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Microsoft's Hidden Windows 8 Feature: Ads
MojoKid writes "Despite the fact that I've been using Windows 8 for the past three weeks, I somehow managed to overlook a rather stark feature in the OS: ads. No, we're not talking about ads cluttering up the desktop or login screen (thankfully), but rather ads that can be found inside of some Modern UI apps that Windows ships with. That includes Finance, Weather, Travel, News and so forth. On previous mobile platforms, such as iOS and Android, seeing ads inside of free apps hasn't been uncommon. It's a way for the developer to get paid while allowing the user to have the app for free. However, while people can expect ads in a free app, no one expects ads in a piece of software that they just paid good money for."
M$
I only pay for applications with bad money instead of good money, so I'm fine with the ads.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
This kind of caught me off guard too. The music App started showing me ads, and not just little images off to the side, but full screen videos asking me to sign up for a subscription. I thought that the :"Music" app was what I was supposed to use to listen to the music I already owned. Not some nagware that tried to convince me to buy more music off the MS specific store. I promptly removed the music from my desktop after that and just went to download Winamp, since WMP and the new music app were completely unable to play FLAC files anyway. I can't see how MS isn't going to get in trouble for this one. If they got in trouble for doing it with browsers, which were mostly free anyway, even before they started including them, just think of how Apple is going to react to MS embedding a music store in the OS, or Steam is going to react to adding a games store in the OS.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I guess Tanenbaum will have to add a new chapter to the next printing of his Operating Systems textbook.
You paid MS to license Windows8. You didn't buy a copy. Ergo, you are agreeing to pay MS a specified sum of money to view ads which happen to come with programs that you can also use.
Is there, or has there ever been, ANY reason why you would put Windows 8 on a desktop or laptop? There's not a single positive new feature or advantage of it that I've heard of. And I'm being serious, I really haven't heard one thing it does new or better than 7.
Phones/Tablets, I can understand, but why would you on a desktop or laptop?
One more reason to exercise "down"grade rights.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can hardly believe this article was posted without researching the EULA. I would imagine it addresses this new feature. If it does, that's not news (other than the usual EULA hilarity). If it does not, that's news.
The only thing that's "news" here is the rather unbelievable concept that you actually think people read EULAs anymore. Even if it did address it, chances are the words "built-in ads" are summed up inside three paragraphs of legalese that no one understands anyway.
You paid money for the OS. When an OS component has an ad, feel free to get angry. In the meantime, get over it. You don't have to use Microsoft free software. You can choose to download your own. Hell, this is Slashdot, you should be making your own, releasing the source, and publishing it to the Microsoft Store. Anyone who's unboxed a new computer will know that this is true. You just paid ______ computer company $____ for a computer! How dare they install advertisements, trialware, and crap software on your computer! Same issue, different company.
just think of how Apple is going to react to MS embedding a music store in the OS, or Steam is going to react to adding a games store in the OS.
Valve has already published its reaction to the Windows Store in Windows 8. See stories from late July and late October.
On page 7 of the 11 page legal document called the Windows 8 EULA, in Section 6 "Windows Apps", Microsoft include the following wonderfully enlightening information...
"Some Windows apps include advertising. You may choose to opt out of personalized advertising by visiting choice.live.com."
No, "(GBP)inux" and "Appl(EUR)" aren't quite the same as "M$". Microsoft started out as a publisher of interpreters of the line-numbered BASIC programming language. Names of string variables in early BASIC always ended in $, making LET M$ = "Microsoft" valid code. What language are you talking about that uses the symbol for GBP or EUR?
I haven't noticed any ads, myself.
Of course, the first thing I did after I installed Windows 8 was install classic shell and disable metro entirely, so maybe that's why. ^_^.
Covering it in the EULA does not necessarily make it either reasonable or unremarkable.
Or like how Steam tries to bombard users with popup ads anytime they want to play the games they've already paid for?
I'm not sure how you're using Steam, but this has never happened to me.
Fact the first: Adverts within an application consume display space, and in smaller screens, this becomes more apparent.
Fact the second: Adverts require that you be a bit more careful with your mouse/finger/stylus/whatever, lest you accidentally click on the advert and interrupt what you're doing (especially if you're playing a game or other activity that has a high chance of random clickage).
Fact the third: Ads in paid-for/included applications, delivered by the OS maker, cannot be rationalized, especially since the competition does no such thing. When an OEM does it, it is often labeled "crapware".
Fact the fourth:: Even if you do not use it (them), you are stuck with the application(s) residing on your hard drive, taking up space, and potentially running in the background, which would consume both CPU and networking bandwidth. For mobile devices with 3G/4G data caps and using Windows 8 (be it RT or x86), this becomes a potential extra cost... you are literally paying to see the adverts in programs you did not install or choose yourself.
Fact the fifth: You as a consumer were not made aware of this intrusion until after you purchased the item, and since it is software, good luck getting a refund on it from either OEM or OS maker.
Conclusion: This ad-laden software is a massive flaw, not a feature.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I paid $15 for the OS upgrade (before they fixed the loophole in their upgrade promo site), just to see what all the commotion was about. Upgrade went fairly smooth considering I did the unthinkable and actually tried to upgrade a Microsoft OS without starting from scratch (I imaged my boot drive ahead of time just in case).
I played around with the Modern UI apps for the first day or so, smirked at the not-so-subtly placed ads, installed Classic Shell and haven't bothered to go back to the Modern UI since. The Modern UI truly has no place on a desktop computer... or anything without a touchscreen for that matter. It's a consumption-oriented tablet UI that probably excels at keeping you occupied during an extended shit session. I'll stick to the desktop and benefit from Win8's tighter security and streamlined bootup/shutdown. With a couple tweaks, it's like a really well made service pack for Win7.
Microsoft will send you the bill for their licensing of Reuters etc.
This is a stupid non-story. The reason Microsoft has ads (besides a desire to make money) is that these features are delivering content that costs money. Stock symbols don't just magically tell you their value, you have to subscribe to someone who host's live stock tickers. You have to pay Reuters, the WSJ and New York Times to publish their news stories. You have to pay the Weather channel to provide you with detailed hourly forecasts and historical data.
Microsoft is providing a premium service through the ad supported apps. And these are also applications which aren't a part of the core OS experience. If you don't want them... uninstall and pick another app without ads.
You use a finger on your right hand, duh
On what planet does 0.003 * 1e9 = 3e8? Do you work for Verizon?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
On page 7 of the 11 page legal document called the Windows 8 EULA, in Section 6 "Windows Apps", Microsoft include the following wonderfully enlightening information...
"Some Windows apps include advertising. You may choose to opt out of personalized advertising by visiting choice.live.com."
... Or you might aswell also opt-out by visiting www.ubuntu.com and avoid the hassle altogether!
I knew this was coming the moment i saw ads on the new XBox interface and was further reinfirced when MS did everything they could for you to NOT be able to diasable 'Metro'. First and foremost, Metro is there FOR OTHER PEOPLE to use your computers' resources.
Good-bye
I don't believe that hosts is faster than adblock, which blocks content before the domain name is resolved. Firefox goes through a process to decide whether and how to send a request, which ABP uses. Benchmark it for me.
Also, why should I trust a piece of closed-source software with my DNS records?
If you're dynamically updating a hosts file, it would seem that you are reinventing the square wheel -- this is what a DNS cache is for. A local DNS caching server is going to be just as fast, and much more flexible. You can run one on your desktop, or have it on a separate machine, and either way you can route all other DNS requests to it, instead of having a script running on each machine. They support dynamic blacklists as well, and you can match wildcard addresses (e.g. *.malwareserver.com). What is the problem with using tools designed for this purpose?
You mention the home address. The problem with 127.0.0.1 isn't that it it's slower. The problem with it is that it's a valid IP address, usually for a local web server. If there is a server listening, it will process the request.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The OS doesn't have ads; it's a couple built-in (Metro) apps you probably won't ever use after that one time you open them to see what they are. I agree it's an asinine move, but it's one that won't affect most users.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
No, that's not how things work.
Without Adblock,
User requests a piece of content -> Firefox uses content policies to determine how and whether a request should be sent -> Firefox checks the local browser cache for the file -> Firefox requests the DNS record for the domain in question -> The OS parses the local DNS cache (the hosts file should be preloaded)-> finds address 0.0.0.0, returns that to Firefox.
Adblock stops that process at step 2. Hosts would be faster IFF Adblock adds more overhead to the content policy process than it would take to actually make the request.
I took a minute to actually test this.
Atom netbook, Linux, Firefox 17 beta, Adblock Plus, Firebug, Mozilla's internal DNS/file cache disabled, hosts file 34 lines long:
Normal DNS name resolution: 3 ms.
With hosts blocking : 3 ms.
With Adblock : 0 ms.
A larger hosts file would of course increase the time taken for DNS resolution.
Not only this, but it can also filter parts of addresses (e.g. filter example.com/badcontent but not example.com/goodcontent). You can filter all sorts of things with regexes that are completely impossible with naive blacklists, like blocking content based on its type.
Your A, B, C, D list is all handled by a DNS caching server. Do note, this is not the same thing as the built-in local DNS cache, so your comments are really completely off-base.
DNS caching servers may be a bit more complex, but again they're also more useful: they work for any device that supports TCP/IP networking. The one I am using weighs in at a hefty 39.9 kilobytes. How big is your implementation?
A "plain" manually updated hosts file is going to be larger in itself than any other form of blacklisting. Even so, you might have an argument still by virtue of simplicity. When you start updating it with a script, you've just tossed all that out the window: your software performs the exact same function as a dns caching server, except badly, with more resources, and less flexibility.
The fundamental weakness of hosts is that you can't do regexes, and you cannot enumerate all malicious domains. It is difficult to strictly compare the performance of string matching (hosts) versus regular expressions (DNS, ABP). A small hosts file would have a chance of beating the other solutions, in theory. In practice, not so much, and by the time we get to multi-megabyte hosts files, you're pretty much screwed for performance.
Are we done here?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.