Microsoft Wants To Pay You To Use Its Windows 10 Browser Edge (theguardian.com) 256
An anonymous reader shares a report by The Guardian: Microsoft has a new browser. It launched with Windows 10 and it's called Edge. The company says it's faster, more battery efficient and all-round better than Chrome or Firefox. You can even draw on websites with a stylus. Trouble is, not very many people are using it. So now Microsoft's trying to bribe you to switch. The newly rebranded Microsoft Rewards -- formerly Bing Rewards, which paid people for using Bing as their search engine (another product Microsoft says is better than a Google product but that very few people actually use) -- will now pay you for using Edge, shopping at the Microsoft store, or using Bing. Users of Edge who sign up to Microsoft Rewards, which is currently US-only, are then awarded points simply for using the browser. Microsoft actively monitors whether you're using Edge for up to 30 hours a month. It tracks mouse movements and other signs that you're not trying to game the system, and you must also have Bing set as your default search engine. Points can then be traded in for vouchers or credit for places such as Starbucks, Skype, Amazon and ad-free Outlook.com -- remember, if you're not paying for something, you are the product.
Worldwide news are always US only. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we get a "US" news filter here so we can filter out the news that have offers only exlusive to US citizens? Please?
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How would that work? Does it require someone to read through the fine print of every offer presented in every story and manually tag whether or not that story contains US-only news? When The Guardian reports on a US-only story, it doesn't sound like that process can be reliably automated.
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Yeah. It's a damn shame we don't have people who... what's the word?... "edit". Like, an editor.
FWIW, you can be safely assured the stories here on /. are US-centric because it's a US-centric site. Thank you for playing.
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Pfft this is Slashdot. Even the editors can't be bothered to RTFA.
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What makes you think this is world wide? You're on a site hosted in the USA, run by a USA based company with USA based editors and a user base that primarily lives in the USA.
Say it like it is. You're a guest of this site. So am I.
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Microsoft wants to squirt diarrhoea into your face? They'll pay to do so?
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It says a lot about the state of US news consumers if you think an advertisement for a brand loyalty program is "hard news."
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Yes, but it's true. US news is mostly a bunch of BS about the Kardashians and the like.
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That says a lot about the state of US reporting, A lot of US hard news articles are UK newspaper based, and not reported much, if at all in the US.
http://www.pcworld.com/article... [pcworld.com]
There you go US Based and more computer/tech oriented.
Just a suspicion the Guardian was used because Pravda isn't what it used to be and the Russian State organs are now about Russian Nationalism not communism.
Re: Worldwide news are always US only. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well that's your perspective, and it's not a terribly accurate one. The entire global technology infrastructure begins and ends with the United States. Oh but you think your Intel chip us made in Singapore because it says made in Singapore on it? Try again: The chip was fabricated in the US (specifically, Chandler Arizona) and was just packaged in Singapore. Intel, AMD, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Facebook.... All US companies.
Android and iOS make up 99% of the global smartphone market.
But not just inf
Re: Worldwide news are always US only. (Score:5, Funny)
We're not somehow backwards just because don't use fucking metric.
Well, umm, actually we are. The only countries in the world that don't use the metric system are the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar.
So yes, we're about as backwards as it gets in that respect.
Re: Worldwide news are always US only. (Score:2)
And that means what, exactly? Are you trying to say that North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela are somehow more technologically advanced because they measure their water using metric?
Just because the US is the only one of a few who do a particular thing doesn't really say a whole lot, especially because there are many things like that beyond a measurement system that many countries hold unique.
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Are you trying to say that North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela are somehow more technologically advanced because they measure their water using metric?
Nope, what I said was that we're about as backwards as it gets in terms of using the metric system.
Since virtually all scientific research has moved to the metric system, perhaps we should jump waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead to the 1980's or so and do the same.
The metric system has so many advantages that I really should have to detail them here.
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you're confused, the USA does use the metric system where it makes sense. and "metric countries" like the UK use english measurements for many things, like railroads using miles, cars using miles and gallons and miles per gallon, people weighing themselves in "stones", beer by the pint, etc. etc.
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The entire global technology infrastructure begins and ends with the United States. [...] Intel, AMD, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Facebook.... All US companies.
That looks like a reasonable list of most of the biggest US companies in computing today. You might have added a few more, notably Amazon, and perhaps the big PC manufacturers like Dell.
However, for their size and resources, many of these companies have done remarkably little to advance technology infrastructure in the last few years. Almost all of them became big on the back of a small number of very successful products or services, but many of their more recent attempts to diversify have failed horribly.
Re: Make in Phillipines Packaged in... (Score:2)
Chandler is the home of the most advanced fab in the world. And yes, Intel still assembles parts in Singapore, among other places, I just listed them as an example.
In fact even some of the cheap crap electronics you buy from China are made from parts here. I live within miles of an Avnet plant where they make things like resistors, capacitors, diodes, etc, that are shipped straight to China for assembly into PCBs that later make their way back here inside of a smartphone or a refrigerator.
Reeks of desperation (Score:4, Interesting)
Another use for my Arduino (Score:4, Funny)
Once I had a system where the power management (sleep) couldn't be turned off, and we wanted to use it for digital signage. So in about eight lines of code I turned an Arduino into a USB mouse and set it to wiggle the cursor every 5 minutes, thereby preventing the system from going to sleep.
Later, I wanted to wanted to guess someone's PIN number over night, so with a few lines of code I set the Arduino to act as a USB keyboard and type in every possible PIN, waiting a few seconds between tries.
Now, Microsoft is willing to pay me to wiggle a mouse around and occasionally click. Hmm ... :)
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Now, Microsoft is willing to pay me to wiggle a mouse around and occasionally click. Hmm ... :)
I remember, back in college maybe 1998, my roomate signed up for this startup company that would pay him per click on advertisments. He wrote a script that would reload the website, move the mouse, and click on the link evey 2 seconds.
He made close to 300 bucks over 3 months before the company went belly up. I wish I got in the action but I was taking ethics:P
And we just found one! (Score:4, Funny)
> Yes, because electricity is free.
An Arduino in a sleep, wake cycle like that will have average power usage of about 0.005 watts. That's $0.005 per year (one penny every two years).
> There are a lot of dumb people here.
And we just found one of them.
Re: Another use for my Arduino (Score:2)
Electricity is free at work!
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Personally, I'll consider using Edge when it supports NoScript completely. Chrome still doesn't, so I don't use it.
I'm noticing a trend... (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 10: free*
Edge: we'll pay *you*
Could it be that the price of Microsoft products are finally approaching their actual value?
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Step 3 is, "We'll pay you in bitcoins so you can buy heroin on the dark net."
Step 4 is, "We'll send you heroin by drone."
Step 5 is, "Windows 11 is $5000/month and comes with free heroin."
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Depends on what you define as their "products."
Windows 10 is only "free" if you had a (recent) prior version of Windows. Sure there will be a few lost sales but the vast majority of people don't "upgrade" their OS until their PC breaks and the new version comes with their new PC.
And in turn they reduce their support costs significantly (they can justify EOLing Win7/8 much sooner if you've been given every incentive to upgrade already.) And of course they can leverage any new "features" in Win10 as an ad p
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I suspect that Edge's quality isn't the issue here. Microsoft could make Edge the best possible browser in the world, that leverages quantum computing to instantaneously give you web pages the second your mind just thinks about wanting to browser there, and it wouldn't matter.
Microsoft has spent almost it's entire lifespan fucking over everyone and their goldfish in order to dominate and monopolize the PC market, and people are remembering that. On top of everything else, Windows 10 is demonstrating very
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This isn't even payment. If people aren't using Edge there's a reason for it, and being forced to also use Bing just to get points that only give discounts is pitiful. A discount is not money unless you were already going to buy item anyway.
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Search queries and results are mined already so why not use one that pays a little cash?
Seriously? Shit's bad, so why not accept a pittance to make it worse? Also, cash and Amazon gift cards aren't quite the same thing.
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They're pretty darn close, if you use Amazon for cheap household necessities like a lot of people do.
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And people wonder why the local stores are going out of business. From people too lazy to get out of their mom's basement. If the reward is only for Amazon cards, or Starbucks cards, it is NOT because the reward has an equivalent cash value but because there's a kickback to drive people to those stores. To bad you can't send that $100 card to Amazon and get a $100 bill back in the mail.
This is why when there's a class action judgement that the penalties are often paid out as coupons beause they're cheape
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Also, cash and Amazon gift cards aren't quite the same thing.
Physical cash is starting to have the same relationship to money as a picture of a 3.5" floppy disk has to saving data. It isn't completely phased out, but its really close for any affluent enough to have a credit card. For instance less than 3% of my spending is done with cash, and its only that high because my wife loves estate sales.
Bing It (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Bing because I find it to be as good as Google or better for searches (especially image/video searches) and maps.
The fact that they pay me to use it is a bonus.
They'd have to pay me a LOT more to use Edge, however. And make Edge available for Windows 7, because fuck Windows 10.
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Bing is actually better that Google in returned results. But I do absolutely hate the interface with a fiery passion.
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As for me being the product, what major search engine can I use that isn't mining my searches for profit?
See: https://www.privacytools.io/#s... [privacytools.io]
If you're too lazy to click, it says DuckDuckGo, Disconnect Search, MetaGer and ixquick.
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DuckDuckGo kind of sucks as a search engine, though. The results even on the first page are not always relevant.
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DuckDuckGo kind of sucks as a search engine, though. The results even on the first page are not always relevant.
So pick your poison: MS crap, Google's track-everything-you-do, or DDG that works 90% of the time (for me, at least).
I choose DDG. When the search results don't answer my question, then I run the same search in Google.
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Not that I love Google - five years ago, it was great. now its beginning to fester.
Please, someone, can we have a search engine that looks for what I typed in the Search bar, and nothing else. Always. And respects "-" when I want to exclude irrelevant crap.
Re:Bing It (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bing It (Score:4, Informative)
Sucks for porn.
Not if you understand the wonderful DDG bang commands.
!bi my fetish
Search Bing images, the best porn image search, without having to go to Bing's eye-damaging front page. There are many cool ! commands, including !wa to search Wolfram Alpha, the world's best online calculator.
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The best image search? The world's best online calculator?
Everyone knows that Bing is for porn. And, yes, Wolfram Alpha is ridiculously good - it's from the same guys who make Mathematica, and it sits on a substantial raw data set for something general purpose (such as "all current and historical weather data"). It's not the all-purpose factual search engine it wants to be, but as a calculator on steroids it's quite nice.
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Who needs search when you have xhamster?
I wonder if they have any connection to the old newgroup alt.sex.hamster.duct.tape...
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It's nice that you think they don't track you.
There's no trackers on their website, and the ads are generalized by your current search query, not your past searches. I see no evidence they're tracking anybody. Maybe they sell their visitor logs to some other company, but if anybody caught them in the act, they'd be destroyed instantly (since [1] privacy is the singular thing their business hinges on, and [2] it would be such a massive violation of their explicitly clear, non-jargony Terms of Service that they'd be sued into oblivion).
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What?!
I wouldn't fuck Windows 10 if they gave it away for FREE!!!
Oh wait...
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Bearing in mind that if you're using Windows 10, it won't be you doing the fucking...
Re:Bing It (Score:5, Informative)
I use Bing because I find it to be as good as Google or better for searches (especially image/video searches) and maps.
This is demonstrably false. As soon as you look for something even remotely rare where Google finds only 5-10 matches, Bing finds 0. I've done this experiment innumerable times.
Some examples:
Search for "tig welding" "cantilever" "bronze"
Google: 491000 results
Bing: 3150 results
Search for "botox" "cannabis" "dingbat"
Google: 1150 results
Bing: 58 results (none of which very relevant)
search for "ion scavenger" "fluorescein"
Google: 192 results
Bing: 23 results
Search for "osmosis" "peristalsis" "cowboy bebop"
Google: 34 results
Bing: 1 result!
Finally... search for "forked code" "bonded" "lap"
Google: 4 results
Bing: fuckall
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Re:Bing It (Score:5, Funny)
"tig welding" "cantilever" "bronze"
"botox" "cannabis" "dingbat"
"ion scavenger" "fluorescein"
"osmosis" "peristalsis" "cowboy bebop"
"forked code" "bonded" "lap"
You either have the worlds most amazing Saturday nights, or the most terrifying.
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Click on page 15 of the results
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Bing maps seems to lack a lot of the detail that Google has. Stuff like individual business names in every building, with opening times, contact details etc. It probably depends on the area you are looking at but for Japan Google Maps are way, way better.
Ehh maybe halfway? (Score:3)
They've put a lot of work into Edge. Now that it supports extensions and has Adblock, it may even be good enough to use regularly. It sounds unlikely but it's not without possibility that it is better than Chrome in perf.
But Bing? They're nuts. The search results are measurably worse and the user experience is lacking advanced features that makes Google so powerful.
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Sweet! So it's on par with what other browsers have had with years or in the case of Firefox, over a decade.
Remember AllAdvantage? (Score:2)
Anyone else remember AllAdvantage?
Trust busting (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft's OS will silently and without permission uninstall programs [betanews.com] that compete with the ones shipped with Windows 10, such as Firefox and Chrome. Or sometimes it will just silently and without permission change your default web browser back to Edge. The reason for this is because Edge's default search engine is Bing, which gives money to Microsoft via personalized advertisement brokering. And now they're locking in Edge, Bing, and the Windows Store so the user is given some menial rewards for using the three lock-in-step.
When a company uses its monopoly or near-monopoly on one platform (e.g. desktop OS) in order to break into other platforms (e.g. web browsers, search engines, app stores), and rewards users for obeying or inconveniences/punishes users for not obeying, that's called abuse. It is far worse than AT&T bundling free phones with their service, and that got them split up into multiple companies. And it's several steps advanced from the original case that Microsoft was convicted for, which was bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 95.
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And it's several steps advanced from the original case that Microsoft was convicted for, which was bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 95.
But that was way before there were dozens of billions being made with such systems. Look at google, they have featured invasive ads for their chrome browser on the most popluar website on the internet. Any punishment? None. Or take google apps. Abusing their monopoly is the only control they have in fact over android, the remainder is open sourced. On the smartphone maket, google approaches monopoly status.
Or take systemd. It bundles many services and is forced down the throats of thousands of gnu/linux use
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But that was way before there were dozens of billions being made with such systems. Look at google, they have featured invasive ads for their chrome browser on the most popluar website on the internet. Any punishment? None. Or take google apps. Abusing their monopoly is the only control they have in fact over android, the remainder is open sourced. On the smartphone maket, google approaches monopoly status.
You can change the default browser in Chrome or install another browser. Besides, Android isn't a monopoly, since iOS is a viable alternative. On the other hand, many governments and what not still require legacy x86 Windows-exclusive standards, so even though Linux and macOS and ChromeOS exist, Windows is still de facto a monopoly.
Or take systemd. It bundles many services and is forced down the throats of thousands of gnu/linux users. Thanks to it, everyone is forced to use binary logging if they want to use udev.
Use eudev. Problem solved. Or, forward all your logs from journald to your preferred syslog daemon so they're in plaintext. Also you're not really forced to do anything since Lin
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It is far worse than AT&T bundling free phones with their service, and that got them split up into multiple companies.
If by AT&T you mean Ma Bell, then free phones? When did that ever happen? Under Ma Bell you leased your phone equipment from the phone company. Ma Bell got split up into multiple companies because it was a massive monopoly that maintained this and other predatory pricing practices.
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So.. like.. (Score:2)
With Apple and Google getting into cars Microsoft can't be far behind so will this happen with their cars soon?
Here, here's our car for FREE and while you drive it we'll give you mileage rewards. Just make sure you use BING navigation and BING auto-insurance which will track your driving and mileage habits!
Heck, why not start that with Windows Phones first...
Or they could, y'know.. just make a better web browser?
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Or they could, y'know.. just make a better web browser?
Could they though? I'm beginning to think they lack the capacity.
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Microsoft have a partnership with Ford for vehicle automation already.
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Here's an idea for Microsoft (Score:2)
How about taking the money that Microsoft is going to "pay" to users and:
- Go through Windows 7 (or previous versions, personally I'm using Win 7 for my MS only software development) and fix outstanding bugs
- Create an open source, WebKit based browser that can compete with Chrome/Firefox/whatever without having to pay for users
In the long run, this would be money better spent (ie generate more paying customers) than bribing users to use the substandard products that Microsoft has on it's "Front Line".
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How about taking the money that Microsoft is going to "pay" to users and: ...
That won't get them all the data that they'll be able to collect from the people who "agree" to installing the telemetry processes that will let Microsoft track what you're doing on your computer.
Browser Turing Test . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
It tracks mouse movements and other signs that you're not trying to game the system
This sounds like a challenge to me. Can you write a bot that can fool the Edge bot detection system . . . ?
Search on a tech topic. Open the StackOverflow result. Take some time, and follow some of the links to death.
In another tab, search for porn, and follow the links.
Hey presto! Normal user browser behavior!
Reason I don't use Bing... (Score:5, Interesting)
...Bing as their search engine (another product Microsoft says is better than a Google product but that very few people actually use...
The Bing spider did not follow the instructions (about which subdirectories to skip) I gave it in the robots.txt file on my website.
.
I sent logs and my robots.txt to Bing's support team, and got back an answer along the lines of, ~yeah, we know that sometimes it doesn't follow robots.txt, that's your problem to solve~.
If Microsoft thinks their search spider is so "special" that it need not follow the instructions I give it for my websites, then I don't want anything to do with Bing.
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it sounds like you think microsoft are a bunch of selfish pricks who don't give fig for standards of behaviour, standards for technology or standards in general. I'm shocked.
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BingBot was hitting my site for invalid urls - changing case. And I was getting hit thousands of times a day. It wasn't like they were hitting old urls - they literally changed the case on the URL and my server was properly returning a 404. This went on for weeks until I opened a support ticket and then it finally stopped some weeks after that. What a shit bot.
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...where is it the law that I have to check for a robots.txt file?
There isn't a law.
.
Bing support admitted to me that their spider had a bug and they were not going to fix it.
There's nothing I can do to make Microsoft be good netizens, that ball is entirely in their court. Bing support made it obvious to me that they don't care.
Not a differentiator: (Score:2)
You can even draw on websites with a stylus.
This is just plain lame. If it's a killer feature, then what is stopping other browser manufacturers from duplicating it? If it's not a killer feature, then other browser makers will ignore it and it will die!
How is this feature even useful by the way, it's not a web standard, so it's not as if someone else can see what you are drawing on the web page... unless you cast it to raster, in which case, I can already do this with ms paint and a screen grab... I'm just not seeing how anybody is clamoring for thi
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BUaaS (Score:2)
Browser User as a Service vendor here: My pricing structure starts at $10,000 per month.
HMU.
Even paid (Score:2)
I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole
Re:Even paid (Score:5, Funny)
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FTFY
Bing sucks (Score:2)
Wife got a new laptop, win10. Tried figuring how to do something in Win10 (was different than earlier versions). Couldn't. Did a search. Default was BING. No luck. Entered same search terms into Google, and as well as serving up relevant looking links, it gave me the answer outright. Google knows more about Win10 than BING does. WTF?!?
And Edge crashes her laptop a lot.
I stand impressed ... (Score:2)
... by the sheer volume of people who think that anything they do on the internet, regardless the "precautions" they take to try to maintain their anonymity, is really anonymous. Or that Microsoft is more evil than ANY other tech company. But if self-delusion lets you sleep better at night, so be it.
LOL, "no" (Score:2)
"Microsoft Wants To Pay You To Use Its Windows 10 Browser Edge"
Lol, no, not even if they paid me.
Look, I'll admit that I've done a LOT of shameful things for money, but even I have limits, low as they are.
Cool (Score:2)
Can I script it and run it in a VM?
Ahead of the curve? (Score:2)
Business plan (Score:2)
1. Sign up for this program.
2. Sue them for violating labor laws.
3. ???, IANAL and it probably won't work
4. Profit!
dnf install edge (Score:2)
Adblock. (Score:2)
Windows is a dealbreaker (Score:2)
No, I can't really see it. I also value my privacy so I don't think their offer will work for me. I've got friends doing this and they only get an store credit card for $5 every 3 months, not really worth it IMHO!
Uhm... no (Score:2)
Fuck off cunts. :D
It's about time... (Score:3)
... Microsoft finally got nearer to a true price point for using their products.
Microsoft Refuses To See Why We Use Firefox (Score:2)
Apparently Microsoft execs are wondering why people are using Firefox, Chrome, Google and Linux instead of Edge, Bing and Windows.
It is scapegoating and denial to say that the problem is popularity alone.
The answer is that Microsoft products, while usually well-engineered under the hood, are awkward in interface and exhibit a corporate mentality of control in forcing us to use other Microsoft products.
In what is clearly a shock to all the first-decade MBAs out there, people hate being forced to do things, a
Screw that (Score:2)
I would actually be tempted - Firefox has gotten increasingly sucktastic, and Chrome has some glaring deficiencies as well, so if I had already been forced onto Windows 10, I'd certainly have tried out Edge, and if it wasn't actively noticeably *worse* than FF or Chrome these days, I'd happily use it if they were paying me. Hard to pass up free money.
But must use Bing as your default search engine? Frack that. (Moot point anyway for the moment, I'm staying with Windows 7 for as long as I possibly can. Event
Garbage (Score:2)
Lesson Learned (Score:2)
Even IF I were going to potentially try Edge, there was a lesson I learned as a child, and it has held to this day as zero fail: When something seems too good to be true.....
Well, you know the rest. The suckers that actually think that MS isn't getting that $ worth PLUS MORE at the expense of said suckers are very unfortunately under-educated. Even more unfortunate is the number of people that will jump right on it and keep this sort of BS alive.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck Micro$oft!!!
I will not. Have you seen how many viruses they have?
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Don't forget that the "Microsoft actively monitors whether you're using Edge for up to 30 hours a month. It tracks mouse movements and other signs that you're not trying to game the system, and you must also have Bing set as your default search engine." statement means that Microsoft will be setting up a telemetry service on your computer to record what you do and send it to Microsoft. Just like the "Customer Experience Improvement Program" updates that add telemetry trackers to your Win7 system which Micro
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Edge is a couple years behind Chrome, Safari and Firefox in standards support. Why should I use edge on my powerful desktop where pages actually render better and sometimes faster on my phone! Microsoft Energy per page load metric is kinda useless being that Windows is mostly installed on a rather powerful PC, where such battery life metrics isn't that big of a deal.
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Nothing like facts to drive your point home...
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