If Windows is the dominant desktop operating system in China, and 90% of it is pirated, how much of it do you think got re,ediated in time for Y2K...?

Thursday January 6

China to Ban Government Use of Windows - Paper

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will ban use of Microsoft Corp's new Windows 2000 operating system throughout the government in a bid to support indigenous software, an official newspaper reported in editions available on Thursday.

Officials at several government ministries said they were unaware of such a policy, which the Yangcheng Evening News said would save the government billions of dollars.

``The country's important government ministries will not permit the use of Microsoft Windows 2000 on their computers,'' the newspaper quoted officials as saying.

The ministries would instead use ``Red Flag -- Linux,'' a new software platform developed by Chinese researchers and based on upstart operating system Linux, the newspaper quoted the officials as saying.

Weaning China away from reliance upon Microsoft software would be the Information Age equivalent of China's invention of the atomic bomb and launch of its first ballistic missile and the satellite, it said.

``Maintaining independence and keeping the initiative over our own operating system will be the 'Two Bombs and Satellite' of the new era,'' it quoted the officials as saying.

Windows is still far and away the dominant operating system for personal computers in China. While piracy is rampant -- reaching a rate of more than 90 percent by some estimates -- the Chinese government has said it uses legally registered copies.

Windows 2000, designed to replace Microsoft's popular business-oriented Windows NT operating system, is scheduled to hit markets in China in the first half of this year.

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 06, 2000

Answers

John, thank you.

You seem to be the late night Homer.

Good job!!!!!!

-- Hatti (klavine@tco.com), January 06, 2000.

MS vs. the Red Menace? (Red Flag Linux?!?!) Almost sounds like another hoax from the chemtrail crowd, except it's in the Reuters newsfeed, and our Linux fan here at the office says it's a known product. Hmm. Hell, a major chunk of PCs and components come from Taiwan and to a lesser extent China... if China wanted to screw up our computer capability, all they'd have to do is invade Taiwan and shut off the flow of parts. (And with open-source software like Linux, they wouldn't need our software to survive in case they want to isolate themselves.) Now *that* would be a Y2K problem.

-- Just (anotherbuckeye@columbus.org), January 06, 2000.

If you are Bill Gates, or hold shares in Micro$haft, this may be bad news.

Many of the rest of us may regard it as absolutely wonderful. If China shows that you can run the government of the most populous country on earth using open source software, then there will be no FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) barrier left to allow Micro$ucks to maintain the stranglehold it has established over the rest of the world.

Subject to verification -- thank you, China.

-- Nigel (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 06, 2000.

Wey'ellllllllll, if they're operating on windows, (even pirated copies,) there was nothing stopping them downloading the y2k-patches from microsoft.com like I did. Which resulted in a blue-screen half way through the download, (which I took as Microsoft's way of saying "download complete!",) which resulted in me PC chugging along just fine through '00. Compaq, then Dell, now PRC going Linux...I see a sensible trend in this world, for once! Fugg'ed if I know how Redhat or VA Linux are ever gonna make a cent of profit, but hey!, I thought the world would be serious turmoil by this here 1/6/'00, so don't ask me.

-- number six (!@!.com), January 06, 2000.

I think it's because of the NSA_key

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 06, 2000.

I'm with Hokie.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), January 06, 2000.