Microsoft Software Catastrophe? We Should Have Seen Through Windows Years Ago.

 by Ian R Thorpe, 19 July 2024

A worldwide problem with Windows computer operating systems has caused mayhem for all types of business around the world. Airlines grounded hundreds of flights, trains and buses were cancelled. Shops and other buinesses were unable to proess card payments. Doctors’ surgeries, hospitals, television stations, payment platforms – virtually all sectors of human society have been affected And the cybersecurity firm whose software update caused the problem are warning it may take days or even weeks to get everything running prpery. 

Apparently the problem was caused by an update to an anti - hacking program loaded to computers overnight. So far Microsoft has ruled out a cyber attack and pointed the finger of blame at CrowdStrike, a company specializing in safe-guarding systems against cyber attacks.

So rather ironic but then my experieces with a security firm which bears a name that should have warned me they're a bunch of pirates, have taught me that having an anti - virus package can be as bad as, if not worse than having a virus on your computer.

Allegedly the fault that caused today's chaos was due to a software update, CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz has already begun the public mea culpa, but at the same time warned it wouldn’t be a quick fix:

Well Crowdsrike may have fucked up their software, but the wider problem is the inevitable result of an operating system architecture that really just an aglommeration of barely related modules, patches, fixes, widgets, bells and whistles grown piecemeal over the sapce of thirty years to suit primarily the commercial interests of the providers rather than the interests of the users. Countries like Russia and China that have evolved their own independent systems partly due to sanctions policies but largely due to common sense have been unaffected0 by this outage.

I have often atracted a lot of abuse for saying this but I reckon that our hamfisted trading and sanctions policies are actually doing our ‘adversaries’ a favor. It was always utter folly to move to a situation in whih the majority of our commercial, economic and social activity is totally dependent on a single, rather dodgy technology. Yes I'm talking about Windows. It isn't a fully integrated software suite as one would expect for somthing so vital to the world, but a mash up of software oddments, piled layer upon layer and held together with the digital equivalent of string and sticky tape.

To illustrate what I mean about the shoddiness of this product and the output from Silicon Valley in general I recently, just for fun, (we old guys who in the early part of our careers wrote software for mainframes have a strange idea of fun,) drilled down through the various layers of Windows 10 and found that its living, beating heart is the old DOS kernel that powered the first IM 8086 PCs in 1981.

Until May tgis year I was mainly using Win 7 with no problem while the WIN 10 computer I bought four years ago gathered dust because I hated the operting system so much there was a major risk every time I booted up that it wouldgo through the (glass( window in a very short time. 

In my not so humble opinion the Windows operating system was perfected with XP, after the disaster of Windows Vista Win 7 was really just XP with added annoying features. Back then applications were purchased not rented and usually functioned perfectly, or if they didn't, could be reloaded from CD or the dowloaded source code. After that it was all downhill, Win 8,10, 11 made stupid alterations to turn Windows into a middleman for BigTech's software-as-a-service scam, and a surveillance engine to sell god knows what private information to advertising firms and government. (Remember MS’s claim the “W10 would be the last W”?) Once a tool for users, 8-11 make users into tools of Microsoft and Commerce ambitions. Once a service, now an overlord.

Luckily for us eccentrics there have been Open Office and its successor Libre Office, Mozilla (and TOR if you're a privacy junkie,) and loads more free or very cheap software to do just about everything we might want to.

Today's event is a perfect example of what centralized/global organizing produces. Catastrophes. This transition to virtualized life worked on since the mid 90’s via computers is a pie in the sky dream of billionaire psychopaths and political control freaks. Now they have centralized everyone on a grid, a network of dependence, all users are vulnerable and without localized options that existed before. They wish. Seducing us with “convenience”, then when we all sign up, they have the world by the bollocks. Add in AI (requiring 2x all current power plant output) they believe they will assume absolute control over everything, centrally. Cupid stunts.

Linux, open source software is an option as well as non-participation via Win7. Gen 6 Intel machines can be rolled back successfully and then one can use all the robust software up until about 2015, free of rentier landlordism. And the “cloud” is just a massive surveillance and intellectual property theft device for elites. Once we are all over to Linux the old mainstream software and new independent software still open to 7 will be available through Linux/software configuration schemes. Also acts of non-participation, grassroots.

As i keep saying, the 21st C elites no longer have anything to offer Humanity with their “progress” and “convenience” offerings.

Mass centralization schemes (Digital cash, biotracking IDs, massvax) will never work as dreamed so best to pull out now. The current nightmare is the tip of an iceberg of dysfunction ahead. The sooner one withdraws to historically safe, localized systems of sharing support, the sooner we move from 1% obsolete growth cult to 99% maintenance sustainability. 

Sans 1% of course.

 

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