7 ms·

What's the demographic that's using XP in China? I find this super interesting...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
balola 6y ago
Form my experience, mostly government and state-owned companies, which account for a big part of China's paid software market. Even some Shanghai government systems support only IE6 to 8, some only love IE11. Most state-owned banks too, popular browsers are all duel-engine. There's little to no incentive to change what's working, and customers experiences don't really matter.
- szhu 6y ago
  > customers experiences don't really matter To consider it from a different perspective, perhaps customer experiences matter more in China. Technology in the US is super cool and cutting-edge but the constant shift to new technologies and the rapid deprecation of slightly old software leaves a significant body (perhaps even the majority?) of consumers in the dust.
Kliment 6y ago
Industrial equipment control computers mostly - the computer is part of the machine and cannot be upgraded. You see this quite a lot outside China too.
- dx034 6y ago
  Honest question: Would using Linux have been a better idea then? An old unpatched Win XP has tons of vulnerabilities but so does an unpatched 20 year old Linux Kernel. Using Windows XP on those devices often gets very bad rep but is there a viable alternative for machines that are air gapped and technically won't be upgradable for several decades?
  - tpxl 6y ago
    Remote vulnerabilities don't really matter for air-gapped machines.
    - eternalban 6y ago
      "Attacks like Stuxnet, the computer worm deployed against an Iranian nuclear facility a decade ago, shattered the myth that air-gapped systems are impenetrable fortresses." source: https://www.cyberscoop.com/duo-labs-air-gap-radio-mikhail-davidov/ https://www.cyberscoop.com/duo-labs-air-gap-radio-mikhail-da... Links to: https://duo.com/labs/research/finding-radio-sidechannels https://duo.com/labs/research/finding-radio-sidechannels
      - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
        That's exfiltration, not infiltration.
      - tpxl 6y ago
        It wasn't really air-gapped if someone plugged an USB in it, was it ;) I'm aware of the "over the air" methods to _read_ data from air-gapped systems (The blinking hard-drive light!), however I was referring to doing damage to industrial systems running legacy software, where you usually find this (think a big machine with a "terminal" attached to it that just controls the hardware and has no inputs).
  - Kuinox 6y ago
    In the XP days Linux was not seen as a serious things.
  - sumtechguy 6y ago
    At that time using XP was a very viable thing to do. You would pretty much never do it now. Think about it from a business perspective. Something goes wrong in the OS. At that time you would have had to have linux guru on staff to take care of it. OR you could pay 30 bucks for a OEM embedded copy. If something went kinda bonkers you could call microsoft and they would fix it. Their support on things like that is pretty good. At that time getting that sort of support for linux would have been basically nonexistant. Today you could get that kind of support for linux. Back in 2000-2004 it would have been tough. At this point no company is going to re-write the firmware on a machine they sold 20+ years ago unless they happen to be still selling that exact same model and you are paying for some awesome support contract.
- wheresmycraisin 6y ago
  No, there are tons of regular office computers and even home computers that run XP. Industrial computers in China would actually be running fairly up to date OS's compared to, say, US.
  - Kliment 6y ago
    I visited a number of factories in China last year and saw lots of XP on measurement, production and test equipment. All the office desktops were on W7 or W10. I'm sure lots of XP desktops exist, but I didn't see any in the (quite many) offices I passed through. I can't speak about home computers, I only saw a small handful.
unnouinceput 6y ago
You'd be surprised how many KIOSK's out there are running XP under the hood. Especially ATM's.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Form my experience, mostly government and state-owned companies, which account for a big part of China's paid software market. Even some Shanghai government systems support only IE6 to 8, some only love IE11. Most state-owned banks too, popular browsers are all duel-engine. There's little to no incentive to change what's working, and customers experiences don't really matter.

szhu 6y ago
> customers experiences don't really matter To consider it from a different perspective, perhaps customer experiences matter more in China. Technology in the US is super cool and cutting-edge but the constant shift to new technologies and the rapid deprecation of slightly old software leaves a significant body (perhaps even the majority?) of consumers in the dust.

Kliment 6y ago

Industrial equipment control computers mostly - the computer is part of the machine and cannot be upgraded. You see this quite a lot outside China too.

dx034 6y ago
Honest question: Would using Linux have been a better idea then? An old unpatched Win XP has tons of vulnerabilities but so does an unpatched 20 year old Linux Kernel. Using Windows XP on those devices often gets very bad rep but is there a viable alternative for machines that are air gapped and technically won't be upgradable for several decades?
- tpxl 6y ago
  Remote vulnerabilities don't really matter for air-gapped machines.
  - eternalban 6y ago
    "Attacks like Stuxnet, the computer worm deployed against an Iranian nuclear facility a decade ago, shattered the myth that air-gapped systems are impenetrable fortresses." source: https://www.cyberscoop.com/duo-labs-air-gap-radio-mikhail-davidov/ https://www.cyberscoop.com/duo-labs-air-gap-radio-mikhail-da... Links to: https://duo.com/labs/research/finding-radio-sidechannels https://duo.com/labs/research/finding-radio-sidechannels
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      That's exfiltration, not infiltration.
    - tpxl 6y ago
      It wasn't really air-gapped if someone plugged an USB in it, was it ;) I'm aware of the "over the air" methods to _read_ data from air-gapped systems (The blinking hard-drive light!), however I was referring to doing damage to industrial systems running legacy software, where you usually find this (think a big machine with a "terminal" attached to it that just controls the hardware and has no inputs).
- Kuinox 6y ago
  In the XP days Linux was not seen as a serious things.
- sumtechguy 6y ago
  At that time using XP was a very viable thing to do. You would pretty much never do it now. Think about it from a business perspective. Something goes wrong in the OS. At that time you would have had to have linux guru on staff to take care of it. OR you could pay 30 bucks for a OEM embedded copy. If something went kinda bonkers you could call microsoft and they would fix it. Their support on things like that is pretty good. At that time getting that sort of support for linux would have been basically nonexistant. Today you could get that kind of support for linux. Back in 2000-2004 it would have been tough. At this point no company is going to re-write the firmware on a machine they sold 20+ years ago unless they happen to be still selling that exact same model and you are paying for some awesome support contract.
wheresmycraisin 6y ago
No, there are tons of regular office computers and even home computers that run XP. Industrial computers in China would actually be running fairly up to date OS's compared to, say, US.
- Kliment 6y ago
  I visited a number of factories in China last year and saw lots of XP on measurement, production and test equipment. All the office desktops were on W7 or W10. I'm sure lots of XP desktops exist, but I didn't see any in the (quite many) offices I passed through. I can't speak about home computers, I only saw a small handful.

unnouinceput 6y ago

You'd be surprised how many KIOSK's out there are running XP under the hood. Especially ATM's.