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Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

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Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#341

Post by therealdrag0 »

inetknght wrote: post #214
rayvy wrote: post #184

Slight tangent, but @jammygit mentioned in this thread: > "All I want is to be able to give companies my money in exchange for not being spied on, manipulated, or locked into some walled garden....Is my money not good enough for them? Can someone elaborate a bit on this idea? Are we at a point where there is something more valuable than money itself? Data? Is this the point where Google et al can say "Nah, we actuall…

Anecdote: I used to pay for Imgur.com pro account. They then removed their subscription model and now have an advertisement-based model. Their advertisements are notoriously... not well intentioned to the end-user. And I would be very surprised if Imgur is not selling user data. I'm actually very upset about that. Another anecdote: Spotify. I don't use that. https://twitter.com/mikarv/status/1012386696934182912 Anoth…

I don't think we should conflate telemetry with general user data that can be sold. Seeing HOW a user uses an app (re your Spotify example) is useful for the developers of the app. That is not data they are selling to other companies and IMO isn't a privacy issue and shouldn't negatively affect user experience.

What theme you use or what buttons you click most often, isn't sellable; what is sellable are interests, consumables, and demographic distinguishers.

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#342

Post by tracker1 »

mav3rick wrote: post #65
jammygit wrote: post #44

All I want is to be able to give companies my money in exchange for not being spied on, manipulated, or locked into some walled garden. I can't for my OS - I have to use free gnu/Linux because everyone else treats me like crap. Is my money not good enough for them? This is getting absurd

The money you would likely pay would be less than what they can make by selling you ads (as a whole). If you were willing to pay > $1000 for software and services there was no reason for companies to maintain an Ad business.

Yeah... like the car dealers that just sold you a $50K car don't also try to get you to use them for your oil changes.

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#343

Post by tracker1 »

zanny wrote: post #179
ryanianian wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is infuriating. I'm paying for the service--that's supposedly what's sustaining it--why are there ads? If you (Amazon) decide you want more money, let me decide to pay more to eliminate ads. Similar things abound with Hulu. Even the more expensive "ad free" version has some ads for certain shows/movies due to "licensing agreements" (read: Hulu wanting more money).

Its not new whatsoever. I'm sure double dipping predates newspapers who combine recurring billing and ads in between the articles. Cable TV today is a really obvious offensive case of it because unlike with the papers you aren't as constrained by recurring distribution costs.

Newspaper subscriptions mostly pay for the delivery costs... the printing costs are largely from the ad revenue.

Also, Cable is a bit of a mixed bag as the cable company you pay doesn't pay for ALL the content on 100+ channels. Even if you only want like 10 of them. That's where ads pick up the slack.

That said, the ever shrinking runtime is really annoying... late 70's hour long programs had around 48-50 minutes of content... today, it's inching under 42 minutes of content (and overlays on credits most of the time).

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#344

Post by tracker1 »

ovao wrote: post #314
kemitche wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, glad to hear about that Hulu situation. I used Hulu for a while, then dropped it when they added ads to my paid account. When I heard they had an ad-free version again I thought I might come back - but if the ad-free version is not ad-free then I'll just keep my money.

The option I subscribe to is ad-free, at least for the shows I’ve been watching.

Depends on the program source... some have an ad in front of the episode even for the ad-free tier. The "live tv" option sometimes keeps you from skipping some ads as well. Most frustrating to me is they have an updated app on the fire tv devices, but won't update the android tv app (NVidia Shield TV).

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#345

Post by inetknght »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #341
inetknght wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: I used to pay for Imgur.com pro account. They then removed their subscription model and now have an advertisement-based model. Their advertisements are notoriously... not well intentioned to the end-user. And I would be very surprised if Imgur is not selling user data. I'm actually very upset about that. Another anecdote: Spotify. I don't use that. https://twitter.com/mikarv/status/1012386696934182912 Anoth…

I don't think we should conflate telemetry with general user data that can be sold. Seeing HOW a user uses an app (re your Spotify example) is useful for the developers of the app. That is not data they are selling to other companies and IMO isn't a privacy issue and shouldn't negatively affect user experience. What theme you use or what buttons you click most often, isn't sellable; what is sellable are interests, co…

Seeing HOW I use an app can be a perceived privacy issue. It definitely can negatively affect user experience. Case in point: limited bandwidth and/or high latency, especially if the telemetry is transmitted with synchronous communication.

What theme I use is sellable, especially if themes can be purchased. What buttons I click most often is also sellable by making it known what features would attract the most advertisements or what kind of data drives my use of the application.

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#346

Post by tracker1 »

thought_alarm wrote: post #278
foepys wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is going down the same route. They are not interrupting continuous playback yet but they are already promoting their Originals with autoplay ads (sometimes even with sound) in some clients. Luckily their clients' range of functions is horribly inconsistent, so I can still chose different clients to avoid this.

This is why I cancelled Netflix. I've switched almost entirely to watching content I own, whether its iTunes purchases or ripped DVDs. I control the entire experience, I don't have to worry about content suddenly vanishing, I don't have to deal with anyone trying to steal my attention. I feel the same way about dropping Netflix now as I did about dropping cable TV 5 years ago. I'm never going back.

I think it was one of the Barbershop DVD's which had over 20 minutes of unskipable previews on it.

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#347

Post by jammygit »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #108
jammygit wrote: post #44

All I want is to be able to give companies my money in exchange for not being spied on, manipulated, or locked into some walled garden. I can't for my OS - I have to use free gnu/Linux because everyone else treats me like crap. Is my money not good enough for them? This is getting absurd

I guess you're assigning "walled garden" to macOS, but macOS is still UNIX underneath, and you can run any open software you want on it. I still think it's an excellent option for the privacy conscious. There are plenty of free software based operating systems that will take your money. Red Hat seems like the most obvious one.

Good points.

With macos, you need to buy the hardware, and the hardware locks you out of using Linux lately. You also have to spend like crazy on pre-upgrades since everything is soldered in. Then they fight tooth and nail to keep 3rd party repair from being viable, so the apple store says you need a fully new machine and yet the guy down the street can fix it for $700 (would be less but everything is soldered). The machines and os are great, but the other stuff is a buzz kill.

With red hat, I'm not sure its up to date enough for desktop use - dedoimedo likes to talk up his centos install but he doesn't actually recommend it. I'm going to look at red hat one day for production.

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#348

Post by Accacin »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #261
inetknght wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you stray from the beaten PATH (and LD_LIBRARY_PATH) then yes you can start encountering trouble. Most good tools provide the options for you to do that. If you want to start building from scratch then `configure` and `make` often have PREFIX (and flavors such as BINPREFIX, LIBPREFIX, etc). `cmake` has similar variables to control where it looks for dependencies. Other languages' tools undoubtedly do too. I high…

In other words, I can get what I want, which is very simple on Windows and Mac, in Linux by compiling things from source or otherwise jumping through a bunch of containerization hoops. No thanks.

But I can't do these things on Windows 10 either, I tried to put all my installed software on D: and when I had an update I was unable to install it because Windows couldn't work out where my stuff was which required a reinstall to install the update. Now I have to manually enter 'D' prefix on all installations, and that's for software that actually lets me!

The Linux package managers aren't perfect, but overall offer more flexibility for what I personally need.

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#349

Post by Svoka »

jammygit wrote: post #44

All I want is to be able to give companies my money in exchange for not being spied on, manipulated, or locked into some walled garden. I can't for my OS - I have to use free gnu/Linux because everyone else treats me like crap. Is my money not good enough for them? This is getting absurd

So... Why not use macOS?

Re: Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10

#350

Post by Spivak »

closetohome wrote: post #111
eutropia wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to spend several days manually ripping out huge chunks of Win10 to get something resembling the usability of XP. That included removing all of the updating utilities, hosts-file blocking of microsoft servers, removal of most of the preinstalled apps, as well as disabling and deleting all of the scheduled tasks which try to re-install and re-enable those settings. All this trouble so I can play modern PC games..…

1998: I'd never connect a Windows box directly to the Internet. Hackers might break my computer. 2018: I'd never connect a Windows box directly to the Internet. Microsoft might break my computer.

Oh man I get just a glimpse of what the Windows team has to deal with when applying patches it's absolutely insane. Never in my life have I had to worry that yum update was going to trash my system.
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