"Kerching. Thanks sucker. One born every minute. ROFL".

If only that were the case.

The last time I heard the statistic a child was being born, on average, every second and a half. 40 children a minute, so "one born every minute" would amount to 2.5% of the population.

I would find a market penetration of 2.5% for Windows to be perfectly acceptable!

Microsoft noted: "We regularly try out new bad experiences and fucking stupid concepts that may never will probably get released with Windows Insiders to get feedback royally piss you off."

There are four channels in the Windows Insider program. The Canary Idiot Channel allows users to preview platform changes woefully bad design decisions early in the development cycle, while the Dev Channel is aimed at enthusiasts masochists and is used by Microsoft to "incubate new ideas." "just chuck any old shit out there."

Microsoft recommends the Beta Channel "for early adopters." "as a bit of a laugh, but people keep using it so we'll keep it going until we're bored."

Of the Beta Channel, Microsoft has said: "Your feedback has zero impact here," and it has asked Insiders receiving the new experience to "let us know what you think, so we can ignore you some more."

I'd like to know about this supposed Win10 'ad' thing. I've never, ever seen a Windows ad anywhere on a desktop outside of the Weather & News taskbar widget, and (a) only if you completely open the widget and (b) only if you didn't kill the widget off your taskbar in the first place.

Never seen a Microsoft ad feed in all the Windows systems I'm responsible for admin o_O

Where the person responsible for this sort of thing at MS is strapped to a chair, and their eye lids taped open, then, on the screen in front of them, the offending UI feature is played back on repeat until said person is a gibbering wreak

Where the person responsible for this sort of thing at MS is strapped to a chair, and their eye lids taped open, then, on the screen in front of them, the offending UI feature is played back on repeat until said person is a gibbering wreak

Bleeding heart liberal!

Wanna bet they'll follow the Amazon model, where the point of the ads (usually for your own products) isn't to raise money themselves but to annoy you so much that you'll pay extra to get rid of them?

Nice extra revenue stream from 'advertising' without most of the hassle of actually running an ad business.

I'm afraid that there is somebody in their ivory tower marketing department who actually thinks users do like those nuisances ads exciting opportunities (cough, gag).

After all, what greater satisfaction can anybody expect from life than to improve Microsoft's bottom line...

Probably the same twat who thinks the "callouts" in Office which you cannot disable are a good thing

(yes, I have a list of a number to add to the registry, but they keep adding new ones)

As I've said before, marketroids are deluded narcissists convinced the world is waiting anxiously for their next fart, brain or otherwise.

Even though you’re paying money for a “premium” operating system, ads shallowly disguised as “curated recommendations” are being foisted on you from the very start menu itself?

It’s almost like they want people to find reasons to stop using their OS.

If people won't stop using the OS then finding the next evil thing to inflict on them becomes a game.

why wider workforce productivity is down the shitter then.

Dear Microsoft

Fuck off.

Just that.

Fuck off.

Yours with extreme prejudice.

Me.

Don't tell Microsoft to do that. Do it yourself to go to somewhere better. They're not going to change but you have the option.

They are definitely not going to change, except for the worse. They know people will keep using their products no matter what, so why would they try to improve not make things worse? It's indeed a game.

Some of us have chosen not to play it.

for:

• the bandwidth needed to download these adverts

• the machine resources (CPU, RAM, ...) needed to display them

• the wasted employee time being distracted by them

Was this article written by a Microsoft shill? Because that's not how I would describe unwanted advertising...

"Your feedback has the greatest impact here ..... "let us know what you think."

Do they *honestly* expect people to say "Great feature, I love seeing all the additional adverts in the Start Menu!"

There's only one thing they're going to get for this - negative feedback. If MS want to "recommend" store apps, what's wrong with having a recommended section in the store people can select? Oh I know, it's not "in your face" enough.

Honestly, Windows development lately just seems to be a case of "keep flinging shit at it to see what sticks".

Shit always sticks. And stinks.

"Windows 10 has long featured ads"

I've got a couple of Win10 machines, and I don't recall doing anything special when I first set them up, but I don't think I've seen a single advert. Where do they appear, and any idea what magic trick is preventing them from appearing? Not that I want to see the ads of course, I'm just genuinely curious as to why something which has "long featured" in Windows has never shown itself on either of my Windows boxen.

Probably a complete failure of the Windows 10 update system on your kit.

Probably a complete failure of the Windows 10 update system on your kit.

Ah...that could be it. I've disabled Windows updates for fear of MS-induced borkage.

I too don't have any adverts on my Win10 boxes. I vaguely remember doing a right-click then "remove" on something after installing? A start menu group maybe? I definitely did nothing more than that.

Those were technically recommendations/ads. Shortcuts in the Start Menu to games. All those 8KB items in the "Apps and Features" listing (which they liked to recreate after major updates) are things they think you might want want from the app store, for games and apps. Those were the least-offensive method of doing it, a trial run, and now with Windows 11 having been out for a long time they're going to see what they can get away with which will become the default from the start with Windows 12. Don't forget the ads for Office and OneDrive showing up in Explorer, either.

First time disabled.

Second time uninstalled the software forcing ads against my block.

Not on my PC! .... even if I can turn it off (for now). Just don't put this shit on an OS - put it on your website by all means but NOT on the OS. As for the Feedback Hub; that is not taken seriously at all by Microsoft. The greatest impact is in the bottom of their rubbish bin.

I never liked the start menu and it has been a waste of pixels for me. It always seemed to be a great way to generate extra mouse clicks and gestures that just contribute to cts.

I just use, and sit down for this, desktop shortcuts to what I need and use keyboard shortcuts or a few strategic mouse clicks to launch programs. I'm not sure who all these folks are that need more that 5-10 programs to get what they need to do done everyday, but maybe MS should put ads there and leave me alone and stay off my lawn.

Only noobs use the start menu anyway.

5 - 10? I've got 17 shortcuts on the panel (task bar is the equivalent for Windows users). Some only get used rarely, some everyday, depending on what I'm doing. The Desktop itself is a place to store files and folders for easy access.

fixated on that ad nipple

While I'm not fond of the idea, at the same time... the software engineers at Microsoft don't work for free, and if they're giving away the OS upgrades now, that revenue hole has to be closed somehow. I'd love to see an option sort of like Amazon's "special offers" where you can pay like $20--the amount of a discount you were given up front--to opt out. All those open source projects rely on servers, bandwidth, and storage paid for by someone. We all want something for nothing, but of course that's part of why being an adult isn't as much fun. You realize that such things aren't sustainable short of waking up tomorrow and finding that we're living in a post-scarcity utopia where money no longer has any practical purpose.

Still, the start menu just needs to die already. It was an illogical POS back in Windows95 and it is still an illogical POS. Go back to the old Program Manager as a starting point, or even start from scratch, and design something new. The whole desktop metaphor never really made a lot of sense and has been holding back UI design for at least the last three decades now. If you watch how people use their computers, I'd be willing to wager a good sum of money that the overwhelming majority of them rarely use more than a dozen apps with any degree of frequency. Sure, there's always the "I use this app every second solar eclipse, but only if it's the second tuesday of the third month of an odd year," but that represents less than a rounding error of users. Most people have probably 3-4 "core" apps they use on a regular basis (e.g. web browser, email, word processor, steam) which you can just pin to the taskbar and never have to look at the start menu save for during those rare celestial alignments. If the start menu disappeared in Windows 12, I doubt many people would really notice after a month or two.