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Windows 10 Now Showing Full Screen Ads On Lock Screen (consumerist.com)
Striek writes: Several media outlets are reporting that Windows 10 has now started showing full screen ads on users' lock screens. They can be turned off, but how many people will actually bother with this? "Tips site How-To Geek discovered that Windows Spotlight, which normally rotates between a selection of photographs, was being used to display an ad for Square Enix's Rise of the Tomb Raider. Understandably, most people probably don't want to be hit in the face with a full-screen ad for a video game before they even unlock their computer. If you want to make sure you're not hit with these ads, follow these steps to disable Windows Spotlight:
Open the Start Menu and search for "Lock Screen Settings."; Under "Background," select either Picture or Slideshow, instead of Windows Spotlight.; Scroll down to "Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen" and this toggle." Apparently the "and more" is where Microsoft hid the advertisements.
It's official, CEO #3 is just as jerky as #1 and #2. The MS tradition of corporate mayhem continues.
Table-ized A.I.
This is the price of "free" MS upgrades.
I actually had to pay full price for this.
Kindles have always had two prices. The lower price with ads is the advertised price. You can pay a higher price for the one without ads on the lock screen.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Change the damned settings. It's RIGHT THERE in the summary.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Did you read the summary? This is not complicated. Change the settings. tada.wav! There, closed. You're all set and, best of all, you got to pick what's displayed instead of relying on a third party to do so. That and, as of yet, this has not been shown to be a malware route. It probably is but we can not make that accusation until it's demonstrated to be so. They provide network access, that's the greatest route of malware right there. Change the damned settings and move on. Who the hell wants ads on their lock screen? Nobody, that's who. Change it and move on. What the hell do you think "other" is, anyhow? This is MS we're talking about. Of course it's ads. Turn that shit off and be done with it. Hell, you see the same thing on a Kindle, except you can't turn it off - unless you buy a more expensive version (or maybe upgrade? I dunno about that part).
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yeah, I am.
Pizza apps are a staple of any app ecosystem. Generally I use my web browser on my LAPTOP or safari on my iPhone (or the pizza app, whichever happens to be on screen sooner) The point is that Microsoft is trying to setup an ecosystem like the apple or google app stores for applets. But if they don't even have basic apps like those to order pizza after, what... 3 - 4 years of running an app store, they're seriously hurting. Because it's THOSE apps that are designed intentionally to be used on a metro/touchscreen interface they're vital to the success of the surface but they're not there.
So - as a tablet - it's an utter failure. I can't recommend it to my grandmother or tech-challenged friends and family when a droid tablet or iPad will work right out of the box. As an ultrabook with a touchscreen it does much better but then it gets compared to macbooks or ultrathin laptops
And no it wasn't bullshit but thanks for your concern. Aside from palemoon there's nothing on the surface but pure unadulterated Microsoft goodness. Sure, it's probably a bad driver (hardware seems fine otherwise) but they're all Microsoft drivers either from the stock install or the windows update and, being that it's a Microsoft built device, they can't claim it's a weird hardware configuration or some driver the vendor didn't properly test.
Expectations of PC users (MS hopes) are driven by their acceptance of all this "stuff" on their phones. But it *is* possible to turn 10 into a credible equivalent of 7, and MS even provides all the gory details at technet for those willing to dig. Some of it's even available in the standard settings apps (plural - app and control panel). I'm no MS shill, and probably will not upgrade my desktop to 10 (it's old enough that support is likely to be iffy anyway) since it's running well in 7. But I do have one computer running 10, and in general it's OK. Of course, I spent some time "reading the instructions" (which are not all from MS) and doing a moderately extensive effort to lock down the worst of the data collection and advertising support stuff.
> - Has the ugliest and most backwards user interface in history.
Not really true. It's different from what you had in XP thru 7, but you can, with a little work, dial the interface back to where it closely resembles 7. Of course, it has a different "start" menu that I'm growing to accept. If you really want the olde style, get one of the start menu apps developed for Win8; most work fine in 10 as well. Certain things are, of course, somewhat broken no matter what: for example, in 7, you could shut down with 3 keystrokes (win key, right arrow, enter); in 10, the minimum (if you don't have a substitute start app installed) is 5 (win key, up arrow, enter, up arrow, enter).
- Does not allow you to control the installation of updates.
You are correct here to some degree, though Pro (and even Home, in terms of short-term scheduling) allows you to delay them for some time. Also, W10Privacy.exe makes some of the otherwise Pro and Enterprise settings available in Home as well, using the information provided at technet. Should this degree of hacking be needed to control how updates are done? Of course not, for knowledgeable users, but for people who ignore updates because it's too much trouble to think about it the process probably is a good thing.
- Incorporates advertising into the shell (and now) the lock screen.
This is a surprise how? When they assign a unique advertising ID by default? And then provide explicit settings for turning it all off? You get ads on your phone the same way, why not on your computer? Most people won't notice, and those that do and are bugged by it can turn it off easily. And unlike Active Desktop in 98, it doesn't crash the computer if you turn the ads off.
- Steals your Internet bandwidth to help pay for the distribution costs of Windows Updates.
That's also an easy, one-click disable in publicly available settings, that works. In my copy (a 'free' update'), in fact, that distribution tweak was set by default to local network access only, not Internet (the middle level). Again, the publicly available settings let you turn it off completely if yours is the only W10 computer in sight.
- Gleefully violates your privacy by sending microphone recordings, keystrokes, email, file contents, and who knows what else to external servers without explicit consent.
Most of this can be turned off in Settings. What isn't turned off there, can be controlled using things like W10Privacy.exe, which can set rules in your computer's firewall that prevent nearly all communication with MS (of course, some things, including WU, break when you set all of them, so be careful). For full-on tinfoil hat types, you can set rules in your router's firewall, too, that should take care of the couple of things the computer firewall can't. Should all of this stuff be turned on by default? Heavens no! But your phone does the same thing so again why not your PC? And if you have a Smart TV you are already being monitored by camera and microphone at all times, with information being sent to the manufacturer insecurely to be used for selling advertising.
Bottom line:Windows 10 takes too much effort to set up and maintain properly, but when you expend the effort and acquire the tools and knowledge, it works as well as and arguably better (especially for power management) than 7.
This is no longer true. It is possible to download open source iOS apps, and build and install them into your iOS device. That whole $$$ required to get a developer certificate quietly went away a while back.
To be sure, you do need an apple account to get the now free device cert, and so this doesn't quite qualify as 'opening up their devices', but at least it no longer costs cash. That said, there are few iOS open source apps, since the vast majority of people don't seem to mind paying a bit of money for an app. They also don't mind that they're being 'tracked', whatever that might mean in the context of installing applications. If I visit a website, I am constantly bombarded by ads from that site until I go and delete the tracking cookies. If I install an iOS app, this doesn't happen (of course). So while they know I've installed an app - a good thing, by the way, since the purchase can be restored if you lose the device, and even installed on what appears to be an unlimited number of additional iOS devices - they don't appear to do anything with that information.
For OSX of course, there has never been any restriction beyond having to turn off gatekeeper. The dialog that pops up and complains that you're trying to run unsigned software even directs you to the appropriate place in the system settings.
Bullshit for very large values of bullshit. I haven't had wireless not work: on any installs I've done in the last 8-10 years now.
I think this is one rare example where anecdotal data counts. I am not saying it never works. It clearly worked for you. Perhaps you did your research in choosing the WiFi card first (I did not).
First Google page hit on debian wireless not working supports my claim. I am not saying it is Linux's fault, but there appears to be consensus on wiki.debian.org that "Wifi has always been a problem for free software users. USB Wifi cards are becoming less free."
I totally agree.
For now the thing is to keep writing to companies like Adobe, Steinberg, Native Instruments, MakeMusic, Canon, etc. to ask them to support Linux. In the end, if they don't, then I guess running the necessary apps under a VM with hopefully good graphics performance, under Linux.
Linux is usable but its just a matter of how much is one willing to dispense with to use it? How much convenience, such as putting a laptop in suspend and expecting it to work? Wanting to be able to scan a document wireless from a multi-function printer?
People are still on Windows not because of one big thing, but all the small things which collectively they don't want to deal with.
If you ask people who switched from Linux back to Windows, they may say it was x or it was because of y, but actually its because of x, y, z, etc. Not sure if it will take some entirely different approach to ever make an Open Source OS the primary one used by people in the world, or whether some change of thinking around Linux can do it. However nothing major has happened with Linux after all these years and attempts so I really wonder.