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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 begins.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is the price of "free" MS upgrades.
The annoying part isn't that Microsoft would try to advertise on your own lock screen. No, the moment we heard that Windows 10 was announced as a free upgrade, we all knew they'd eventually stoop to this level. The annoying part is how they refer to it in their settings.
"Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more"!? Go piss up a rope, you insincere, weasel-mouthed, marketing stooges. You've already hidden the option to turn the ads off behind a labyrinth of menus, you could at least give us the courtesy of not bullshitting us any further than that.
Best part will be when someone manages to insert malware into one of the ads and pwns every single Windows 10 box. And someone at Microsoft will say "oops, we're sorry. Well we'll refund you the price of the OS OH WAIT THAT'S RIGHT IT WAS FREE so sorry.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's interesting to compare the development of Software as a Service with television programming. Most people are not outraged by commercials on television--it is understood that someone else 'owns' the show you're watching and that they have the right to put ads in it. It seems like what MS (and others) are trying to do is gradually shift to a software environment where normal people think of Windows as a thing that belongs to someone else (MS), and as a result, MS has the right to put ads in.
Of course, we hate this idea because we grew up owning software, but if they can persist this long enough, a whole generation will grow up not owning software, but consuming it instead, and at that point, using computers could become as bad as trying to watch the evening news. You'll try to start a word processor, and as the thing 'loads', you'll be subjected to ads for household disinfectants and medications with alarming arrays of side-effects.
Honestly, how much more of this do you think people are going to put up with before they say 'enough is enough'?
I think people will just assume that that's what Windows 10 is supposed to do, and not change a thing.
Most people are not like you and me, they don't think too deeply about the laptop they've just bought. They bring it home, turn it on, accept some EULA, click a few 'next" buttons and an "OK" or two then start using it.
I'm sure if it came with Linux Mint preinstalled an awful lot of people wouldn't even notice, because Gmail would work fine.
I regularly need to ask people "What version of Windows does your computer run"? and about 2 in 10 know.
How much would it cost to get a Linux ad placed there?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
to get into the MS ad network and display gape porn on their network...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Why doesn't MS offer a "normal" edition and a "spam and snoop" edition ("Windows 10 SSE" *). The normal version would cost more. At least you'd know what you are getting and can avoid junk by paying more.
* Or Godwin it: "SS"
Table-ized A.I.
I run into the same thing, except in my case it's 1 in 5.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
There's nothing that makes Windows run more games other than the fact that Windows runs more games. If you want to have a real impact, only buy multiplatform games. Demand is the only thing that will change the industry. It will be complete waste of your time no doubt. The instant gratification generation never gets behind an issue or boycott that actually matters or requires critical thought.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
About half of my family is running Linux instead of Windows. We're geekier than the average, but I can tell you that non-geeks in my family have no problem at all running a Linux desktop. (And I've installed Windows and Linux, and overall it's easier to do a Linux install.)
It has never been easier to junk Windows and switch to Linux. Many people just use email, a web browser, and Facebook; those all Just Work on Linux. Video, sound, it's all fine.
And desktop is getting less important all the time; people are using mobile devices more and more. And Microsoft missed the boat on mobile.
So even as the "network" that makes Windows important is crumbling ("network" as in "network effect"), even as Microsoft's actual power to push people is waning, they keep finding new ways to punish people who stick with them. Hey, nobody will mind if we monitor them a bunch, right? Make it almost impossible to figure out whether it's enabled or not. (If it's even possible to disable it... maybe it isn't!) And start pushing ads, because nobody hates having full-screen ads in their faces.
Is Microsoft actually trying to achieve Windows 8 levels of hatred for Windows 10? Does Linus Torvalds have sleeper agents inside Microsoft trying to make Windows crumble from inside?
Keep this up, MIcrosoft, and we may yet see the Year of Linux on the Desktop.
P.S. I haven't bothered to keep up with all the settings one must change to disable all the bad behaviors in Windows 10. I just checked to see if there's a tool for it... there's a bunch and it's not obvious which one(s) to use. Is there a clear favorite tool to fix the Windows 10 settings?
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-privacy-tools/
Hmm... maybe this one: Spybot Anti-Beacon
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Windows 10 is okay, all things told.
No, it's not!
Have standards sunk so low that an operating system which:
- Has the ugliest and most backwards user interface in history.
- Does not allow you to control the installation of updates.
- Incorporates advertising into the shell (and now) the lock screen.
- Steals your Internet bandwidth to help pay for the distribution costs of Windows Updates.
- Gleefully violates your privacy by sending microphone recordings, keystrokes, email, file contents, and who knows what else to external servers without explicit consent.
is "okay, all things told"? Even with the privacy concerns being associated with a company already found to be working with and providing data en masse to the NSA?
Windows 10 is, at best, a complete disaster. Any systems improvements under the hood are completely overshadowed. I just can't wait to see what other fresh bullshit Microsoft pulls in a year or two when more people are on 10 and the OS is fully on the OSX model of perpetual updates. At that point there will be so little recourse, your computer may as well be owned by Microsoft and simply be leased to you (as long as you behave yourself).
I don't know why they even call it a "personal computer" anymore.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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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.
Ubuntu is way ahead of the curve.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
When will Apple catch up?
Now we just sit back and wait for infected ad servers to deliver 0-day malware....
Till the first bit of malvertising that uses this as it's infection vector? Is someone taking bets?
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Unsolicited Finger In the Anus. Popularized on the website Fark.com and is a cliche among TotalFarkers. Originated from a news story about a young man who poked his friends in the backdoor with his finger on a high school football bus trip. In the story, the judge is quoted as saying "an unsolicited finger in the anus, while crude, is not criminal".
This is one of the really great things about Windows, how it introduces features to people that they really want and need. Having Windows constantly context aware insert product placements directly into peoples lives will really help them be aware of the things they need to spend money on.
Ads are great and anyone who doesn't like this won't know what they are missing. I want to thank Microsoft for introducing this feature to computers. Anyone who doesn't like these features in windows is probably just really stupid.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
When you see something like this, you know that the Product development group has taken a back seat to the commercial / sales groups at a company.
No self-respecting product designer / owner at a company would allow such a fundamental, first impression of the product to be tainted by advertising as they designed the thing. What product manager would say, during the design process, "wouldn't it be great if we could show ads all over the home screen of people's phones!"
No. Only after the filter had been applied by the marketing / sales department and commercial officers to say, "well, we need to raise more revenue to make our shitty product line seem good" would the product team reluctantly agree to allow ads to make their way into this.
All respect lost.
And, as I recall ... it was a gaping security hole they deprecated.
Then they did the same thing in Vista with gadgets. Also, a gaping security hole they deprecated.
And, I seem to remember they had them in Windows 7. And, again, it was a gaping security hole they deprecated.
Trusting Microsoft hasn't fucked this up again is idiotic.
But, more importantly, putting fucking ads on people's computers pretty much means Microsoft have gone full asshole on this one, and have really decided to fuck over their user base.
Shit like this needs to stop. We don't have our computers to provide Microsoft with fucking ad revenue, we have them to do work and manage our stuff.
I'm really beginning to think I'd be better off running my Windows 8.1 behind my own firewall with all updates turned off -- Windows 10 sounds like a bigger pile of shit every week.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.