StarDestroyer.Net BBS

For over 30 years, we’ve thought of PCs primarily as Windows machines, which we owned and controlled. That’s about to change forever.

This isn’t about Microsoft forcing us off Windows 7 to Windows 10 as fast as it can (though it has found many ways to push that agenda). This is about Microsoft abandoning the Windows platform as a conventional desktop.

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.

DaaS for Windows isn’t new. Citrix and VMware have made a living from it for years. Microsoft has offered Remote Desktop Services, formerly Terminal Services, for ages.

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.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you know IT departments have not been happy with Microsoft’s twice yearly major “upgrades” to Windows 10. Let’s call it what it is. These aren’t upgrades or updates; they’re service patches (SP).

Take the Windows 10 April 2018 Update — please! It came with more than its fair share of bugs. What was especially annoying was that “Update” fouled up so many of Microsoft’s own programs. When even Word, Outlook and File Explorer lock up, you know you’ve got a mess on your hands.

Computerworld’s Woody Leonhard even recommended that, unless you were stuck with the April Update, you turn off automatic updating. He’s right to do so. Windows patching was always chancy, but with Windows 10 you’re more likely to have trouble when you patch than you are to avoid problems. And isn’t that a heck of a note?

So, with this track record, do you want to pay good money to let Microsoft maintain your desktops for you? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Nonetheless, DaaS Windows is coming. 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.

Forget that noise. If Microsoft continues on this course, soon your only real choices if you really want a “desktop” operating system will be Linux and macOS. Oh, you’ll still have “Windows.” But Windows as your “personal” desktop? It will be history.

Jub wrote: ↑2018-07-30 02:14pmAre there actually good alternatives to Windows on a PC or are we still stuck with a crop of other operating systems that aren't gaming friendly, aren't end-user friendly, are incomplete, or just otherwise lack features most PC users expect out of an OS? I'm a little out of date but last I checked even the best Linux distros were having issues with graphics driver compatibility.

Zaune wrote: ↑2018-07-30 03:01pmThe graphics driver issues are mostly smoothed out now, though I think AMD GPUs still have slightly lower FPS with the Linux drivers. Ubuntu is at least as noob-proof as Windows by now, if not more so, and is officially supported and recommended by Valve. They're also still working on SteamOS, which is going to be even more idiot-proof in exchange for being very sub-optimal for anything except gaming by default. (They also just re-hired the writer of Portal 2, sparking the usual wild rumours.)

I'm not saying we're at the point where you can switch to Linux and never have to bust out the terminal and do things the old-fashioned way, or have to learn to live without every new game or app being available to you on release day if you're not able or willing to dual-boot, but huge progress has been made. And Windows hasn't exactly been getting more and more user-friendly with every new version; quite the opposite in some ways.

Zaune wrote: ↑2018-07-30 04:50pm The good news, if you can call it that, is that it's not just consumers who are getting screwed here. One of these days somebody's Win 10 box is going to perform an unwanted update-and-reboot in the middle of something so critical that serious harm is done: Someone's drone goes out of control and ends up through a car windscreen, for example, or a lot of data ends up trashed and backups have to be flown out on the company Learjet because it's too sensitive to email. At that point the kind of lawyers even Microsoft have to take seriously will be weighing in.

Gandalf wrote: ↑2018-07-30 06:14pm

Zaune wrote: ↑2018-07-30 04:50pm The good news, if you can call it that, is that it's not just consumers who are getting screwed here. One of these days somebody's Win 10 box is going to perform an unwanted update-and-reboot in the middle of something so critical that serious harm is done: Someone's drone goes out of control and ends up through a car windscreen, for example, or a lot of data ends up trashed and backups have to be flown out on the company Learjet because it's too sensitive to email. At that point the kind of lawyers even Microsoft have to take seriously will be weighing in.

I wager those sorts of problems can be handled through terms of service.

Also, I imagine that in event of a subscription lapsing, any files will still be accessible, but the system will just have lose some key functionality

Personally, I'm not shocked. Subscription seems to the wave of things and has been for a while.

Broomstick wrote: ↑2018-07-30 04:59pm I've been hearing about this "your computer as a terminal, rent your OS/software/whatever" since the 1980's. While there are niches where that model makes sense there are a lot where it doesn't.

I'm having a friend build my next computer right now. I'm going to Linux. There's nothing I do that requires cutting edge apps and software so that's not an issue.

Some of us still like to own things.

Broomstick wrote: ↑2018-07-30 06:30pmWhy?

It's not like the individual consumer has any power to negotiate terms of service. It's take it or leave it. Given how large Microsoft is as a practical matter for many people there are no alternatives.

"Terms of service" tend to be dictated by the provider.

Why on earth would you assume that? Why would they keep your files "accessible" if your subscription lapses? Where's the profit in that? And make no mistake - this is about profit as well as control.

Some of us still like to own things.

Gandalf wrote: ↑2018-07-31 04:39amI was thinking of it from Microsoft's point of view, in the same way the quoted post was.

Why on earth would you assume that? Why would they keep your files "accessible" if your subscription lapses? Where's the profit in that? And make no mistake - this is about profit as well as control.

You mean that a multi-billion dollar corporation might be doing things for some sort of... monetary gain?

Also, the profit is in an ongoing and reliable OS service. Microsoft does a fuckton of business with businesses and governments and others who'll pay a lot for something which works. A service which locks out files (Does it encrypt them or something? That's quite the security risk) would essentially be ransomware and lose them a lot of work. Who would ever do business with them again?

Gandalf wrote: ↑2018-07-31 04:39am

Some of us still like to own things.

You never owned Windows. That's why you can't crack it open and modify the thing. You just paid for the right to put their stuff on your computer.

Vendetta wrote: ↑2018-07-31 08:02amAlso, for basically all end users I absolutely agree that they should not be in charge of updates because they cannot be trusted with them. Especially people who think they know enough to be allowed to be in charge of updates because they're always the ones who come up with aggrieved stories about their PC unexpectedly restarting to update whilst they were doing something soooo important. If they actually knew as much as they think they do about their computer they wouldn't be surprised because they'd know the updates were pending and would have restarted already.

Zaune wrote: ↑2018-07-31 08:58am Sensible solution, right? Well, Windows didn't think so. I got a constant stream of pop-ups, at least one a day, demanding I change the settings back to the default because it was "unsafe". Unsafe how? Whatever security holes it's patching have been there since release, or at least the last Service Pack, waiting a few hours until I'm finished using the machine for the day is unlikely to make much difference. And even if it is some sort of potential security issue, it was my privately-owned hardware and data on that computer and it should be my decision whether or not to accept the risk.

Vendetta wrote: ↑2018-07-31 12:45pmUnsafe because although the security holes had been there for a while, nobody knew about them until Microsoft announced their presence to the world by patching them.

On Patch Tuesday all the clever yet thrillingly unscrupulous malware developers get a nice little newsletter in the form of new critical updates which they can dissect and figure out what flaw they patch, then write something to exploit that flaw knowing full well that a vast swathe of potato users and Windows Antivaxxers will resist updating their boxen until it is "convenient". That's why they're called "Zero day" exploits. The exploit appears on the same day as the patch that fixes it whilst most people still don't have the patch installed. So by evening of the next day a whole new raft of zombie PCs have joined a bouncing baby botnet and are ready to send spam advertising totally natural little blue pills, take down email servers to fish for dirt on politicians, DDOS playstations, crash company servers to fish for lists of credit card numbers, or whatever this botnet gets rented out to do.

Zaune wrote: ↑2018-07-31 01:27pm

Vendetta wrote: ↑2018-07-31 12:45pmUnsafe because although the security holes had been there for a while, nobody knew about them until Microsoft announced their presence to the world by patching them.

On Patch Tuesday all the clever yet thrillingly unscrupulous malware developers get a nice little newsletter in the form of new critical updates which they can dissect and figure out what flaw they patch, then write something to exploit that flaw knowing full well that a vast swathe of potato users and Windows Antivaxxers will resist updating their boxen until it is "convenient". That's why they're called "Zero day" exploits. The exploit appears on the same day as the patch that fixes it whilst most people still don't have the patch installed. So by evening of the next day a whole new raft of zombie PCs have joined a bouncing baby botnet and are ready to send spam advertising totally natural little blue pills, take down email servers to fish for dirt on politicians, DDOS playstations, crash company servers to fish for lists of credit card numbers, or whatever this botnet gets rented out to do.

I'm going to have to ask for a citation on that, because I would be very surprised if Microsoft has ever patched a security exploit that the malware industry didn't find and exploit first; indeed I was under the impression that their procedure for finding these things was to wait for someone to notice they've been compromised and complain about it.

Zaune wrote: ↑2018-07-31 01:27pm I'm going to have to ask for a citation on that, because I would be very surprised if Microsoft has ever patched a security exploit that the malware industry didn't find and exploit first; indeed I was under the impression that their procedure for finding these things was to wait for someone to notice they've been compromised and complain about it.

Zaune wrote: ↑2018-07-31 08:58am
Sensible solution, right? Well, Windows didn't think so. I got a constant stream of pop-ups, at least one a day, demanding I change the settings back to the default because it was "unsafe". Unsafe how? Whatever security holes it's patching have been there since release, or at least the last Service Pack, waiting a few hours until I'm finished using the machine for the day is unlikely to make much difference. And even if it is some sort of potential security issue, it was my privately-owned hardware and data on that computer and it should be my decision whether or not to accept the risk.

Elheru Aran wrote: ↑2018-07-31 12:38pm Renting things as a service, rather than owning them outright, only works to a certain extent. Residences, yes. Cars, sure. Even software in certain contexts, yeah. But say, pants. Would you want to rent a pair of pants? Underwear? Something you put your most valuable information on and access it regularly... actually belonging to someone else, who in theory could yank your access to it? I don't know how well that'll fly.