WIN XP Support

[cbbahn]

Hi all,

I am just working with my winXP laptop and i am very satisfied, so I
see no reason to switch to candy-like win8.

As MS ends support soon, might it be possible to set up a private firm
or organisation who provide security fixes and patches for an annual
fee? Or is there so much internal MS knowledge needed that an outside
just cann't provide any sufficient support? What do you think? I am
just curious and not be able to do that because I just start to learn
programming.

Kind regards,

Christopher

[Auric__]

cbbahn wrote:

> I am just working with my winXP laptop and i am very satisfied, so I
> see no reason to switch to candy-like win8.

You're not alone, believe me. I wouldn't have switched to 7 if I could get XP
to work on my new computer. (Also, my tablet needs 7 because there are no XP
drivers for most of the hardware.)

> As MS ends support soon, might it be possible to set up a private firm
> or organisation who provide security fixes and patches for an annual
> fee? Or is there so much internal MS knowledge needed that an outside
> just cann't provide any sufficient support? What do you think? I am
> just curious and not be able to do that because I just start to learn
> programming.

If we're talking "possible in any way, shape, or form," then sure, anything's
possible. It's also possible that pigs will spontaneously sprout wings.

There are numerous problems with third-party support that goes *that* far...
not the least of which is they'd probably get the living shit sued out of
them by Microsoft. (Why? I dunno. That's just what large corporations do.)

--
"Hear, hear!" I said. "'Less than perfect.'
What I've been aiming for all my life."

[R.Wieser]

cbbahn,

> As MS ends support soon, might it be possible to set up
> a private firm or organisation who provide security fixes
> and patches for an annual fee?

No, for several reasons.

The most important one is that XP will stay owned by MS and thus you are
still not allowed to do anything commercial with the OS itself without their
say-so. Which you most likely won't get.

Another thing is that bugs are normally tracked/found/solved while being
able to look at the sourcecode of the malfunctioning program. As MS does
not allow many people to look at their sourcecode (at least not for free)
you're stuck there too.

Yet another thing is that a possible solution needs to be thoroughly tested
(otherwise it could easily break something), which costs a lot of time and
money. Do you have that (and do you think you can sell enough fixes to
recuperate the money you spend) ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


-- Origional message:
cbbahn <cbb...@gmail.com> schreef in berichtnieuws
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[Deanna Earley]

It kinda' requires having the source code to provide fixes to it.
That is solely in the domain of Microsoft, unless you want to move
wholly until the realms of Wine.

--
Deanna Earley (dee.e...@icode.co.uk)
iCatcher Development Team
http://www.icode.co.uk/icatcher/

iCode Systems

(Replies direct to my email address will be ignored. Please reply to the
group.)

[JJ]

On Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:09:17 -0700 (PDT), cbbahn wrote:
> As MS ends support soon, might it be possible to set up a private firm
> or organisation who provide security fixes and patches for an annual
> fee?

Very unlikely. Even for those that freely publicized a working
tweak/fix/patch for a commercial product and the are relatively large number
of people using it, most will get a cease-and-desist letter from the
company. Even tough the tweak/fix/patch authors don't take any money.

This applies not just for Microsoft, but for any software companies
including hardware companies where the tweak/fix/patch is for the driver or
the software that is part of the driver installation.

[Deanna Earley]

On 28/04/2013 14:09, cbbahn wrote:

> As MS ends support soon, might it be possible to set up a private firm
> or organisation who provide security fixes and patches for an annual
> fee?

Oh, you do know that Microsoft will still continue to offer support if
you pay them more money?

[JJ]

On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:19:36 +0100, Deanna Earley wrote:
> Oh, you do know that Microsoft will still continue to offer support if
> you pay them more money?

I've read somewhere (I think it's Reddit's Windows section).

They said; Only large companies may pay for additional support as well as
request for patches. Smaller companies may not be "eligible" to request
patches, just support.

But I'm guessing everyone including individual, can request for patches as
long as they have deep pockets.

[Charlie Gibbs]

In article <kllogl$g77$1...@speranza.aioe.org>, dee.e...@icode.co.uk

(Deanna Earley) writes:

> On 28/04/2013 14:09, cbbahn wrote:
>
>> As MS ends support soon, might it be possible to set up a private
>> firm or organisation who provide security fixes and patches for an
>> annual fee?
>
> Oh, you do know that Microsoft will still continue to offer support
> if you pay them more money?

I doubt it. M$ has a vested interest in burying all previous versions
of Windows. The delightful term I once heard was "de-conceived".

--
/~\ cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

[Bob Masta]

On Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:09:17 -0700 (PDT), cbbahn

Just my own personal opinion, but I don't see a burning need
for further support.

I may be unusual, in that although I use XP as my main
"workhorse" for development, that system is *never*
connected to the internet.

Maybe support would be needed for internet-connected
systems, if the Bad Guys come up with a new and nasty
exploit. But my guess is that whatever badness they come up
with could be better handled by a firewall or browser
update... no need to touch the OS.

Other than new internet exploits, XP has been around so long
that any "normal" bugs that haven't been patched by now are
probably minor, or easily avoided.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v7.21
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
Frequency Counter, Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI
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[Geoff]

On Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:31:50 GMT, N0S...@daqarta.com (Bob Masta)
wrote:

>I may be unusual, in that although I use XP as my main
>"workhorse" for development, that system is *never*
>connected to the internet.

Does that mean you *never* updated it? If not, why not?
If you have updated it how did you do it without connecting it?
Should I be worried about applications you published that have been
built without the latest patches to the libraries they use?

[Bob Masta]

I bought a CD containing SP3 from Microsoft. <g>

But OS version does not affect library use with respect to
most software. There are libraries that come with language
compilers, which are separate products from the OS. (And
which I don't use anyway, since Daqarta is 100% assembly
language.)

Then there are DLLs that are part of the API for the OS, but
which are upgraded by the *users* on their own systems. An
app can call a standard API function (say, to show text on
the screen) and let the OS do the rest. It may be that the
newer OS version uses (say) better graphics acceleration for
the same API function, but the app doesn't need to know
about that. (And probably shouldn't, and usually can't even
if it wanted to.)

And if there was a security problem with a particular API
function on the old version, simply running the app on the
newer version completely solves the problem.

But in case you are still concerned, note that if you
download Daqarta from my site you are guaranteed of getting
a digitally signed version (which can be verfied from within
the program to prove it hasn't been tampered with), and that
VirusTotal has tested it on the latest versions of over 40
different anti-virus packages and passed it with flying
colors.