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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.
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
How about we just cut the "M$" bullshit and speak like adults, how about that? That bit was fucking old when Win95 was new, its even lamer now. If you don't want to type the name or be snarky just use MSFT which is the stock ticker, it lets you be snarky without looking like some loser that figured out how to look up memes last week.
As for TFA....Is it possible that Ballmer is shorting the stock? or is he just THAT incompetent as a CEO? I know Forbes labeled him worst CEO but I didn't think he was also the most retarded, the kind of shit he's been pulling lately frankly reminds me of the PHB from Dilbert, in fact if you'd have told me about turning the desktop into a giant cell phone, pushing ads onto the paid version, and trying to force touch to be the primary interface when less than 4% of the desktops that ship NOW have touch, much less the hundreds of millions of laptops and desktops MSFT wants to upgrade? i would have honestly thought you were simply ripping off a Dilbert strip.
I mean Good God, look at the man's "accomplishments" during his tenure, rushing the X360 out with a 2 billion dollar flaw, spending 8.5 billion of Skype thus making sure the carriers treat WinPhone like an STD wrapped in AIDS infected needles, Zune, Kin, killing PlaysForSure and soon Windows Messenger, Windows 8 forcing desktops to have a cellphone UI...its a fucking trainwreck over there, he is making the reign of the Pepsi guy at Apple look good by comparison.
If the board doesn't get his fat sweaty clueless ass out of the big chair in the next year and a half i could see them becoming another RIM, a company only holding onto legacy markets while the rest of the world forgets they even existed. Hell the ONLY things that are saving his ass on the desktop is that Apple has no desire to own the low end and the Linux devs won't quit futzing with critical subsystems long enough for it to become stable, otherwise they might be in trouble even there.
I know I've been hearing from a LOT of customers lately just to make sure i could still get Win 7, nobody wants that damned Win 8 and after 2 billion in ads they sold just 4 million copies...that's $500 for every $40 sale. talk about a waste of advertising money! As a retailer I'm just glad Win 7 is good until 2020 and is solid as a rock, hopefully fatass will be "pursuing other interests" before Win 9 comes out so someone with a functioning brain can right the ship. as it is now its as retarded as someone slapping a $100K sticker on a Ford and thinking that means it can compete with Ferrari...nope, it just means you run off the market you had in pursuit of a market that doesn't want your product...brilliant move Ballmer, just fucking brilliant. I can see why they pay you the big bucks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.