Microsoft Halts All New Sales in Russia (techcrunch.com) 73
Microsoft is "suspending" all new sales of products and services in Russia, and is halting "many aspects" of its business in the country to honor US, UK and EU sanctions. The move comes days after Microsoft restricted Russian state media across its platforms, and after Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister called on the company to block Russian Xbox accounts. From a report: Microsoft saw the withdrawal as virtually necessary. "Concrete steps" like this would have the most impact, according to company president Brad Smith, and there will be "additional steps" as the Ukraine situation develops.
Block Windows entirely? (Score:2)
All Windows accounts present in Russia should be deactivated. That could get interesting fast...
Spell check and clippy (Score:2)
Looks like you trying to dance with nuclear war, do you need some help? Turn on clippy, add some snark, and remove the off switch. And set spell check to change every occurrence of Putin to "man with small penis" or Trump-fuhrer.
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SAAS and web service models ... (Score:2)
All Windows accounts present in Russia should be deactivated. That could get interesting fast...
Such a move - and/or similar interpretations of the sanctions by even a few other companies or government regulaters forcing it - could make "Software as a service" and "web service" business models into casualties of the Russia-Ukrane war.
Indeed, just the realization that this is possible might be enough to start businesses switching from proprietary software products to open-source and in-house tooling.
Perhaps
Re: SAAS and web service models ... (Score:1)
Serbia was met with no consequence for NATO. Oh, forgot, it's right when WE do it. And living in a country with a lot of refugees from Serbia war, having grown with their kids, I tell you, NATO is the bad guy. And Russia would be equally bad as USA when they nuke two cities with its civilians.
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It used to be "Russia has never invaded a democracy" and "Unless they draw blood". Now the goalposts are shifting to using nuclear bombs on civilians?
Fuck off, you human piece of cancer.
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Re: SAAS and web service models ... (Score:1)
La guerre n'est pas forcément un génocide et un génocide n'est pas forcément une guerre. Un génocide c'est, par exemple, les indiens d'Amérique exterminer par les Yankees.
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No need to answer. I bet you do.
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"Hey Cletus, lookie here, we got us a real perdy-mouthed edgelord!"
I've shit more controversial things, bro. Try harder.
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Russia has never invaded a democracy
Of course even that, was untrue.
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The fog of propaganda.
Like the saying about Benito Mussolini, who banned more than 100 members of parliament, refused to let opposing parties have their say, created a secret police force, did away with local elections and reestablished the death penalty for political crimes: "But at least he made the trains run on time."
Except he didn't. He made the press SAY that he mad the trains run on time.
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And I'm sure if the Russian military used tactical nukes on Ukrainian cities, it would be perfectly justified as well, and fingers would be pointed at other nonsensical stuff.
That's the modus operandi "You can't criticize Russian foreign policy as long as there's been something worse in human history from the Big Bang to now."
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I actually DO live in a country which borders Serbia, and you're full of shit.
Also, to compare an invasion of one country bigger than France by a nuclear power with a civil war in a small country 30 years ago is beyond retarded.
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Let me know when the USA invades the whole of Somalia with the purpose of annexation, and then I'd agree with you.
Idiot.
Principled stance (Score:3)
All Windows accounts present in Russia should be deactivated. That could get interesting fast...
There's levels of integrity at play in the Russian sanctions.
If you do something I don't like, it's completely reasonable for me to turn my back and not interact with you further. It's a principled stance, and tells the world I don't like what you've done.
If you do something I don't like, and I start breaking promises and agreements I've previously made, to you, then that reflects badly on me. It shows the world "I break promises". It doesn't matter if the reasoning is sound, or even if the world would agre
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I don't know this but assuming it for the sake of argument, does that involve your immediate family? Cousins? Thrice removed? The people who happen to live in your block? The businesses who happen to be in the same office complex as yours? Fellow city dwellers? Fellow countrymen? How wide is that context of yours?
This is actually a rather new concept on the international stage, as many previous examples cared little about that context. Selling weapons to the guys that are currently waging war on you? "Sure
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As long as there are humans, there will be war. We are incapable of working together long-term as a species and frequently fall back to our tribalism bullshit.
These assholes in Russia are getting older and older and likely wanted ANY excuse to play with these banned weapons before they die.
The mistake the USA, EU are making is not stepping up and saying NO!! instead we are supply weapons and some aid but that isn't actually stopping the Russians. I think their own ineptitude is likely causing more problems
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In any case, any Windows license that Microsoft grants, Microsoft can revoke. Haven't you read the EULA?
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Yep. I was just about to say the same. Now that most Windows workstations are always connected via the Microsoft account, it would be a matter of a simple licence revocation. As much as I hate the youve-got-to-have-an-account model deployed by Microsoft, this would be an awesome use case and it would hurt A LOT!
Largest unlicensed software pirater (Score:2)
According to the most recent BSA Global Software Survey in 2018 ( https://gss.bsa.org/wp-content... [bsa.org] ), Russia is reported to be at 62% percent unlicensed software. Russia continues to account for the largest dollar share of unlicensed software in Central and Eastern Europe.
This is just going to further drive this figure upward.
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Windows is not really the concern here; Microsoft is also halting the sales of services.
Combined with Oracle's recent announcement [reuters.com], this means that Russia is quickly getting cut from global cloud services, on which they rely a whole lot.
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Will non-Russians be cut off from Russian cloud services?
asking for a friend.
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as such, the very purpose of closed source and copyrighted software? to have more control it situations like this one?
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Closed services have been a part of the computing world a lot longer than open platforms. Heck, back in the day, the big tech companies like IBM literally had a man on site at all mainframe installations, to manage the systems. Cloud computing isn't some sort of revolution, it's a return to the old time sharing systems of days of yore.
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if you get a bunch of rfc's over mainframe standards together you will see cloud computing from the corner of your eye.
The early days of IBM mainframes also had a FOSS (Score:2)
Closed services have been a part of the computing world a lot longer than open platforms. Heck, back in the day, the big tech companies like IBM literally had a man on site at all mainframe installations, to manage the systems.
As I understand it, the customer engineer was mainly a hardware guy (although in those days the division wasn't all that great and he was REALLY the rep-on-the-spot for everything).
But there was plenty of free and open-sourced software circulating, among the user groups (which also se
Oh no! (Score:2)
Once freed from the shackles of Windows and Office, Russia will be dominating the IT world!
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then we will finally see that fork of linux i've been hearing about coming from that block of nations or at least that superior distro to lead said charge.
China as well. (Score:2)
then we will finally see that fork of linux i've been hearing about coming from that block of nations or at least that superior distro to lead said charge.
Also: China has one already, so they're all set should they pull the trigger on Taiwan.
(Loaded with spyware, of course, but hey, that's totalitarianism for you.)
China's move on Taiwan was believed to be ready to go but is now (at least) delayed while they assess the unexpectedly strong international reaction to Russia's move on Ukrane.
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So, they won;'t have to worry about the NSA links to Microsoft, Google, Facewank, etc any more. [sad face]
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Like I said: "... hey, that's totalitarianism for you." B-b
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cut off office/ms 365 and azure there (Score:2)
cut off office/ms 365 and azure there
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wut? (Score:2)
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This. If the average Russian can't have a functional life because their asshole in charge is warmongering, said asshole may not remain in charge for much longer. Then again, Russia government was never very kind to their own and likely won't have any problems slaughtering a few thousand dissidents if necessary.
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The danger is free speech (Score:3)
Most modern multiplayer games have text or even voice chat between players. It would also seem that it is difficult to block (at least without being obvious or blocking other things). Putin doesn't want the Russian people to get any news about what's really going on. Getting Microsoft to block the accounts would make it look to Russian gamers like it was just more sanctions from the west.rather than an at
No more M$ patches for Russia! (Score:2)
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Well, given how badly Windows sometimes breaks because of Microsoft's updates, maybe it would be better for them to keep pushing updates to their enemies.
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M$ should prevent all machines in Russia from receiving software patches for their machines. As a result, they'll all be much more vulnerable than usual within a week. And even more so the week after and so on.
I love this idea! Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to?and DNS of .ru. Am
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I'd imagine that most Russian government offices already disabled automated Microsoft updates a few weeks ago, in order to prevent the US government from installing backdoors into their systems as a software patch.
Block it all to and from russian IPs (Score:2)
Azure, GCP, AWS and DNS of .ru. Amazon, faebook, twitter, apple, google. Everything
Russia gets all the breaks (Score:2)
Who do I have to invade to get rid of Windows?
Not like MS does MUCH support, but (Score:2)
Shut off support.
I know other tech companies have done so.
Oh come on, SlashDot. (Score:2)
This place is dead. I am saddened and disappointed not to see comment after comment of "In Soviet Russia, ...". I mean, Jesus Christ it's ripe for it. It should be run into the ground at this point. Did all the old guard die off from the beetus?
I will get us started.
In Soviet Russia, Microsoft firewall YOU.
The year of Linux on (Russian) Desktop (Score:2)
Linux on (Russian) Desktop could be the side-effect if the current Windows authentication is shut down (if that happens).
Change log on screen background to pics of the war (Score:1)
Bold (Score:2)
Extremely bold of Microsoft to announce their support of Russia like this.
stop Microsoft365 (Score:2)
blocking Microsoft365 would immediately cause a few headaches
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The Korean nuke only being able to reach Seattle would be less of an issue then.
Unless, of course, the US "Intelligence" services think that the DPRK's missiles can already hit whichever cities the "Intelligence Community" actually live in.