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The Ad-Supported Operating System
An anonymous reader writes "The appearance of an ad-supported operating system is probably not that far off. This article takes a look at some of the finer points behind an OS which is financed with ad views, and more specifically the logic behind a free version of Windows which could make this a reality. There are a few issues which must be resolved first, but with Microsoft refining Windows Live and shifting some of their focus to advertising, many of the pieces seem to be falling into place."
Ads in place of a subscription make sense, but how do you justify ads for something with an exact value? When you see enough ads to have payed the price of the OS do they go away? I don't understand.
Would you complain then? Free stuff in exchange for some ads is common and, when done tastefully, seems to be popular with end users. gmail anyone?
Just get a plain old CRT and adjust the control to clip the ad toolbar off the screen. Space problem solved!
How long before someone creates an adblock extension for it?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
... click frauds ??
I don't want a signature.
Right now, I get paid to remove ads from peoples computers
In the future, I'll be getting paid to install an OS with ads preloaded.
/not gonna happen
Yeah, right, that's what I think. Also I'd never use MS Messenger because it's full of ads, and there's a lot of free (as in speech) and ad-free alternatives. But in spite of it, people don't seem to care.
$ whoami
I think that many people would happily pay for an operating system just to avoid the ads.
If the day ever comes where I have to choose between paying to use an adless operating system and using one with built-in advertising, that's the day I turn off the computer for good.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
At first thought, *maybe* for the consumer market, but *never* for server-market. I mean, who regularly looks at the screen of a server, anyway? You use remote tools for that.
And as long as their OS comes packaged with OEM systems, why should they worry about selling Windows for less than they're charging already? Win XP is a fraction of the cost of a desktop from IBM, HP, or even Dell.
And that leave Retail boxes, where demand isn't exactly elastic.
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So instead of getting reputable ads they start getting penis enhancment products and the like.
Or, if spam email is any predictor, the hijackers will advertise their services promising to reduce the OS-planted ads. Oh, and also how you can get your ad planted in 10,000,000 people's OS.
Isn't it just like Microsoft. They rarely try to entice people to purchase their products because they're good. They always are looking for ways to MAKE people by their products because they have to. I'm saying this in relation to the likelihood that an ad-based windows OS would be the one bundled with OEM computers. It's doubtful the ad-OS would be in a box on a store shelf anywhere.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I've got Karma to burn, so here goes.... my true assessment of home-computing. A few of my relatives have home PCs - all running pirated versions of Windows. The ads come in the error messages:
e d-to-be-part-of-Windows, anti-spyware, external firewalls, broadband (modem drivers are clunkier in recent OSes), Flash, Support services etc.
* Program performed illegal operation
Sends the hapless home user scurrying to get a licensed copy of the OS.
* Windows did not shut down properly. Files may be corrupted or lost
And the poor chap goes out and buys a UPS. Never a chance to even imagine that ext3 rarely loses files even during a power shutdown.
* Photoshop Elements may not work well with this Service Pack
So the user pays Adobe for the privilege of being lazy enough not to explore better options.
* Windows encountered an error in lsass.exe and must shutdown
The user buys an upgrade since there's no support for the old OS any more.
And so on, Windows has been a huge advertising platform for anti-virus software, UPSs, Backup-software-that-actually-works-but-is-suppos
The fact that despite being an antiquated junkpiece several years behind in technology, Windows has succeeded as a platform, proves a coupla' things:
1. User apathy and lethargy is a very potent force. A user would rather patch a buggy junk, rather than learn something better, simpler and advanced.. like Linux, Opera, Firefox, Open Office, Gnumeric etc.
2. It's not possible to release Newer OSes forever, that's still prone to viruses and malware... remember You Can't Fool All The People All The Time...
and so, it appears
Microsoft has patented Web-Service-OSes that can be metered like Electricity and Gas. It's about time, one would've thought. Suddenly, all these lower-life-forms like anti-virus and backup s/w firms who depended on MS for their living.. would become redundant! There'll be hell to pay, since these guys don't die overnight.
Symantec, Trend Micro, Citrix or Veritas wouldn't take such initiatives lying down. Interesting times ahead!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Has everyone forgot installing Windows 95/98, and going through the process of deleting the bundled AOL trials, CompuServe this and MSN Online that? It's not "Punch the monkey and win a free iPod!"-style advertising, but it is paid product placement and it is advertising. Also in Windows 95 and 98 was a "Sampler" directory on the CD with games and reference utilities, although most were distributed by Microsoft Games, there was a game from Scholastic and another company. In Windows XP, view your My Pictures folder (or any folder you or windows has identified as a photo folder), and look at the task pane: "Order Prints Online" takes you to a list of paid links to photo printers, "Shop for Pictures Online" takes you to a page with two microsoft links and one to 'BizPresenter.com'. It's not a new concept! It's just been subtle, but I doubt it'll get too much more obvious (viewing a 10 second advertisement every time you boot up, or "Targeted Media" on your desktop, ala Win98's Active Desktop items but with Coke ads instead of CBS News -- wait, they're both advertising!
If MS provided retailers with a cut-rate version of Windows to distribute on their products, how many people, really, would bother uninstalling said OS from their new computer?
Can MS make enough selling adverts to match or overshadow the profits they'd otherwise make from selling a straight system OS?
I'd venture a big fat 'Yes'.
An OS driven ad is very different from an internet ad. --Why? Because the internet ad only comes up if you go to a specific site. An OS ad comes up if you turn on your computer. How easy is that to sell to a company?
And who cares about click-throughs? Click-throughs are for small companies trying to hawk wares on the web. That's small potatoes. When you can guarantee a hundred million pairs of 'eyeballs' you can now get advertisers like Coke and Tide and GM sending checks to your accounts receivable department. Coke and Tide and GM don't care about click-throughs.
-FL
As much as I hate Microsoft, if a free ad-supported Windows was available, I'd go for it. While nothing can replace Linux as my primary OS, I still want to play games, and Cedega just isn't good enough. An ad supported Windows means: 1) Microsoft will not make money off me on purchase 2) Nobody will make money off me as I ignore the ads 3) I get to play games on Windows and stick it up to Microsoft in the process 4) Privacy in this case is not a problem because I'm not doing anything other than play a few games on that OS (no browsing around or reading e-mail or handling personal data) It sounds perfect to me. Bring it on!
Even though the idea of an advertiser-driven OS was a total joke at the time, it did seem like an inevitable development someday.
If it's an either/or deal then you're right. But suppose they're just testing the water looking to make ads ubiquitous on the windows platform.
Then they'd probably market Vista with a ridiculous mark up - even by Microsoft standards, that is - and then offer an entry level version with full functionality, but supported by adverts. Of course, the ad-supported version costs as much as they think the market will bear, but everyone is so relieved at not being charged One Beeeelion Dollars that they think "phew, what a relief". Likewise when the OEMs start bundling the ad enhanced version by default.
MS already have the infrastructure to serve the ads via their acquisition of Massive. They'd need to make sure no one turned the adverts off - which sounds like a job for WGA.
Suddenly the spyware like elements of WGA make sense. MS can mine user activity patterns to serve targetted ads, beat Google at their own game, and get an ongoing revenue stream against the likelihood that the next windows released gets delayed until the Twenty-Second Century. Huzzah! The company is saved!
You know, I think this might actually be The Plan...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
- Dragging a window caused a (slow) redraw. Haven't they heard of buffering?
- Inserting a USB memory stick went through some kind of add new hardware thing. Why wasn't it automatically mounted? The drivers were present, so why bother the user?
- Ejecting the USB drive meant going to a tiny PCMCIA icon in the task bar; hardly intuitive. Why wasn't there an eject button Explorer?
- The scheduler really sucks. Even the old 4.4BSD scheduler handled load better, and ULE wipes the floor with the Windows scheduler.
- Why doesn't the kill -9 equivalent always work? Some processes seem to get stuck in system calls that never return. Not good design.
- Privilege escalation is painful. RunAs feels like a horrible hack, and accessing it through the GUI is painful.
- Drivers. Why do I have to hunt for drivers for my hardware? The only specific configuration I've had to do on other platforms was to grab the DRI drivers for FreeBSD, and that was little more than 'portinstall drm.' Windows won't even tell me what hardware I have if it doesn't have drivers for it! It is very hard to find drivers for 'Unknown Multimedia Interface.' If it even gave me the PCI ID then I could google for that.
- Installing software is painful. Each application seems to have its own method of installing. On OS X, I just drag things to the Applications folder. On FreeBSD, I use portinstall. On OpenBSD, I use pkg_add. On Windows, it varies for app to app.
- ACPI support is somewhat flaky. Quite often my laptop would go into suspend mode and never resume. According to the comments in the ACPI code for FreeBSD there are some special work-arounds for a buggy ACPI controller in my machine, but somehow Windows doesn't have them. Why not?
- Drag and drop support in Windows is very hit-and-miss. Many things don't even seem to support drag and drop on text!
My conclusion was that Windows is not ready for the desktop, let alone the laptop.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The freedom from vendor lock-in is priceless.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Really? Someone better tell Microsoft this!
Oh wait...they already know. Hence their "world of applications that run on windows" ad campaign. You may have seen it before.
Yeah,
I replaced my tax software with a linux friendly version of "Accountant."
Damn, this human/program works wonders as I don't have to do any work myself. It's voice activated too!
ie, "Hey, Steve here is this and this and that, I want this and those and something else. See you later Steve!"
It's just like that folks...
Not sure if Steve is open source though, but I could ask him later!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Just to get it out there, I'm looking for AutoCAD to run under WINE and still have the ability to use the scripts I've spent years writing. That would get me somewhere. It also seems, from
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
> It's much more clever sending the best students to the best schools, instead of sending those with the richest parents.
I'm not familiar with the Scandinavian education system, however I am familiar with other 'free' higher education systems. I'm sure the Scandinavian ones have a high standard of education, but I wonder if they have some of the flaws the other free systems have.
How did the 'best' schools get created? Did they get created with government money? Or did they start privately and were later made free-for-all?
Is there a Finnish or Norwegian equivalent of Stanford, which was set up with private money (and is even today quite expensive) because the establishment in those days thought MIT and Harvard was 'enough'? To put it another way, is state-budgeting limiting the growth of Scandinavian higher education?
Further, if you look at the free/subsidized higher education in Asia (and to some extent even France), you see an interesting trend: the best are very good indeed, but the quality of education falls off quite dramatically after that. The reason being that taxes only go so far, and countries tend to finance institutions of higher education keeping national prestige in mind (hence the French Grandes écoles and the Indian IITs). Compare this with the US where they Ivy league has catchet mainly because of the age of the institutions, but insitutes like Rensselaer can hold their own despite not having the prestige associated with Ivy leagues. What I'm trying to say is that the US system has a lot more depth than state-supported systems elsewhere.
Incidentally, the GP noted that all the free education is financed by taxes, the hope being the student will pay taxes too someday. (Finland IIRC has pretty high taxes.) So how does you feel about Linus, who's presumably having to pay no taxes now that he's living in the US? (he had a Finnish university education AFAIK). Apparently a lot of successful Scandinavians do this as well.
Go somewhere random
I still can't understand all the ad biz, I really don't pay much attention to 99.99% of the ads. Really, are all those companies paying for those ads getting a benefit from them?
Even on TV it has been years that I pay attention to an ad, usually I will switch channels or fast forward. On the internet I just block those sections of the page, and just read the article or the forum.
How much money is being spent on advertising, that money could be used on making things cheaper for consumers, or just donate all that money to other countries and then they will have a bigger market to sell their products.
I'll be really interested in reading some study about the efficiency and success of all those ads, I bet some are really good, but 99% of them I think is a waste of money, just like e-mail SPAM, and regular spam in your mailbox at home. I don't know anyone that doesn't throw that to the trash without reading. We could be saving some trees.
Stop the ads and make something useful with that money.
Once upon a time Internet marketers could have had a brighter future. In metaphorical terms I feel that too many of them cooked the goose that laid golden eggs. While the Internet matured they exploited it with spam, adware, unwanted pop-ups, malware, exploits and any other slimy scummy technique they could think of in order to push themselves before unconsenting eyeballs -- be damned whether the user wanted it or not.
The end result is (just speaking for myself mind you) that I *HATE* marketing now. Yes, I admit it. I know it's not PC, but I despise all forms of marketing, even forms that could be considered ethical. I now change the TV channel when a commercial comes on. I change the radio station when an ad comes on the radio. I throw away all my direct marketing ads in the mail without even glancing at it. I use all of the pop-up filtering technology available so that I don't have to see it on the web. I don't want to see ANY of it now.
The thing is I don't think I'm alone, I think there are a following of people who feel the way I do.
How did we reach this state of marketing-hatred? I think perhaps it's related to the attempts by online marketers to prevent me from blocking the ads, whether we're talking about hashes in spam to bypass checksum filters or anti pop-up-blocking technology -- that's when the war on the consumer started and they don't deserve to win.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.