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Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

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Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#44
It's so funny to watch MSFT completely miss the lessons that have turned Google into the World's Most Valuable Advertising Business.

HEY YOU GUYS LETS PLASTER ADVERTISING ALL OVER ALL OF THE THINGS!

Look at Gmail: http://imgur.com/M8RF1TV

Look at Yahoo Mail: http://imgur.com/Cjwxspc

Look at AOL Mail: http://imgur.com/ZeaIe1L

Which email product do you use?

Which would you rather use?

The advertising business that is sustainable is owning the user at a moment of high-intent, aka SEARCH.

Slapping ads all over my login page is a great way render the fat from brand advertisers into short-term revenue gains at the price of ENRAGING me.

MSFT get the tracking and the ads the fuck out of my kitchen and my OS or at least give me a REAL way to pay you for a clean, no ad version!

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#45

I was shocked and very worried when ads for Microsoft Office started popping up in the Action Center (10's centralized notification area) last year. When I wrote about my concerns on a Windows forum, most pf the responses were along the lines of, "why are you complaining, Windows 10 is free." If people no longer feel that they own their operating systems, then there is no check on Microsoft's behavior. Inevitably, ad…

What is the harm done? Of course you don't "own" your operating system. You also paid nothing for it. I also struggle to grasp the double standard of why Google, Facebook, et al are able to endlessly track and personalize ads, but when Microsoft follows a similar model, there is outrage.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#46

I was shocked and very worried when ads for Microsoft Office started popping up in the Action Center (10's centralized notification area) last year. When I wrote about my concerns on a Windows forum, most pf the responses were along the lines of, "why are you complaining, Windows 10 is free." If people no longer feel that they own their operating systems, then there is no check on Microsoft's behavior. Inevitably, ad…

The Microsoft Office one is far worse than this example.

I actually had Office installed and was STILL seeing those annoying as heck notifications. That was just blatant and annoying advertising.

All this is, is you're opting to receive dynamic lock screen images that rotate constantly, Microsoft threw in a few ads. It isn't ideal but you you get something in return (a constantly changing set of lock screen images from Windows Spotlight).

With the Office thing you get nothing in return, it is just irritating and pointless.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#48

Probably a good time to remind people about ReactOS: https://www.reactos.org/project-news/reactos-040-released One day it may be the only way to use Windows programs without this kind of end-user harassment.

> One day [ReactOS] may be the only way to use Windows programs without this kind of end-user harassment.

There's a lot of code sharing between ReactOS and Wine. For the most part, Wine works really well to run Windows software... there's no need to run an entire somewhat-Windows-compatible OS that has limited hardware compatibility when you're just interested in running a particular Windows application. [0]

However, I expect that you neither meant to imply that Wine wasn't a good option for running Windows software, nor that work on Wine was likely to stop before work on ReactOS stopped. :)

[0] Edit: To be clear, I'm quite aware that the task that the ReactOS devs face is monumental. I also acknowledge that those devs have put in a lot of good work over the past ~eighteen years.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#49

Seems like the only way people want to make money these days is through invasive advertising without the end-user's explicit consent. Granted the expectation of free software is driving most of this, but it starts a vicious cycle because those who get annoyed with them develop countermeasures, which the creator responds to with more aggressive ads, ad infinitum. It does start explaining some of the highly controversi…

Having read the article, this is about the "Windows Spotlight" feature -- which shows you a different wallpaper just before you log in. For me it's usually the default "cave and beach" wallpaper[1] although it's shown interesting photos from time to time, so I've left the feature on. It's on by default but pretty easy to disable. Not sure how I'd feel if it started showing me blatant ads. I'd probably just turn it of…

That cave and beach is by my house in New Zealand. Was super confusing when I saw it on someone elses computer as well and realized the photo wasn't one of mine

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#50
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there really was universal expectation of free software. Then we'd really be getting somewhere.

Are you talking about free as in freedom? I think gargravarr meant free as in cost.

I did. But as discussed elsewhere on this page, libre software has its own set of drawbacks.
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