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Windows 10 is now serving Edge advertisements to anyone that does not have it as the default browser.
These ads appear over the Edge icon in the Windows 10 taskbar, even when Edge is not open. They do appear only when Edge is not the default system browser but that covers the majority of Windows 10 systems.
Since it advertises Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Rewards, it is possible that the campaign is reserved to the United States. The reason for this is simple: Microsoft Rewards are only available in the US right now.
This is not the only ad that promotes Microsoft Edge that users may see however. Microsoft is pushing ads in the Action Center as well stating that Chrome is draining battery fast and that switching to Edge would better the situation.
Both ads have some use for users and try to promote a feature of Microsoft Edge or Microsoft that may be beneficial to users.
One could argue that this is a good thing, and it probably would not get such a bad reception if Microsoft would provide clear and concise options to turn of[f] these after they appear once.
The main issue that many Windows 10 users may have with these ads is however that is seems impossible to get rid of those advertisements once and for all.
Microsoft really wants Windows 10 users to use Cortana and Edge.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 05 2016, @06:42PM
In other words, Microsoft are desperate because Ballmer royally fucked the company and now they hired Pajeet Poodoo as their new leader, to gut the company and reduce all of their offerings to the modern equivalents of BonziBuddy.
Just imagine how fucking awesome it would have been if Microsoft opened the kinect API and offered for sale a framework for homebrew devs to create their own games.
But noooooo, Microsoft are too good to tend to their strengths and implement awesome ideas -- that's why their future is glorified adware.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 05 2016, @09:15PM
I'm sure there already is a product on the market, but if they keep this crap up, people will make tons of money selling "advertisement blocking" software for Windows 10 - something that keeps up with the latest Microsoft rollouts and changes and just shuts that crap off before it even has a chance to bother you. Seems like a $5.95/year annual subscription opportunity just waiting for implementation and mass marketing.
I've shut off Cortana and removed Edge and Store from the task bar more than once, and they keep coming back... sure, I can research how to shut them off again, and again, and again, but why bother if I can just pay someone else a few cents to do it for me each time. The marketers could even setup a kickback relationship with Microsoft, handing over 30% of their profits in exchange for Microsoft giving them advanced notice of the next wave of crapware in time for the blocker company to rollout effective patches.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday November 06 2016, @11:00AM
You pay money for Windows and then you have to pay more money to a third party to make is usable?
Something is badly wrong. The rest of us get perfectly usable software for free/Free.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 06 2016, @12:17PM
Technically, I don't pay for Windows - but you'd probably be shocked to know what my company pays for my MSDN license that gives me unlimited installs of Windows for "free". I'm writing this response on Ubuntu 15.10, installed on a company laptop - Ubuntu is my preferred "easy running" OS for development and personal use - but the corporation and some of our development is in Windows.
If you think Windows 10 is bad, ask anyone with a corporate IT "maintained" install of Windows 7 and a few "productivity" packages runs... I fire mine up just to use the VPN, which won't install on anything else. Powering up Ubuntu and corporate Windows at the same time, I can log in to the company e-mail via web interface on Ubuntu and answer 3 or 4 e-mails in the time it takes the corporate imaged machine just to boot up and start the e-mail app.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:48PM
That's what you get for appointing wanna be white people Indians. Overconfident morons. Another group of useless asians numbering over a billion doing nothing but fucking up the planet.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @07:11PM
... that if they could get the vast majority of the people using software that made it easier for those agencies to collect information about the users, then they would refrain from filing additional anti-trust charges, or taking certain other actions against principle officers at Microsoft.
I have absolutely no evidence that that's true. (But I'll bet it is.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday November 05 2016, @07:32PM
That's because their intended source of revenue from Windows 10 was spying on their users, and Cortana and Edge are all about providing that data for Microsoft. It's funny, it used to be that the bad guys would break into easily compromised Windows machines in order to install spyware, now Microsoft is providing the spyware right out of the box. And we're supposed to think that's a good thing somehow.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @08:04PM
Edge is also designed for increasing the use of Bing. The address bar isn't visible in a new tab or window unless you specifically click where it should be. They do this to try to get users to type what they want in the Bing box which will automatically increase Bing's usage.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 06 2016, @12:12AM
To be fair, Bing is better than Google nowadays...in fact it started being better than Google right around the time of election season. Which means that it didn't become better, Google just became worse. Probably as a result of tweaks to better hide Hillary's dirty laundry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @10:26PM
Yeah, right. As if anyone can tell when one US election season ends and the next begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday November 05 2016, @10:44PM
I was under the impression that one of the Windows 10 updates forcibly enabled Cortana on all machines. Does that mean it's always listening? I certainly wouldn't put it past them.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 07 2016, @02:03PM
It did, but they backed off on that when the PR started looking bad. Of course, just because Cortana is off doesn't mean Windows 10 isn't phoning home [betanews.com].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Saturday November 05 2016, @07:34PM
Microsoft really wants Windows 10 users to use Linux.
FTFY
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:29PM
You've just hit the nail on the head.
I was in the market for a new computer & voted with my wallet.
My wallet voted to go to System76.com & buy a new desktop, 6th gen I7 4GHz, 32GiB of DDR4, 250GiB NVMe SSD, & all the ports I could ever need for less than the cost of a Windows machine.
It's currently humming away happily on the back of my desk as I type & I'm >!SO! happy to have made the switch.
Microsoft has done an excellent job of pushing me to upgrade...
They've pushed so hard I flew right out the window & upgraded to Linux.
Bravo MS, Bravo!
*Insulting mocking golf clap*
I hope it prompts others to do the same.
There may be a learning curve to get used to Linux, but it's *NOTHING* compared to the 1984 Reality Curve we'd get with Windows.
*Double handed rude gesture & maniacal laughter*
Damn I feel GOOOooooooooood today!
=-)p
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday November 06 2016, @12:02AM
So why aren't you using a smart phone instead like everyone else? :P
The point being, that if anyone asks Microsoft why they are doing all this crazy crap, they will probably whine about how they are having such hard times because the "PC is dying" and such drivel.
But on the flip side, it is this kind of abuse that makes average people, who only need to post pictures of cats and watch clips of Family Guy, switch to a toy smart phone that isn't from Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:34AM
So why aren't you using a smart phone instead like everyone else? :P
A couple guesses: Carriers charge more for service on a smartphone than on a flip phone. And programming apps aren't practical on smartphones.
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:52AM
Pretty much nailed it. When your carrier charges you by the byte (figuratively) then you're loathe to use your phone for much of anything that might even *remotely* touch your data allowance.
But the biggest reason I don't use a SmartPhone is told in one of my previous posts, to which I will refresh the memory.
1: Android fails it's own Accessibility tutorial. There is a point where it wants you to make a "swipe-up-and-right" gesture to edit text in a Text Entry Field (TEF). Except that no matter where you start the gesture the tutorial complains that you've missed the TEF & then restarts the lesson. Trigger an endless loop of frustration.
2: Unless I go to an Apple store & force one of their own employees get the Accessibility working properly, I have evidently no way in hell of getting an Apple phone to talk to me. I've been to two different locations of my carrier, had *Managers* attempting to get the phone to talk to me, & had them proven to be utterly unable to do so. If the carrier manager can't get it to work then the only other option is an actual Apple store... Of which there don't seem to BE any in my backwoods, podunk, agricultural cow town on the outskirts of Silicon Valley. If I were willing to drive ~2 hours to get to the nearest one that Apple claims to me, then I could spend the day listening to some Apple employee doing a ham fisted job of it... But since I'm blind & have to arrange rides about a week in advance to coordinate with my normal form of transportation, then bribe said transportation to make the trip, just GETTING to an Apple store is pretty much a non-starter.
Windows & Blackberry are non-starters to begin with. My carrier doesn't carry them in sufficient quantity to have any employees who can turn on their Accessibility, if they have any such functionality at all.
*Sighs*
I use a Feature flip phone because I'm pretty much forced to do so. Android has it's head up it's ass, Apple needs me to drive to Apple HQ in order to find anyone "genius" enough to get the phone to talk properly, & that pretty much cuts my options to nil.
=-\
On the bright side, grasping at the silver lining in this rain cloud, at least my Feature phone doesn't require constant updates to the software!
Until someone makes a zero day exploit for text messages on a phone that can't click links to follow them, can't run apps to get hijacked by a malformed SMS, or get online to send all my PII to some schmuck in Donkeyfuckistan, they'll just have to pass me by.
=-)p
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @05:05AM
So why aren't you using a smart phone instead like everyone else? :P
Name me a smartphone that isn't filled with proprietary software. Don't say phones running Android, because those include many proprietary blobs. Phones running Replicant are the closest to being free, but even they have proprietary software (just not in the OS).
I also don't like to be tracked. Cellphones (not just smartphones) are necessarily tracking devices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:06AM
Did you get your screenreader issues sorted?
Details?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 05 2016, @07:45PM
I wonder how many Microsoft shills (paid and unpaid) are jumping ship with WinX? It's one thing to promote a defective system to the ignorant masses. Promoting an actively malevalent system is something else entirely.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:23AM
I hope that happens. The fewer of us there are, the higher the pay will be.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Celestial on Saturday November 05 2016, @07:49PM
Back around 2002 - 2005, I used to triple boot between Libranet Linux, Mandrake Linux, and Windows 2000 Professional. However, in 2005, I began playing a MMORPG video game that (at least at the time), did not work in WINE. I played that game almost every day for years, so I just deleted the Linux partitions and stuck with Windows. The MMORPG video game shut down several years later, but I've stuck with Windows for four reasons.
1. Out of habit.
2. A few of the video games I play today don't have Linux versions.
3. Libranet Linux and Mandrake Linux no longer exist. I've kept tabs on Mageia Linux which is the successor to Mandrake and Mandriva Linux, but it seems to be stuck in development Hell as there has been no new version in a year and a half now, and the ETA for the new version keeps being pushed back.
4. It's been eleven years. What little Linux knowledge I had is a bit rusty to say the least and most likely no longer even largely applicable.
But it's obvious that Microsoft Windows is now a dead end where it uses the user and not the other way around. Windows 10 just seems to keep getting worse instead of better. I've read good things about Korora Linux (based on Fedora Linux), may have to give that a try.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 05 2016, @08:15PM
The only reason why I stopped dual-booting and went Windoze only was because a lot of bullshit in my Computer Science program (with the exception of Intro to Operating Systems class) required Windows crap. Having to work most of the time and then go home and do schoolwork, I was too tired to fuck around with VMs and WINE and too cheap to buy new hardware. Plus, all of the good, um "available at no cost" applications run on Windows.
Soon I'll buy some new hardware and get ready to re-embrace Linux, but now I'm trying to decide which distro to run - Ubuntu used to be great but now it's pozzed with AIDS, and the Mint that everybody recommends choked catastrophically during its install when I last tried it fairly recently, and I tend not to allow such major failures second chances. Maybe Debian?
(Score: 4, Informative) by https on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:19PM
If your study program required Windows, it wasn't computer science they were teaching.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 06 2016, @12:27AM
Yup, I'm well aware of that, but I'm only about the piece of paper that's from something a little better than Stockton Upstairs University of Suite B. I'd be more than happy to actually learn real math when I no longer have to work for a living.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:36AM
So the 'your not a true scottsman' argument? You really only can properly learn programming only on open source? /sarc
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:47PM
Debian is what I've used for over a decade, but Red Hat and SuSE also have strong adherents. In my mind the argument for Red Hat is basically "systemd came out of there, so they're going to ensure it works well on their system". (I'm still pissed off about systemd, and wish Debian hadn't adopted it, but it's become nearly generic, and I'm told that future versions of KDE and other applications will just assume that it's present. And I don't like to fight city hall.
There are, of course, lots of distributions that claim to be good, and I don't have recent knowledge with most of them. IIRC PCLinux is supposed to be especially friendly to people used to MSWind, but I've never used it.
The two most common Linux system bases are Debian and Red Hat. I've never had a problem with a simple install of Debian stable. My experience with Red Hat was also pretty good, but it's now over a decade old. Hope that helps.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:11AM
I'm trying to decide which distro to run - Ubuntu used to be great but now it's pozzed with AIDS, and the Mint that everybody recommends choked catastrophically during its install when I last tried it fairly recently, and I tend not to allow such major failures second chances. Maybe Debian?
Ubuntu used to add a lot of value over Debian in usability, but it's not nearly as true these days unless you just happen to like Unity for some reason. Debian's still a good choice, though; rock-solid stability, updating to new versions is smooth, and you can still ditch systemd if you want unlike a lot of current distros. Just don't forget to enable the contrib and non-free repos, they're disabled by default but often needed for things like firmware or GPU drivers.
The big negative to Debian is the upgrade cycle is slower. Which honestly isn't a negative itself, but with everyone else constantly chasing the latest versions of everything, it can get annoying toward the end of a stable version's life. The usual ways of mitigating that are to use the backports repository and third-party repos for specific software. Lately, though, I've started using Nix [nixos.org] for things I need newer versions of (or things that aren't in Debian's repos), along with AppImages for a couple things (Krita) and it works well.
I used to follow Debian's testing repo, using it like a rolling release, but that isn't as big a deal as it used to be. I realised that for most of my software, I don't care if it's on the latest bleeding-edge version, so an occasional AppImage or Nix package for the stuff I care about is sufficient. In fact, I prefer only getting security updates to most of it so I don't have to deal with random breakage and obscure fucking bugs every few weeks.
So, that's my suggestion: Debian stable + Nix.
Also, I'm not familiar enough with it to say whether it's good to use or not, but if you like KDE you might be interested in trying OpenSUSE. I recall it being a decent KDE-based distro in the past, it just didn't have anything compelling enough to pull me away from Debian.
(Score: 2) by ragequit on Sunday November 06 2016, @09:07PM
When I need need linux (for the 5% of stuff I haven't ported to OSX (like rpcclient)), I trust Slackware.
Runs beautifully in or out of a VM, no systemd (unless you are into that sort of thing)
The above views are fabricated for your reading pleasure.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @05:55AM
It's been eleven years
Some folks find RoboLinux to be just the ticket when they can't break free from Windoze apps. [google.com]
...because of its VM. [google.com]
"One of the project's more interesting features is the availability of a pre-configured virtual machine support pack with Windows XP or Windows 7--a VirtualBox setup which allows the user to install and run the Windows operating system seamlessly alongside Robolinux. This is an optional add-on that must be purchased from the project's online store."
...and they just released a fresh spin says DistroWatch. [distrowatch.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 05 2016, @07:51PM
They should set the ads to display if the user is using IE by default. Windows 10 ships with both of those browsers, right?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Saturday November 05 2016, @08:02PM
I agree, M$ Edge is a horrible browser, but I don't have it on the start bar, or on the taskbar, the is an icon under M$ default manager. I've not seen ad pop-ups for Edge either but I've done some tinkering to make Windows10 heel when I call it. It took some research but I think I've tamed most of the aspects of my Win10 install down to even updates. I like using it for quite a few things but I am not giving up my BSD partition, or the *nix desktop I use quite frequently. The right tool for the job has always been my mantra, which is why I still have an dedicated firewall box running between my cable modem and my wireless router. The Alpha machine I run as a firewall has 4 dual NIC cards and serves its' purpose quite admirably.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:33AM
1. sell Windows
2. profit!
3. distribute Windows 10 for free with peer-to-peer sharing
4. advertise Edge on Windows - we are here
5. turn those Windows installations into a vast CDN, distributing ads, software, multimedia
6. profit! profit! profit!
7. GOTO 6
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:22AM
This isn't a new thing, they were already advertising at users with the "Edge uses less battery!" shit and the prompts to try out Office 365. That part of the news is old news, and anybody that is bothered by it has already had months to be outraged.
The interesting thing about this news is that, according to another source [pcworld.com], the setting that's used to disable these little bits of advertising randomly turns itself back on between OS updates. Oh, and the fact that the "do not advertise at me" setting is labeled "Get tips, tricks, and suggestions as you use Windows." That's not sleazy and misleading at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @04:15PM
Most people are stupid. Most people use windoze. Coincidence?