China Has a Massive Windows XP Problem 520
An anonymous reader writes "The Chinese are going to have a very, very hard time kicking the Windows XP habit. The deadline for the retirement of Microsoft's most successful operating system ever is eight months from tomorrow: April 8, 2014. That's the day when the Redmond, Wash. company is to deliver the last XP security update. According to analytics company Net Applications, 37.2% of the globe's personal computers ran Windows XP last month. If Microsoft's estimate of 1.4 billion Windows PCs worldwide is accurate, XP's share translates into nearly 570 million machines. In the U.S., 16.4% of all personal computers ran Windows XP in July, or about one in six, Net Applications' data showed. But in China, 72.1% of the country's computers relied on the soon-to-retire operating system last month, or nearly three out of every four systems."
Math much? (Score:5, Insightful)
But in China, 72.1% of the country's computers relied on the soon-to-retire operating system last month, or nearly three out of every four systems."
This is Slashdot. I think we can do the math on that one.
Re:That will be a lot of spambots (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think that isn't happening already?
Re:Math much? (Score:5, Insightful)
But in China, 72.1% of the country's computers relied on the soon-to-retire operating system last month, or nearly three out of every four systems."
This is Slashdot. I think we can do the math on that one.
I came for this. I do wonder, though, for how much of the general population does "72.1%" go in one ear and out the other, but "three out of every four" sticks.
Microsoft will extend the deadline (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft simply has no choice especially if it wants to protect its compatibility insurance with Windows Office. In reality its monopoly in Desktop Applications...Relies on on it being a Monopoly, and it has real competition. I have bought tablets, smartphones, rasberry pi, an Ouya replicating everything I do on a PC. At a fraction of the cost of a less desirable bottom end PC. Intel and Microsoft have been overcharging its hostages on massive gross profits of 70%(Its not working for Apple Macs either), and are finding it very difficult to adjust when its competitors with can produce devices like a Chromebook for $200 a Tablet for $100 a Smartphone for $100 a chromecast for $35. buying an *unpgrade* to the crippled version of Windows 8 at £99($150) is stupid.
The bottom line is any money they earn from cutting off their hostages from essential packages is a potential export to another platform.
Re:xp still works (Score:5, Insightful)
EOL a product to force new sales? (Score:1, Insightful)
What if your auto dealership end-of-life'd your Honda Civic? And thereafter refused to service the vehicle? Would you buy another Honda, or start looking elsewhere for your next car?
And to keep our analogies clear, let's consider that an XP patch (of a security hole) is equivalent to a recall for a manufacturing defect that is fixed for free.
LPT bit banging (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that mean we should all be using DOS?
No, but it means that people with a need for DOS should still be using DOS. In a lot of cases, only DOS supports legacy or hobbyist hardware that bit-bangs the parallel port. Likewise, the AC that you replied to has a need for Windows XP for much the same reason: to use hardware that lacks an NT 6 driver.
Re:EOL a product to force new sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a horrible example. Car manufacturers do stop making parts for old vehicles after a while. Fixing up old junkers can be expensive because the parts can be quite rare. Owners certainly have the option of buying aftermarket parts just as PC users have the option of third party software.
Whenever emissions or road standards change the car manufacturers don't retroactively update every previous production model to meet them. The owners either pay for a custom fix up, are SOL, or get grandfathered in.
Re:I think M$ will extend XP support (Score:5, Insightful)
No there aren't. Extended support began 5 years ago. 5 years is long enough for even monolithic dinosaurs like government and hospitals to get their shit together to prepare for the inevitable. Except they did nothing and still expect everything. Bollocks to the lot of them.
That's how basically all companies do it (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at Ubuntu: They support standard releases for a year (they've reduced it) and LTS releases for 5 years. That means from the date of initial release. RHEL is 10 years of support for their 5 and 6 releases (7 for 3 and 4) and then you can buy 3 more years of support for extra money.
OS-X is a bit different in that Apple supports two version older than the current one. That in practice means about 3-4 years of support, but is harder to plan since you don't know how fast releases will come, you don't get a defined, guaranteed, cycle.
So... Where's the company that gives a much longer/better support cycle? Because I sure don't see it.
Re:EOL a product to force new sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does MS not realize how vividly anti-consumer this is? Even to non-tech types?
so in your view, MS (and everyone else in business) should have dedicated resources for maintaining old products in perpetuity, just to ensure that people who ARE NOT BUYING new products can enjoy the old products?
I think it's your comment (and the 2 Insightful mod points) that is out of touch with reality. With companies requiring to show sales and profit growth in order not to be considered dead by the stock market and therefore by the consumer and by the banks, it is quite amusing to read that the 10+ years support period Microsoft has invested on the XP product is a let down. It would be an interesting exercise to consider the implications of this perpetual support requirement for every other software/hardware and non-IT product you can use.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
windows 7 is nearly as easy to pirate as windows xp was.... so it's pretty obvious what chinese users will do when the time comes.
Re:xp still works (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't worry, Linux boxes are far from immune from them.
People here have been saying that for decades, but still there's no Linux malware.
Even when a Linux derivative (Android) is about to pass Windows' installed base, it still has less than 0.1% of the malware out there on Windows. You'd have to say this theory is thoroughly busted.,
Re:xp still works (Score:4, Insightful)
Off course said theory isn't busted. It's not like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware [wikipedia.org] doesn't exist, it's simply hardly worth the effort to focus on Linux.
On top of that, the typical/average Linux-user is much better informed about security issues than is the typical/average Windows-user (**). So making a website to trick people into clicking/downloading/running something malicious is more likely to work in the latter case.
Switch mom&pop to Linux and before you know it they'll be clicking the same links and the botnets will live happy ever after.
Linux might never see the sheer volume of malware that exists for Windows because it's "late in the game" and because simply put both the developers and the users have learnt quite a bit over the years making it harder for viruses etc to propagate.
(**: Apple used to be 'virus-free' too. As its user base is growing (and dare I say dumbing down?) there is an uptake on the amount of malware too...)
Re:xp still works (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux might never see the sheer volume of malware that exists for Windows because it's "late in the game" and because simply put both the developers and the users have learnt quite a bit over the years making it harder for viruses etc to propagate.
Thank you for not saying "virii". You've actually used the correct plural.
The main reason why Linux is more secure is history. Linux is descended from Unix, and Unix spent its formative years in University labs where students would routinely prank each other. Of necessity, Unix grew up with security being an issue almost from Day 1.
In contrast, Windows grew out of DOS. Unlike Unix, where people were sharing a computer and had to play nice together, DOS was an environment where you owned everything, lock, stock and barrel. The thrust of the design was on usability, not on security. As a result, several fundamental system components were designed insecure and it was difficult-to-impossible to retrofit security on them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:xp still works (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you talking about?
Windows '9x grew out of DOS. Windows 7 grew out NT, which was most definitely designed with security in mind.
I would argue that "pure" NT is more secure than pre-selinux Linux or Unix. Selinux is something whose true security I have never been able to calculate. unlike NT or IBM's (mainframe) RACF, the rules and support mechanisms are hard to fathom. So hard, in fact, that a lot of people give up, switch it off, and thus defeat its purpose.
However, nothing runs "pure" NT. NT was forced to accept the Windows Gang of 3 core DLLs inherited from the DOS-based Windows predecessors, and they required wedging the security door open in order to remain backwards compatibility. Which is basically the same sort of problem as the Selinux complexity issue except that if you turn off Selinux, it's your own fault, not a core OS design decision.
You have enumerated and expanded on those precise problems and I can't state it any better. The only thing I can can is Who the $%@!! thought that a Web Browser needed to be (squeaky Steve Ballmer voice quote) "An Integral Part of Windows" as stated in the anti-trust trial. What actual advantage did it give? No other OS I know of puts the web browser code into the OS itself and I've yet to see any performance or capability advantages that Windows has over those other systems in that realm. Security holes, yes. Actual advantages, no.
Re:xp still works (Score:4, Insightful)
That might have held water except that Android phones vastly outnumber Windows phones and certainly would be a sweet target for a virus.
Servers are also a sweet target and Linux has had Windows outnumbered there for quite some time.
I wouldn't claim there is no Linux malware or that there won't be more, but it is notably rare in spite of some of the sweetest targets out there running Linux.
Likewise, there exists malware for Apple, but not in proportion to it's popularity. It genuinely looks like Windows is a soft target even with the confounding factors accounted for.
Linux also isn't particularly late in the game. While ads were gushing about the upcoming Windows '95, I was installing SLS Linux.
The one thing that could screw that up is if a distro encourages new users to run as root so they can get the full 'Windows experience' they are used to.
Remember, until MS came along, getting a virus from email was only a running gag. The idea that it could actually happen was absurd.