Microsoft Is Amazing

My special interest is computers. Let's talk geek here.
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yogi
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

Post by yogi »

My wife's family from her mother's side is really big on ancestry records. When her grandma died we went out to Iowa for visitation at a funeral home the day before her interment. It was a pretty normal event except for one thing. There was some cousin or other with a laptop interviewing just about everyone who showed up at the wake. He was trying to accumulate source information for the family tree which he maintained. It was a perfectly logical occasion on which to do such data collection, but in my humble opinion it was out of place.

The results of this fellow's work and record keeping was viewable at the annual family reunion. The last time I saw the drawing it looked like it was on a roll of extra wide wall paper. It was massive but only represented part of the work he did. People came by to look it over and issued the appropriate 'ooohs' and 'ahhhs' upon seeing such magnificence. For me to see my entry on the tree, it was a 'gee whiz' moment. But, I have a feeling that wife's family takes it all about the same as your family. After the curator passes on, his work is going to end up in the recycle bin. Then again, there must be some Mormon Church that would be interested in preserving such things. I suspect doing all that work for the family's benefit could turn out to be less than satisfying. The gentleman who is keeping the tree alive in my wife's family must feel a sense of purpose, meaning, and direction. For his own happiness the project is a very good thing. It's just too much information for most other people to appreciate.
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Kellemora
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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I hear ya Yogi! My great-grandmother on my dad's side is who maintained the family records every since they moved here from Germany. She passed all of her work to one of my great-aunts who carried it on further.
She was an amazing woman, knew everything in her head. As her anyone's birthday, including all the children, and she knew them off the top of her head.
I was doing a little genealogy myself, and after seeing some of the work I had done, she approached me when she was up in her 80's and asked if I would take over her work of keeping the family records. It took a couple of years to enter all the data she had in the genealogy program I used back in those days. She was more than pleased, and passed all the rest of what she had to me, which would be the actual paperwork for birth, marriage, and death certificates, bibles, etc.
There is no one in my family I know who wants to take over my existing files and all this paper.
Which is why I finally put it all up on Ancestry and recently made it public.
I have also done the spousal genealogy for all I could find the data on, this is how my linked files grew to over 165,000 individuals. I have over 180,000 names, but dropped some of the links because I could not verify them. In most cases, they were unrelated except through spouses who were merely a flash in the pan for a couple years.

My wife's sister, who is blind and very near death, passed on all the records she amassed on her family. All of these were entered, and the mistakes she made corrected. Also some stories she passed on I found to not be entirely accurate, and found the most accurate versions through public records.
People want copies of my work, but do not want to contribute anything to help. Sad!
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yogi
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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Getting back to how amazing is Microsoft ...

Since I am beta testing Windows, and since their Edge browser was designed to be used Windows 10, and since I am positive that everything I do on my laptop is part of the telemetry Microsoft collects, I decided to use Edge when I browse through Twitter-land. I have two Twitter accounts. One is for this website and the other is my personal one. Since I'm following 900 +/- people on Twitter, I use the Tweetdeck software to sort out my incoming tweets. Tweetdeck was developed by one of those high school prodigies who had nothing better to do with his time than to make disruptive software; disruptive in a good sense. Tweetdeck is a vast improvement over the original Twitter website. Seeing how well it all worked, Twitter made the kid a multi-millionaire, if not billionaire, and took possession of his software. It's been downhill for Tweetdeck ever since, but it is now the only software of its kind. So, that's one more reason I use it. I often have Tweetdeck monitoring Tweets while I do something else on the other computer. Lately it's been my Windows 10 computer that does the Twitter scans, and since I was there anyway, I use Edge as a vehicle for my live feed.

One reason I stopped using Edge (naughty beta tester that I am), is because it simply is buggy. Microsoft has lost market share big time because of the poor performance of Edge in spite of the fact that it has some cool features. I wasn't about to test any of the coolness of Edge. All I wanted to do was view my Tweetdeck stream. So ... I set the Edge browser to open from the last session in operation. Thus, every time I open Edge, I expect to see Tweetdeck fire up. To be fair about it, Edge does a good job displaying the multiple columns of Tweets. It has all the addons and extensions necessary to show all the content. And they all seem to work. HOWEVER, shortly after I complained about being forced to use Edge as my default browser, Tweetdeck no longer comes up automatically when I open the browser. I have to open a new tab and do a search for Tweetdeck. Then I click on the Tweetdeck record in Bing (I really hate Bing by the way) and voila. While all this works fine, it's not the way a browser should work. As it happens, this problem seemed to be mostly happening with Tweetdeck and not any other website. Because of that specific bug, I submitted feedback about my experiences.

As I stated earlier in this thread, I had my doubts about Microsoft engineers actually reading what is posted in their Feedback Hub. They never reply to inputs, but things do happen. Uncanny things. As was the case with my inability to make Firefox my default browser, the Tweetdeck problem was fixed in the next preview release. I find the timing of this fix to be amazing given that Tweetdeck can't be a major priority over there in Redmond. Maybe the "return to previous session" is a priority and nobody mentioned it before me. I don't know. But this is the second time I gave my complaint to Microsoft and it was fixed in the next release. This is truly amazing.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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Compared to Farcebook, I'm happy with the way Twitter works. If I assign someone to a List, their Tweets appear in that List, all of them. Unlike Farcebook who can't seem to get even half of them to my Lists, or they show "no more posts to show go to news feed," when I know a person made several posts.
I don't have a personal account under my name on Twitter, I use it as an author platform under my pen name.
I use a free service to help maintain my Twitter account, because I get some strange followers who come and go.
With over 12k followers I'm following back, and try to keep it in balance, it takes a service to keep track of who comes and who goes.
I was worried a little bit when suddenly I picked up hundreds of non-English followers. I ignored them at first and didn't follow them back. Seems many of them were in the Arabic language. I copied some of their messages and ran them through a translation engine to see what they were. It appears someone transcribed a few of my books into that language. So at first I thought they were pirated. Turned out, I was getting royalties from foreign sales and never even knew about it. So now I just don't worry about it. If someone follows, I follow back. If they unfollow, I unfollow.
With Twitter placing so many accounts on temporary suspension, the service I use shows them as unfollowed. So I unfollow, and then when they get restored, it shows they followed me again. So this accounts for about 12 to 20 per day that I unfollow and follow back again a few days later. Annoying!

My son-in-law loves his Windows 7 and Windows 10 computers. He's a heavy streaming gamer so uses Win7 for that purpose, but his practice he now runs on Win10. He pays a heavy price for the required programs he must use, but it makes almost all of his work as efficient as possible, and it is linked in with the necessary services he must have to do his job.

Speaking of which, our local small chain grocery store just upgraded their home office computers. So each store has to upgrade now too to be compatible with their new system. They switched from Ace to Comcash, which is a cloud based software system, but the version they bought is for the Win10 OS only. Comcash makes all Win versions, but the stores must be compatible with the home office system. Ironically, they are doing away with their home office IT department and trusting this software will keep them going they way it is supposed to.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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If you look at the posts I made on Facebook many years ago, you will find several articles citing the questionable practices they use to run their operation. I stopped putting links to those articles because of several "friendly" comments about how negative I am about Facebook's business ethics. Oddly enough Facebook itself never cited me. LOL In today's political climate we are beginning to learn about the "social engineering" I talked about years ago. What you see on your timeline is the result of this engineering in addition to the behind the scenes algorithms embedded in Facebook's core software. This may not make sense to you, but the reason it happens is because each and every item you see there is sponsored in some way or another. It's not only a matter of targeted advertising. Facebook is keeping tabs of your response to what you see and they don't want to waste their time documenting inane activity on your part. Keep in mind at all times that you, the user, are the commodity Facebook is using to make a profit. Unfortunately, that same technique is being applied by the bad actors out there too.

The targeting of unsuspecting social media users is not only a Facebook problem. Twitter is suffering from the same malaise. I'd guess that a good number of your 12k followers are not people at all but are robotic and trolling accounts run by bad actors. It's not easy to pick out the real from the unreal in most cases. Twitter currently is doing a house cleaning and you may note a sudden drop in followers for no apparent reason. Rest assured that Twitter knows what it's doing even if it's not obvious to you.

I am impressed that you now have an international following, of apparently real fans. That is something you can be proud of regardless of what Twitter or Farcebook does.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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Twitter is doing a great job of weeding out the fake accounts and bots. I know several, mostly those who were stupid enough to Buy Followers, who lost almost half of their followers as Twitter closed those accounts.
I rarely see mine fluctuate by more than 10 or 15 per day, which is normal considering how many followers I do have.
Twitter puts a temporary suspension on some which my monitoring service lets me know about to unfollow.
But in most cases, they are real people and get their account reinstated so I get a notice of same and follow them back again.
I have not followed someone myself after my first six months of getting started. And for the next year, I only followed back those who were active and in the field of my endeavors on Twitter. I ended up with a ton of followers I didn't know and didn't see much interaction from. My balance kept getting further and further out of whack, so I started using a service to weed out those that were inactive or appeared to be bots. Then after they did what they could, I started up with a new monitoring service that is much more accurate and gives me better information.
Unfortunately, when you get too many followers, you simply cannot keep up with them all every day, so I began making good use of Lists. I have Lists for folks I read every day, and Lists for ones I read once a week. The latter do not usually have interactive tweets, mostly just informational.
I used a method of my own to determine who ends up on what lists, and who never ends up on a list.
It works well for me!

I tried doing the same thing on Farcebook, but they do not show the posts of those in my lists on my lists, and often end a list with "go to news feed" after only 3 to 6 hours of posts. This makes using lists on Farcebook not worth the trouble.
Even reading the main news feed. I will start to read a post of interest, and POOF it disappears from the news feed. They are censoring numerous conservative posts, and leaving up all the nasty, vulgar, liberal, and socialist posts.
Just from what I'm seeing when I'm on Farcebook, if it is anti-American it will stay, if it is pro-America it gets taken down.
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yogi
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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I hear you, Gary. The alt-right is furious about what Zuckerberg is trying to do with his cash cow, i.e., trying to make all the people happy all the time. That's better than allowing every miscreant in the world to have their say, but when any large organization takes a stand they open themselves to criticism. I have to chuckle when I read about the Right Wingers vs Facebook. Obviously none of them ever looked at the political support (cash donations) Facebook has made. Anyway, that place is a mess at the moment, and all the problems they have were well earned. :bleh:

Lists are a wonderful mechanism for filtering. I've been using them on my personal Twitter account ever since they were first introduced. I sort them into general topics such as news, technology, friends, and miscellaneous. I discovered Audiense a few years ago. Since I use their free service I have to sort things out myself and do not have access to all their services. Their search engine is wonderful in that I can pick out people who have not posted over a certain period of time, tag them, and delete them all at once. It's not as easy as it seems with the 900 accounts that I follow and must be impossible at the 15k level. I don't blame you for hiring data analysts. I don't have anything to sell to warrant paying for better service, plus I currently get to see everything I want to see. The problem is that I see it all at the same time every day. Some of the really good stuff gets tweeted while I'm asleep.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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It's a shame Lists don't work right on Farcebook, because they are a great tool.
On Twitter they work perfectly, so no complaints there.
I don't have time to keep up with everything I would like to. So my daily read List is fairly select, only around 100 people.
I have certain people I follow all of their posts or tweets because they have certain benefits for me to do so.
Besides the main big social media sites, I have specialized sites I follow related to being an author, these also take up a lot of time, especially if you say something and have to follow up with the responses, so I usually keep my yapper shut, hi hi.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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Twitter was originally intended to be read by texting devices. That is why there was a limit to the number of characters in a given Tweet. I don't think anyone reads their timeline on their phones anymore, smartphones notwithstanding. Now the tweet stream is plagued by content that you could only find on Facebook in previous generations. The two are essentially the same with a different emphasis. Reading a tweet is quick and easy if the author sticks to the character limit and doesn't go multimedia. Unfortunately, a huge portion of the accounts I follow are news outlets and they always have links to articles. The other people of any worth that I follow are extremely popular and have threads with dozens of tweets. That takes a while to discover and read. For the most part I'm looking for trends and will get sidetracked by detail if I think it's worth reading. if it were not for lists and the Tweetdeck application, I probably would put Twitter in the same social network box I do with Facebook. And, you must know by now how I feel about Facebook. :lol:
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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I hate Farcebook, but unfortunately this is where all of our family members place their info.
Twitter I only use as an author, I put nothing of a personal nature on it, nor do I follow personal family or friends there.

There's a new one out now called MEWE which I've not yet looked into, but have several who have moved over to it.

I sorta miss the old Usenet. I liked the way the topic responses threaded out with the indents.
It may have been the particular reader I used that made it work so well for me. It only showed the lead topic and a number if there were thread responses. This way I didn't have to see all the old stuff wide open with no new responses.

I think as these social media sites grow and get richer, they can afford to start fiddling with adding things nobody wants.
Farcebook is one that has never worked right since they started the TimeLine feature.
Also, when you go to someones timeline to hunt up something, even though you have it set to Recent, they still show you FIRST files you have not seen, even if they are dated well beyond current. I have no idea why they started doing this, but it takes ten times longer to scroll down through those to get to the Recent to see if you missed a post from the last 24 hours.

At least I don't waste more than 1/2 hour, rarely longer, checking all the social media sites I follow.
Leaves more time to hit valuable sites like this one!
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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I have some philosophical disagreements with the way Mark Zuckerberg runs Facebook. The original version was not much more than the bulletin board style we have here. But, Mark is a Yale graduate and as such is trained to be a successful businessman. He found ways to monetize what nearly all the people who use Facebook think is free. Gamification was the big draw. Few people realized that Facebook is not about socializing nor playing games. It is about collecting personal and private data regarding the people who go there. Creating huge databases and selling them to business interests, as well as others, is the name of the game Zuckerberg plays. The price you pay to use that social network is the forfeiture of information about everything you do on Facebook and elsewhere too. As is the case here on Brainformation, once you post it, you give up the right to ownership. Thus Zuckerberg owns the data on several billions of people he used as a commodity over the years.

Truth be told Facebook never denied what they were doing. It's all spelled out in their terms of service (TOS). But who reads the TOS before signing up to use a website? The powers that be at Facebook rely on that fact and never make a point of how they conduct business (unless they are being investigated by congress, or some such thing).

The timeline you see is the result of an embedded algorithm in the site's software. I've read where not even the software engineers over there know exactly how it works. It's too complicated. However, you can be certain that it is manipulating what you see and keeping records of your response. Some of the glitches are just that, but most all of what you experience on Facebook is programed to elicit a particular response from you, the visitor. Does any of this matter if you get to share photographs of your distant relatives? Most people say no. It does matter to me. It turns out that the personal database Zuckerberg owns can be used to manipulate people's behavior. Isn't that lovely?

The sad reality is that privacy is now as extinct as the Dodo Bird. You may have nothing to hide, but does Mark Zuckerberg have the right to know who every member of your family is, where they live, and have photos of most if not all of them? Does he have the right to use his business to collect personal information and give it out to the highest bidder? If you don't mind any of that, then think of this. Mark Zuckerberg also freely hands off all that information about you to any government agency that wants it. The Federales are very happy that he is collecting data for them.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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This is exactly one of the reasons I never put anything of a personal nature on any social media site.
I may hit the like button, or possibly share a post, but never add new content of my own.
I did eventually add my birth date, and some unimportant stuff.
But I can see by the ads I get they do check to see what it is you may have liked or looked at.

Now on my writer account there is nothing personal at all, it's my pen name.
The things I look up regarding topics I am writing about sure bring up some strange ads though, hi hi.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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The targeted ads on the Facebook site itself are bad enough, but they don't stop there. I use several social sites to keep track of what is happening on the Internet. As all free sites go, they all have advertisements. Ads for Jet.Com, for example, show up on Tumblr, Pinterest, Flipboard, and of course, on Facebook. They only show up after I've been to Jet looking for something. I have to laugh when I see the ads because they are showing me items that I have already purchased. What's the point of targeting advertising to me when I just purchased the item? They are clever enough to know where I've been and what I looked at, but they have no clue about whether I actually made a purchase or not.

All that personal and private information I ranted about is obviously being shared with "partners" of Facebook. Facebook makes it nearly impossible to delete your account, but it is possible. They retain your data for a while after you leave, but their partners keep it forever. I've read about a lot of people leaving Facebook in protest of their policies, but that did not stop the data collection or retention of their partners. Once the data is sold, or leased, Facebook is out of the picture. Their partner sites keep on going, and going, and going.

I've tried to combat the problem by using the Tor browser which hides your identity. Tor works beautifully but Jet.Com, for one, does not like it because it can't read the browser's user agent ID string. That means the web site cannot identify me or compare me with my history in their database. The message they send back says they won't let me in because of this and I might be a hacker. The same message comes back, but not as often, when I use the Opera browser. Opera has a built in ad blocker and many sites don't like that fact. In those cases I call up the URL from Firefox and go into the "reader" mode which strips off everything from the display except the text. It's the perfect alternative to ad blocking with the drawback that I will see no images at all, not even the ones I want to see.

Browsing the Internet should not be this complicated. Then again, now that net neutrality is history it will only get worse.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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I hear ya Yogi! I do use ad blocking side programs I've installed. It was necessary for some of the things I do, as the ads covered up the window and the buttons I need to get to.
I usually disable the entire display box instead of the ads themselves. The entire right column next to the active window.
Been trying to do this on Debi's latest used Win7 computer, and can't seem to get the left edge of the box to delete. The same blocking program is on her computer, but does not have the same features as it does on Linux computers.
Plus the one I normally used is now blocked itself due to supposedly containing malware. It may be blocked but what I had blocked with it remains blocked anyhow.
I'm still waiting to see what horrors await us now that we no longer have net neutrality.
However, by the same token, it may open up a whole new internet. Especially if those who own the cables decide to start offering services themselves. I'm thinking along the lines of Google owning a lot of the fiber optic cables and trunk lines.
So many things that used to run on their own services have started using the Internet. Cell Phones and Satellite TV, etc.
We've had DirectTV now for a long time. They recently upgraded our system, which gave us a ton more channels we could record from, and record many more at once. What they didn't tell us was this was done using our own Internet cable.
I was shocked when I saw our monthly data bandwidth usage jump from around 50 up to around 400 per month.
As soon as I figured out what caused it, I had the frau cut back on all the shows she was recording and would never watch anyhow. My bandwidth usage dropped right back down to around 80 now, because she still records a few more shows than the dish itself can handle.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what else our dear government has messed up!
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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You work in a strange computer environment over there my friend. I've never seen ads cover up needed links and buttons in a browser, even less likely across applications. It's also hard for me to imagine a "right column next to the display window." Something like that could happen when using multiple virtual machines, but even in that case one of the boxes can always be set to overlay the others. Perhaps things are different with a Linux host. I've not seen any interference from ads in my Windows environment unless it was malware, which could be a challenge shutting THAT down. The slowest part of loading a web page is downloading content from the ad servers. Not only is it slow, but frequently it maxes out the processor. That's why I would block ads; to conserve resources and improve throughput.

ISP's now have the legal right to charge you to access individual segments of the Internet as well as the Internet itself. You may, for example, have to subscribe to see certain websites; Google, for example, which is now free to use. It is also now legal to throttle the traffic and charge customers to run at full speed. Your wife would notice this throttling during her download sessions. The scariest part of it all is that ISP's may now censor what you see and keep track of exactly what you are doing. The records they keep on your usage would make Facebook look like a kids' game. Oh wait. They already look that way. :lol:
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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Well, Farcebooks right column advertising box does cover part of the Flash Player window regardless of whether you are on Linux or Windows.
Also, if you turn off Notifications on Farcebook, they STILL pop-up on the screen you happen to be on, often causing a major problem for game players. If the notice pops up under your mouse while you are clicking on something, it takes you out of the screen you were on and reopens the Farcebook screen and whatever the notification was far. Sometimes this is to somebodies page. Getting back to where you were before then becomes a several step process, and whatever you were doing when swept away is often lost in the process.
The turn off Notifications selector although checked has not worked since they started TimeLine several years ago, and they never fixed it.
The frau and I play a game called Farm Town. The only way to access it is through Farcebook.
Farcebook is always making some type of change that messes up how the game works too.
If you happen to be on Farcebook for any reason, the vertical box on the right side of the screen with all the advertisements does not go away when you go to one of the game sites. Nor does the little Chat Box at the bottom of the same column. I've got that hidden when I'm on a game page along with the entire advertising column on my computer. On both of Debi's windows computers we can't get rid of the left box border, so it still is over the game when playing, but does not obstruct the buttons used in game play since the column itself is hidden.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

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I get it now. I misunderstood what I read previously. The ad interference is within the Farcebook website. Now it all makes sense to me. They run their site inside something like Flash containers, but it's not Flash. In fact there are several containers on a given page of Facebook. I have seen third party software which claims they can eliminate some or all of the obstructing containers on Farcebook. I am very skeptical about those programs, not to mention it's probably a violation of the TOS to use them. Those containers and ads are there for a reason. That is the price you are paying to use their service. If you get rid of their ads, then Facebook gets no benefit from you being there. That's nice for you, but the advertisers aren't getting what they are paying for in that case.

Zynga used to be the exclusive game provider on Facebook. It all changed years ago when Zynga ran into financial problems. I don't know who supplies the games now. Like the main content, the Farcebook games are running inside a container. This is why you see ads that you can't control, exactly the same as those ads on your timeline. I've read your complaints about the broken games on Farcebook many times. They are not broken because most of those games are run as beta software. By definition beta doesn't work correctly. The reason nobody is fixing any of the problems is due to the fact that the game play itself is a very low priority. They don't give a hoot if the game works or not. They just want you to be in there making connections to other players and seeing the click bait. I can think of no better example of how Farcebook is openly exploiting their users. It's not about games. It's about collecting data pertaining to their users' activity. Look at it that way and it will all make sense.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

Post by Kellemora »

Oh My, Zynga was the worlds worst game provider. I tried many of their games and every single one had the same problems, probably due to their faulty engine.
On the opposite side of the coin Slashkey makes the very best games available on Farcebook.
I've been playing Farm Town since 2009 when they were first introduced. It has come a long way over the years.
Honestly to the point it is actually almost too much to deal with.
I took a partial two year break from the game, only to come back and find they made it super easy for folks to move up the ladder, in some cases like lightning.
Over 99% of the problems some players claim to have and blame on the games, it is really their own computer problems.
Sure, there is a small glitch after every upgrade, but they are usually fixed in a day or two with no serious damage.

As far as the ads go. I've only eliminated the right column ads from the in-game page, not from the Farcebook pages.
I wouldn't have had to do that if they were not covering up part of the Flash Window, so I couldn't get to the tools needed to play the game.

We've had a slogan for over 10 years now. If it says Zynga on the label, it don't come down our cable!

Actually, the game companies make one heck of a lot of money. Although someone can play a game for free, they can't move ahead or make use of any of the convenience items which cost REAL MONEY.
At least Farm Town does give us ways of earning Farm Cash Dollars, but it is slow going. As far as I know, no other game on Farcebook gives a way to earn Dollars to buy game items.
As a simple example of one feature, to have the FT Mayor run your neighbors facilities for you. It requires Two Trains with TEN long cars on each. Each of these cars cost 35 Farm Cash. So it takes 700 Farm Cash Dollars to use this feature. All of the major tools used on FT cost Real Money, and in some cases, you need to buy three of these tools in order to buy the one tool that does all three things at once. Roughly 200 Farm Cash to move a compound tool to the next level.
With over 6 million players dumping at least 20 bucks a month into this game (some none, some a lot) you're talking about an income of Big Bucks to Slashkey. To the tune of over 200 million dollars a year from the US alone. Over 100 million a year DAU in China.
The only reason Zynga had problems is because of their lousy games and even worse engine. Even so, they are up in the 100 million dollar category too.
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

Post by yogi »

The time has come to continue the saga that prompted the writing of this thread in the first place. That is to say, I have another story about how Microsoft seems to really care about it's customers.

Most of the games in the Windows store remind of of the Zinga legacy on Facebook. There is one game in particular that I happen to like because it actually is fun and works as advertised 99% of the time. Plus, it's free. The name of the game is Hill Climb Race. This is a 3-D game with a variety of travel tracks and a variety of vehicles to use on the tracks. The only point in the game is to see how far you can get. You accumulate coins along the way and use them to advance yourself through the upgrades of the vehicles. There are ads, but very few and out of the way. I can buy coins if I don't want to earn them for free, but who ever does that? Needless to say this game is a great time waster that I've learned to like on Windows 10.

A few days ago the weekly Windows 10 beta update came down the tubes. It had some minor improvements and I didn't spend a lot of time investigating them. I did have a need to waste some time a couple days ago and opened up Hill Climb Race, or I TRIED to open it up. I got an error telling me that I could not use this app because it wont work on my computer. WTF? It's been working ever since i bought into Windows 10. So I did the usual stuff, reboot, uninstall, re-install, clean all the temp files, gut the registry, and whatever else came to mind. Nothing worked. The error message gave me an error code and told me to take it to the Windows Store and see if it will help. There is no help option in the Windows Store. So, I did the next best thing and went to the Feedback Hub where I complain about Windows 10 in general. I copied the error message and put it in the post along with a snide remark about the crap games they give away for free. I then uninstalled the game and looked for something to replace it. Lo and behold there was a Hill Climb Race 2 that downloaded and installed with no problem. It was supposed to be better than the version I had, but I detested it from the very first game. They changed a lot of the game play and made it competitive instead of a single player game. Plus, the ads that are built into the game are obnoxious. That's because THIS version was designed for X-Box while the version I was using obviously was for laptop or tablet.

Today, two days after I posted my snide remarks on the Feedback Hub, I went to the Store once again and tried to download the original game. It worked. Once again I was shocked at the realization that somebody over at Microsoft actually read what I posted and did something about it. Unfortunately all my accomplishments, coins, and gems, are gone so that I have to start for ground zero. It's not a big deal, but at least I now know it's not a bait and switch game that Microsoft likes to play. They apparently actually do care about me having a good time on my Windows 10 computer. :mrgreen:
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Kellemora
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Re: Microsoft Is Amazing

Post by Kellemora »

Glad they got you up and running again. Shame you had to lose all you built up to in the game though.

As far a Zynga goes. I tried several of their games, and every one had the same problem, probably to do with a lousy engine they developed. As they tried to fix the problems, they only went from bad to worse.
It finally got to the point, after hitting the same problems with all their games, if said Zynga on the label, it didn't come down my cable. Besides, I think the programmers were a bunch of clowns, some of the stupid things they did to the games.

My brother tried sending me an early Christmas Gift. He did so using OneDrive, which I don't have of course.
He sent me a link to be able to download what he sent to me, but in order to access the file, Mickey$oft wants the Password to my personal and private e-mail account. There is no reason EVER for me to give my e-mail Password to Mickey$oft.
He tried again with an on-line OneDrive that allows guests to log-in to read or download a file.
Got the same problem here, Mickey$oft still wanted the Password to my private e-mail account.
OK, two can play this game. I opened a new gmail account.
Went back and put the e-mail address in the box, and the password for the e-mail account.
Got an error message that said something like, the e-mail does not match the e-mail the link was sent to.
So I asked my brother to resend whatever it was he was sending to my new temporary e-mail address.
He did so, and when I tried to see what he sent, I got another error message. You must have a OneDrive account, do you want to create one now. I clicked YES. It tried to install an exe file which of course produced another error message.
I gave up! Told him to send whatever it was he want's to send to my DropBox account, which he already has access to.
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