581–590 of 647 posts
I like the ads. They spice up my day and give me something fun and interesting to look at when I'm bored at work. Plus I find it positive to see adverts for useful and enjoyable products and services. Thanks Microsoft for putting these ads in my Start Menu where they are handy and easy to find. Maybe they could also put some adverts for products and services that are relevant to my interests into other parts of the o…
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I've been using linux as my primary desktop for the past 20 years. Is it perfect? No, but it's damned powerful for development, fast, and fully customizable. Ironically, my love of linux on the desktop has also kept me gaming on console. I've strongly considered building a pc and the thought of having to use windows (proton has come a long way, but a lot of games I'd like to play aren't supported) is enough to give m…
Yeah, dual booting for gaming is a pain. That's why I do most of my gaming in a Windows 10 VM these days. I pass through a GPU and use looking glass for I/O and it's great! I just have Windows living on one of my virtual desktops and can instantly switch between games and host applications.
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> 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 al…
> I can drop windows and switch to linux, but I don't think everyone could. Honestly, most people could if they really wanted to. People come up with all kinds of reasons why they can't but ultimately it just boils down to not wanting to be inconvenienced. Your other examples are a lot harder to do something about but that doesn't mean you can't do anything. Do you really need a smartphone at all? Third party data ha…
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Perhaps they figured they could rake in much more cash by giving the license away for free and charging someone else for showing ads.
Microsoft does not give their license away for free. OEMs pay for every PC they ship. The OEM licensing price is lower than the retail price but the PC buyer most assuredly paid for their copy of Windows. Microsoft just decided they needed to double dip. They make money on the front with licenses and subscriptions and on the back with advertising.
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"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…
In 2025, Microsoft will own search and Google will own the desktop OS
Hot take: it’s not really Microsoft’s fault or responsibility, as there is no Microsoft to be responsible or faulted for this craziness. It’s one individual (or two? Or a small team, but really not that big of a group) who is rotten to the core and is so career-obsessed they don’t understand that they are making lives of millions of people worse with this, so that they can just show their PowerPoint to higher up. It…
The org doesn’t promote PMs who have those ethics, so they never get to make these calls the correct way. The company wants this, long term at least, and select the people that will do it via hiring and promo.
Versus building new tools or experiences, etc. etc.
This is on some specific people's conscience, nobody made them do it in a way an angry tiger makes people try to run away. It was some one or two people's choice.
Were there other people in their place, we would have never had this problem.
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>I've learned not to underestimate the extents to which people will go to rationalize their cognitive dissonance. In person, my tactic has just been to self-censor more - I guess I'm tired/lazy and don't want to be bothered unnecessarily. I couldn't agree more. As someone with decades of infosec experience, I stopped trying to get my family members ( especially those who don't have any technical background) not to us…
It's fair enough if you don't want to make evangelism your life mission but if you don't point bad things out to people at all then you are limiting your impact as much as those that have given up and submit to those things. Sometimes people are receptive to being nudged towards responsible behavior.
What makes you think I don't? Check my comment history, that should disabuse you of that notion.
>Sometimes people are receptive to being nudged towards responsible behavior.
That's often true. But I've banged my head against that particular wall too many times already. You did catch the part where I said "family" right?
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You'll be trading one set of known frustrations with another set of unknown frustrations. A few years ago, I ran Fedora w/ KDE Plasma. What _seemed_ to be random is the GTK fonts throughout the UI changed to a mono-spaced font regardless of what the control panel showed. It "resolved itself" within a few weeks. I don't know if it was an update that caused and subsequently resolved the issue, or something else I did.…
I'm not disagreeing with your point, but I don't think those frustrations are comparable with advertising in the Start menu and file browser. I also find it funny that you mention problems with fonts as this is an area where I believe both Linux and macOS are ahead of Windows.
Windows caught up quite some time ago to macOS. I don't see Linux as superior with font handling. Certainly lacks on the rendering side of things (DPI etc).
> comparable with advertising in the Start menu and file browser
Wouldn't know. I use Win 11 Pro so those updates don't seem to have come down to it (yet?) and use Win 10 Ent at work where those will never arrive.