Do some evil
Well, that's how it feels. Money doesn't just talk, it persuades.
While much attention has been focused on the new Surface Pro laptop Microsoft has launched in Shanghai on Tuesday, the company also announced a special build of its operating system for China. Dubbed the Windows 10 China Government Edition, the new OS is a product of over a year of collaboration with local trader China …
No as Dylan said money doesn't talk, it swears obscenity.
Ah, yes, a "people's poet". Does his personal net worth of $180m swear obscenely, or does money work differently if you're a Nobel laureate rich twat singer, trying to be a trendy socialist?
And as an aside, what's gone wrong with the Nobel prizes? They used to be proper prizes awarded to people for real work and talent. Now we get tossers like Obama being awarded the "peace" prize for simply not being George Bush, and Dylan gets a "literature" prize for scribbling out a few moany songs.
The China Government Edition will use these manageability features to remove features that are not needed by Chinese government employees, like OneDrive, to manage all telemetry and updates, and to enable the government to use its own encryption algorithms within its computer systems.
Now the BIG question is, when will those features be included in the version foisted on the rest of the world?
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You may have got that all wrong, you know. You shouldn't condemn Slurp without hard evidence.
Have you considered that, being one of the world's expurts in data slurping, ms may have added a whole new raft of data collection which will phone home to to relevant authorities, presumably in the Middle Kingdom.
It'd be info passed to certain other agencies the Chinese'd be worried about
Have you considered that this new technology might be soon rolled out worldwide in an essential service pack, phoning home to ... err ...
This may not end well for slurp.
Off topic question - I wonder if the Chinese have specified a red BSOD?
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>>a sustained campaign by Microsoft and the Chinese
>> most copies of the OS used are now legal
Does this statement seem a little bold?
Could only find an old article.. maybe no longer applies?
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-gives-up-on-charging-for-windows-in-china/
This could be interesting. So it is technically possible for MS to build this OS without the telemetry. So the required by law, necessity and corporate interest basis for processing allowed by GDPR wouldn't apply to Windows. There's clearly no safety of life justification so Microsoft are going to have to rely on consent. How many people are going to explicitly consent?
Anyone want to join a collective action (allowed by GDPR) to get Microsoft one of those 4% of global turnover fines?
Internet Explorer bundling all over again.
You don't have to trust either, just rely on their self interest. Microsoft want to sell you stuff, the Chinese government want to blackmail and steal intellectual property.
So for work use Microsoft, at home the Chinese government. Unless you are a particularly attractive blackmail target.
C. Linux Mint.... Installs in minutes, far faster and easier than Windows every did... Comes with LibreOffice and Firefox installed by default, and VLC etc is just a click away. No messing around with tricky privacy settings... No invasive UI features that the cult at Microsoft believe adds value... Most its all its all free! But hey if you still want to pay for Win10 and have your privacy taken away when even Google and Facebook are free go ahead.
Meanwhile Techies in the west wish they had a better wall around their own copy.
Personally, I'd rather wall it up in a basement somewhere and pretend it doesn't exist..luckily most Windows software I want to use works Ok (not great, but Ok) in Wine.
"The Windows 10 China Government Edition is based on Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, which already includes many of the security, identity, deployment, and manageability features governments and enterprises need," said Windows boss Terry Myerson.
Ohhh, so it can get 0wned by specifically crafted PDF's, PNG's or BMP's so the government can spy ?
Have they obsoleted SMB, yet ? Thought not .... InsecureByDesign!
For decades XP and W7 was pirated in China and a legit copy was hard to come by (or keep). It is still that way. We in the West paid for it. Perhaps the tables will be turned now that China has the scrubbed down version that everybody else in the world would like to have. The West could be awash with pirated copies of the China Edition!
The obvious problem is that the China Edition will be calling the Beijing Mother-ship rather than Redmond's Death Star. The user will be getting notices that using a VPN carries the death penalty. There will be ads for this weeks chicken feet specials - I hear they are delicious.
In actual fact it is a good thing that China will be using legit W10 licenses. The rest of Asia will hopefully follow - not likely though. Eastern Europe, Russia and South America - nope, never.