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Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

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Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#201
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I wouldn't be willing to pay for an ad-free version of an OS that you are already paying for.

What? Who paid for Windows 10? I thought Windows 10 is supposed to be free?

There's no way to get Windows 10 for free. Either you pay for an old version of Windows and upgrade or you buy Windows 10.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#202
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. Steam was DESTROYING my PC for a long time. I couldn't figure out what it was and finally tracked the random spikes and focus losses to Steam's update service being corrupt. Re-installing Steam means uninstalling everything you've downloaded with steam, possibly losing save games and stuff like that, then having to wait for everything to re-download and install. There are ways around it, which I…

Sorry you got burned, but I installed a whole new primary drive and didn't have to reinstall all my games. There's also a backup feature that you didn't use. Games have also generally always put their saves in your documents folder. I appreciate it might have been an easy assumption to make, but it's even right there in google searches instant answer thing[1] so it must be a common question. It obviously caused you a…

> Games have also generally always put their saves in your documents folder.

Many games do, but there are still plenty that put them elsewhere. You probably want to use something like Gamesave Manager [1] to find them all.

[1] http://www.gamesave-manager.com

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#203

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…

Amazon Kindle does the exact same thing with their "Special Offers"

But they aren't the same at all. Kindle is literally ads, with big text, calls to actions, discounts, etc. This wallpaper is 99% a wallpaper, 1% an ad.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#204
post #5

I really don't like this direction that MS is heading. I'd rather they charger for Windows 10 and newer and not start bundling software and pushing ads by default. Also, fuck buying games off the Windows store, Steam and any other service that locks you into DRM. My steam client in Linux is hopelessly broken due to updates. Some of my games will still play, but most require the stupid Steam DRM layer. I should have b…

Except they actually are¹ charging for Windows 10. And even if you pay for it, they still shove this tracking crap down your throat.

It seems the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap is to pay for the Enterprise version of Windows 10 (good luck with doing that if you’re not a business though).

――――――

¹ — http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?keywords=windows+10&Site...

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#205
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cars track you too: http://www.kliemanlyons.com/2014/09/vehicle-telematics-a-use...

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#206
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (A…

Does "getting the GPU to work" mean you can give your Windows VM exclusive rights to the ports on the back of that graphics card as well? That would be amazing. I'd love to, say, run a Hackintosh setup with Windows 10 in a VM that could fully utilize it's own GPU + external ports -- this way I could use a modern VR setup (Oculus or Vive) without having to use Windows full time!

In fact, that's the only way to do it. This VFIO/IOMMU setup virtualizes the PCI-E port itself. It routes the PCI-E port that the graphics card is plugged into to the VM. So the VM has exclusive and direct access to that PCI-E port. Therefore, the GPU, the ports on it, everything hooked up to that PCI-E port belongs to the VM. Most importantly, this also means the GPU's SMBus for temperature monitoring is also routed and owned by the VM. From the VM's perspective it isn't any different than a physical card.

You can also route USB hubs to it the same way, sound cards, etc.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't drop something that doesn't exist.

You can drop something that doesn't exist but was announced. Thechnically Skylake support for Win7 wasn't announced, but the effect is the same since there was an implicit expectation that the feature would come.

But I presume dropping support just means not being able to use the latest features.

Even a very old system image of windows 7 will run on the very latest skylake. It doesn't need the very latest updates. I doubt they will create a kill switch in a windows update that refuses to boot if the system detects a too modern CPU.

Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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Re: Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads

#209

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…

Holly crap, I always dreamed to achieve what you did and never knew direct GPU access was possible, even though I used Qemu for work before.

Right now I am basically running a windows pc for gaming and a linux laptop for work. It seems IOMMU is compatible with all my gaming tower, and with many modern cpus/chipsets. I will make a test over a live CD anb if it works migrate my whole pc and blog about it.

Thanks very much for the ida

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