Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's State-Imposed Indoctrination and Back Doors

Summary: Microsoft is trying to make the Chinese use software and services with back doors (including remote deletion of FOSS by Microsoft), just like in the US and UK

HOW DOES Microsoft save itself from Linux world domination (notably thanks to Android), other than waving some vapourware like Vista 9 (Windows 9)? Well, there's always Vista 7 to fall back on, as Vista 8 is probably Microsoft's most hated operating system ever (sales or "licensing" deals have been worse than with Vista). Watch this coverage from Microsoft partners at Ars and Microsoft's longtime booster Nick Kolakowski, who now works for Slashdot and writes nonsense like: "HP is pushing Windows 7 laptops and desktops as "back by popular demand." If that doesn't irritate Microsoft, nothing will."



"No wonder China is now working on its own operating system for mobile, called COS."How is that irritating? HP is pushing Windows after numerous Microsoft moles entered HP's management. Sosumi wrote in IRC:" I'd rather have HP offering at the very least an Ubuntu option" (but no, that's not even an option).

In even more disturbing news, following shallow reports from IDG about Microsoft's attempts to promote itself as "open" in China (while deleting Free/Open Source software like Tor from Windows) there is new nonesense [1] about Bing (censorship disguised as search) promotion in China. Who is Microsoft kidding? And given the company's strong ties with the NSA is it really shocked that Chinese people don't want to use Microsoft services? Remember that Windows has NSA back doors and Microsoft gives the NSA easy access to its datacentres. Microsoft recently decided to hop onto users' computers without even telling them, then delete files from their systems (Microsoft should have remotely removed Windows [2,3], not Tor). What kind of fool in China would still pursue development with Windows? No wonder China is now working on its own operating system (for mobile), called COS.

"Here in the UK it’s no better because Microsoft is now taking over schools again, under the pretense (or pretext) of “education”."Here in the West it's a different story. In the US, for example, the government assumes that Microsoft, NSA, and back doors are essential. According to [4], there is still a lot of FUD against FOSS and Ken (Helios) responds frustratingly. As Will Hill put it: "There's more to this than FUD in this corruption, there's secrecy and legal threats too. The same thing has been carried out everywhere. I wish Ken had paid the $2,000 and broken his agreement to keep it a secret. It's outrageous and probably against the law to keep public spending like that a secret. People need to break agreements like that and then demand their money back for looking at it. Maybe he should have written a check and immediately had it cancelled."

Here in the UK it's no better because Microsoft is now taking over schools again [5], under the pretense (or pretext) of "education". This is corrupt. A lot of British schools still use Windows XP and there's no budget for new computers. They should migrate to GNU/Linux within weeks or a few months, but with Microsoft guarding the hen house it's unlikely to happen. Schools in the UK will continue to have back doors from Microsoft and the NSA, who can always blame bugs and leave them unpatched for over a decade, as Windows XP serves to show, and as reported by the Microsoft press (it took Microsoft more than 12 years to fix a serious Windows bug).

“Post-Vista PC sales have been slowing down, especially lately, because many people are moving to Android phones and tablets, and many people see their existing XP machines that can't run the latest bloated versions of Windows as "good enough" to run their office software and web browser.”
      --Ryan Farmer
Ryan Farmer, a former Microsoft MVP, wrote in our IRC channels: "We need to keep an eye out on what happens to Product Activation after Windows XP goes EOL. If Microsoft stops activating re-installs of Windows XP, we should be sure to beat them over the head with that and remind users of supported versions what will happen to them later. XP is the first version of Windows with Product Activation that is going to go end of life. It has been about 13 years since I first wondered what would happen when XP went EOL. It took a long time for the answer because Microsoft didn't plan to support Windows XP for even half as long as they did. The Windows "Longhorn" / Vista catastrophe set them back several years, and they ended up having to extend Windows XP's lifecycle to cover all of the people that refused Vista. Post-Vista PC sales have been slowing down, especially lately, because many people are moving to Android phones and tablets, and many people see their existing XP machines that can't run the latest bloated versions of Windows as "good enough" to run their office software and web browser.

"Well, there are like millions and millions of people who might have activation difficulties after April. Their computers can't run anything newer from Microsoft. I suspect they'll be pissed, if they understand what just happened."

At the end of the day what we have here is a criminal company that distorts the system, infiltrates the state, and imposes itself on young individuals through the state. Microsoft is not just classical corruption (bribery etc. as we have just demonstrated) but also systemic corruption.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. In China, Microsoft steps up efforts with Bing, Windows Azure
    Bing has barely any market share in China, but Microsoft hopes to change that in the next year or two by investing more resources into the local version of the search engine.


  2. If Microsoft thinks old Tor clients are risky, why not Windows XP?


  3. How to protect your Windows XP system after April 2014


  4. Blame FUD for Microsoft’s Dominance in Schools
    At that time, the last thing we worried about was spending a couple of hundred dollars on software. I probably had $200 in the spare change jar in the library. We lived in a big house, with a comfortable six figure income. Life was good. A purchase like this wasn’t anything to worry about. It wasn’t the cash outlay that bothered me. It was the fact that a public school was requesting we purchase a specific brand of software.

    Having been a Linux user for a number of years, I knew there were other options and I made it a point to talk with someone at the school. How many people with minimal incomes were being asked to shell out this kind of money when other options were available? How many of our tax dollars were being spent on software that was completely unnecessary?

    I am no stranger to the Austin Independent School District. Unfortunately, my claim to fame and the events that led to said infamy are well known. It’s a shame that it had to happen the way it did but again…split second decisions and all that…


  5. Microsoft To Prepare 160,000 Teachers For The New Curriculum
    Microsoft will provide free study materials to around 160,000 primary teachers as part of the “First Class Computing” initiative.

    Training will be given as the schools in the UK prepare for the introduction of the new curriculum in September 2014 that will place a lot more emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects.




Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
 
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025