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In Windows 10, Ad-Free Solitaire Will Cost You $10 -- Every Year
Wired UK reports that the pre-installed Solitaire on Windows 10 capitalizes on the long-cultivated addiction that some users have to the game with an interesting bargain: rather than being an ordinary included application like it used to be, what may be the world's most pervasive on-screen office time-sink of a game now comes with ads, unless a user wants to pay (by the month, or by the year) to remove those ads. Notes the linked piece: "To be entirely fair, this is the same as on the Windows 8 version, which wasn't installed by default but could be downloaded from the Windows Store."
At $1.49/month or $10/year, this might be enough to drive some people who otherwise would not to check out some of the free, open-source games out there; PySolitaire is one of many in this incomplete list.
At $1.49/month or $10/year, this might be enough to drive some people who otherwise would not to check out some of the free, open-source games out there; PySolitaire is one of many in this incomplete list.
A year from now you'll have to pay money for this steaming pile...
... and they know that... which means they're inserting ads in shit because "fuck you"... and that's cool. So long as we're on the same page. I'll respond by redirecting the DNS entries of their ad domains to localhost. And then go around systematically replacing, kneecapping, or tweaking all their shit to make it do what I want it to do.
Why?
First law of computer security.
Physical security is the first law. And I have possession of the OS in my hot little hands. Which means it does what I want to do so long as I can figure out what they did and I'm willing to sit there and fix it.
Which so far I've been willing to do.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
And so it begins....
Yet another reason to upgrade to Ubuntu.
Will
There is a really really obvious reason Microsoft gave away Windows 10 for free. They take 30% of all apps sales.
Give me a break. Solitaire is still free and *ad-free*. That's right I said Ad-Free, because it is if anyone actually bothered to open Solitaire on Windows 8 or Windows 10. If you want to play Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows 7 solitaire aka Klondike solitaire it's still free and it's still completley ad free.
They also added, in spite of everybody here being entitled little brats, 5 other versions of solitaire like Spider solitaire and freecell. If however you want to try out one of the "Daily Challenges" you may use the curated, daily content for the outrageous price of watching an ad.
God, Slashdot has really hit a new low. God forbid an app, that can be uninstalled is included with a free OS that gives you 5 games for free but offers one tiny bit of premium content in exchange for an ad.
If your tin foil hat paranoid brain can avoid clicking on the daily-challenge button you get multiple high quality card game apps for nothing. Or you can right click on the app in your app list (because it's not even pinned to your start menu by default) and click "Uninstall". Lord have mercy! The pain and trouble! Oh my!
They aren't tracking your surfing habits more than google. They're tracking them exactly the same. The OS isn't scanning the contents of your files and applications and uploading them. Put simply this is some of the most rediculous FUD I've seen in nearly all of Slashdot's anti-Microsoft FUD. Which is saying a lot.
For fuck's sake, Solitaire is not part of some master scheme to spy on you. In fact of all of the large tech companies Microsoft is the one most actively avoiding ads to pay for their products and instead choosing for subscriptions.
No one said solitaire was going to spy on you. I started this conversation because I don't like the move to an ad-based, MS-store-based business model. I would rather just buy Windows and have it be a solid, reasonably useful operating system. I mentioned the spying as an aside, which by the way, is really irritating nonetheless.
Are you defending the new MS business model? I personally don't like thinking about getting nickel and dimed all the time when I use something. I'd rather pay up front and not have to think about how much this costs or that costs as I use the OS.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
e I don't like the move to an ad-based, MS-store-based business model.
If your biggest complaint is that there are ads in some areas of the solitaire suite then just spend the $1 per month for the next 10 years and you'll be back to where you were paying for windows before. You can even write it off if you're a business as an expense instead of a purchase.
Better, take the $170 for Windows xp/7/8 pro and invest it. Every month you should make about $1.70 in returns. Take that $1.70 and get solitaire every month for life. Take the other $0.70 and every other month buy yourself a nice ad free version of the apps you want for $1.50 like MetroTube. Most ad supported apps in the store also have an ad free version you can buy outright.
Meanwhile the Microsoft Store Based business model works great. All of your purchases are instant. No more filling out a shady as hell paypal form and waiting for a cd key to arrive. No more trying to find virus free freeware on Downloads.com which then ends up installing a firefox extension to spy on you. No more installing tiny applications which may or may not solve the problem you have and may or may not add a rootkit to your system. The Store is safe, it's well sandboxed by the WinRT APIs. It's cheap, since most apps are more like $1.50 instead of $9.99. It's convenient, you just search and all of the apps are in one place, you don't google and hunt through their poorly designed 1980s BBS inspired website. All of the libraries and packages are included no hunting for dependencies. And yes there are some ad supported apps, but I'm fine with that because I believe in developers being able to make a livelihood but sometimes I'm not willing to actually buy an app outright. I'm more than happy to look at a reasonable amount of ads in an app if I don't feel like spending the $0.99 for it. And when I do feel like spending a couple dollars to support an app it's bought outright 99% of the time and I can install it easily on all of my computers without registration or DRM or any bullshit.
I have a feeling that we are going to hear lots more complaints about the "free" version of Windows as people have more experience with it. I also expect that if they get a few million complaints, they might make it so that you can pony up the $130 obligatory dollars per copy to make the "FREE" ad-based Windows into a paid-for, ad free version.
Yes, and then just like the cable companies, the ads will also sneak into the $130 fully paid version.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
@im_thatoneguy We are happy that you are content to be the revenue generating property of Microsoft.
Just understand that your long rationalization of how convenient and awesome your computer lifestyle is overlooks the blazing moral issues the rest of us are displeased with. What you really are endorsing is a future where the single corporate gatekeeper model is perpetuated with said gatekeepers in a position of power which has never been so concentrated in the history of the world.
All of the large OS and Web Service corporations are gunning for this role: to be positioned such that they will
1. Extract profit on all human purchasing activity
2. Control what you are allowed to see via advertising, search and censorship bubbles
3. Complete awareness of who you are and what your personal motivations are so as to maximize the above while providing value to the nation states in which they must operate who would gladly be given access to the above data treasure.
This is all being sold to you in the name of your benefit and convenience. And you bought it.
This I'm sure will sound alarmist to you, but we see the end game, you don't. Enjoy it while you can.