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Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

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Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#181

Post by fpgaminer »

swinglock wrote: post #159
joshAg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Keep in mind there's more to it than pure frames per second. You also got latency and jitter to worry about which is vital but almost always ignored, probably because it's difficult to measure and understand. Doing it properly still required special hardware and software I believe.

Indeed, I've seen some talk about latency/jitter issues on the vfio mailing list. I haven't tested it myself yet, so we'll see how it goes. Though I figure things will just naturally get better over time as the kernel's support improves.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#182

Post by scholia »

sp332 wrote: post #104
forgetsusername wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The PC market is shrinking quickly There were 275 million PC units sold in 2015, and approximately the same number is expected for 2016. Sales were growing until 2011, when they peaked at around 360 million units. So certainly sales have shrunk, but I wouldn't describe them as "shrinking quickly", according to forecasts.

Shipments were down in 2015 even if you include Apple computers, which outperformed the rest. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40909316 Things look even worse when you take them out. Which forecasts are you using?

IDC PC numbers are depressed partly because it doesn't count tablets/2-in-1s as PCs, it counts them as tablets.

The story to which you link notes that "The impact for 2016 will be larger as detachable tablet volume grows, boosting earlier forecasts of PC growth in 2016 from -3.1% to growth of 1 to 2%."

The quote is saying that if you add those "tablets" back, it's predicting that the PC market will grow this year.

Another important point is that the vast majority of Windows 7/8/8.1 PCs will run Windows 10, and the upgrade is free. There's very little need for most users to buy a new PC.

If users only buy a new PC every six years, then Windows PC sales should halve, compared with a three-year upgrade cycle. It doesn't mean that PC usage is declining (though it might be), it just means that PCs are lasting twice as long.

Smartphone sales were, of course, hugely inflated by the fact that they only lasted for 18 months or so. When people keep their smartphones for three years, smartphone sales with halve as well.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#183

Post by sofaofthedamned »

fpgaminer wrote: post #133
abledon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to a recommended tutorial?

The VFIO blog was the best resource I found. Start at the first article ( http://vfio.blogspot.com/2015/05/vfio-gpu-how-to-series-part... ) in the how to series, work through that, and then read all the other posts on there. It's also helpful to use https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM... , as that covers some of the things that the VFIO blog glosses over and it's a little more up-to-date. Thi…

Agreed, this the same info I followed to get Elite Dangerous working in a Windows VM on a Ubuntu host. Feels very nice to have Windows not as the root of a machine.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#184

Post by [deleted] »

fpgaminer wrote: post #133
abledon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to a recommended tutorial?

The VFIO blog was the best resource I found. Start at the first article ( http://vfio.blogspot.com/2015/05/vfio-gpu-how-to-series-part... ) in the how to series, work through that, and then read all the other posts on there. It's also helpful to use https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM... , as that covers some of the things that the VFIO blog glosses over and it's a little more up-to-date. Thi…

[deleted]

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#185

Post by wongarsu »

bduerst wrote: post #152
wongarsu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition nothing can be "free" (as in beer), there's always someone paying for it (even if it's just opportunity cost). For any useful definition of the word free there can also be free software.

Yep, also called TANSTaaFL (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch). Which is the point in context to someone saying "If only there really was universal expectation of free software...". With IP, the costs are hidden and it's easy to fall into the trap of expecting it to be totally free.

The problem with TANSTaaFL is that it uses a completely different definition of the word free than normal English. Normally the word free only references the price paid by the consumer, not the cost of production.

If I give you a lunch without asking for anything in return, and without inconveniencing you, that's a free lunch for you. Of course somebody paid for it, but that doesn't stop me from giving it to you for free.

>Which is the point in context to someone saying "If only there really was universal expectation of free software...".

"I get my software for free but be offered the option to donate" is the model that's giving us Dwarf Fortress. It's free (as in beer) software in any useful sense of the word free.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#187

Post by wangchow »

It's easy enough to disable the adds. Also check the Microsoft account and there are various preferences with toggle buttons associated with "targeted ads." To be honest, some people like having targeted ads if it's something consumers may be interested in.. Why not inform them?

And for those who don't like them.. Just go through those settings and change them. As long as these ads are configurable it's not a big deal.

That being said, if they became something customers can not opt out of that is a different story.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#188

Post by ocdtrekkie »

signal11 wrote: post #32
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…

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…

I have a hard time calling this an ad. It was one of the wallpapers released for the new Tomb Raider game, and it's a pretty nice lockscreen picture in it's own right.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#189

Post by fpgaminer »

miffe wrote: post #165
joshAg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Wow, that's a great resource! I'm glad to see your disk benchmarks were also all over the place. I couldn't seem to make much sense of CrystalMark's results, even when increasing the test size above my RAM size to eliminate caching. I'm using virtio to an SSD dedicated to the VM and saw, like you, some markers were better in the VM than they should be, and some where significantly worse. Very weird. Luckily I won't matter for gaming.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#190

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Someone1234 wrote: post #46
bendykstra wrote: post #39

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 fr…

This behavior is caused by a preinstalled modern app called "Get Office", which you can find in your Start Menu's All Apps list. Along with it's brethren "Get Skype", right click and uninstall both. The fact that these apps are unable to tell that you already "Got Skype" and "Got Office" is definitely irritating.
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