the silly new interface - you pass from old school to Metro to old school to Metro three times. It just ain't worth it.
They can make a new UI, but nobody's gotta accept or use the damn thing.
Even that Windows 8.1 laptop I was talking about in my parent post: I messed with that for two months. Two days ago I reloaded the thing with Windows 7. I have work to get done, don't have the time to mess with the latest Microsoft fad. Good riddance to bad rubbish.