Windows XP: End Cyberwar, Open the Code Now!

You are correct, so it must be combined with an education effort.

But yes, I know what you mean. That's why the pitchforks and torches are needed to encourage parents to also overrun schoolboards and get them teaching "Open Source XP" at least two hours a day. Is that too much to ask?

Yes.
Those two hours a day could be used to make sure students are grounded the fundamentals of basic literacy and education, which seems to be lacking in an ever increasing number of students.
And why concentrate on XP? It's far from an ideal OS, even with it's market share.

Originally posted by BadgerJoe
Those two hours a day could be used to make sure students are grounded the fundamentals of basic literacy and education, which seems to be lacking in an ever increasing number of students.

A few lines does not a response make, but welcome to ATS.

"basic literacy and education" are not the jobs of public schools/babysitters. That should be the parent who teaches basic stuff. Who told Americans they could hire out the education of their children? Personally I think the schools would be most useful todrop the nationalism and flag saluting and get with what works. Teach people how to control their TECH.

And why concentrate on XP? It's far from an ideal OS, even with it's market share.

Because time is short, and there's no time to distribute and teach something new, except through M$/Globalist plan. Is this a real objection? I don't think so.

I use Ubuntu Linux (version 8.10) and Firefox 3. Not once have I ever caught a virus while using them. The answer is not to keep Windows XP, but to stop using Microsoft products.

I realise that if this were to happen you would see crackers (the actual term) begin to exploit Linux just much as Windows, but the difference is that the community of Linux users have the power to fight back, since the code is open to all. With Windows you can't tweak the kernel or any core files... unless you want to violate the terms of use that you agreed to when you installed the Operating System.

reply to post by smallpeeps


I am a tech and i ask you why xp why not win 98 it worked just fine. Little to no virus problems and the code was cracked open a long time ago it is fast. it can be updated so it can be used with the newer hardware . It was all about better than xp and still is. Even at that how about dos shell you could retro fit it do do whatever you want and it would be probably the lightest microsucks based program you could use to do this that is if you feel like making your own drivers and gui. btw if your clients want something fast sugest linux lite or if the need a windows fell try ubuntu their are a lot of distros that you can use that are fast and stable un like xp and if they let you have the code to any microsux os you (might find) that a lot of the lagging crashing and bluescreens of death caused in their products could be caused by a error in the coding of the framework it self causing it to drop data while running sys files and the kernel but thats a theory and its obvious people want to pay for windows products every two years or they would have already switched any of the other free and easily operated os out to day

Linux is good but not for everyone and will never catch mass appeal for simple reasons people like assurance that they go anywhere and someone can help you with the problem relative speaking.

If you give a person a computer with linux say Ubuntu a common person will not know what to do with it or will they like the native GUI, there are to many different distros maybe if it was like 5-10 and not hundreds or thousands it would be different.

Most users no nothing about code and will not like writing or changing code to make changes in something, you can change things in linux but its just to complicated for users it needs to be simple

Plus every linux version has a different GUI some look like Windows, some like Mac OSX, some like Mac OS 8 , some completely different thats two many choices and two many different things to learn for the average person.

The average person is fine with the way things are and until that changes nothing else will.

There was a thread recently regarding how Windows XP is actually living on, but only for the Air Force. Thanks to that thread, I found this link:

2003: Gates reveals Windows code to China

Whoops, here I went and wrote my silly thread here thinking that US peoples could maybe take XP for themselves (rather than accept Vista) --But I had no idea that America had already been sold out... Yikes! Wish I'd been better informed.

But this raises more questions for me, because two years later in 2005 Bill Gates said he was short the US dollar:

2005: Bill Gates: I am shorting the US Dollar

2008: World Bank hacked.

Hmm.

Quite a few people use linux actually, and its easy to get answers to problems, by searching online and at the forums. Theres usually more help, free, than for microsoft, and it only takes minutes to reinstall in most cases, and still preserve your home files and data. After trying many different versions, I prefer mepis and pclinuxos myself and always keep the latest cds of both on hand.

Originally posted by mystiq
Quite a few people use linux actually, and its easy to get answers to problems, by searching online and at the forums. Theres usually more help, free, than for microsoft, and it only takes minutes to reinstall in most cases, and still preserve your home files and data. After trying many different versions, I prefer mepis and pclinuxos myself and always keep the latest cds of both on hand.

You are right. linux is on the rise due to smaller thumbprint and better ease of installation recently. It will probably be the leading OS of the future. But I am guessing some of this XP code will leak back from the Chinese and we will see smaller and smaller versions of XP being distributed which will incorporate a virtual-UNIX-kernal by default or vice versa meaning it doesn't matter so much what the OS is if the interaction is more suited to humans.

I am guessing in 2003 there were Chinese ten year olds (now age 19) who are still poring over the M$ XP code right now, figuring out how to spin and tweak it. Well, too bad Gates didn't think Americans would like to see this code. They probably would've choked on their latte to see how many backdoors actually exist but maybe their kids could've gotten an edge on the Chinese kids?

Does anyone think a full release of XP code would make the world more enabled, in relation to tech?

At this point I am thinking it really wouldn't matter.

absolutely, hands down, the most interesting and relevant thread i have read on ATS. (the linked article to the DNS security hack was likewise superb.)

way to go: smallpeeps!

.....

i really wish i could contribute more, to stroke your brain in reciprocation. unfortunately all i can do is thank you for bringing a truly important perspective to my world: an increasingly rarefied occurrence in the midst of the aporkalypse.


second line.

Originally posted by tgidkp
absolutely, hands down, the most interesting and relevant thread i have read on ATS. (the linked article to the DNS security hack was likewise superb.)

You are very welcome.

i really wish i could contribute more, to stroke your brain in reciprocation. unfortunately all i can do is thank you for bringing a truly important perspective to my world: an increasingly rarefied occurrence in the midst of the aporkalypse.

There are a lot of very primitive factors which move the internet of today. These are cross-cultural, and force-projection over the internet is organized and effective.

I think in the future when a packet is sniffed, it will be encrypted (non-transparent) and all net traffic will be that way. The de-mystification of the packets will happen on the local machine. I think this is a natural human reaction to the techno-dystopia of today. Only a 100% full buy-in from all PCs and servers on the cloud, will be accepted. All traffic in the cloud will be convoluted and knotted up mathematically such that nobody knows what any other machine is doing. In this way there is no "Intelligence" or "Information" which eavesdroppers and whomever might sit around and gather. If they grab packets, these packets contents will be enfolded, uncrackable and complete benign in regards to any implications.

Are kids being taught that Pirates are cool via the movies? Well okay then, that follows exactly with what I am saying; If this generation were enabled by being given full access to the XP code and given the ability to distribute it (and making it run on legacy crap PC boxes), it would create a generally more-secure world and a generally more even playing field in regards to tech.

What sort of "trade school" does this administration think today's graduate will be lining up for? The age of robotic workers is upon us (as the loom came upon the weaver) and so the human worker itself, becomes obsolete.

Let me just muse A+ style here for a moment. In the USA, you plug in a 500 watt PC power supply into a 110 AC power source. This empowers the motherboard and drives and so on. There are fans inside and rotating metal discs which are magnified and which have data. Now let's consider all the curbside PCs which require far too much user-skillz to bring up to a useable machine. Now take the motherboards out of most of them and what you have is actually very significant technology there in the motherboard, but it's the other components (power, hd) are the baggage. The boards themselves are quite sublime in their manufacture and design. That motherboard in that crap old PC would be almost un-attainable in some futures. It needs only a power source. The hard drives will become like memory modules (1 TB on a DIMM for example). A combination of old and new, is the future.

Recently I took an old 386 test machine and geared it up for my neighbor and his family to play games on it. I just formatted it and loaded it and then installed it in their house. In that moment, I accomplished a tech-enabling of a single US family. But even as I did that, I kinda talked them out of hooking it up to the internet because I fear the machine may be infected and owned by some aggressive popup or malware.

So I didn't make any money loading a machine for my neighbor and the box may come back to me needing a reload, but it's okay. But what I learned is that when I share techknowledgy with another family, it makes me feel good.

Also, the effect on people's lives when you introduce a decent computer to their world, is really something delightful. People love techknowledgy and the cargo cults attest to the primal nature of this truth that people generally view tech as being something very special.

Has tech been hijacked? Has tech been used against the people of Earth by controlling forces? I am not qualified to answer that. But, the moral hazard is obvious in this equation.

History

The history of cargo cults seems to have begun before historical records in these countries of Melanesia and advances from materials that arrive with foreigners by canoe to sailing vessels, freighters, and airplanes. An indigenous tradition of exchange of goods and objects of wealth was tied to a belief that the ancestors and deities had an influence over these things and prophesies that they would return at some time laden with these objects of wealth for the members of the tribes.

It is normal for every generation to be born expecting that techknowledgy would be used for the betterment of humanity. To be born into a world where the opposite is true, would be very strange. These natives (and most natives) tend to see tech as being "from the gods" or what have you. I guess I am saying that most humans think other humans will want to share tech. So in that interest, I am trying to throw some (albeit irritating) light on this topic.

I just want to make sure the future has access to good, true, seeds.

My XP laptop gets viruses quite a bit... my vista desktop which I just installed avg and turned the firewall on has never gotten a single one despite running nekkid for over a year.

Vista isn't bad anymore really...

PS-I turn off ALL unnecessary services on vista. I just recently turned security center back on haha..

[edit on 2-5-2009 by miragezero]

a reply to: smallpeeps

Yo what's up! Suddenly I can post again! Weird!

Hmmm, XP now fading... I mostly have been posting on bitcointalk.org these days.

But I promise to be good ATS bosses, c'mon I give you good content, dripping with brain matter. So, thanks for being the database of you know, conspiracy and all that.

But can anyone help me to compile code on Linux Ubuntu? It's not as easy as in M$ Visual Studio, this code makes calls that fail in M$ so I have to compile it in Linux.

Windows XP worked on 4mb of ram and Win7 now needs 1000 X more at 4gb

No one I knew as a software developer mastered everything in XP and even as an expert on security I will admit I don't have a clue as to what goes on under the hood on win7

Walmart sells a wider range of food now and programmers are popping down to the shops to buy frozen, dried or tin cans and taking them home and are then telling everyone that they are master chefs but they are not and are little better than burger flippers working at McDonald.

They don't know whats inside the tin and take it as fact anything they read on the label.

Code that you can get from Stack Exchange will show how to call a windows API to list all the locked files but the only trouble is that half of these locked files are missing. You can also get code that lists all the network connections using native windows API's (Bit like netstats) only trouble is, again half the data is missing.

The times I have been prevented from deleting what looks like an empty folder is untrue and do spare my intelligence about hidden folders/files

Even Microsoft cannot resolve every network connection back to a windows process and WireShark has the same trouble and they call it secure? Yes right and that's from the people that keep giving free updates out to the 70% plus of people who are ruining pirate windows.

You know when you drag a file from one folder to the next but have not yet let go of the mouse button and windows freezes for a few seconds (sometimes a lot longer) well I happen to know that windows is taking a background copy at this stage and the reason I know is because I have written a Webdav server and you can see whats going on from the servers end.

Microsoft now decides what you can block from the ect/Hosts file, not you because they know better.

Developers are being lead down a one way street and MS took C++ and put fancy toys in it and called it C# and now they have F# but people (myself included) cannot do a thing without using the mega bloated .Net framework, we are locked in to Microsoft and its a deliberate ploy.

TaskHost, SvcHost , DasHost are used to host process for the thousands of dynamic linked library's that comes with windows to hide whats going on under the hood and making it difficult to apply security or control the beast known as windows.

You must not use COM, it's old hat we are told and yet half of windows core components still uses COM with a .Net Wrapper and you are a braver man that me if you dare to even try to backup and restore the windows registry.

if you are an expert developer and think all is above board then knock up a file watch program, point it to the root c-drive and list the changes in a list-view, close all applications, hit run, go to bed and tomorrow you can tell me why 2,000-5,000 files have been deleted, moved, changed even with as many services as possible being turned off and most scheduled tasks disabled along with file recovery, updates and windows defender all being turned off.

Having written DNS-Servers, Proxy-servers, Network sniffer, Webdav server, reg clean, file clear programs and God knows what else I am aware that windows has hidden sub levels hidden from prying eyes, programmers and tools like task manager/ resource manager and just now and then I get to see things that I cannot explain from the logs in my hardware firewall.

Hackers are being used as an escape goat much like the terrorists in this so called war on terror and sure we have some that might like to format your drive or carry out a primitive DDOS attack but who left the back door open and who by default leaves the windows outbound firewall rules turned off, who allows any tom dick or harry to search every node (not quite true) in the widows registry.

I've been telling people that thought they were experts for years about HTTPS not being safe, most just laughed but it's funny because now they all talk after heartbeat that they knew all along well they didn't know. most don't have a clue who Bob and Alice are they just bang on about Microsoft preferred methods, best practices or some other current notion from Microsofts bible that changes every other year.

All I can say is start from the perspective that windows is a virus and the enemy is the state/corporations and you are not too far away from the truth and do spend money on a new router with a decent firewall because that can protect your whole network and not just machine running the windows NT/XP/Vista/Win7-8 Virus.

a reply to: smallpeeps

"I think in the future when a packet is sniffed, it will be encrypted (non-transparent) and all net traffic will be that way. The de-mystification of the packets will happen on the local machine."

Yes I agree and I can see you know a bit about what you are talking about and credit to you for trying to pull away from Microsoft.

What you might have been fooled into thinking (like I was) is that Alice sends Bob a lock and Bob uses that lock to post his own lock in the box back to Alice who then uses Bob's lock ?

Web browsers don't use any lock from Bob, I know from writing man-in-middle SSL code, it's just the lock from Alice and all the locks from Alice share the same key so get a copy of that key and you can see how in real time all this so called secure data can be decrypted in real time.

We need 3rd party components that can plugin to the data built into the bios that allow us to control our own encryption long before it gets anywhere near windows because windows has clearly show it self to be the weakest link and Microsoft can be anything but trusted.

Maybe some type of DMZ between data decrypted in the BIOS or Network card and windows is needed so that windows is nothing more than a conduit feeding a browser that talks to the BIOS/Network card if you see what I mean.

originally posted by: VirusGuard
a reply to: smallpeeps

What you might have been fooled into thinking (like I was) is that Alice sends Bob a lock and Bob uses that lock to post his own lock in the box back to Alice who then uses Bob's lock ?

Well there is a little more to it then that. Generally it started out with symmetric then later on asymmetric was born. Then a mix of the two came along.

Thanks for the great rplies virusguard! I worked in virus removal for a company for a while, it was so funny because I tried to tell them their processes sucked but in the end it seemed like they just wanted to be stupid until finally one day I was on the phone with a customer and was told to "Hang up the call you are on, the company is done." They laied off the whoe company pretty much. Just dummies who nothing about tech, throwing money down the computerhole. Hey it was a fun job despite laughing and shaking my head at all the mgrs. No leadership is 99% of the jobs anyway, so it's just a paycheck, trying to save these regular users.

Now they are actually just being exploited.

Yeah buddy you know your stuff. In trms of conspiracy, when do you think M$ actually became a treasonous entity seeking to destroy computing? I feel it was during the poor recption of Vista they just said "Forget what people think, they will do what we tell them"

Haha, also it's a templar flag the logo. A multiolored rainbow templar flag, but still, it was kinda of a set up hehe. I tried all my life to wake up employees and users around me. The mgrs and VP are just taking the cash and running. All over, goodbye Microsoft, good luck being a PHONE now. Dummies.

a reply to: smallpeeps

I think it started to turn bad when 3rd parties like Borland got pushed out and MS moved from just providing a platform (glorified file server) to trying to offer a total solution, one size fits all.

They have taken permissions, rights and ownership to lock even the best developers out from their own computers to hide more and more dirty tricks under the bonnet.

No one can have God mode else you would see too much, ask too many questions and this is what they call security when I am quite capable of screwing my system up without any help from MS and it's security.

I am not sure quite when the NSA took Bil Gates aside (He nicked windows from Olivetti anyway) but they are so keen for anyone to have a copy of windows even if they won't pay that if you report a case of piracy to microsoft you are first told to fill out an on-line form and then they send you an email saying that you have to put it in writing.

Windows is so secure that even as administrator you are blocked from dumping file from a webdav into the c-root and so secure that even cracked/pirate version of windows get updates from Microsoft, want them or not.

Had Microsoft not effectively given away so much free software then it is quite possible that today everyone would be running one form or another of Unix and then the CIA/NSA would had lost the ability to switch everyone off.

Would you like to explain to me why I need to re-boot my computer just so I can move where IE10 stores my internet temporary folder or why we have super hidden folders like "Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5" and why with all my skills I cannot delete Index.dat files in these folders, yes that right I cannot delete files so what kind of programmer am I ?

Well OK for those of you that don't know MS Locks about 20 of these index.dat files with about ten process per file and if you kill all these processes then windows crashes, No you cannot do them all from a batch file that runs at start up, you don't have permissions.

But what you can do is open a file-stream and fill the files up with zero's but anyway I should not have to got to war with my computer just to delete my internet browsing history, drivers maybe but not what MS is calling Temporary Internet Files.

I gotta get that one friend of mine in the real world into this threads. Hehe.

Good to be back.

originally posted by: VirusGuard
a reply to: smallpeeps

[...]

They have taken permissions, rights and ownership to lock even the best developers out from their own computers to hide more and more dirty tricks under the bonnet.

[...]

Bro, my first question: What is this: 'best developers' you speak of? 99.99% of them make bug ridden crap on orders from above. ???

I made a thread called Microsoft Backdoor Reloaded 2. Using netstat to capture outgoing communications and stored it in a output txt file at 10 second intervals. While doing this I started basically disabling/enabling services. To see which services dial home. I caught crypto services establishing a http connection in the log and posted my findings. I already knew this sort of thing happens a lot on many services. Microsoft claims there is no secret backdoor in their products.


The crypto service connection is routine and is normal for updates. However, my argument was, how do we know what exactly is being sent when it's encrypted? Microsoft could easily collect meta data of the machine and sneak it in on that connection. A log or two or even send the entire registry over the net on a fast connection and no one would think anything of it. They could know what your internal network looks like with a simple log. Since your machine is dialing in to their server they already know the machines info and IP address. You bet your ass that Microsoft knows a lot more about the machine than what they are saying is going over that communication. That's just one service and there is probably multiple services that do this. In fact malware and viruses basically use the same tactic to create a persistent connection. What better way to do it than to use Microsoft's own Windows Services to load it automatically, or use the registry, create a task, or simply use the start up folder. There are multiple ways.

When you install Windows there is a built in administrator account that is made and then it is disabled once the first user is created, which is also a administrator. Usually 9 times out of 10 that user will continue to use that user (admin group) account. When that user downloads a program and gets a virus or root backdoor, since the user is admin the virus also becomes admin or with admin privileges.

The thing is Microsoft doesn't tell people that you should create another normal user and use policies to protect the system and administrator accounts. This would stop the majority of viruses dead in their tracks. Why? The normal user under the systems security policy cannot download, cannot alter the registry, cannot use msconfig tools, cannot use the CLI, cannot create services, cannot alter the registry etc.

Some browser hijacking viruses may still get through the browser because of flash, java and other things running in the browser. Those sorts of things are still able to punch holes in the security of the system because they are still ran as SYSTEM even though they are under a normal user with no administrator privileges. It's definitely an ongoing debacle.