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Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

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Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#161

Post by blisterpeanuts »

civilian wrote: post #144
gargravarr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying for the privilege of seeing adverts. So fundamentally MS. I'm so glad Win7 will be supported until 2020.

My brother cut me a login to his Comcast Xfinity. I tried watching "The Magicians" on syfy.com--- and there's 100 seconds of ads, six times over a 45 minute show! It makes the cliffhangers and pauses even more obnoxious. I'm going to go back to torrenting.

No TV/cable, but on a trip recently I tried to watch syfy on the hotel TV -- and it was more ads than show. I can't believe anyone puts up with it; I swear it was five minutes of ads and five minutes of movie. No thanks; I'll just wait until things come to Prime or Netflix.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#162

Post by proactivesvcs »

Zikes wrote: post #24
gargravarr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam is the best of a bad bunch really - it's not perfect, but it's much fairer than other platforms. There's another article on HTG (linked from this one) that outlines the differences between Steam and Windows Store, and Steam scores quite highly. I was very surprised when some of my older games suddenly popped up as being available on Linux for no extra cost. When the Steam DRM works properly, it's pretty non-inv…

gog.com is the best option out there in my opinion. A strict no DRM stance, with sales on par with Steam's. You can download the installation binaries once and install offline as many times as you like with no extra effort, so there's no worries about losing your entire collection when a Russian script kiddy hijacks your Steam account to facilitate Counterstrike item scams and then Steam bans your account and says "w…

Disappointingly, GOG's stance on "no DRM" is far from strict. Some of their titles require online activation or authorisation for multiplayer.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#163

Post by arm »

api wrote: post #51
gargravarr wrote: post #6

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…

People want free. Things aren't free. But people want free, so let's give them "free" and monetize them indirectly with surveillance, invasive advertising, etc. The entire Internet has gone down this road since it's very hard to compete with someone who is giving something away for "free" (note quotes). Free has given us George Orwell's bidirectional it-watches-you TV set.

Yeah, except Windows 10 actually does cost money. And the people who pay for it still get to see ads.

It seems like the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap in Windows 10 is to pony up for the Enterprise version (which is basically impossible if you’re not a business).

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#164

Post by jfoster »

exodust wrote: post #107
jfoster wrote: post #70

Seems like the "new Microsoft" honeymoon period has been brought to an abrupt end. Did every single Windows 7 user get this? Perhaps they can recover from this by learning quickly from the backlash that's about to happen.

Backlash from needing to go into settings and flick a toggle switch from on to off? Oh the horror!

Whether it's justified or not is nearly beside the point. Will backlash happen from this? If it hits the login screen of every Windows 7 user, it'll almost certainly be in mainstream press within the next couple of days. It won't last, of course. That's why I think Microsoft will have an opportunity to learn from it.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#165

Post by miffe »

joshAg wrote: post #137
fpgaminer wrote: post #99

With Windows 10 doing things like this, and Windows 7 being aggressively deprecated, I decided I finally wanted to ditch Windows as my daily driver. It was good timing, then, that I watched the "7 Gamers 1 CPU" video from LinuxTechTips, which showed me how to do it without sacrificing gaming. Most everything I use runs in Linux, and for the few things that don't I can spin up a VM. But there's the caveat that is as o…

How much of a performance hit do you get running a VM with vtx and vtd versus running windows bare metal? Is it as simple as it seems? I'd love to switch over to a VM for windows games backed by vtx and vtd, but I've been worried that it'd be waay more work.

I tried this a while back. My results can be seen at http://miffe.org/bench/

The largest problem is that the NVIDIA driver refuses to work when it detects that it's in a VM. The workaround is to hide the VM status for the guest os, by using -cpu host,kvm=off and disabling the tweaks that makes windows work better (hv_time,hv_relaxed,hv_vapic).

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#167

Post by GhotiFish »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #102
dangrossman wrote: post #84

Microsoft added the Spotlight feature last year, and this is pretty much exactly what it was billed as: if you don't have a lock screen image of your own, you get random wallpaper images from Bing, and also occasional app offers and tips. You can upvote/downvote the offers to personalize the suggestions in the future. It's an app discovery mechanism, and you can turn it off by picking your own lock screen image. I do…

I'm fine with jumping aboard the hate train for things like the Office ads but this seems like a pretty non-issue and I agree with you. Just like the Google Play widget or notifications for the App Store on iOS; Windows is doing the same-thing but with a lock screen background. I'm not sure if this is a default (I thought it wasn't; it certainly wasn't when I bought a Surface a couple of weeks ago). If this is a defa…

I look at it as a part of a larger arc of issues. Windows is going fremium.

I feel like advertisements as a direct component of an operating system have crossed a line. This is like when Ubuntu started advertising amazon products in their launch bar. It crossed a line.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#168

Post by 27182818284 »

cm2187 wrote: post #9
gargravarr wrote: post #6

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…

Except windows isn't free. Even users who upgraded for free initially paid for a windows license (at least outside of China).

It seems weird in the computer world...

but I see a ton of paid cars driving around with advertisements stuck on the back too

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#169

Post by gravypod »

mtgx wrote: post #36
gravypod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was sold to the public as a "free" upgrade. "Free" in that context is what I am referring to.

Yup, they are having their cake and eating it, too. Free for 10% of the PC users, the rest 90% will pay for it, but because of those 10% we're also going to serve everyone ads, too.

Yea, and what I suspect you will probably see over the next few days is people saying that "it was free so it was ok!"

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#170

Post by fpgaminer »

joshAg wrote: post #137
fpgaminer wrote: post #99

With Windows 10 doing things like this, and Windows 7 being aggressively deprecated, I decided I finally wanted to ditch Windows as my daily driver. It was good timing, then, that I watched the "7 Gamers 1 CPU" video from LinuxTechTips, which showed me how to do it without sacrificing gaming. Most everything I use runs in Linux, and for the few things that don't I can spin up a VM. But there's the caveat that is as o…

How much of a performance hit do you get running a VM with vtx and vtd versus running windows bare metal? Is it as simple as it seems? I'd love to switch over to a VM for windows games backed by vtx and vtd, but I've been worried that it'd be waay more work.

> How's much of a performance hit do you get running a VM with vtx and vtd versus running windows bare metal?

I've seen research that shows the GPU being 98-99% when using QEMU/KVM. I haven't used the system long enough to accurately quantify my personal experience.

> Is it as simple as it seems?

For me getting the GPU working was the easiest part. It worked on the first try. The hardest part was finding good docs (Arch wiki & VFIO blog), trying to understand their little ecosystem, and finding the right compatible parts (hint: besides the CPU, it's really easy). I'd never used QEMU/KVM before (I used VirtualBox previously) so that was a big learning curve. It seems like things have matured quite a bit since the VFIO blog wrote its articles, as a number of things had changed and become easier.

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