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posted by on Sunday February 05 2017, @04:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the RT-redux dept.

Martin Brinkmann reports via gHacks

Microsoft is working on a new Windows 10 SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) that the company named Windows 10 Cloud internally.

First signs of Windows 10 Cloud appeared a week or so ago on the Internet, but it was not clear back then what this new edition of Windows 10 would offer. Suggestions ranged from a cloud-based operating system to a subscription-based system similar to Office 365, and a successor of Windows RT.

[...] Windows 10 Cloud [is] a revival of the Windows RT version of Windows.

[...] Windows 10 Cloud [will] only run Windows Store applications and apps that Microsoft made to work with the operating system. Any legacy Windows 32 program [will] not work on systems running Windows 10 Cloud.

[...] Windows 10 Cloud is a work in progress. Things may change along the way before it is released.

Windows 10 Cloud behaves as you would expect it to behave. Cortana walks you through the first steps of setup on first start, and you may notice that quite a few apps are listed in Start after [OS] installation.

Some of these apps are first-party applications or games, while others [are] third-party applications. The selection includes Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and on the games side, Age of Empires Castle Siege, Asphalt 8, and Royal Revolt, among others.

Most don't appear to be installed though, but merely links to the application's Windows Store entry.

[...] You are stuck with Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer as the browser, and with Windows Defender as the security solution.

Several comments there mention how this will be competing with Android, iOS, and Chromebooks. Do you see a viable niche for what Redmond is offering? ... or is 420 correct when he says, "a company [...] determined to put themselves out of business"?

Also at Ars Technica.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Sunday February 05 2017, @06:10PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Sunday February 05 2017, @06:10PM (#463149)

    I would also like to once again thank Apple for making this bullshit acceptable.

    Don't forget Nintendo when awarding credit. They lost a SCOTUS decision and still hung tough and destroyed all enemies through determination and persistence. In doing so they set the industry practice that a computer vendor could indeed exert absolute control over the platform, extracting rents from every software vendor wanting to publish on the platform and ban content that didn't mesh with the image they wanted to project. Without their example Sony and Microsoft wouldn't have perfected the lockdown on the PS[234] and XBox 360 and wouldn't have provided the vivid example of the many benefits to the practice that attracted a control freak like Jobs to carry it to the next level, beyond the ghetto of 'video games' into general computing.

    Microsoft has a problem, don't know if this turd will help but they have to try. Their problem is they built a vast monopoly from an accident they ruthlessly exploited. But while they still have their 'monopoly' on the PC desktop and the office suite it doesn't matter anymore because people hated them so much they are abandoning the entire desktop to escape them. At the turn if the century 90% of the world was utterly dependent on Windows and only the Apple freaks with more money than sense bought a Mac. Even most of the 1% Penguin Peeps paid the Microsoft Tax because of the illegal bundling rules that the DoJ has proven time and time powerless to end. Well they still have the same Iron Grip on the PC but most people gave it up for a phone or tablet. because of that the IE only webpage is a relic and the assumption that 'everybody' can open an Office document is fading fast. Without the tie in to Windows desktops the story for Windows Server becomes bleak and Azure is just an overpriced and underperforming cloud full of Linux VMs. The time when you could count on essentially every user being able to install a win32 app/plugin is gone. So there go the network effects that sustained the monopoly so more decline is a certainty.

    Meanwhile they have a more immediate problem. Their entire revenue model depends on an ever growing base of PC sales all bundling a Windows license and a good percentage also licensing Office, Software Assurance, etc. Growth is a memory now, managing the decline is the order of the day, longer replacement cycles, invasion of non-PC devices plus market saturation means PC sales growth ain't coming back. But they need licensing revenue to drive the story they sell investors. And if they can't have they they at least need growth installed base driving sales in the Windows Store so they can sell a story of the wonders of raking off thirty fat and juicy points from every sale. So give away Windows Cloud and hope you can get people buying apps in the Store.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05 2017, @06:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05 2017, @06:17PM (#463150)

    Please stick to computer related topics, you seem to have those pretty well locked down and provide good insight.

    • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday February 05 2017, @07:17PM

      by jmorris (4844) on Sunday February 05 2017, @07:17PM (#463158)

      You ignore the possibility that my political views have had the same level of study and reflection put into their development and that it is you who are hopelessly ignorant and misguided.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05 2017, @08:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05 2017, @08:51PM (#463182)

        Doing the work and getting the wrong answer should be an indicator that you're doing something wrong.

        ...and constant consumption of Faux Noise and Breitbart is NOT "doing the work".

        Starting from the (selfish, racist, White-privileged, mean-spirited, non-empathetic) answer you want and working backwards, eliminating any facts that are counter to the Reactionary result you want to achieve, isn't a legit process.

        and reflection

        Ideological naval gazing isn't "reflection".

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 05 2017, @09:51PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 05 2017, @09:51PM (#463194) Journal

          Dude - SJW's are losing it. Fuck all your selfish, racist, White-privileged, mean spirited, non-empathic bullshit propaganda. Jmorris may not always be exactly "right", but he's not far wrong. The bullshit you just spouted? Half of it isn't even in the ballpark, the rest is up in the topmost bleacher seat, half hidden by the bird shit.

        • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by jmorris on Sunday February 05 2017, @11:52PM

          by jmorris (4844) on Sunday February 05 2017, @11:52PM (#463225)

          ..and constant consumption of Faux Noise and Breitbart is NOT "doing the work".

          Look at the silly little Prog AC who knows his talking points about Fox News and Breitbart and knows nothing of substance.

          I think it is precious how you think those are the taste makers. FNC is the voice of the cuckservative establishment along with National Review, the editorial page of the WSJ and the Weekly Standard. (note the common ownership of three of those four) Breitbart is pushing some ideas out to a broader audience but they merely popularizers, they are not the source. Go deeper. Come to the dark side, at least to stare into the face of your true Foe and know it.

          We are the Dark Enlightenment. We are questioning everything. We are reading old books. We keep finding ever more interesting and heretical Questions as we dig deeper and deeper in our search for Truth. We still haven't found a lot of answers but we are already discarding most of your faith as obviously wrong. Some think we took a wrong turn early on in the Enlightenment, hence the name for the overall movement. Some believe the fork is nearer 1776 with the French Revolution as the bad side of the fork and the American Revolution being OK or at least neutral. But we are all in agreement that just about everything from 1850ish (+/- 50 years) forward has been down the wrong path. We hold that Conservatism has conserved nothing because it isn't designed to conserve anything, thus it is useless. Some think Christianity also either went wrong or was wrong from the start, others think it is an integral part of any solution; but even things so fundamental are on the table for debate. There is almost universal agreement that "equalism" does not accord with reality and is therefore a basic error; there is great disagreement as to what the consequences of this insight should be.

          Basically, all of the interesting philosophical debate is happening so far outside the Overton Window most people are utterly unaware of it. But soon they will be unable to avoid noticing it because it is hitting a critical mass and pulling the WIndow toward it as the failures of the Progressive / Globalist order become obvious. So come see what is happening, if you dare.

          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 06 2017, @12:32PM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 06 2017, @12:32PM (#463390) Journal

            Curious, so I did a search for "dark enlightenment". I found several links that are "interesting". Haven't found anything really worthy of serious attention. The worst of what I found justifies the American left's contempt for the "alt-right". The best of what I found seems to be so much mumbo-jumbo.

            So, how 'bout how tell us WTF you're talking about? Dark enlightenment? Come on, give it up! If Darth Vader is to be our new Supreme Leader and Master, we need time to get used to the idea.

            • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday February 06 2017, @03:17PM

              by jmorris (4844) on Monday February 06 2017, @03:17PM (#463446)

              Yup, you can't explore the Dark Enlightenment without encountering Moldbug. I'd suggest starting at Nick Land's The Dark Enlightenment [thedarkenlightenment.com] even though that blog is basically dead now. Look at the three tabs at the top, they are a very good intro to the ideas. Poke around the DE world a bit. They are the intellectual base but too intellectual to build a movement around that does much by themselves.

              The Alt-Right is a related but much broader group of people who usually share some of the DE ideas but mix in other stuff, the theme there seems to focus on application vs theory though. And yes, there you WILL find Nazis, and worse because once it was clear action was the plan it attracted the usual suspects. How do you openly discuss the fallacy of "equalism" without attracting the Stormfront crazies? But anyway, next stop should probably be Vox Day (the Supreme Dark Lord) and his work. His "SJWs Always Lie" is the main tiepoint between the Alt-Right and Gamergate. His division of the Alt-Right into Alt-Lite, Alt-West, Alt-White, etc. seems to have taken hold and been widely adopted. His 14 points are also a useful tool, note that few people who fly the alt-right banner agree to all 14 but they always agree to a majority and which points are agreed to and which not pretty much reveals which of the subdivisions one falls into.

              After that hit an aggregator like theshitlordhub [blogspot.com] and explore the wide range of heretical thought going on. A classic gab post kinda sums up what is happening. It went something like "it is a weird world now, my daily news feed is mostly coming from sites run by a Jew (Brietbart) and a Nazi (DailyStormer)." But it typical, ideas are flowing unchecked between all sort of people, movements and subcultures. Mostly peacefully even, barring a few flamewars and shitposts that define Internet culture everywhere. And it is worldwide. And yes the chans are involved, along with reddit and even the maniacs at mpcdot.com. It is barely contained chaos.

              Probably why the legacy media are so confused, even when they aren't intentionally lying and slandering. They probably do have a difficult time understanding a leaderless organization that has open neonazis peacefully interacting in the same groups that also like guys (for certain values of guy) like Milo. Only explanation I can offer is we all seem to agree the world has went wrong, many of the ideas we cherished are turning out to be based on error, things are near a breaking point and we have to work on solving it since nobody else is. The benefits of the feverish pace of intellectual ferment made possible by bringing so many wildly differing groups into a subculture outweigh any worries about purity. For now. Eventually I suspect something will need to be done about the 1488 types, but that is just me.

          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 06 2017, @12:46PM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 06 2017, @12:46PM (#463391) Journal

            https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives.html [blogspot.com]

            That guy? I'm kinda working my way through his stuff. He does have a seductive style of writing, but I'm watching for the racism. Some of the crap I saw on other sites almost resembles nazism.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:00PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:00PM (#463409)

            "We are the Dark Enlightenment."

            aka: you're a nigger and whine like a nigger. You think your pointless rambling will change peoples minds? alt-left / alt-right - same bunch of niggers whining about fake oppression. So tired of you worthless fucks. It's why I have to deal with a phony orange money in the white house who ran against a phony cuked woman. And never mind the actual monkey for the past 8 years who who appealed to the alt-left while pulling an alt-right and wiping his ass with the constitution. And president orange chimp is doing more of the same right after twatting about how president monkey face abused his power and signed so many executive orders. I mean how fucking stupid are people?

            Face it. You along with 99% of the population havn't the slightest fucking clue whats going on politically. Everything you read is a skewed biased lie from the biggest news outlets down the "darkest corners" of independent blogs full of the ramblings of nutters. And better yet, you don't have the balls to admit you are wrong, voted for the wrong guy, and I'm betting has buyers remorse. Hows that white nigger "pulled myself up by my boot straps" pride doin for ya? Fucking moron.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05 2017, @08:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05 2017, @08:40PM (#463175)

    people hated [M$] so much they are abandoning the entire desktop to escape them

    As the 1st reply notes, you described things quite well here.
    ...with this exception.

    Folks abandoned the desktop because they desire mobility (and low-cost devices).
    M$ tried to leverage their monopoly and cram their bloated mess onto portable devices and, as could be expected, got junk that pretty much nobody wanted.

    ...and trying to charge -anything- for your OS when the competition (Android) costs zero is a business model bound to fail.

    An AC above got another piece of the puzzle with "Developers, Developers, Developers".

    Just as M$ missed the significance of the internet[1], thinking that the future was them selling CDs (e.g. Encarta), M$ showed up late to mobile with too little to offer.

    [1] Gates' silly little book didn't mention the 'Net.
    He had to go back and add that in the 2nd printing.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Sunday February 05 2017, @11:04PM

      by jmorris (4844) on Sunday February 05 2017, @11:04PM (#463216)

      Folks abandoned the desktop because they desire mobility (and low-cost devices).

      Partially correct. Notice how almost every non-windows platform that wasn't insanely expensive got traction. Note that while the Mac never really took off the popularity of iPhone and iPad and later the cheaper Apple laptops even got volume sales. It was a combination of the popularity of non-PC platforms combined with the inability to offer a non-Microsoft option on Desktop or laptop form factors. Chicken or egg, who knows, who cares, it is what happened. Observe the panic the netbook created until Microsoft successfully convinced the manufacturers to kill it in favor of midsize 11" Windows laptops with cut rate licensing. The one thing that simply couldn't exist was a desktop or laptop preloaded with a non-MS offering. It took Google to eventually blow a hole in that final firewall and look what it took to do it; they had to build laptops without a PC BIOS and a non-standard keyboard, i.e. build machines that couldn't possibly run Windows. And they sell very well. Think about it, there is zero real reason EVERY laptop sold isn't offered in both a Windows and ChromeOS preload configuration, other than an illegal and unofficial bundling deal that has never went away. Or even as a dual boot as a $5 upcharge. The fact that never happens says everything, the invisible hand of the marketplace has an invisible claw upon it.

      The problem is Windows is a nightmare for a typical end user. It requires professional administration and is actually harder to administer than a Linux PC. It suffers from more security issues even now than sendmail's worst year. It never had any business on the desktop/laptop of 80% of the people who were forced to buy it because of the monopoly. The second people had a viable option they bolted. Had a laptop or desktop preloaded with an alternative option been allowed the end of Windows could have happened in the 1990's. Had alternatives been allowed, we would have had a crapload of options, all better than Ubuntu's current release by now. Probably a mix of Free and Closed offerings even. Because they were allowed to keep and to leverage an accidental monopoly, Microsoft retarded the development of the computing world by at least fifteen years, probably twenty.

      M$ tried to leverage their monopoly and cram their bloated mess onto portable devices and, as could be expected, got junk that pretty much nobody wanted.

      I'd just phrase it as "Nobody ever really wanted Microsoft's bloated mess and since they had a choice on devices, unlike the desktop, they didn't buy it." They found that after decades of forcing their crap down their customers throats they only had enemies and slaves, almost zero true fanboys or even loyal customers.

      ...and trying to charge -anything- for your OS when the competition (Android) costs zero is a business model bound to fail.

      Android is not free. How much free do you see in the Play Store? Always look at the big picture. Once they can establish the Windows Store as the only allowed source of apps Windows can be as "free" as Android and the money will flow.

      An AC above got another piece of the puzzle with "Developers, Developers, Developers".

      There is always a conflict there. You can't allow the 3rd Party devels to wall in your system. Imagine if Microsoft, Apple, etc. never encroached on their 3rd party devels. That would mean no built in browser, no 1st party office suite, no 1st party defragger, virus scanner, etc. But all of the successful platforms do keep the developers in mind, witness the devel tools each of the popular platforms have available.

      • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday February 06 2017, @07:09PM

        by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday February 06 2017, @07:09PM (#463574) Journal

        Notice how almost every non-windows platform that wasn't insanely expensive got traction.

        Remember the late 80's/ early 90's? Lets rephrase your quote: Notice how every non-proprietary unix platform that wasn't insanely expensive got traction.

        Those were first DOS, then Windows machines running on the cheap open PC platform. What were the alternatives back then? Sun? SGI? HP? DEC? Workstations that cost as much as a car, with varying CPU arch's, and very costly software options like compilers. Today we can easily download source and build many applications on BSD, Linux, Mac. But back then unix vendors were fighting each other for market dominance and you had nearly zero cross platform compatibility unless the vendor built for your platform. The unix vendors shot themselves in the foot by fracturing their platforms.

        During this mess, Microsoft was riding the wave of the cheap, open, PC platform. They were at the right place at the right time. They built an open platform on another open platform, and actually united the computing world. We were awash in cheap PC's and software back then. People like my father bought them to run his business using DOS/windows applications like basic CAD and word processing packages. The total cost of our second 486, a Micron, was something like $6000 and the CAD software was only a few hundred bucks. That CAD software also ran on another white box 486 and our older white box 386's (with i387's). We could run any of the interesting and cheap software you found in mom and pop computer stores and magazines on (almost) ANY PC so long as it ran DOS/windows. It didn't matter that Windows was proprietary at its core. It mattered that Windows was open at the developer and user level. The big Unix vendors were stuck in their ancient ways using proprietary everything while selling through VAR's and other vendor channels that joe-sixpack's like us would or could never afford or be bothered with. The PC revolution was off to a great start and MS was right there leading and uniting it. Of course they were going to win.

        Though, ironically, they completely missed the mobile train. Just like the big unix vendors of old, they let someone eat their lunch right under their noses. And that was Google and Apple. It got so bad their only hope of getting people onto their mobile platform was to force the desktop to become a mobile platform in hopes of getting people hooked on Windows 8/10 and Metro. Still isn't working for them. The irony.

        I used to write software here at work. Mostly in C# and some C++ on windows. Though, today, my safe bet would be to stick with POSIX as much as possible and building against mingw/Cygwin on windows and let people build on Linux, BSD and Mac. You can't go wrong.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:23PM (#463423)

    It's called free market capitalism, stupid. You sound like a socialist commie. The idea is to make money. People freely walking about your "disconnected" platform are not under your control. Don't like it? Don't buy it.

    Why do you think the PC is increasingly becoming more and more a game console? Smart phones and tablets are almost there. New black box "secure" firmware systems, à la EFI/UEFI, TPM's, and deeply embedded management processors that can do god knows what outside of OS control. And now we are being pushed into the cloud and allowing grossly invasive devices into our homes such as "smart" TV's, Alexa, Google phones, Apple phones, and IoT. We openly invite devices that phone home to servers god knows where under control of god knows who. They can now openly monitor your entire life. Now we are giving control of physical devices of everything from your lights to your locks to these same people. How long before we hear about no-knock raids where they unlocked the doors using IoT and executed based on "evidence" gathered by their phones, TV's, and light bulbs?

    At the current rate of hostile takeover by various syndicates, including the US government, we are going to loose the open computing platform in 10 years. And it wont be because some pawn in the government makes it illegal. It will be be because people are lazy and eat this kind of shit up. They hoodwinked us using bread and circuses along with the illusion of voting.

    Enjoy.