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  1. China's IT giants get to gather to milk poor Windows XP users

    Where MS coughed-up poor XP users......
    When it comes to milking, China is No # 1.
    Chinese can milk a bull and promote a brand called Bull's Milk globally.

    BEIJING, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Tencent will join hands with other IT giants to "build a hedge" against potential Internet attacks for Chinese users after Windows XP shutdown on April 8.

    Tencent, along with Kingsoft, Sogou and other Internet service providers, will give technical assistance for Windows XP users for system upgrades and risk defense, said Ding Ke, a senior manager of Tencent.

    The companies will start the protection before the shutdown and the "hedge" will continue during a transition period that may last for two to three years or even longer.

    "The up-coming shutdown will serious affect Chinese users," said Ding, adding that more than one quarter of China's computers are running the operating system.

    Microsoft announced earlier that it will stop providing technical assistance for Windows XP after April 8, and computers will still work but they might become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses.
    Last edited by enim; 3rd Mar 2014 at 13:16.
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  2. Suppose any one uses windows XP with complete & clean system backup, without any updates, without any any new installation of software, what kind of support he or she is looking into?
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  3. Member ranchhand's Avatar
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    Irrelevant. For realtime users, XP hasn't been supported for several years. M/Soft has made a half-hearted gesture toward the appearance of support, but why should they spend budget money on an OS that isn't making any sales money for them?? M/Soft wishes that XP and Vista would disappear and just go away. As you said, China is advertising "Bull milk" to the people to make it appear they are actively "protecting them" for propaganda purposes only. Hackers are rolling on the floor laughing.
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  4. My ignorance, but, how come?
    For realtime users, XP hasn't been supported for several years.
    Official deadline for support is April 8, 2014. Isn't it?
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  5. By promoting "Bull's Milk" Chinese tech giants wants to milk poor and frightened XP users those who wanna continue with XP. Shame on hackers who are rolling on the floor laughing, and targeting poor individual PC users. Internet security itself is laughable. I do not think any big corporation will be using any XP online machine by April 8, 2014.
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    And Microsoft has always claimed that China has the largest base of pirated XP licenses. It may not be any additional "milking" is done - it may be a recognition that China's XP base will not upgrade, will not spend an extra dime for services they're used to, and have no desire to 'upgrade' any applications - particularly if applications actually offer lesser services (Nero 6 and 7 vs. 10 and beyond, for example; Outlook Express and POP mail systems for another, which might force Chinese ISPs to engage larger capacities if POP off-loads weren't available; or the massive re-education processes that MS Office Ribbons inflict with questionable benefits to long-time Toolbar users).

    It sounds like a lot of the 'additional support' is actually going to be updating User HOST files.
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  7. It sounds like a lot of the 'additional support' is actually going to be updating User HOST files.
    China will become a fruity wine yard for XP hackers.
    Regardless of OS, Chines Hacker's Farm worth million dollars business annually any ways.
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    Originally Posted by OllieTSB View Post
    And Microsoft has always claimed that China has the largest base of pirated XP licenses.
    MS actually once made the claim that about 90% of all XP installs wordlwide were pirated and the evidence they used was pretty convincing: basically they checked to see how many unique XP installs connected to windows update (using the unique id numbers generated by WPA) and compared that number against the number of XP licenses they had sold. the ratio of pc's connected to windows update for an XP update to licensed sold was 10:1, i.e. for every one XP license they sold 10 XP machines connected for an update.

    that's just mind-boggling.
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  9. Member ranchhand's Avatar
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    My ignorance, but, how come?
    The last major XP OS support install was SP3; there have been no major upgrades to the basic XP operating system since then. I have XP machines come in to my shop every other week for various problems, but rarely for virus infection. I also have just at many Windows 7 units come in as well. I see no difference. The company where I worked for 7 years before retirement ran Windows XP and still does. We had no system hacks; the only viruses we occasionally had came in through Java/Active X and those were not difficult to remove. I see no big effort put forth by Microsoft to upgrade the system itself, and most of the "security holes" they claim to patch were possible exploits, not active threats, and many had no history of occurrence. One man's opinion.
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    Dead, yes, I'd seen those results... of course, I remember Bill Gates tried to serialize DOS 4.00, too, and the uproar brought out DOS 4.01 within a couple of months. DOS 3.31 wasn't too shabby, after all.. Gates was making hundreds of millions and passed the Billion Mark in those days. Yeah - piracy REALLY affected that!

    Ranch, make it "two". Yes to everything... if China's "poor" are the target of hackerdom, WHAT A WASTE, eh?!!
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  11. Windows life cycle fact sheet
    End of support

    End of support refers to the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance. This is the time to make sure you have the latest available update or service pack installed. Without Microsoft support, you will no longer receive security updates that can help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software that can steal your personal information. For more information go to Microsoft Support Lifecycle.
    Image
    [Attachment 23894 - Click to enlarge]

    * Support for Windows 7 RTM without service packs ended on April 9, 2013. Be sure to install Windows 7 Service Pack 1 today to continue to receive support and updates.
    Seems like story / history gonna repeat on January 13, 2015 for Windows 7 as well.
    And, January 13, 2015 would be the end of multi-media era, if MS does not cook something really GooD!
    If so, this will give rise of another dawn (era) called WAR of multi-media hardware machines...
    Last edited by enim; 5th Mar 2014 at 05:01.
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  12. I guess the PRC government just trying to make a case for tightening internet access and enhancing surveillance. Nothing "security" in the end-user sense, but in the government's point of view.
    What those ISP offer will likely be... some "parental control software", "tailor-made firewall"... that may not really serve for the benefit of end-users.

    Those ISPs have already blocked access to Google and actually any email containing "google" cannot get into China's mail servers...
    Really skeptical if such offers are well-intended.

    I do not care that much about MS support for their OS after 4 or 5 years when major problem has been fixed. However, I'd care more on whether they will drop support for certain programming framework in the newer OSes.
    A new OS with support for programs written in VC2008-2013 and .NET 4 will not create a big compatibility problem, but otherwise quite troublesome.
    Last edited by MaverickTse; 5th Mar 2014 at 06:18.
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    Originally Posted by OllieTSB View Post
    if China's "poor" are the target of hackerdom, WHAT A WASTE, eh?!!
    True, in most countries the majority of poor people don't even own a PC, and those who do own one probably do not use it for shopping, banking, paying bills, or filing income tax. However, even a computer that won't supply any personal information a hacker can profit from might still be an asset to someone interested in creating botnets.
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  14. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    a botnet ? care to explain that further ?
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  15. Member valvehead's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by enim View Post
    Windows life cycle fact sheet

    Seems like story / history gonna repeat on January 13, 2015 for Windows 7 as well.
    And, January 13, 2015 would be the end of multi-media era, if MS does not cook something really GooD!
    If so, this will give rise of another dawn (era) called WAR of multi-media hardware machines...
    You're comparing two different things: Mainstream and Extended support. See the table under #3 in the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ:

    Click image for larger version

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    The only things you lose at the end of Mainstream support are free technical assistance, free non-security hotfixes, warranty claims, and new features.

    Extended support is what really matters because it includes security fixes, the knowledge base, and the support website. You can still get paid technical assistance if you really need it, but in the nearly 20 years that I've been using Windows, I've never used either paid or free support.

    Bottom line: Extended support for Windows 7 SP1 goes until January 14, 2020.

    I only hope that by then Microsoft has listened to its customers and makes Windows 9 (or whatever happens to be the current version at that time) good again, or I'll be switching full-time to Linux.
    valvehead//
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    Originally Posted by vhelp View Post
    a botnet ? care to explain that further ?
    No, because you can easily find a better explanation than the one I would write by typing "botnet" into your favorite search engine, and reading through the links it finds.
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