Slashdot Mirror
With DaaS Windows Coming, Say Goodbye To Your PC As You Know It (computerworld.com)
Ostracus shares a report from Computerworld, written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Microsoft is getting ready to replace Windows 10 with the Microsoft Managed Desktop. This will be a "desktop-as-a-service" (DaaS) offering. Instead of owning Windows, you'll "rent" it by the month. Microsoft Managed Desktop is a new take. It avoids the latency problem of the older Windows DaaS offerings by keeping the bulk of the operating system on your PC. But you'll no longer be in charge of your Windows PC. Instead, it will be automatically provisioned and patched for you by Microsoft. Maybe you'll be OK with that.
Microsoft has been getting away from the old-style desktop model for years now. Just look at Office. Microsoft would much rather have you rent Office via Office 365 than buy Microsoft Office and use it for years. Microsoft Managed Desktop is the first move to replacing "your" desktop with a rented desktop. By 2021, I expect the Managed Desktop to be to traditional Windows what Office 365 is to Office today: the wave of the future. Or maybe tsunami, depending on your perspective. I'm not happy with this development. I'm old enough to remember the PC revolution. We went from depending on mainframes and Unix boxes for computing power to having the real power on our desktops. It was liberating. Now Microsoft, which helped lead that revolution, is trying to return us to that old, centralized control model.
Microsoft has been getting away from the old-style desktop model for years now. Just look at Office. Microsoft would much rather have you rent Office via Office 365 than buy Microsoft Office and use it for years. Microsoft Managed Desktop is the first move to replacing "your" desktop with a rented desktop. By 2021, I expect the Managed Desktop to be to traditional Windows what Office 365 is to Office today: the wave of the future. Or maybe tsunami, depending on your perspective. I'm not happy with this development. I'm old enough to remember the PC revolution. We went from depending on mainframes and Unix boxes for computing power to having the real power on our desktops. It was liberating. Now Microsoft, which helped lead that revolution, is trying to return us to that old, centralized control model.
It seems to me that Microsoft managers don't have a reasonable vision of the eventual results of their recent ideas for the future.
If Microsoft tries to charge a monthly fee for an operating system, eventually 1) Nations will all gather together and try to buy Windows from Microsoft. That would be cheaper than paying monthly. Or, 2) Nations will gather together and contribute to ReactOS, a free operating system that runs Windows programs.
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (August 4, 2015)
We no longer have a usable Windows operating system. We can't go to customers and tell them their computers are not secure from outside access.
Because of the Windows 10 spyware, customers have been delaying buying new equipment.
It seems to me that Microsoft managers don't have a reasonable vision of the eventual results of their recent ideas for the future.
They aren't targeting corporate users they are targeting the mass market idiot consumer, because pioneering by the videogame industry through mmo's, and apple and other phone companies building walled garden appstores for their phones, and steam doing the same thing. They will get it all in the end because the average citizen is tech a illiterate moron.
Software companies can sit in their office and "release" the software via the net, and keep part of it on servers in their offices. Before high speed internet penetration was everywhere, the only way they could get paid was by shipping you the entire software physically or they wouldn't get paid.
The internet allows tech companies to force policies on ignorant consumers because the literate consumer base cannot hold them accountable. You'd need physical proximity to the business for your anger and discontent to effect company policy. The free market is dead and has long since been so, the internet removed any last bit of consumer power consumers had. Welcome to the silicon valley dictatorship driven by idiot half of the consumer buying public.
George carlin said it well about humanity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The post you are quoting is absolutely correct. and your post does not dispute it or detract from it.
I'm still using Office 2003. on Windows 7 SP1, and yes, the file format converters still work perfectly, both forward and backward. I don't NEED to upgrade, and I don't want to either. I hate everything about the ribbon interface, I use the ALT menus, and don't you dare try to tell me they have replicated the shortcuts because they fucking haven't! Try selecting some precise area of text with arrows and the shift key, then press "ALT - O and then O". Are you looking at the Font Dialog? No?! Exactly. Lies. (on their part!)
I will never update Windows again. Spyware and "telemetry" killed it for me. Windows user since 3.1
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
This is a problem for people who learned to copy-paste from StackOverflow instead of learning to read documentation.
True, but - a lot of "modern" solutions are basically built to work like that. I'm doing some hobby stuff in a Javascript framework right now (not my choice, the only tool available for this job) and doing copy-paste is literally the only way to get things working because there are so many virtually identical ways to get to the same goal and none of them are explained anywhere or make an intuitive sense that the fastest and only reliable way to get it working is to go through teh stackoverflow solutions until you find the one that works for your particular combination of patchwork bullshit.
Entire generations of coders grow up being copy-paste people not because they are lazy, but because their ecosystem supports this as the most viable way.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The mass market no longer buy PCs. They are content consumers they buy Apple and Android. They use smart TVs, smart phones, smart tablets because they are dumb and just want their computer to do simple things for them. The power PC user will absolutely tell M$ to go fuck itself, what is that Hitler one, on yeah with a pineapple pointy end first.
So M$ is basically driving down a one way street with a brick wall at the end and accelerating. They watched their mobile phone crap die because people hated what they were doing and thumb in bum, mind in neutral, they just keep going straight down that path. They simply can not be told and are not listening to what a pack of cunts they truly are.
So now the shift will occur, obviously Android is killing it on content consumption devices and Apple is doing is doing better in spite of themselves with selling you privacy, rather than selling your privacy. SteamOS (steam was kind of dopey no distributing FOSS on steam to promote steamOS) and Linux winning everywhere except the desktop. Playstation of course well they're a bit slow and are sort of going nowhere.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen