Bonum Certa Men Certa

World's Largest Population Heading Towards GNU/Linux Because Windows is Not Secure (NSA Trojan Horse)

Stallman in China Stallman's trip to China; image from stallman.org



Summary: Following espionage and other incidents of cracking against China the government decides to ban the latest Windows while encouraging the population to abandon Windows

An interesting but unsurprising report from Reuters revealed some fairly important news from China, whose government is saying no to Windows (latest version). This is even characterised as a ban. To quote one report: "The Chinese government has announced that its agencies will be forbidden from upgrading their ageing and end-of-life Windows XP systems to Windows 8.1, banning Microsoft's latest operating system in the name of security."



Vista 8 is banned not just because it is terrible but because it is a threat to national security [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. This is a significant turning point which may lead other governments to pretty much the same policy.

This exodus oughtn't be too shocking given some recent news from China about GNU/Linux. Richard Stallman visits the country these days (delivering talks and other such activities) while Chinese people are urged by their government to embrace GNU/Linux (there are calls for migration on national television). There is state support for these efforts. NSA-Microsoft ties, in addition to cracking against Huawei, may further contribute to this. Don't be shocked if Bill Gates already books some plane tickets or prepares his private jet for a trip to China.

Vista 7 is a horrible mess too, no matter the hype Microsoft spent billions to produce. Watch what happened at Emory this past week. This was summarised by a pro-Windows sites that said "Whoops! Emory University server sent reformat request to all of its Windows 7 PCs" (link).

There was a fair deal of coverage about it. Neowin wrote:

Sometimes, there are incidents that take place that remind people who use PCs to back up their files on a regular basis. Such an event happened earlier this week at Emory University in Atlanta, where an "accident" resulted in a server sending out a reformat request to all of the Windows 7 PCs at the school, including the server that sent out the request itself.


How highly insecure. Remember that the NSA built back doors into Windows, so imagine what it can do with 'features' like the above, e.g. at times of war.

What such idiocy may cause for national security should teach everyone to abandon Windows immediately, especially in the public sector.

Germany is now introducing new procurement rules that take into account NSA espionage. It also forbade UEFI (on government computers), perhaps foreseeing the bricking of hardware remotely (yes, it enables rendering PCs "bricks" [1, 2]). Disregard the new spin and the hogwash from Linux Journal; it is written by Doran from Intel; it's basically advertising of restricted boot, portraying it as benign while masquerading as an informative article. Intel and Microsoft must be desperate for some kind of new lock-in.

It is worth adding that Microsoft is far worse than Google when it comes to NSA connections, no matter what it's extremely misleading attack ads say/insinuate. Here is a decent new blog post that says:

In the battle between office productivity vendors, Microsoft has long distanced itself from Google GOOGL +1.72% claiming that the fact that Google scans emails in order to deliver contextual advertising to customers is a data security breach. Never mind that the scanning was completely anonymized and digital – Microsoft leveraged the conspiracy theory that it was somehow a case of Google employees reading all of our email.


China already develops mobile operating systems that are based on Android/Linux (COS for example). These can help assure China's national sovereignty. They deserve it.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
 
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake
Links 09/02/2025: Coffee, Toxic Productivity, and Programming
Links for the day
Debian's Human Rights violations & Swiss women Nazi symbolism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 09/02/2025: Software Patents on MP3 and Another Scam Dressed Up as "Crypto"
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2025: Russian Energy Cut Off, LLM Pushers Show Signs of Desperation
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Does Not Have Media Companies and Lobbyists on His Side, But His Message Spreads Regardless
The message of RMS is spreading in spite of all the smears
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time High in Chile
sharp rise for GNU/Linux in Chile
Links 09/02/2025: Hottest January on Record, Panama Blackmailed
Links for the day
Why We Still Love Gemini Protocol
Gemini Protocol may seem like something "old" (it's actually very new) and something "nobody would use", but many people use it
Gemini Links 09/02/2025: "Died as a Mineral" and Game Interface for a Non-Game
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 08, 2025
Links 08/02/2025: UK Back Doors and Religious Fundamentalists in Positions of Higher Power
Links for the day
Today's IBM (Red Hat) Isn't the Company That Fought a Microsoft-Sponsored SCO in Court
IBM is nowadays in a state of rapid disintegration
When You Simply Rebrand Almost Everything as "Hey Hi" ("AI"), "Hey Hi Workloads", "Hey Hi Datacentres" and Whatnot
The "growth" has been a growing lie for years if not decades
Microsoft Windows Falls to 12% in Myanmar
Remember that Microsoft is virtually 0% in mobile
This is the Man Who's Attacking Linus Torvalds et al in "a Disease" (Social Control Media)
One thing that Richard M. Stallman and Torvalds can agree on is that Social Control Media should be avoided
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: "Thought Leaders" and Returns to Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Links 08/02/2025: MElon Coup, Mass Layoffs at Facebook, and PlayStation Network Down
Links for the day
Unlike GAFAM, Free Software Serves You, It Does Not Serve Governments and MElons (Overlapping Forces)
Tired of oligarchy controlling your life through gadgets and "apps"?
On Wars Against Founders
We need to insist that founders remain
When It Comes to Social Control Media, Linus Torvalds is Channeling Techrights
GAFAM workers know exactly who to aim at
New EPO Paper: Promoting (Rewarding) People Who Grant Many Illegal European Patents to Make More Money (at Europeans' Expense) While Patent Courts in the EU Are Themselves Illegal
now the coup is sort of complete and even the "courts" are part of the corruption
Slopwatch: Carnival of LLM Slop and FUD Spewed by Bots, Pasted in by MaKenna Hensley and Day
Welcome to the Web in 2025. Articles about "Linux", "Security", and the Web (e.g. "Firefox") are fake.
Links 08/02/2025: News Corp Admits Traffic Declines, Wildlife Trafficking Tackled
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: Lamp and Notions
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 07, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 07, 2025