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Microsoft a target — Parallax Forums

Microsoft a target

MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
edited 2016-11-01 22:39 in General Discussion
Putin wants to rid the country of such name's

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/putin-wants-push-microsoft-out-russia-battle-us-n674781

EDIT: Fixed it.

Comments

  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    All Microsoft OS'es to be replaced by new Russian software, Fortochka 3.1, featuring red screen of smert. All computer equal, all get same software. Is good for Mother Russia to stand on own two nogy!

    http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/fortochka/
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    I'm amazed such ideas have taken so long to develop around the world. But slowly they are.

    If you are a government of a country of course you need control.

    Increasingly that control is exercised through software.

    That means you need control of the software you are using. The last thing you want is a "black box" supplied from some company in another country over which you have no control.

    Or let's put this another, economic, way:

    Why are we paying huge piles of money to some other country to do what we can do for ourselves?

    Those canny Indian guys are taking this one step further. Why do we need to buy processors from the Yankee Intel when we can make our own? Google RISC V for the story.

    In short. We out here do not trust the USA or any of it's operatives anymore.

    Sad but true.

  • Heater. wrote: »
    In short. We out here do not trust the USA or any of it's operatives anymore.

    Sad but true.



    Sad to here that things have deteriorated that much since WWII, we were great allies.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    I'd like to know if Microsoft was after Russians to upgrade to Windows Dyeset (10). It's no secret that Win10 is logging keystrokes and harvesting data for sale and likely for the NSA. We hate it and we're Americans. Clearly foreigners and foreign powers hate it more than we do.

    Somewhere in Russia, there's an ercosky who's REALLY upset, even if Win10 was free.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-11-02 01:00
    erco,
    We hate it and we're Americans.
    What is stopping you from doing something about it?
    Clearly foreigners and foreign powers hate it more than we do.
    By far the majority of people on the planet are "foreigners".

    By the way Win10 is not free. As in actual money. Or any other way.

    The lure of the PC and the internet was that we humans get control. As opposed to the centralized systems of old.

    We have failed.







  • User NameUser Name Posts: 1,451
    edited 2016-11-02 02:59
    Heater. wrote: »
    What is stopping you from doing something about it?
    Merely by switching to Linux, our privacy is assured?
  • User Name wrote: »
    Heater. wrote: »
    What is stopping you from doing something about it?
    Merely by switching to Linux, our privacy is assured?

    I was about to mention, theres always linux..

    BUT....

    They better hire 50k software engineers, and even then they will only have as good a software as windows is...
    Which we all know it has 'issues'.

    I don't think they even HAVE 50k software engineers capable of doing that level of OS engineering available in their work pool.
    Let alone the money to pay them.

    Talk is cheap, actual action is expensive.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    @User Name,
    Merely by switching to Linux, our privacy is assured?
    Of course not. Far from it. Makes little difference which OS you use when you give your soul to Facebook and so on.


    @Clock Loop,
    They better hire 50k software engineers, ... I don't think they even HAVE 50k software engineers capable ...
    Who is this "they" of which you speak?

    I presume you mean the Russians. But "They" is us. "They" is also a cooperation a between a multitude of companies, institutions and even counties, large and small. From Google downwards. Even MS makes Open Source software and supports Linux now.

    From the article linked in the opening post:

    "U.S. intelligence officials also believe that any attempt to ban Microsoft will be limited because its products are too integrated into Russia's IT infrastructure."

    That right there is a situation any government in it's right mind would want to fix. It's insane to have you entire state beholden to some company in a foreign country over which you have no control.






  • Heater. wrote: »
    From the article linked in the opening post:

    "U.S. intelligence officials also believe that any attempt to ban Microsoft will be limited because its products are too integrated into Russia's IT infrastructure."

    That right there is a situation any government in it's right mind would want to fix. It's insane to have you entire state beholden to some company in a foreign country over which you have no control.








    I felt that way a number of years ago when I was forced to seek tech support for some Windows version. Between the comunation difficulties and being guided to go through processes I had already tried, nothing got solved there. The impression I got back then was the company was out of touch with its base.
  • Heater. wrote: »
    It's insane to have you entire state beholden to some company in a foreign country over which you have no control.
    Sure. From Putin's perspective it makes perfect sense to use domestically produced software, especially in government offices, and especially if it were my plan to keep pushing the buttons of other governments around the world. Indeed, it's axiomatic.

    OTOH, if I were Ivan Average, keyboard monkey, I'd have a lot less to fear from MS than from Vladimir Putin.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Who said anything about domestically produced. Open Source software comes from all over the planet.

    But, yeah, Ivan Average should be more worried about Putin than MS.

    But then, a huge proportion of average Ivans think that Stalin was a good guy, a hero.

  • Heater. wrote: »
    Who said anything about domestically produced. Open Source software comes from all over the planet.
    The first article I read on the subject, several months ago, mentioned specifically that Putin wanted "domestic software," not Open Source software. Whether Linux could be sufficiently Russified to meet Putin's requirement, I do not know.
    But, yeah, Ivan Average should be more worried about Putin than MS.
    The corollary is true in the US, too. That is why MS keeps reassuring us that they absolutely do not share data mining results with the government. I'm perfectly confident that MS doesn't give a flying fig about me.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    Heater. wrote: »
    From the article linked in the opening post:

    "U.S. intelligence officials also believe that any attempt to ban Microsoft will be limited because its products are too integrated into Russia's IT infrastructure."

    That right there is a situation any government in it's right mind would want to fix. It's insane to have you entire state beholden to some company in a foreign country over which you have no control.








    I felt that way a number of years ago when I was forced to seek tech support for some Windows version. Between the comunation difficulties and being guided to go through processes I had already tried, nothing got solved there. The impression I got back then was the company was out of touch with its base.

    A lot has changed since then... now they don't seem to care either :(
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    I'm in full agreement with the anti-Microsoft sentiments in this thread. I have had more problems with my new laptop that came with W10 than I have had with all my previous laptops combined.

    Same thing with my desktop that was automatically downgraded to W10 one night. A month or so later it started acting up. Blue screen of death, work lost to intermittent reboots, software that worked perfectly under W7 locking up and loosing hours of work, and unable to use it at times due to updates.

    Upgraded the desktop back to W7 a week back and have not had a single problem since.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-11-03 15:32
    On the other hand after avoiding MS almost completely ever since 1997 I have been welded to a Surface Pro 4, with Win 10 of course, for months. It runs a good lot of the programs I use everyday on Linux. It's been mostly dependable. Sure it does some odd things occasionally and takes a bit of effort to disable as much Smile as you can.

    My beef was never so much about the technical merits of MS operating systems and software, more about the disaster that is the whole world becoming dependent on a single platform and closed file formats etc.
  • kwinn wrote: »
    ...my desktop...was automatically downgraded to W10 one night. A month or so later it started acting up. Blue screen of death, work lost to intermittent reboots, software that worked perfectly under W7 locking up and loosing hours of work, and unable to use it at times due to updates.

    Upgraded the desktop back to W7 a week back and have not had a single problem since.
    This is exactly the story of my wife's computer.

    Thanks to NoScript, my Win7 machines avoided this fate.

  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    Heater. wrote: »
    My beef was never so much about the technical merits of MS operating systems and software, more about the disaster that is the whole world becoming dependent on a single platform and closed file formats etc.

    I'm sure that Gregg Microsystems' "Gatekeeper" software can universally undo any damage done by Microsoft.




  • rjo__rjo__ Posts: 2,114
    In order to understand the President of Russia, you have to understand Russia. And it doesn't hurt to have a fairly dark sense of humor.

    The best way to teach young people how operating systems work is to give them an "important" job... tell them to go build a new one. At worst what happens is that you get a new generation of Windows experts.

    Let's say that a concerted cyber attack was being waged against Russia... an entire world of experts would be available to help. If Russia were to monotonically move to its own operating system... they would be completely alone: not good for anyone.

    Who is most likely to attack us?...us. Who is most likely to attack them?... them.
    It is what us and them have most in common.






  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    I like to think they are not so stupid as to want to build their own OS and the entire software stack that sits on top of it. Russians I have met are pretty smart cookies.

    The wise thing to do is to embrace Linux and Free and Open Source software. Use it, enhance it, contribute to it. Be part of the world wide conversation and developments on "cyber security". And all things technical for that matter.

    That would be a far more efficient approach. You get more out than you put in when you cooperate with such things.

    But I guess they are intertwined with Windows and wondering what to do. Shoveling money out of the country for that is obviously stupid. Especially as you have no say in what the product is.






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