I wish Valve would try to build a desktop OS. They surely have the bankroll to do something like that.
I'm curious what percentage of Windows users are only using it for gaming? Are there any stats on that?
Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
521–530 of 647 posts
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#522> As Microsoft puts it: “We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account (MSA).” What is Microsoft really thinking here? You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account. So…
Companies should really accept a "No" from their users. No I don't want to use a microsoft account just to use my computer. (Without jumping through hoops) Don't ask me again the moment I say "No". You can see the same with all those dialogs that only have "Yes, do $THING" and "Remind me later".
It also seems like the MS approach would be very much against the "consent" concept of the GDPR.
Maybe they'll have a different model for windows-in-EU vs elsewhere?
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's what the phrase "the customer is always right" originally meant. It means you can do all the market research, development, testing, polling, and seeding to sell a product. But the ultimate decider of whether the product is "good" is whether or not the people buy it. If your sales plan flops don't say "it's not the product's fault, I just need to do a better job marketing it." No, the product is wrong, the custom…
It doesn't matter how much you paid: You aren't the customer, you're the product.
There's a saying in Japanese that precisely describes this situation: 鴨が葱を背負ってくる. The literal translation is "a duck approaches you with a leek on its back." It refers to good luck brought by someone waiting to be exploited. Paying money for a product that works against you is exactly this.
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#524Hot take: We're nearing the peak size of corporations, and in 20 years the average corporation will be smaller, rather than larger. There's a simple reason. The reason Microsoft is doing stuff like this is because they're absolutely enormous. They have baseline costs in the tens of billions of dollars. You simply can't recoup that with individual product releases, where even a breakaway hit would cover a fraction of your costs for a single year. You need rent, and so they're rent seeking in every possible endeavor. And many other companies are in the exact same boat.
But both advertising and direct rent (e.g. pay us $10/month for your OS license) have theoretic limits. $10/month sounds awesome (from both a creator and consumer perspective) for a product that might have otherwise cost hundreds of dollars, until you get into the domain of a million companies doing the exact same thing. $10/month * n subscriptions becomes unviable at some point, and probably a relatively low point for the vast majority of people. It's kind of similar to what happened to Netflix. As more Netflix competitors emerged (and Netflix itself began to struggle), the cost to simply watch what you want skyrocketed, and consequently - so did 'piracy.'
And similarly with advertising. People can only physically watch so many ads. And for every advertised product, the value of advertising for a new company becomes relatively less. In other words if you're the only person advertising, in existence, everybody's going to know about you. If there are a million comparable products being advertised, then even a large advertising budget may yield negligible returns.
It's a tragedy of the commons, or more precisely - of the commoner.
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#525Hot take: We're nearing the peak size of corporations, and in 20 years the average corporation will be smaller, rather than larger. There's a simple reason. The reason Microsoft is doing stuff like this is because they're absolutely enormous. They have baseline costs in the tens of billions of dollars. You simply can't recoup that with individual product releases, where even a breakaway hit would cover a fraction of…
Surely they make a ton from their cloud services. I wouldn't think they needed to make more money from Windows over and above the license fees. This is more likely revenue optimization.
I'm happy with my move to Fedora!
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Microsoft is selling your eyeballs to advertisers: You are the product not the customer. > Vendors are buying windows from Microsoft and installing it onto a computer and selling that computer to you. You are buying a computer not windows. Sometimes people are buying Windows[1]. It is possible to be the customer for the OS and the product for the ads at the same time. --- 1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/window…
Microsoft clearly has zero interest in the idiots who buy retail licenses, especially home licenses. They'll cash your check, but they're not going to pay any attention to your opinions. You're trapped in their ecosystem and they have no reason to pay attention to your desires. They're going to sell your eyeballs to as many advertisers as possible and there's nothing you can do about it.
> ... and there's nothing you can do about it.
Except - like with the car examples above - eventually customers get pissed off or frustrated enough to switch to a different OS (or car manufacturer).
Thus Apple and Linux distro's picking up a lot of ex-windows users. KDE plays well to this audience. :)
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies should really accept a "No" from their users. No I don't want to use a microsoft account just to use my computer. (Without jumping through hoops) Don't ask me again the moment I say "No". You can see the same with all those dialogs that only have "Yes, do $THING" and "Remind me later".
Users should learn to say "no" to companies. The surveillance advertising economy is not some hapless mistake that companies will suddenly wake up to one day and realize the error of their ways. Whatever Microsoft "should" do is just wishful thinking. Change will come from users or regulation, and regulation seems unlikely.
> Users should learn to say "no" to companies.
This assumes that consumers have a choice to say no. I can drop windows and switch to linux, but I don't think everyone could. I want a phone that doesn't come with Google's software and won't severely limit what I can do with it like apple would. Could most people find and afford one? Some surveillance companies like facebook and Experian don't give you any choice at all. They collect (and leak) your data even if you never sign up for anything with them. If I only have one option for broadband in my city it's unreasonable to expect me to go without functional internet access, even if I hate the one company available and know they'll sell my browsing history.
At a certain point people are basically forced to use companies or are at their mercy even if they'd rather not be.
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account." You are not kidding. I bought my parents two computers and set them up from scratch, taking pains to create local user accounts (because they don't have Microsoft accounts). On one of them, I have no idea how, the sole user ID still managed to be a POS "Microsoft account" cre…
I have a Microsoft account (an ancient one even, anyone remember Hotmail?) I use everyday, but I refuse to use it with Windows 10/11. Why? Because I don't want sync. I treat each of my computers as separate, individual, unique machines. Synchronizing the data on them is fucking insane to me because I can't rely on a given machine to be the computer I expect it to be. And yes, I have separate Google accounts for my ph…
Yeah man. I have a Hotmail account I use as a spam-bucket, and that's it.
For the sync I want, I tolerate iCloud. For everything else, I roll my own.
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies should really accept a "No" from their users. No I don't want to use a microsoft account just to use my computer. (Without jumping through hoops) Don't ask me again the moment I say "No". You can see the same with all those dialogs that only have "Yes, do $THING" and "Remind me later".
Not just the account. The telemetry should have a complete off switch too.
They'll never let you disable all of their data collection. They need that data to sell to the government, help them decide which ads to push at you, and to leverage against you in any other way which might benefit them.
Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
#530I wish Valve would try to build a desktop OS. They surely have the bankroll to do something like that. I'm curious what percentage of Windows users are only using it for gaming? Are there any stats on that?
The Steam deck already runs Arch and you can use the thing as a desktop computer, so that OS pretty much is just Linux. Valve has invested a lot to make the ecosystem better and I've little doubt they'll continue to do just that.