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Windows 10 Successor Codenamed 'Redstone,' Targeting 2016 Launch

Posted by Soulskill on from the please-just-call-it-windows-11 dept.

MojoKid writes: Windows 10 isn't even out the door yet, so what better time than now to talk about its successor? Believe it or not, there's a fair bit of information on it floating around already, including its codename: "Redstone." Following in the footsteps of 'Blue' and 'Threshold', Redstone is an obvious tie-in to Microsoft's purchase of Minecraft, which it snagged from Mojang last year. Redstone is an integral material in the game, used to create simple items like a map or compass as well as logic gates for building electronic devices, like a calculator or automatic doors. The really important news is that we could see Windows Redstone sometime in 2016.

122 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by Haymaker · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    Wasn't there some kind of "every other Windows" rule that said they get released in bad Windows, good Windows

    and this one is already named after a Minecraft material that's frustrating to use...

    1. Re:Hmm by i_ate_god · · Score: 2, Informative

      sort of

      Win95/ME bad, Win98 good, Win2k good, WinXP good, WinVista bad, Win7 good, Win8 bad

      --
      I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
    2. Re:Hmm by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm thinking that they are breaking this pattern now, and have a new one.

      Everything after Win7 bad . . .

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re:Hmm by kingbyu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except that you need to track their consumer Windows versions in order: Windows 3.1 - Good, Win95 - Bad (Then OK with SP2), Win98 - Good, WinME - Very Bad, WinXp - Good, Visa - Bad, Win7 - Good, Win8 - Bad Bad.
      (Don't put WinME out of order and don't mix in Win2k if you aren't also going to include Windows NT)

    4. Re:Hmm by ralphsiegler · · Score: 1

      No your mixing apples and kumquats. Windows 2000 doesn't belong in list, that's in NT series. WinME is between 98 and XP, it was BAD

    5. Re:Hmm by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

      XP and later are the NT series too. Win2K was the first version of NT that saw any significant consumer use. It was originally intended to replace both NT4 and 98 (unifying the two streams like XP eventually did), but they later changed their mind and released 98SE and ME. Still, 2K was far more consumer-friendly than NT4 was, and lots of technically oriented users like myself followed the upgrade path of 98 -> 2K -> XP.

    6. Re: Hmm by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...I think you're the first person in history to call Windows 8.1 "good" and Windows 2000 "bad." What's your secret?

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    7. Re: Hmm by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      8.1 Update is not bad. I wouldn't call it bad. It is "different" enough for people not able to change to have issues (i.e. dumb people). My mom can use 8.1 just fine after bypassing 7 completely, and she isn't any geek.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    8. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Who are these people who say Windows 95 was bad? Did you even use 3.11? Windows 95 was a huge improvement thanks to features like:

      Virtual address space - In 3.11 a program could read and/or overwrite other program's data in memory. Firstly, this wasn't very secure. Secondly, this lead to massive instability because you a rouge program could overwrite parts of the operating system in memory, which generally lead to the computer restarting. I remember leaning the memory management aspects of C in Windows 3.11 and suffering regular restarts if I made a mistake. Even commercial programs would often cause the whole computer to crash due to memory mismanagement.

      Pre-emptive multi-tasking - In 3.11 if a program never handed control of the CPU back to the operating system (e.g. got stuck in a loop) you had to restart the computer. If a program was doing a computationally intensive operation it would lock up the whole computer until it completed leaving the UI unresponsive. With time slicing and pre-empting in Windows 95 this problem was solved so a rouge program wouldn't bring down the whole operating system.

      Games - With Windows 3.11 you had to play all your games from DOS and that had all the fun of producing a boot disk and editing your autoexec.bat and config.sys to free up base memory to allow your game to run. In Windows 95 you just doubled clicked your game and it ran.

      Fantastic user interface - The Program Manager paradigm in 3.11 was pretty bad. The 95 Task Bar + Start Menu interface was a huge leap forward and is still by fast the best interface design. Shame Microsoft want to throw it away and replace it with coloured boxes.

      There were plenty of other improvements in 95 that made it far better than 3.11. I don't know how people can say it was bad. Here's my list:

      3.11 - Bad - Incredibly unstable and could easily be cause to crash by any program.
      95 - Good - Massive improvement over 3.11.
      98 - Good - Incremental improvement over 95.
      98 SE - Good - Incremental improvement 98.
      2000 - Fantastic - By far Microsoft's best operating system. Lightening Fast, stable, great interface.
      ME - Irrelevant - Didn't matter anyone with any sense went to 2K which came out nearly a year earlier.
      XP - Bad. A big step backwards from 2K. Much slower, stupid blue interface, dogs and wizards stuff all over the place. No benefits over 2K.
      Vista - Bad. Bad Another step back. Incredibly slow and unstable with a terrible interface.
      7 - Bad. Faster and more stable than Vista, but terrible user interface with customisation options going missing.
      8 - Abysmal. Metro touch crap, more customisation options gone.
      10 - Worst so far. They're even replacing the control panel with Metro shit. Won't use.

    9. Re:Hmm by CannonballHead · · Score: 2

      I'm pretty sure Windows 7 was not really just "rebranded Vista." Having used both Vista and Windows 7, it certainly seems like they fixed a whole lot of issues in Vista. Sure, it looks sorta similar more or less continued the Vista-esque GUI/frontend look and feel... but if we're just basing it on the frontend look and feel, then we may as well be comparing Windows to Gnome and KDE... :P

    10. Re:Hmm by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      You clearly didn't spend much time around Windows 95. It was obnoxiously unstable. I worked for a small ISP from the mid-90s until around 2006, and I remember the hell that was the Windows 95 TCP/IP stack, where I got to be a master at leading even neophytes through the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel to uninstall and reinstall TCP/IP just so they could dial up and get a network connection. I remember frequent crashes, memory leaks and the general instability of 95.

      They didn't really clean things up until Windows 98, and within a couple of years of Windows 98 coming out, the number of tech calls I got over Windows issues dropped pretty substantially.

      Windows 95 was a massive kludge to get a 32 bit OS into the consumer market before any competition (there was a time when OS/2 was seen as a serious threat). It was a rush job.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    11. Re: Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Windows ME good? What dimension are you from?

    12. Re:Hmm by praxis · · Score: 1

      The major issue that Windows 7 "fixed" from Vista was it gave hardware manufacturers enough time to write drivers for their hardware. Not a whole lot actually changed, other than time passed and companies adopted the new driver model.

    13. Re:Hmm by sexconker · · Score: 1

      The core installation is great if you're only running MS services and programs. But a lot of 3rd party shit is useless without a GUI.
      I'm not going to run a core instance AND a GUI instance to maintain compatibility with that 3rd party shit. I'm going to run the GUI version and count on one hand the number of times the GUI impacted me in a negative way. Even on the rare occasion when the GUI is hit with a security issue and the core isn't, there are still other patches affecting the core that same day, so a reboot is still scheduled.

    14. Re:Hmm by CannonballHead · · Score: 1

      Is that really the case? I kept Vista up to date, but it never worked as well as Windows 7 on the same hardware. Even something as simple as file transferring was clunky on Vista, or hung, or was crazy slow. Boot times were different between Vista and 7...

      I don't actually know about the internals of what changed, and I realize it was 6.0 to 6.1 (right? I think...), but it certainly seemed a lot different than a "rebranding."

    15. Re:Hmm by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Let's see sleep finally worked, NT swapamatic o (n) algorithm replaced, indexer which caused disk to swap for hours until baked removed and replaced with instant search, networking smb fixed and almost 5 faster without drops, wddm graphics with aero multitasks where before the hour glass circle would wait with multimedia was fixed, and many others. Vista certainly wasn't ready nor baked

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    16. Re:Hmm by DudemanX · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I love all of this revisionist history about how great XP was. It was the exact same as Vista at release. Lots of driver and RAM problems. It required 64MB but wasn't really usuable with that. It was usable with 128MB but didn't really run well unless you had 256MB or more. Just like Vista required 1GB, usable with 2GB, and ran pretty well with 4GB. This is all assuming you had mature working drivers. Once SP2 came out for XP and Vista (Win 7 is essentially Vista SP2) memory sizes were up to where they needed to be and the drivers were plentiful and mature.

    17. Re:Hmm by ralphsiegler · · Score: 2

      but 2012 has that shit 8.x GUI, so it's BAD

    18. Re:Hmm by Chewbacon · · Score: 1

      Win2k bad? Think you made a typo. Other than lack luster hardware support compared to Windows 98, it was much better.

      --
      Chewbacon
      The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
    19. Re:Hmm by WuphonsReach · · Score: 2

      Everything after Win7 bad . . .

      Win10 looks to be a good and solid upgrade to Win7.

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
    20. Re:Hmm by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      This is why the next version will be Windows 12, as version 11 will be skipped altogether.

    21. Re:Hmm by dryeo · · Score: 1

      The problem wit ME was that there were 2 different driver models, one that was backwards compatible with 9x and one that was forward compatible with XP IIRC. As long as you stuck with the new driver model it was fine, start mixing them and it was shit.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    22. Re:Hmm by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      Win10 looks

      Just don't remind me how it looks. Other than that, it's doing fine.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    23. Re:Hmm by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      well, consider that they used the same drivers?
      vista worked just fine after the updates, it just looked like crap.

      ALSO, vista was typically loaded up with bullshit from manufacturers, bullshit like virtual desktops etc etc shitty widgets enabled by default. vanilla vista if you just configured to look like 7 would be pretty much the same as 7.

      as to file transfers and such, there is the possibility that 7 just had better drivers for your motherboard(and not flagged as updates to vista from microsoft) or some such.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    24. Re:Hmm by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      One of the big improvements was a focus on optimization. There were a number of global locks in Windows Vista that were re-engineered in Windows 7 to be much more efficient on multi-core/multi-CPU machines.

      BTW, don't pay any attention to the internal version numbers. These were mismatched simply for compatibility reasons, not because it was a "minor" tech upgrade or anything like that.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    25. Re:Hmm by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      (...don't mix in Win2k if you aren't also going to include Windows NT)

      Win2K, XP, Vista, Win7, Win8....etc are all direct descendants of Windows NT.

      Win 3.1, 95, 98, 98SE, ME were all based on the MSDOS platform-ish.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    26. Re:Hmm by BlackHawk-666 · · Score: 1

      We used Trumpet WinSock back then. It worked a treat. We ran Netware Lite as our network, again, it worked great - though I think we switched to the built in stuff at some point and never had any problems. That was just a 4 man shop however.

      --
      All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
    27. Re: Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just got Win 8.1 + ClassicShell ... it feels like Win7 more or less. There are actual improvements that I like (hdd defrag vs ssd trim).

    28. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Microsoft doesn't care. It wants more people to buy its Windows phones and tablets, and use more of its own ecosystem stuff: Bing, Outlook, Skype, Cortana.

      The desktop PC monopoly is only used as a leverage for other things, because Microsoft is jealous of Apple (hardware) and Google (software and services).

      MIcrosoft changed its CEO, but it is business as usual.

    29. Re:Hmm by dotancohen · · Score: 1

      sort of

      Win95/ME bad, Win98 good, Win2k good, WinXP good, WinVista bad, Win7 good, Win8 bad

      So Windows Redstone will be good, but stay away from Windows Atlas!

      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    30. Re:Hmm by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      When my job requires me to interview senior level developers and architects the fastest way to get your resume shit canned is start spouting religious devotion to any particular technology even of that technology is a requirement for the position. It shows a remarkable lack of the flexibility needed to be a good developer.

      Is that your job interviewing for senior level developers for the next version of windows? If 11 is being talked about 12 must already be being planned, right? Also just as a heads up, when you interview you represent the company. A good way for me (or anyone) to tell a company to go fuck themselves is to put a sanctimonious prick to interview who think he's all the shit because he's asking the question and has the power. No better way to show mismanagement by displaying your biggest twats proudly. What company is that though, just so anyone who doesn't think windows 8 was anything less than shit will apply.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    31. Re:Hmm by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Interesting

      they know there's a fundamental difference.

      it's just that couple of the guys up high on the system were/are willing to sacrifice desktop usability in order to push people into getting their software from microsofts software market rather than directly from software publishers.

      because they want that 30%.

      metro was conceived purely because of that. all the other stuff piled up, all the hurry in making it was because of that(not api parity with old stuff). ALL of it was only for that end goal, even the superficial windows phone etc integration.

      the reason why they're giving the new windows free for tablets is because of that 30%. the reason why they started giving developer tools 100% free is for that 30%. the reason why you were booted into something that piece of shit launcher that would launch the apps from the store was because of that 30%.

      because really, if you're a fatass idiot running the show and look at apple getting 30% of millions of app sales.. then you look at your own platform and realize that you could, potentially, be having 30% of every photoshop cs-whatever's 1000$+ price tag... then you start to steer your company into doing stupid shit like that - and why do you think about the same time that was coming into fold the companies doing sw like photoshop started looking into subscription models? by accident? why did valve push steambox/steamos? the companies stared doing that stuff as insurance. MS never had even a chance of getting that 30%.

      (the phone integration with wp7.5 was realy funny too, had to install fucking zune on windows 8, to get same level of integration you had with android phones out of the box)

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    32. Re: Hmm by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      ...I think you're the first person in history to call Windows 8.1 "good" and Windows 2000 "bad." What's your secret?

      They also wrote "Windows Me - good" which suggests something like a psychotic break with reality.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    33. Re:Hmm by Drethon · · Score: 1

      And the fact you could get software from many publishers, rather than just Microsoft, is why Microsoft has the massive market share over Apple. Guess history is not a good lesson.

    34. Re:Hmm by danbert8 · · Score: 1

      Most people didn't transition to XP until they were forced to by Microsoft killing off 2K. Windows 2000 was where all the power users were until you had to upgrade directx (limited to XP only) or they stopped doing security updates. By then XP was equivalent to 2000 in usability.

      --
      Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
    35. Re:Hmm by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 1

      I had mixed feelings about W95. There were a lot of improvements over Win 3X, but stability wasn't one of them. There was one day it went down 15 times! In one 8 hour day! That's no exaggeration, I actually counted the reboots. The upside is, I got a lot of breaks. :-P

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
    36. Re:Hmm by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      The left hand side of the Start Menu with the ' hierarchical menu of apps' works the same in the latest build of Windows 10 as it does in Windows 7.

    37. Re:Hmm by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I got to be a master at leading even neophytes through the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel to uninstall and reinstall TCP/IP just so they could dial up and get a network connection.

      That's what really screwed 95 and 98. Stuff could very easily break so badly that the only way to fix it was to re-install the component, or the entire OS. Your system could be hosed by some dodgy configuration set up by a free AOL CD and the only way to fix it was to reinstall your TCP/IP stack, which for most users meant buying a new computer.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    38. Re: Hmm by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      Did name calling make you feel better? Your comment was otherwise useless drivel.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    39. Re: Hmm by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      8.1 Update goes right to the desktop. Most people have their commonly used programs right there anyways, and Metro is just an ugly Start menu. It is ugly, but it isn't bad. The fact that most people don't customize it properly is part of the problem.

      Customization means it isn't quite standardized, which is also part of the problem.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    40. Re:Hmm by macs4all · · Score: 1

      And the fact you could get software from many publishers, rather than just Microsoft, is why Microsoft has the massive market share over Apple. Guess history is not a good lesson.

      Um, that's not why.

      There is one, and only one, reason why Microsoft once had massive market share over Apple (and everyone else) in the business world: Exchange and Outlook.

      Period. Seriously. Period.

      Further, Apple has never restricted the sources from which you could get software for MacOS nor OS X. In recent years, it has made the user make a conscious decision to do so; but it has never disallowed Macintosh software from any source.

      You're confusing OS X and iOS. Pretty lame for a Slashdotter.

    41. Re:Hmm by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Apple avoided similar issues because they have taken total control of both the hardware and software where MS went with supporting the commodity market.

      IOW, "You get what you pay for."

    42. Re:Hmm by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      Sleep (at least on laptops) worked steadily for me since Windows 2000 until Win7 actually. On one of my Vista machines, hibernate was broken due to an NVidia driver bug (that was never fixed before that video card became unsupported), but on a Vista machine with an ATi card, it worked fine. On Win7, a (new) laptop with a different NVidia card couldn't enter sleep, but could do hibernate. Don't blame Microsoft for shitty graphics drivers that fail to switch power states (you can see it recorded in the Event Viewer).

      I stopped buying NVidia graphics cards after that; their drivers used to be good, but ever since the switch to WDDM they've been shit. They've even managed to cause BSODs (happened to my roommate a couple months ago, then-brand-new card with fully updated drivers) by crashing, and then crashing *again* within a few seconds of being brought back online (pre-WDDM, any video driver crash meant BSOD, but ever since Vista the drivers run in user-space and don't automatically bring the system down when they crash, provided they can be started again).

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    43. Re:Hmm by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      Vista's base requirement (on the box) was 512MB, actually, although you needed 1GB for Aero. It would technically boot on 384MB, but it ran like shit even compared to normal! Running on 1280MB (stupid laptops that only have one replaceable module...) was viable, though not great, if you used a high-end (for the time) 2GB SD card for ReadyBoost (basically, a disk cache that made it a lot faster to pull stuff into RAM, which was handy when you didn't have enough RAM to keep anything but the smallest possible working set live), it worked all right. I gamed on that box (DotA, Eve Online, some TF2). My next box also ran Vista but had 2GB of RAM. It was a pretty solid gaming box, though (once I installed a beta NVidia driver; the official one "worked" but many features were missing and it ran at about 40% the framerate).

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    44. Re: Hmm by Jaqian4274 · · Score: 1

      More like win95 good, win98 bad, win98 SE good, win2000 good, winME bad, winXP good, Vista bad, win7 good. win8 isn't necessarily bad just the UI wasn't popular.

    45. Re:Hmm by Leslie43 · · Score: 1

      This. Very much this.
      While they look and operate similar, the underlying functionality and minor gui changes made a vast difference in how the OS ran. Vista generally requires twice the memory to keep up with Win7. Back when Vista was released, that was A LOT of memory.

  2. Visual Studio with the Minecraft Interface ? by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Funny

    You really will have blocks of code then

    1. Re:Visual Studio with the Minecraft Interface ? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Perhaps this is the TRUE reason why Microsoft bought Minecraft... they realized some Minecraft-happy devs on the Windows team has now littered the Windows source code with Minecraft remarks that they'd get sued. So it was cheaper to buy Minecraft than fix the source code.

  3. Why is that important news? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    The really important news is that we could see Windows Redstone sometime in 2016.

    What, really, is important about that?

    No-one was expecting Microsoft to stop at Windows 10, were they?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Why is that important news? by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      No, Mr. Monkey. We were expecting everyone to install Linux and don't really care what MS does.

      Maybe next year...

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    2. Re:Why is that important news? by Nukenbar · · Score: 1

      Because you usually don't need an entirely new OS every year, unless you are Ubuntu.

    3. Re:Why is that important news? by PwrSwitch · · Score: 1

      It's also likely just an update to Windows 10 to include everything they didn't give themselves time for by the summer release, not a successor. Windows 8.1 went through a couple of these larger updates, so I imagine it'll be similar to that.

    4. Re:Why is that important news? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Spïñäl Täp didn't.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:Why is that important news? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      Microsoft have an official OS cycle of 1.5 years for interim builds and 3 years for major releases. they have been lax in meeting that goal in the past but this seems to be pretty well sticking to normal release cycle (assuming end of 2016).

    6. Re:Why is that important news? by sexconker · · Score: 5, Funny

      Windows Live. The only Windows with DirectX 12.1.
      Only $9.99 per month per device. Includes 60 minutes of Skype credit, a bunch of storage you'll never fill up on a good service you won't use because it isn't called Dropbox, and you have to log into your Microsoft account to do anything. No, your Microsoft account. Your email address you don't use. No, not that one. Look, do you have an Xbox? It used to be called Hotmail but we don't call it that anymore. It's the one you use to view on Outlook. No, not at work, on outlook.com. Yes, even though your address ends in hotmail.com.

    7. Re:Why is that important news? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Pretty much summed up what happened when Mrs Hog bought a laptop with Win 8 on it. Apart from being horrified that it automatically logs you into everything when you start it, so you try creating a local user, but that doesn't do updates or something, so you say sod it, I'll create a new throwaway account. And then you forget the password...

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    8. Re:Why is that important news? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      No, Mr. Monkey. We were expecting

      ...you to die!

      Sorry. I've been watching Bond films lately.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  4. Redstone by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    Redstone is integral to Minecraft if you play it at a 'higher' level, but lots of players never do much with it, beyond a compass and a few other simple things.

    Also, with reference to Minecraft, what gives, Microsoft? There still isn't a native Metro version for my tablet and phone.

    1. Re:Redstone by Beck_Neard · · Score: 1

      Microsoft traditionally code-named its Windows projects after skiing destinations (Longhorn, Whistler, Blackcomb, etc.)

      --
      A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
    2. Re:Redstone by Pope+Hagbard · · Score: 1

      Given they're naming Windows 10 features after things in Halo, it's a fair bet this is Minecraft-related.

    3. Re: Redstone by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      WinRT is pretty much dead now. The cheap Windows tablets are x86 with Atom processors.

      I can play regular Minecraft on my 8.1 Transformer Book but only with the awkward keyboard/mouse interface. If you're gonna use Minecraft words in your platforms, at least have a native port to them, Microsoft!

    4. Re:Redstone by zoid.com · · Score: 1

      I knew I could count on someone from Huntsvegas to chime in....

      --
      Zoid.com
    5. Re:Redstone by Alomex · · Score: 1

      Yeah, like Chicago.... oh wait!

      Windows 10 was codenamed after a location seen in Halo: Combat Evolved, so it follows that Redstone likely comes from a computer game. I wonder which one...

    6. Re:Redstone by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Or the sacrificial alter on which the good parts of Windows7 were slain.

    7. Re:Redstone by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      What phone do you have that doesn't have a Minecraft version? It was ported to WP8 near-instantly upon acquisition. http://www.windowsphone.com/en...

      If you're still running WP7, well, um... sucks to be you? Considering that there are sub-$100 (full price, no carrier subsidy) WP8 devices, there's no excuse for running a two-years-since-last-release OS. Even carrier contracts bought at exactly the wrong time would let you upgrade by now.

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  5. They finally found some use for Minecraft by La+Gris · · Score: 1

    Now it is clear why Microsoft spent so much to buy Mojang.

    --
    Léa Gris
    1. Re:They finally found some use for Minecraft by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      I am starting to think Microsoft bought Mojang to stabilize it and keep it OS neutral. A lot of the other entities that could have bought it would already have started using Minecraft to do nasty things to other platforms.

      It would have really sucked for Google to buy Mojang. Save files would have already been mandatorily been sucked to the cloud. Ads on the launcher. And knowing Google an eol would already be announced.

    2. Re:They finally found some use for Minecraft by BevanFindlay · · Score: 1

      This is an interesting post: Microsoft is now the good guy and Google the bad? The insane thing is that I think you're right.

      I doubt Minecraft would ever have an EOL, no matter what its current owner tried to do to it though... Methinks it will be the kind of thing that someone is going to keep running indefinitely, and eventually porting to all kinds of bizarre platforms that don't even exist yet (google for "It runs Doom" if you want to know what I'm meaning). I do wonder if Notch's original plan of "eventually" open-sourcing it will ever happen - it would be nice if MS kept to that (once they've let it print them money for another 5 or 10 years, of course...)

  6. So Windows 10 wasn't made to stay after all? by demon+driver · · Score: 1

    What about those rumors saying Windows 10 was made to stay, with continual updates instead of new major versions every now and then, and a possible introduction of a subscription scheme?

    1. Re:So Windows 10 wasn't made to stay after all? by bondsbw · · Score: 1

      This may be 10.1. Windows codename "Blue" was 8.1.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
  7. Seeing the words "Redstone" and "Launch" = happy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    PGM-11 Redstone, The United State's first operational ballistic missile, and for more peaceful purposes, configured as Mercury-Redstone, the capsule/booster stack which put Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom into space with suborbital flights.

  8. better than Treadstone by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    but it would have been funner.

  9. Words by BradleyUffner · · Score: 1

    I love how the summary had more words describing features of Minecraft than it had describing features of the OS.

    1. Re:Words by zlives · · Score: 1

      you know its just the mine craft theme for win 10 right?!! not new OS

  10. XP phobia by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

    The fact that the fear of change starting with XP and still to this day many businesses which are smaller still using it with plans to change scare them.

    Annual new releases though will drive them harder to Windows 7 more than any other time in computer history. It means businesses which take years to upgrade due to dozens if not hundreds of apps and ancient IE intranet sites will need staff that just upgrades and changes for the sake of changes year round!

    Cost accountants and CIOs will not like annual upgrades

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:XP phobia by scamper_22 · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure how much of an issue this really is today. Just a couple of years back, for sure. It was a huge issue.

      Heck, right now, many workplaces are switching to web solutions. This has one big advantage in terms of standards and legacy. There is definitely some QA here. many of these were big issues just a few years back. Be it IE6 or older windows applications. I think at my current slow enterprise role, we just got rid of the last non web solution. It still ran though on Windows 7, but its out of there.

      If it really becomes a big enough issue for them to lose enterprise customers, I'm pretty sure they have a virtualization solution or they will keep sandboxed versions of legacy applications. It's a very solvable problem. Heck, it would probably cost them nothing at that point to release a free Windows XP Virtual Machine for that rare legacy support.

    2. Re:XP phobia by Pope+Hagbard · · Score: 1

      Annual new releases though will drive them harder to Windows 7 more than any other time in computer history

      :rolleyes: 7's already out of mainstream support and will EOL in 2020. That's a short-term solution at best.

    3. Re:XP phobia by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      Dude my inbox is flooded with jobs for XP to Windows 7 migrations TODAY! They just started and in their eyes 7 is a brand new OS so why waste more money?

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    4. Re:XP phobia by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      I was chatting with a network contractor who came from a network solutions company. Just under half about 40% still cling to XP.

      My inbox is flooded with jobs looking for XP to 7 migration experts. Most companies today look at IT as a cost and not an asset as it adds no value to the bottom line

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    5. Re:XP phobia by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Most companies today look at IT as a cost and not an asset as it adds no value to the bottom line

      This is self evident unless they're an IT company.

      Just because something is a cost doesn't mean you can just cut it indefinitely with no impact.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    6. Re:XP phobia by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      That seems like a really bad way of doing things. XP is fundamentally insecure, there are good reasons to move away from it. Instead of spending time fire-fighting XP infections and unfixed bugs, finding drivers for modern laptops that still work with it etc, moving to 7 years ago would have been the sensible thing to do.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. Jurassic Park 7 by JonathanP.Bennett · · Score: 1

    It's a Redstone system, I know this! This time, the young hacker saves the day by knowing minecraft, instead of an sgi unix.

  12. The real reason... by roc97007 · · Score: 2

    ...to talk about the successor now, is that if 10 doesn't pan out, I need to know what I'll be migrating to from Win7 in 2016.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:The real reason... by SeaFox · · Score: 2

      ...to talk about the successor now, is that if 10 doesn't pan out, I need to know what I'll be migrating to from Win7 in 2016.

      If they can get it wrong so many times, maybe you should be thinking of migrating to something that's not Windows.

    2. Re:The real reason... by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      I have no problem with Linux, have used CentOS and Fedora at home for several years. It's also almost time to seriously consider an Android tablet, because most regular consumer stuff could be done on that platform.

      But "most" is the operative word. The real reason I still have one (1) personal Windows box, (not counting the Windows machines I'm required to use at work) is that I make part of my living as a photographer, and the Adobe tools don't work on Linux (or Android) yet. (Oh, Adobe has "tools" that work on Android, but they're toys, not meant for serious work.) The moment they do, I'm gone. Until then, I have to have at least one Winders box in the house.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    3. Re:The real reason... by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      ...to talk about the successor now, is that if 10 doesn't pan out, I need to know what I'll be migrating to from Win7 in 2016.

      If they can get it wrong so many times, maybe you should be thinking of migrating to something that's not Windows.

      I'd love to, but I guess I'm what you'd call an edge case. I need apps that are only ported to Windows and Mac. (I migrated from Mac to Windows a few years ago when Apple and Adobe weren't getting along.)

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    4. Re:The real reason... by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      what's special about 2016? Extended support doesn't end til 2020.

      Very good point. So really, I can ignore the next two releases. Golden.

      Because after all, Windows is not the app. Windows runs apps and manages resources. And trying to get used to a new gooey paradigm just to be able to say that I'm running the latest OS is an exercise in futility.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    5. Re:The real reason... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I make part of my living as a photographer, and the Adobe tools don't work on Linux (or Android) yet.

      Might want to check out Wine, looks like the support for Photoshop is really good.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:The real reason... by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      It's also an anathema to the enterprise world, where stability is valued over gimmick. Why does MS think that all those Pro versions of Windows 8/8.1 ended up being downgraded to Windows 7?

      The last thing I want for my organization is to have to face a major OS facelift every year because MS feels like chasing Google and Apple's tails. MS really has lost the sense of who uses its OS.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    7. Re:The real reason... by youngatheart · · Score: 1

      As someone embedded deep in the business world, I understand what you're saying and your analysis is valid to a point, but I think you're missing the bigger picture.

      For years and years vendors have been refusing to code to standards because enterprise didn't demand support for the current OS. Now that MS is building an infrastructure where even enterprise is going to expect support for a current OS means that's finally starting to change. It can't happen fast enough for me.

      I installed and switched to Windows 10 shortly after it came out, and there was some of the expected pain of running a beta system, but most things worked fine and now nearly everything critical does. The ones that don't are those vendors I already knew weren't investing in competent programmers and I'm thrilled that they will either have to adapt or die.

      A software vendor should hire programmers who write to follow standards and test and fix things in beta releases. They should, but not all of them do. Now they're starting to realize they'll have to or they'll be out of customers and that makes me euphoric.

    8. Re:The real reason... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Standards aren't dictated by one company's product roadmap. You should probably research what a Standard is.

    9. Re:The real reason... by youngatheart · · Score: 1

      I was thinking specifically of HTML and JavaScript, which do have standards. Companies who have been programming to "work on Windows and IE" are the ones that have been discovering that their stuff is failing now that IE is finally starting to only work right with pages coded to those same standards. You're mistaking my preference for standards for a preference to code to MS, which is the opposite of what I endorse.

    10. Re:The real reason... by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      This isn't just about standards like RFCs and IEEE standards. This is about UI changes, about changes in functionality. The substantial differences in how the Windows 8.x UIs work as opposed to every version of Windows from Windows 95 to Windows 7 is a good example of how major changes in even the appearance of a GUI can have ramifications. The enterprise world is clearly unconvinced of Windows 8.1, which is why I can call up any one of a dozen suppliers right now and order a Windows machine not only with Windows 7 downgrade rights, but with Windows 7 actually installed (and I just did, last week).

      The enterprise world is simply not as tolerant of massive UI changes. Enterprise desktops and servers are not smartphones and tablets, and productivity, at least in the short term, can be radically effected by even moderate UI changes.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    11. Re:The real reason... by youngatheart · · Score: 1

      Can't disagree with you there. UI changes w/out backwards options do suck. OTOH, 10 looks and feels an awful lot like 7.

  13. Redstone by bruce_the_loon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, it could be named after an obscure material in a computer game. An in-joke for those who know it.

    Or it could be named after the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, or after the Redstone missile built there by von Braun and which was the base for Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom's flights into space.

    Guess we'll never know.

    --
    Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
  14. Re:10 will be irrelevant anyway by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Since Windows7 does everything you need

    Everything except sound & wifi, based on 2 out of 3 machines I've replaced XP on.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  15. Re:Seeing the words "Redstone" and "Launch" = happ by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    I guess that makes it, the Right Stuff...

  16. Release 2 by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    They will probably call it Release 2.

  17. Games are taking over at MS by safetyinnumbers · · Score: 1

    Cortana, Spartan, now this.

  18. Through a window darkly. by westlake · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Perhaps by 2016 Slashdot will have replaced its stained glass window with a legit Windows icon---
    a courtesy it extends to every other operating system and to projects like GNU Hurd, which hasn't delivered a 1.0 release in twenty-five years.

    1. Re:Through a window darkly. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I liked the old BillGates borg icon.

      And I am typing this on a tablet running Windows 8.1 so I am not a MS hater. Just somebody who likes irreverent humor more than crisp corporate logos.

      Jobs already looks too creepy to borgify for an Apple logo, though the Apple crowd has ALWAYS seemed more assimilated to me.

    2. Re:Through a window darkly. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      No thankyou. Windows is still broken.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:Through a window darkly. by Mr.+Shotgun · · Score: 1

      And risk a trademark infringement lawsuit? Why would they do that?

      --
      Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
    4. Re:Through a window darkly. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Broken in more ways than which OS? and please bear in mind I'm drinking coffee right now and I wouldn't want to ruin my keyboard.

      The OS I wrote in my spare time in my back yard.

      Seriously though, can't we get a half-way decent shell? And don't tell me powershell is decent until it can do redirection <

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:Through a window darkly. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Wrong direction. I even wrote the operator in my post. I'll do it again: <

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:Through a window darkly. by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      If using cat/type/gc/Get-Content and a pipe is too much for you (yes, it's a few extra characters) you can always install bash or zsh or whatever you prefer.

      Seriously, though, you're really stretching if that's what you consider to be broken about Windows. I could easily be similarly nit-picky about Linux, for example, the default file system on many Linux distros has neither transparent encryption nor transparent compression, while Windows (NT family) has had both for the last 15 years.

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    7. Re:Through a window darkly. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Seriously, though, you're really stretching if that's what you consider to be broken about Windows

      It's just one thing out of a million. Any product made by product managers will show their fingerprints. Any product built on the lousy code Microsoft was churning out in the 90s will still have that albatross to carry.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  19. Redstone rocket? by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

    Damn. I must be getting old. I thought it was referring to the Redstone rocket until I read a little further. My daughter plays minecraft, otherwise I wouldn't have even known what redstone was.

    1. Re:Redstone rocket? by 0xdeaddead · · Score: 1

      thats all I could think about. But I guess you know, kids these days.

  20. Mercury redstone by 0xdeaddead · · Score: 1

    you know the start of the manned space race.

  21. Windows 2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Windows 2000 was fantastic. I used it throughout most of the Win XP life cycle.

    1. Re:Windows 2000 by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I held on with W2K almost to the end, too. In fact the only hardware I have ever owned with a 'legit' XP license is a netbook I bought on eBay, and that, I had to reinstall anyways, because it had Japanese XP, but the OEM key sticker on it worked to install US XP from generic OEM media.

      Win2k on a machine not facing the net directly was viable a long long time till hardware stopped being supported, as long as my browser was (still is on desktops) SeaMonkey.

  22. Oh look by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Another Windows story. That part is okay, but way too many peopple seem to want to drop into the never clever discussion:

    Slashdotter 1: Every other version of Windows sucks.

    Slashdotter 2: No, because your not counting Windows blahblahblah

    Slashdotter 3: Hey, we're not talking about non professional second service packs, were talking about versiions that have thisorthat.

    Y'all are assembling a Beowulf cluster of asininity, and Netcraft confirms it.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    1. Re:Oh look by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Why would iOS die? Apple has quite strong brand and a following, so I do not expect iOS disappearing any time soon. Or OS X for that matter...

    2. Re:Oh look by mystik · · Score: 1

      *You're* forgetting about Natalie Portman naked and petrified, with hot grits!

      --
      Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
    3. Re:Oh look by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      *You're* forgetting about Natalie Portman naked and petrified, with hot grits!

      And that's just not right, I'll tell you what!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    4. Re:Oh look by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      The big question is which is going to die: Andriod or iOS.

      To be replaced by Windows for phones? That's crazy talk!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  23. Trademark? by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    The Gnu Hurd project's icons are trademark free. Microsoft's? Not so much...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  24. On a challenging note! by Grindalf · · Score: 1

    Does Minecraft really compete well with the open source Minetest? http://www.minetest.net/

    --
    The purpose of existence is to make money.
  25. Re:Seeing the words "Redstone" and "Launch" = happ by dotancohen · · Score: 1

    The next one will be Windows Atlas.

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  26. Windows is really only good for playing games. by squash_me_quickly · · Score: 1

    Yes, I'm a Linux user. That has nothing to do with my dislike of Windows.

    Before I was a Linux user, I hated Windows. How could one like a company that was responsible for autoexec.bat and config.sys. So many hours fiddling with these files just to get games to work. That's why as soon as OS2 came out, I tried that.

    Unfortunately, the fact that "everyone else" uses Windows means that one has to have Windows. Even just to maintain some level of "most of the world" compatibility.

    On another note... at the moment I'm making website "responsive", so that they scale to work on phones, tablets, etc. One can easily get the responsive coding to work in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, for every shape and size of device. I converted one site in about 20 minutes, only to realize that Internet Explorer wasn't compatible with the coding. After finding a JavaScript patch, I then used 3 hours getting the site to also work in IE. Coding that will work in every other browser just won't work in IE, thanks Microsoft :(

  27. Re:Hognoxious the fault lies with yourself by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Given that fact it's surprising that I was able to install various linux distros which *did* work, eh Mark?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."