From WordPad to WordAds: Microsoft caught sneaking nagging Office promos into venerable text editor beta Microsoft is secretly testing in-house ads in WordPad, the basic text editing app bundled into its desktop operating system since Windows 95. On Monday, software developer Raphael Rivera spotted Microsoft toying with the idea of promoting its own Office web apps in Windows 10 using a series of pale yellow banner ads between …
It's you can't buy it without enterprise licensing. Anyway, this show how much Nadella lacks any idea and vision for Windows. He's just copying Google and AWS and following the stream. One day he will discover that without Windows Microsoft doesn't go anywhere.
I'd humbly suggest that this is another victim of Sat-nad's cloud obsession: Azure Uber Alles.
Of course, even the most ardent Microsoft cloud supporter knows that they can't dump Windows. But certainly it feels like there's no real effort being made on that front...
Yes, but how many chose Azure instead of AWS or other solutions because it was easier to move Windows workloads there? As soon as "Windows on premises" disappear or is greatly reduced because it becomes a far less appealing OS, Azure will look far less appealing too. It looks Nadella doesn't think so, and I believe it will realize it only when lost any competitive advantage Azure will stop growing. If I have to use an online editor, what's the advantage of using Office instead of Google Docs?
Google Docs is as poor as Word Online. None of the online versions are better than their offline versions, and Google doesn't even have an offline version. Google Sheets is "sheets" enough (see what I did there? I'll get my coat) that most account departments won't use it. Google Drive is fucking awful for sorting files and seeing key information.
I don't quite agree with you here.
Once enterprises will move Office, Active Directory and Exchange into the cloud (Microsoft's cloud of course) there will be no point in having a second cloud provider for other applications.
Nadella will not lose any sleep on that. It's a done deal.
"you can't buy it without enterprise licensing"
Wrong. You can buy Windows 10 LTSC without Enterprise licensing from Microsoft, however you have to buy at least 5 licenses of which four can be of something else.
For those that live in the EU, you can just buy a single license from one of the 2nd hand software vendors like UsedSoft in Germany. Fully legal.
I don't mind ads per se.
I do loath those that suck up bandwidth and parasitise the page.
I do loath all of the tracking that happens so that ad agencies can serve us the perfect ad.
If simple non-targeted ads, say, in the form of text-based billboards, could be incorporated into webpages and apps, then I wouldn't object to them. Bills have got to be paid.
> If simple non-targeted ads, say, in the form of text-based billboards, could be incorporated into webpages and apps, then I wouldn't object to them.
In webpages? I could tolerate that, as long as they're not bringing any tracking along with them. In apps or operating systems? No way would I tolerate that, period.
"M$ should have enough money to not need ads in any programmes, there should be away to use a computer and not be exposed to ads."
How much money they have already is irrelevant, they need to demonstrate to the shareholders that they are growing the business and increasing profits, so expect more of this sort of think in the future as they are no longer really making money from selling Windows upgrades, so they are looking to monetise Windows in different ways by following the Google and Facebook model of give it away from and then collect data to sell ads.
is just a prelude to the introduction of subscriptions. £9.99/month for the security of getting updates and that ever so essential Cloud Storage that all MS apps will use rather than local storage.
{or words to that effect}
In a couple of years many of us will wake up and realise that 80% of our disposable income is going in subscriptions to MS, Netflix, Virgin, EE, Disney+, Apple TV, Sky and all the rest.
True. Some of us have already woken up. And the subscription services have lost the plot again. It was a way to combat piracy. I tried Ultraviolet once off a BluRay. Fucking awful. Having to sign up to about 3 separate services that weren't related to download a video file that could only be played on certain devices. I gave up.
But Netflix, NowTV and Amazon helped with their streaming services. They made it easy. Netflix maybe more so as their system appears easier to use, can download the movies/TV Shows to the phone and watch them while doing the loft. Even get the option to skip the intro and do 10 second rewinds or forwards.
But then more services came along. A movie disappears as the service looses the rights too it, but now appears on one the other streaming services you don't currently sub to. Amazon tries to charge for movies from the 80s like Inner Space instead of just getting a license for it. Their UI is FUCKING AWFUL. Then comes along AppleTV with their exclusive shows like The Morning Show. So you have to sub to yet another service. Then along comes Disney and The Mandalorian so yet another streaming service you have to fork out for.
FFS. And you wonder why, despite all the streaming services, people still resort to piracy.
Unfortunately there are a small minority of people that understand this. The majority of the population is so used to the small monthly payments for everything that they just keep signing up.
These big providers know that and will continue to develop business models that sustain this. The fact that no one actually owns anything at the end of it is even better. They simply cannot lose.
It is only a matter of time before the consumer versions of Windows become a subscription along with iOS. It is a way of monetarizing existing investments with minimal risk because the consumer will have not choice. Critically the consumer just does not care because they just pay, loads of small amounts to lots of people.
Both potentially. A more valuable company means the shares are worth more. A bucket of cash, like apple has doesn't necessarily mean anything to shareholders, since it's beyond their reach (and should ideally go into research and development, expansion, or improving the products).
And they will be re-enabled "by mistake", come next update (that you can't disable, remember ?) ...
And disabling them again will of course involve another method, usually using registry ...
So this is a loosing game on your free time and sanity entirely, that few people will play.
Upvoted, but to be fair to the internet's semi-illiterate masses, "lose" is an anomaly in English. Spelled like that, you'd expect it to rhyme with "hose" and "pose". Really, it should be spelled "looze" (as in "booze") or perhaps "luze". The latter would work particularly well here in Northern Ireland.
True, but English is full of anomalies like that. Check out the poem The Chaos for how much of a nightmare it can be for a foreigner trying to learn it.
In this case the rule is that when 's' follows a voiced sound (in this case the 'o' from 'lose') it is pronounced /z/. When the 's' follows a voiceless sound (the breathy second 'o' in 'loosing') it is pronounced /s/.
PS I didn't downvote you :)
I haven't read The Chaos, but my favourite illustration of the inconsistencies/quirks of English pronunciation has always been "Ghoti". How does one pronounce that word?
Well...
- "GH" is pronounced as in "Cough", i.e. an F sound.
- 'o' is pronounced as in "Women", i.e. a short i sound.
- "ti" is pronounced as in "Station", ie. "sh".
Put it all together and "Ghoti", using perfectly standard English rules of pronunciation, is "Fish".
English does have several words like this, so many I wouldn't call them anomalies; it's just the language.
I'm not particular fluent in other spoke tongue (although as many can cope in large parts fo Europe and can usually ask for a beer without too much difficulty), but I would be fairly confident in claiming other languages suffer the same sort of thing. Words meaning two things for example or changing entirely depending on context.
This is not overly-intrusive - it's of a similar level of visibility to, say when Visual Studio suggests disabling an extension because it is under-performing.
Big, intrusive pop-up or screen white-space background it is not. Heck, it's even less intrusive than when Google splashed "Upgrade to Chrome" calls-to-action all over their search/results pages.
On the flip-side though, it's still an advert and - unlike most web-based content - cannot be blocked. But if there has to be advertising, I'd much rather it looked like this than the big in-your-face BS that blights the web (and is the second reason why I install blockers).
Oh well. Just another reason to stick to Notepad++!
"That, sadly, is the dying croak of a boiled frog."
Really?
As just about every website with basic anti-adblocker capacity is so keen on reminding us, "these sites rely on adverts to remain free for users".
As I have stated on many occasions when this has been discussed previously, once adverts are limited to single static images or blocks of text, take up not more than 10% of the visible page area, and are positioned in such a way that the do not interrupt the flow of the site (ie: above the header, to the right of the body or below the footer), then whitelist the site - provided that all tracking is removed as well. But while we are faced with these in-article/full page background video/animated gif abominations, my blockers stay firmly on.
So if a website were to present me with advertising in this fashion, the chances are it would get the ok from me.
But since this is in a Microsoft application, and therefore not under the jurisdiction of my blockers... Notepad++ it is!
... and, of course, I fully expect there to be a few who skim-read my original post, think "he's defending Microsoft!" and hit the downvote button in a knee-jerk reaction...
"these sites rely on adverts to remain free for users"
While I accept that this is the motivation for a number of websites, it doesn't mean I have to like it. Just like I understand local radio plays ads to get some income, that doesn't mean I don't immediately switch to another radio station until (at least) the ads have finished.
If these websites are so valuable in terms of the content they provide, then they could charge for it. Most of the time, of course, nobody would pay ...and the site would vanish owing to lack of money.
While this is all very sad, like a lot of stuff in the media, if nobody is prepared to pay then you have to question whether the content is worth anything to anyone other than the content (in this case, website) owners. In many cases, it isn't. Sad. But that's the hard truth. It's all for a similar reason to why ITV (for example) insist on encrypting Emmerdale and Coranation Street (actually, they encrypt everything!) over their on-demand service (thus making life very difficult for TV and set-top-box manufacturers, and making the ITV player so bloody unreliable); it's because they have an over-inflated opinion of their content's worth (nobody every bothered pirating Emmerdale or Corrie because it immediately loses its worth after it's broadcast; yesterday's Emmerdale/Corrie is today's media chip-paper, and it only had any "worth" in the first place because it gave an excuse to bombard viewers with paid-for adverts).
But I digress. The point is, people block ads because they are a pain in the arse and nobody is the least bit interested in them anyway (*). If that causes a website to fail owing to lack of cash and the website owner doesn't have the imagination to change their business model (or they think nobody will pay if they do), then you have to ask whether it matters that it fails.
And the same point applies to applications with adverts embedded in them. If you have to go to these lengths to get your application out there, then it's probably not worth anything anyway; if it was then you could sell it.
(*) Of course, the big players like Google, Amazon, Apple etc keep talking about your "enhanced experience" (or whatever bollox language they choose to use) when talking about pushing adverts on to you. They choose to completely ignore the fact that nobody actually gives a shit about their ads. If they did they would have a "bugger off" option alongside the "yes, please send me lots of pointless ads" and "yes, please send me lots of pointless adds tailored to my specific socio-economic demographic that you've cobbled together by spying on my every move around the internet" options. But they don't
> Just like I understand local radio plays ads to get some income, that doesn't mean I don't immediately switch to another radio station until (at least) the ads have finished.
You're more generous than I! Advertising is why I don't listen to the radio or watch television.
> question whether content is worth anything to anyone other than the website owners
But that's perfectly OK because the website owners can pay for hosting if they want people to see their content. It used to be normal and many still do that. Web went to hell exactly the moment when everyone decided to not pay and instead [try to] make many through ads.
I agree. I have several websites that I pay someone to host. I don't expect anyone to pay me to access the content on them because it's not worth it. But I also don't expect anyone to suffer the blight of endless adverts; I refer to at least one of my own websites myself and I don't want to see any bloody ads.
As you suggest, everyone is out to try and make a quick pound. Unfortunately this seems, all too often, to boil down to shoving bloody adverts at people. The annoyance is even more grating though when you consider that virtually nobody is going to make any money from this except the likes of Googlies who usually supply the ads; these websites become pawns filling Googlies pockets.
> I agree. I have several websites that I pay someone to host.
Me as well -- I have four. I pay for the hosting out of pocket (it's not really that expensive), and I don't carry ads or engage in any sort of monetization. I avoid trying to generate money with them because doing so strongly reduces the value of the sites.
I have 2 websites right now, one an XenForo forum with paid hosting; the other shuttered until I can afford to put it back online ( also a broken arm which has been waiting an operation for 15 months, which rather disinclines one to worry about other things ).
Neither of which, nor any other, have I placed a single advertisement on. If I can't afford it it's down to me, and not by shifting vulgarity to befoul the atmosphere.
Also have this:
https://adfreeblog.org/
I think the downvotes were not personal, but for apologising for adverts. There should NEVER be ANY adverts within an app that requires no Internet connection. Apologising for the adverts means & saying they are fine if they don't get in the way means we'll end up with more.
As just about every website with basic anti-adblocker capacity is so keen on reminding us, "these sites rely on adverts to remain free for users".
But not relevant to the topic which is MS putting advert in an application which is part of the OS that has been paid for directly or indirectly as part of the purchase price of the PC.
But you'll never take take my enterprise Pro license!
Also... This sort of crap is why my home laptop (not gaming rig, hypocritical I know) now sports Lubuntu. Too much other crap shaving memory and cpu cycles from my venerable think pad to bother with Windows on it anymore.
They've totally trashed Windows.
First the basic Solitaire and Minesweeper games were replaced by ad-supported 'app' games.
Now wordpad is getting bombarded with ads to subscribe to MS Office.
What next? Notepad ads to buy Visual Studio? Paint ads to buy Photoshop apps from the store (where MS takes a cut)?
Time was, you *bought* a windows
licence (or at least the licence tax as part of your PC price), and you were free to use the OS and the built in apps (Write, Paintbrush etc.) and games without being bombarded by advertising.
"Time was, you *bought* a windows licence (or at least the licence tax as part of your PC price), and you were free to use the OS and the built in apps (Write, Paintbrush etc.) and games without being bombarded by advertising."
You still can, technically. Where it all went wrong was people wanting sh*t for free, and initially being ok with the ad-supported model. Then the rot sets in; the ads become more and more intrusive, people forget that this is the price they pay (paid) for free sh*t and complain bitterly.
To borrow a wonderful example from Saint Pterry, the behaviour of advertisers always reminds me of CMOT Dibbler's brainwave in Moving Pictures.
Upon (accidental) discovery of subliminal advertising, and how powerful a single frame (in this case, showing a plate of spare ribs) can be when inserted into a film reel, his reasoning is that ergo, a full 30 seconds' worth of the same shot of ribs must be... 24fps x 30... 700+ times more effective in making the viewer want to rush out and eat ribs!
And that's what the thought process of advertisers here on Roundworld seems to be. "Oh, a simple text advert inline with the content is effective - so a full-screen animated video that takes over the entire screen and harangues the user with blaringly loud audio whilst tracking their every activity must be a bajillion times more effective!1!1one!"
Of course, I am ascribing something as complex as "thought" to these parasites, so maybe my reasoning is faulty...
subliminal advertising, although illegal, has been deemed to be ineffective apparently because that one frame of a cool, ice cold drink would need to have the effective of not only making you want to get up midway through the movie for one, but have enough of a lasting effective to carrying on making you want one, while you're stood in the queue at the cinema waiting to get your drink, wondering why you suddenly wanted a drink.
"Where it all went wrong was people wanting sh*t for free..."
Note how the rise of "Everything is free now" exactly parallels "everything sucks now." The end users are fine with tacky eye poison ads and intrusive spyware, therefore every program is tacky spyware
It all went wrong the day MS stopped having 'Making a [decent] operating system (and other bits of software)' as its priority, and changed its priority to 'Making lots of money for its shareholders'. The moment that flip occurs in any business is the moment what they 'do' simply becomes the means to a mercenary end.
MS could quite easily shift to making electric cars/underwear/sugar saturated fizzy drinks/vegan burgers/... and it wouldn't make any difference because MS primary business is, and has been for many years, extracting the maximum amount of money it can get away with while minimising expenses - like most of the world's corporates. Developing a [decent] OS crashed down the priority list years ago.
"It all went wrong the day MS stopped having 'Making a [decent] operating system (and other bits of software)' as its priority, and changed its priority to 'Making lots of money for its shareholders'. The moment that flip occurs in any business is the moment what they 'do' simply becomes the means to a mercenary end."
That flip happened decades ago across thousands of corporations, thanks to the "neo liberal" economic agenda pushed upon us...by the very forces who make out best by the flip.
The corporatists and bankers have forwarded a belief that helps them rather specifically, but it's the public's fault (and I'll be flatly honest in my opinion here, regardless of flames) for both blindly accepting it AND to continuously re-vote for it every time the question comes back up. And the people continue to do this in hopes that, one day, this "prosperity" will come their way regardless, no ignoring, of the fact that they've waited 30+ years for that promise, that has yet / never come true.
World burning? As you keep voting for "climate change is a myth!" candidates and "Tax cuts will spur the economy!" promises?
I've lost my ability to sympathize (that's not directed to the poster, sorry, just to the public at large).
I didn't realise it had been around for 25 years. In that time I've only used Wordpad by accident. As a text editor it's hopeless as it formats the text. As a word processor - words fail me.
As for the other ads, if they bring out a free version of Windows, then fine. If it's a paid version they can eff off.
Now that there's no more security updates for Windows 7 we've now reached the "moment they've been waiting for" at MS.
We're about to see what they've had planned for Windows 10 right from the start except, up until now, that "pesky" Windows 7 has always given people a much better alternative.
From here on it'll be ads, ads and more ads stuffed into almost every part of W10. And, don't be surprised if we start seeing a monthly bill in our email inboxes for the "privilege" of continuing to use Windows 10.
Those are words that have never, ever been used to described the ad experience on a computer.
None of those words have anything to do with ads on an electronic device, and likely they never will.
Ads are a nuisance, a malware vector and totally useless. You can slurp all the data you want, you can hoover all the info you get your hands on, you will never realize that when I've just bought a UPS, seeing ads for a UPS just makes me want to strangle you. Get your finger out and code your ad pseudo-AI to note the date of my purchase and start showing me ads on that when the expected lifetime of the object is about to be reached. THEN you will be relevant.
Of course, by that time your marketing manager will have long been changed, so no impact on his bonus. Well he's not getting one now, now is he ?
We need to nuke the whole ad system and restart from scratch. Start by taking all ad agencies and shooting the lot of them. That will clear the ground to do something useful.
they once came up with a good piece of free software (no, really) for image stitching (ice). Then, clearly, a shithead was promoted to the decision level, and "new and improved" version came with installer about 2 - 4 x the size of the previous one, absolutely no improvement in software performance, and with those (...) sliding ad banners all over the interface. To drive the point home they removed previous version (1.4.4.) from all MS servers. As the last "clean" version was short of expected results (not perfect, but somewhat distorted), out of curiosity, I downloaded the latest ad-soiled variant and tried to run it. Well, the ads were there of course, and the installer was even more inflated, of course, but most hilarious part was that the poor soft couldn't even auto-stitch images that the previous incarnation did, albeit imperfectly. And then, I looked at the release date - 2015.
I haven't seen wordpad in use since 1990s. And why should I? If I need quick text tool, notepad++ does it well, if I need some formatting, open office does it better. There's absolutely no reason to use wordpad which, if I remember (vaguely) won't even let you edit and save. But then, if you're one of those billions of people who just LOVE ads and can't wait to start the day by looking at ads and more ads, and even more ads, then wordp-ad is PERFECT ! ;)
"[sane] Windows fans may be inspired to try Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, but that costs about $300 for a single-user license"
Since when has $300 for a commercial OS been a problem? Didn't Windows 95 cost similar?
You have 3 types of Windows user:
1) Freetards / consumers - Free consumer windows and be bombarded with criminal activities.
2) Corporate users - Buy a $300 license and exert damage control
3) Power users - Torrent Windows from a trusted sharer and exert damage control
This has not changed since WIndows existed. The only difference is that now Microsoft are supplying the virus infested versions themselves rather than the script kiddies.
This is just as annoying as all those socially depressed mobile apps that constantly need confirmation that you still love them. Yes I like this app, otherwise I wouldn't use it. No I don't want to rate it in the store. And then it keeps coming back every few days :(
This is just as bad. At least there's no need to use WordPad anymore now that Notepad finally supports unix line-endings :) That was the only thing I ever used it for.
If I clicked on one of those and it dropped my into the Play store to do the rating, I'd be sorely tempted to give it a bad rating because of the nag alone.
But I'm not really quite that mean. Instead, when I see one of those I just immediately uninstall the app (I run rooted, so I can uninstall anything I want).
Does it install Open Office, cos that let you have the main features of those things for free?
Just wait, today it's only the self promotion they're forcing on you. How long before it's "1000s of hot women who want to meet are waiting for you now"?
Yeah, I, too, did a double-take at that sentence. Unintentional humor?
I think (hope) the author meant to say: "click a button that opens Office"
But I agree with you, Open (or Libre) Office does quite well for my needs. Until, that is, I have to open a Word or Excel document someone has sent me.
I use WordPad often. It's light, it makes presentable text in RTF, and it's there. It's always there on any Windows PC I'm using.
When I use WordPad, I'm deliberately choosing not to use Microsoft Word or Microsoft Office. Consequently, "reminding" me that using Microsoft Office is an option is just an annoyance. Hey, computer! You work for me. Not to be vulgar, but I -own- you. So act like it, huh?
"But the fact remains that Windows for *consumers* has been designed for data collection and telemetry."
So, if this only applied to the "Home" edition, then this would almost be acceptable or understandable. But I'm willing to bet quite a lot of money it applies to "Pro" editions as well, which is utter BS..
A free OS riddled with ads is fine with me. A free application like wordpad which I choose to download, being riddled with ads is also ok to me.
MS adding ads to the start menu, search etc. into an OS I've paid for, or bundling up adware apps into their paid OS is bullshit & such practices have steered even me, a former fanboy to linux & OSS.
Since they're promoting only their own software, shirley its time for another antitrust or class action trials here
There is no reason why GCHQ (or any foreign government) or the like cannot issue a path to remove data exfiltration activity in the name of national security.
Any decent system programmer could do a binary compare on the two versions and document settings of interest for a howto.
Any excess effort is a CLIMATE CHANGE, as wasteful processing power and electricity is squandered on unsolicited electronic intrusions. Trust Microsoft to find new ways of adding more C02 to the worlds problems.
You don't fool me, MS, I know what you're up to.
Today it's ads in <paid thing> then upgrade to Pro version of <paid thing> with no ads.
Later add ads to the Pro version of <paid thing> then upgrade to SuperPro version of <paid thing> with no ads.
Rinse and repeat with extra points for the next adjective used to describe the newest version of <paid thing> that has no ads.
Profit!
Simples!!!
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