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Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

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Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or are completely unavailable on other OSs (many video games) I get a chuckle whenever I realize how things have changed. In the early to mid-80's, there was a popular mantra that the IBM PC ecosystem was for "serous work," and anything else was "just for games," which was a slap at Apple (then dominant for business, but rapidly slipping) and the other alternatives. Today, it seems that for the majority of ordinary p…

> the only reason they stay in the Wintel ecosystem is for games. Is it still "Wintel" when a lot of gamers are going AMD now?

It is until AMD goes mainstream with an instruction set not developed by Intel.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#522
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how showing "Still using Firefox?" can be seen as anything but a targeted anti-Firefox ad. The title is completely accurate.

"Targeted" for me would imply that Windows is checking first to see whether Firefox is installed, and only showing the suggestion if so. If this is just a general suggestion that gets pushed out to all Windows computers, then it's not so much targeted as merely questionable use of platform.

It shows up if Firefox is your default browser

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With sandboxing, macOS is now forcing devs to use their file selection dialog because it will grant access to the selected files - a custom dialog box has no such blessing. It's nice, actually; it's finally making the file selection process feel uniform. Too many Java apps are still using random Swing dialogs though...

How do the java apps use their own file selection dialogs if they're sandboxed?

Sandboxed Java apps don’t. Here I’m talking about apps that you can’t get on the App Store, many of which are older Java programs which haven’t been updated to use the newer APIs.

The push to force sandboxed apps to use the system dialog had the nice side effect of forcing many GUI APIs to actually use the native file pickers, which meant that a lot of non-app-store apps started to use the native file picker. But Java apps don’t automatically get that upgrade.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#525
post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is there 2+ interfaces for all system configurations. 1 of which is pretty but incomplete, and the other hidden and terrible but complete? Of all the complaints, that one I totally understand the rationale for. It's an iterative design, they simply haven't finished building the new one yet. Until they do, I ignore it.

It isn't exactly advertised as an incomplete alpha product. Everything in Windows 10 funnels you into the new interface. The fact that the first-class option for system configuration is woefully incomplete is pretty hard to forgive. This is the only supported version of the flagship product of a fortune 500 company, not an early-access Steam game.

Agreed, W10 has been out for years. Apparently it has hit maintenance mode before they could finish. Honestly I'd rather have the XP control panel, with no extra clicks.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#527

It is the Microsoft sleight of hand. One hand is showing you want you want to see; Open Source initiatives, developer glad-handing, etc. While the other hand does this.

It's more like hundreds of teams who don't talk to each other.

So the hands dont speak to each other?

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#528
post #392

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I absolutely get the distaste for gratuitous UX changes. I've been using Xfce since 2004 and it hasn't changed all that much since then. Overall I'd never claim that a Linux desktop is a "Just Works" proposition, but judging from the issues my colleagues have with macOS, I wouldn't trade my Linux problems for their macOS problems. I can't speak much to Windows anymore, but I can't imagine it'd be all that much better…

Thank You for all your contributions to Xfce. I switched to it on FreeBSD and it is rock solid. When WinXP went EOL I setup a FreeBSD desktop and it has been fabulous. Truthfully my only gotcha is bluetooth support on FreeBSD is pretty bad. I can work around it as I listen to all these horror stories about Win10. Xfce allows me to mimic XP quite well. Drag the bar to the bottom of the screen and setup a dark blue bac…

If you want Bluetooth for audio, there are USB dongles that have standalone Bluetooth controllers in them and are only exposed to the OS as an audio device. I use it on my OpenBSD desktop.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#529
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should all (immediately) forget the old days, when Microsoft was just selling us the "Operating System" and then let us to our own devices. Now they realized that they lost the Smartphone game (the opportunity to siphon our data like Android and iOS do)(to some degree or another). I am using Firefox because it doesn't belong to anyone. I have zero faith on the privacy of Chrome. I believe (haven't tested and I won…

> I am using Firefox because it doesn't belong to anyone. Others mentioned are in a different league, but even firefox is mostly developed for an organization, that seems to be pushing to enter the service industry. Have you looked how many connections firefox makes without even opening a page? I tried to silence it, and it was a PITA - ended up using a firewall. I'd donate to firefox development, like 3, maybe 4 dig…

I am a great fan of SysInternals Suite since before they sold to Microsoft. I have been using TCPView since 2001 (or so)(just mentioning in case anyone who doesn't know the tools can find them useful). I also use Windows Firewall Control (WFC) a neat and cheap software that makes the Windows firewall management very easy. I know that FF on "idling" more has 4-5 open connections mainly to cloudfront, aws, akamai. Unfortunately FF prefers these CDN hosts over the true targets so I can't know more (and too lazy to use wireshark to find out).

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#530
post #20

This, and every other screw-up in the same vein, is why those of us old enough to remember the Halloween documents don't buy the whole "new Microsoft" thing. Want to get me to try Edge? Great -- instead of a passive-aggressive ad, try telling me how it's better than Firefox and why I'd like to use it instead. What will it get me? Better privacy? Better performance? Better development tools? Cynically, it's amazing th…

Some friends think I'm overreacting for refusing to use Microsoft products to this day, yes they have open sourced a lot of cool tech but they are still Microsoft. I felt vindicated when I bought a Lenovo laptop after using mac for the last 8+ years and found out you need to create a Microsoft account to use it!

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