Microsoft Invents $1.15/Hour Homework Fee For Kids 580
theodp writes "Microsoft's vision of your computing future is on display in its just-published patent application for the Metered Pay-As-You-Go Computing Experience. The plan, as Microsoft explains it, involves charging students $1.15 an hour to do their homework, making an Office bundle available for $1/hour, and billing gamers $1.25 for each hour of fun. In addition to your PC, Microsoft also discloses plans to bring the chargeback scheme to your cellphone and automobile — GPS, satellite radio, backseat video entertainment system. 'Both users and suppliers benefit from this new business model,' concludes Microsoft, while conceding that 'the supplier can develop a revenue stream business that may actually have higher value than the one-time purchase model currently practiced.' But don't worry kids, that's only if you do more than 52 hours of homework a year!"
Wha? (Score:3, Insightful)
You gotta be fucking kidding me ...
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Funny)
Say what you will but Bill Gates' vision was revolutionary for the time. He brought shrink wrapped software to the masses. No one had done it successfully before him.
Revisionist history. When shrinkwrap software was an emerging market, Microsoft was but one software house among many that were producing good product on 5.25" floppies. There were also Borland, WordPerfect, Broderbund, Lotus Development Corp, and dozens of other companies. Microsoft was no leader of the pack back in the day.
Microsoft did prove to be most successfully ruthless dog in the pack, though. It's "embrace and extend (and extinguish)" market strategy is arguably a true innovation, and its use of vaporware to limit the encroachment of better technologies on its market share demonstrated a superb mastery of advertising and marketing skills. It has also demonstrated a truly incredible disdain for the fetters of morality, ethics, and law. Microsoft has never been particularly strong in technical skills, but from the first it has been fantastically good at marketing, including pimping its image.
Basically Microsoft has gotten to the top by being the most successful slut on the street corner, knowing when to give the chauffeurs driving the rich guy's limousines a free ride, and knowing how to sidle up close enough to the competition to take a razor blade to her pretty face.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Said S.Balmer "Things are lookin' up!"
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
MS has announced they will not enter the online porn industry until they can determine a way to charge by the erection
Man, talk about gettin' stiffed.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
$1 per erection is too cheap, they get get an _average_ of $6.15 per-erection charging by inch. Or in my case, about $9.00
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Or in my case, about $9.00 ...cough, cough, cough.
I wouldn't worry already. Even supermarkets give you "two for one" deals on everything, I'm sure MS would offer something like this to heavy users, too!
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is there no "Don't Go There (-1)" moderation option?
The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Funny)
Am I the only one who finds it pretty funny that Microsoft's response to piracy of Office (which, I would guess, is most popular among students) markets their $60 version, repeatedly, as a "steal?"
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because someone is in college doesn't mean that they are in the know, and realize that choice even exists. The other thing is that Microsoft cleverly charges considerably less for "student" versions of their software, getting kids hooked early. A buddy of mine picked up a student copy of Office 2007 for $60, where as I think as a company we pay close to $400 per seat for a VLK.
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You can get it for free if you enter the Microsoft Programming Challenge and complete the first tier. ne of their games development newsgroups was giving Visual Studio 2008 out for free.
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Am I the only one who finds it pretty funny that college students still use MS Office instead of OpenOffice? You'd think they'd enjoy the choice before they get stuck with Office 2007 at their first professional position.
Well, you know, some kids either
A: Have realized that when compatibility with the outside world counts, especially with VBA, Microsoft Office Wins.
B: That if you are going to have to know something for that professional position you might as well learn it now while you're at school. Unfortunately not everybody has the learning curve of a hardened Geek. To ask them to be masters of two different office suites is asking an awful lot.
In any case, don't even get me started on Office 2007. That DOES kinda screw
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Well, my kid is a straight A student and has been using nothing but OpenOffice.org for the last 4 years. Can't say she has any problem with VBA, because I doubt if even a minute percentage of high school teachers even know what VBA is.
Hell, in my company we have over 500 users, and I doubt if more than 10 of them use it. In my experience, the vast majority of users who think they need Office, not only don't really need it, they don't even really know how to use it, let alone be "masters" of it.
I can't tell
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A: Have realized that when compatibility with the outside world counts, especially with VBA, Microsoft Office Wins.
Hmm, that's funny. Around here were I work, we don't drink the Microsoft or Apple Kool-Aid.
You realize that once you break that initial vendor lock-in, there is no 'compatibility with the outside world' that matters? Why stick with what the 'outside world' does, when what the 'outside world' does is wrong?
Phrased another way:
Why continue pounding square blocks through round holes, just because that's what everyone else continues to do? It's still wrong.
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2007 is the interface the Devil uses. It seem I have to work some evil black magic just to get double space, and I'm certain I sold my soul trying to figure out how to paste unformatted plain text.
I will not work with 2007. Thats not some obstinate statement, it's quite literal, I will not work. It's like trying to run 240v electronics on 120v.
The thing that pisses me of mostly is they replaced the words with symbols. I know the word for "double space," I don't know what the symbol is! It's not like for
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None of the professors used OpenOffice, but they usually didn't mind a PDF. file->export to PDF.
Actually, some of them still used Word Perfect (IIRC, it may have been some other off-beat WP program), and this was just a couple years ago. Weird.
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenOffice is far from perfect. The UI isn't going to wow anyone. It is slow and clunky. That being said, I would say it is a fair competitor to Office 2003 and Office 2000. Office 2007 is a different beast. Some love the ribbon interface, and some hate it. I'm curious how you feel Office 2003 kicks OpenOffice down the road.
OpenOffice supports more file formats, provides basically all the features of Office 2003, and handles PDF import/export as well.
I really don't believe there is any great disparity between the two products. Both have a few faults and advantages.
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Informative)
OpenOffice 3 simply feels clunky and is slow. That's enough to make me say that Office 2003's far superior. I responded to the next post down from yours with specifics, but to sum it up: Calc sucks compared to Excel (formulas act weird in comparison, poor macro support for Office files--and yes, that's a requirement), Impress sucks (while PowerPoint presentations suck in principle, it's a really good program when compared to Impress, and that should shame the Impress developers), and Draw sucks if it's supposed to be an alternative to Publisher (it's not necessarily, but it's the closest thing in the suite).
Oh, and what I forgot below--it doesn't play with SharePoint. Not their fault, but I use SharePoint because it's a very useful piece of software, and the integration with Office is very handy.
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Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
MS's current office suites will eventually be too old (file formats stop getting used, stop getting patches, etc). The pay-as-you-go service is prohibitively expensive. But OpenOffice and the rest can only get better, if only because they all use the same file format and therefore users have no reason to stay with a poor product when one of the others surpasses it.
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO trying to force people into subscriptions and/or pay by the hour is likely to cause many people to like you say screw it and either take the pain of moving to alternatives or stick with old versions (many are doing that anyway) and pirate extra copies if they can't get them legally.
And if too many people say screw it then the network effects advantage that keeps ms office alive will disapear (while ooo is a bloated pig that can be made up for with extra hardware)
Despite this patent I don't think MS is suicidal enough to make subscriptions/pay by the hour the only option.
Though IIRC MS is trying to use the carrot of lower prices and other side benifits to tempt corporations and academic institutions into subscriptions deals that they then become basically stuck with.
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Interesting)
So 20 people leave their PCs on with the screen saver before they go on a two-week vacation, don't notice they still have documents open somewhere, and they get back a bill of $1.25 X 16 days (2 weeks plus the extra weekend) X 24 hours X 20 people, or $9,600.00.
That will happen exactly ONCE before they all switch to anything else ... at that point, even vim or pico look better.
How about a stray process? (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent point. Unless MS isn't charging for the time in-between keystrokes. In which case their pricing scheme might be worth it. =)
Which reminds me of something. I've closed Word on my work machine before when I've had a document open on a USB stick. Then try to USB eject the stick and it won't go. Go into task manager and see that some word-ish program still has an open handle on it.
Run task manager, kill the exe, and I can eject the USB drive. No real problem but it raises a question: What if this stray process was billing me?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Run task manager, kill the exe, and I can eject the USB drive. No real problem but it raises a question: What if this stray process was billing me?"
Quick - patent it!
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Try Open Office for Mac which is very fast. Recently released with real Mac integration and NeoOffice will soon be dust in the wind.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:4, Funny)
"The big thing IMO is using a consistant (and at least in the case of MS office consistant means the same version, I dunno if openoffice is better about keeping thier layout engine consistent between versions) office suite both among machines you use and between the machines you use and the machines people you work with use.
Sure for simple documents conversions are possible but for complex documents wysiwyg word processing basically relies on everyone having a layout engine with the exact same behaviour (pdf gets arround this by doing a lot of the layout in advance but this loses editability).
So if thier lecturers all use office 2003 and the uni machines all have office 2003 then the path of least resistance is to use office 2003 on thier own machine(s). Whether they buy it at the academic discount price or pirate it depends on thier circumstances beliefs (some universities even have a subscription which allows students to install it on thier own machines without paying)
plus at least here in the uk they will probablly have used at least one of office 2K, office XP or office 2K3 at school or "6th form college" before they went to university.
plus at least in my experiance openoffice is a bloated pig compared to office 2K to 2K3.
I have not yet used office 2K7 on a serious enough basis to comment on whether it is more or less shit than openoffice. It is certainly very different from both openoffice and older versions of MS office.
Too much rum int eggnog? :-)
Re:The Ultimate Steal? (Score:5, Funny)
only one thing to say (Score:2)
Consonant vowel consonant consonant off...
I will never let my kid use any such service.
Re:only one thing to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. On the other hand, I just shelled out several hundred dollars for Adobe Illustrator, a program I need only for a few hours a year (but when I need it, I REALLY need it). If I had the option to pay an hourly rate OR purchase it outright, I'd have chosen the metering. Actually, a lot of apps are the same for me - including all of Microsoft Office. I use alternative word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation packages (or just do it in my text editor / LaTeX), but every now and then I do need to use Word or Excel.
Again, given that there will be alternatives that are not metered, a pay-for-use model for some of these monolithic, massively-priced apps might not be a bad thing.
Re:only one thing to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Just food for thought.
Re:only one thing to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:only one thing to say (Score:5, Informative)
Kinkos charges about $0.42 a minute to use their computers that have MS office preinstalled. I don't own a printer, but the 3 times a year I actually need something printed (like christmas card notes, for example) that I can't get away with at work, I email to myself and print at Kinkos. Office depot will go one step further you can email them the document and they'll print it at no additional charge on whatever paper you need.
/Printer free since 2000
New model? (Score:5, Interesting)
'Both users and suppliers benefit from this new business model'
Only Microsoft could try to call a business model 'new', when hotels and hookers have used it for centuries.
At least its obvious what they are now
Re:New model? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, at least it's a nice hotel.
Re:New model? (Score:5, Funny)
Um, we're talking about Microsoft here. It might be an *expensive* hotel, but I'm not sure I'd call it a *nice* hotel...
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Regardless, I think it's clear that the consumer is getting screwed with this deal.
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Well, at least it's a nice hotel.
... with broken windows.
Re:New model? (Score:4, Insightful)
'Both users and suppliers benefit from this new business model'
Only Microsoft could try to call a business model 'new'...
That's the part of that business model that you have a problem with? That they're calling it "new"?
The real problem in my mind is that really, it's either the user *or* the supplier that will benefit, but not both. Because the question is, will the user end up paying more when you calculate all the charges, or will they end up paying less? If they end up paying less, then the users benefit and the suppliers lose money. If they pay more, then the suppliers make more money but the users lose money.
There are plenty of other problems with this model, but certainly it won't benefit both suppliers and users.
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And they are the only one that can say the user benefits from a 'pay per use continual raping' scheme...
Besides hotels, remember the entire premise of Microsoft in the beginning was based on was to avoid the 'timesharing charges and have your own computer'...
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I guess they also have forgot the days of 'metered internet' and how it hardly used. More revenue stream was gained by dropping 'metering'. Lots more.
Only 52 hours of homework? (Score:2)
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Well, there's what they're assigned, which varies by grade and teacher, and then there's what they actually do, which varies by student. I'm not convinced there's any correlation between the two.
Re:Only 52 hours of homework? (Score:5, Funny)
I did far far less than 52 hours of homework a year.
Thinking about it, there may be a reason I failed high school..
Yet another excuse not to do homework (Score:5, Insightful)
"Teacher I didn't get my assignment done. It was either buy food or rent MS Word for three hours, and I didn't want to starve."
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With that line the teacher can offer you food, which leaves you with no excuse next time. What you want to say is, "We were all out of computer time, and we couldn't buy more until mom gets paid Friday." This one can be used every week (well, until the teacher hands you a Knoppix CD).
Billing for fun and profit (Score:5, Insightful)
and billing gamers $1.25 for each hour of fun
As long as they only bill you while you're actually having fun, I'd imagine that this would be a good deal for many of today's games.
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You'll note Sony Home doesn't cost a penny.
Pretty Remarkable (Score:5, Insightful)
They have some moxie, don't they?
I guess this would be successful, but it pretty much guarantees that all of your customers will hate you, even as they pay you. So really, it's a horizontal move for Microsoft.
As long as computing is as desperately cheap as it is, with $300 computers and free office suites, it's hard to see how they could make this work as a business model.
Re:Pretty Remarkable (Score:5, Insightful)
it's hard to see how they could make this work as a business model.
I think your confusion come from applying your own reasoning to the world at large.
But if I may give a reprieve to your doubts about the viability of this, may I suggest you introduce yourself to a few more CEO's. You may find their approach somewhat 'illogical'. But then again, just look around. Do you think the financial crisis we are facing now was based on 'logical' decisions by these same CEO's?
To many in 'business', being free means cheap. There are people who honestly believe that simply by paying more for something, it means its 'better'.
Money( a medium of exchange for items) and Wealth(the actual items or quality of services themselves that are deemed 'of value') are NOT the same thing, but there are many people who cant tell the difference.
Re:Pretty Remarkable (Score:4, Interesting)
The CEO all made the decisions that were in the best interest of their company
If that was actually true, we wouldnt be here. The word you are looking for in that sentence isnt 'company' the word you are looking for is 'bond-holders'.
The free market does not exist, its a concept invented and held onto by irresponsible people who need something to point at when they fail. Because, its not THEIR fault afterall...
Since they can't see what every other CEO is doing behind closed doors, they can't factor that in.
That line of thought can certainly be called many things, but logical is not one of them. Do you really think being a CEO involves simply wearing a suit and having a good smile? There are actually numbers that get put in those 'behind closed doors' formulas. When it comes to the bottom line, EVERYTHING is a known. To think that this all just came up out of the blue and took all these people by surprise is the height of ignorance. What those idealistic CEOs actually saw when looking at the numbers was EXACTLY what was going on behind closed doors, and they thought 'hey if that place can do that and get away with it, so can we.' and so on... and so on... and so on... well you get the idea. Greed isnt a difficult concept to grasp, and I think you know that. Unfortunately, we are now 'enabling' those who got caught up in greed. As if to say 'dont worry, we know you just made some bad choices and none of this was really your fault'. If the free market existed, the idea would be to eliminate those whos choices caused a problem in which the company would fail. But thats not what we are doing, and it really is the height of irony that we are proclaiming to be supporting the free market, by taking away one of its supposed fundamental pillars. That of the best wins, is no longer true. It is now, that of the biggest wins.
Now, these CEO's who took the risks and failed, have the feeling that there is no longer any risk. They didnt feel the needed reprecussions of a bad decision, which means they didnt LEARN what the failure was. If that is to be our countries reaction to this type of situation... then we can just consider the past 18 months 'practice'. You take a little while to think about that, and I mean REALLY think about it, and come back and tell me where you think it ends.
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I grant that. I'm pretty sure my grandma was still renting her phone up until the day she died, even though the rules requiring this were reformed in the 1970s.
But you can't make long money on ignorance, particularly if we're talking about people that are ignorant of alternatives. I think if this were to catch on, Apple (or lets just call it "Commodore" to keep emotions out of it) would instantly start a "we don't tax you" ad campaign, and the Wal*Mart would start selling boxes of OpenOffice for $20 (that
Unfortunately, you may be right. (Score:3, Interesting)
It requires stupid people to work, as it is not exactly a secret that computer hardware is pretty cheap today. /.ers see it in computer hardware, and a friend of mine who is a professional car mechanic can tell similar stories.
Unfortunately there are enough stupid people in the world. Who doesn't have some acquaintance who bought some cheap crap despite advice that it is not really a good buy?
We
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Wait, I get it! It's just like those crappy upgrades and services the mechanic sells you which don't do anything, or which would be trivially user-serviceable if the mechanic were generous enough to just tell you so!
Man, I just wasn't getting it, but once you make the connection to cars it's all so intuitive!
Re:More amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
another thing that sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Meals on airplanes, I mean, what the fuck? You pay $400 for a ticket, and they can't even give you a ham sandwich? couldn't they jack up the price an extra dollar and give you something real to eat, instead of just cheap biscotti or stale peanuts?
Thank you, thank you; I'll be here all week.
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Yeah, but the cellular companies now have quasi-monopolies because of the way the US mobile industry is (not) regulated. Tariffs or tolls are a way you exploit a monopoly position, not how you build or establish one.
Alright (Score:5, Insightful)
What's in it for the consumer?
Do you supply a top-of-the-line PC and internet connection for us gamers? It might be worth it then, provided we don't game too much.
Do you supply a flexible, strong, compatible laptop for the school crowd? It might be worth it then, provided you don't provide incentives to universities or schools to dump more homework on the poor students.
What about the in-car entertainment system? Cell phones?
If I'm buying the equipment, I'm not going to pay monthly for something I currently get for free. The consumers, even the dumb ones, will be looking for alternatives. If no better alternatives exist, they'll be created.
In short, I hope Microsoft does launch this nice program, hopefully with the backing of the law, and other absurd things so we can watch the anvil break the camel's back.
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What's in it for the consumer?
Since when does Microsoft care about that? The real issue is that Microsoft has discovered that they may be able to lock people into Windows and Office, but they can't force people to buy new versions. Their "customers" will just keep on using Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and then Microsoft only gets a cut when someone buys a new computer, if that. And then, even then, they have to cut the price of their software for the OEMs, and so they aren't making the sort of money they like.
So what you continually
Re:Alright (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when does Microsoft care about that? The real issue is that Microsoft has discovered that they may be able to lock people into Windows and Office, but they can't force people to buy new versions. Their "customers" will just keep on using Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and then Microsoft only gets a cut when someone buys a new computer, if that. And then, even then, they have to cut the price of their software for the OEMs, and so they aren't making the sort of money they like.
It would be suicide, nothing less. Customers resoundingly rejected this sort of system with DivX [wikipedia.org], and they'll do so again. People aren't completely opposed to subscriptions when they feel enough value is offered for the money [worldofwarcraft.com], though.
In business, nothing is more attractive to a bottom line than subscriptions. Yearly guaranteed profits, nice and predictable. Nothing is scarier to a business than spending millions on a product that people may or may not want. But money is a better feedback mechanism for a business than almost anything else.
Honestly, though, I just can't see them being quite that stupid, at least not in the foreseeable future. Just because subscriptions are a wet dream for the financial department doesn't mean marketing won't stick their finger in the wind to see if people would actually go for such a scheme. People have been predicting this sort of stuff for years, and it never happens. It works at the large-scale enterprise level (it's probably advantageous there, since it's a known and regular expense), but it would be disastrous at any smaller scale.
Still, it would be fun to see them try.
Re:Alright (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course consumers will benefit! Microsoft has just announced the first truly-effective open-source promotion policy in the history of the american computing industry. We should be saluting this, but instead, the microsoft bashers on slashdot are reflexively criticizing them.
"Seriously": Consumers will benefit because they will pay proportional to their actual use, which more efficiently distributes the costs. Thus, those who can afford to pay more will do so, and those who can't won't, which is always good if you are a bizarro-world inverse-marxist ideologue, a.k.a. "free market theorist."
Oh, also, higher profits for microsoft will drive them to innovate.
This is the same reason that coupons are good for the economy - those with enough money don't bother and just pay the higher prices. The time and energy people spend clipping coupons has zero cost - likewise, artificially restricting computer use by introducing significant marginal costs is a zero loss to the economy if you are a corporate tool.
The fact that there are economists who actually believe crap like the above tells you that economics really is the dismal science.
Re:Alright (Score:4, Insightful)
In short, I hope Microsoft does launch this nice program, hopefully with the backing of the law, and other absurd things so we can watch the anvil break the camel's back.
There have been many times in my life when I've said this same sort of thing about decisions I've seen others make. I believe I've seen people say similar things on Slashdot about other decisions Microsoft has made in the last decade. So far, opportunities to say "See! I told you so," have been sparse.
The thing is that the universe appears to be fairly forgiving to makers of decisions we think are dumb. Microsoft is still around, and people are still handing them piles of cash every year, despite all the predictions of doom.
I think that if Microsoft succeeds with this pay-as-you-go program, it will be because there are more ignorant people out there than we suspect.
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If they offer this subscription model instead of the current boxed model, and they offer it at the prices currently being suggested, then the only thing in it for the consumer is the grief of switching to a new office suite. Consumers simply will not pay that kind of pricing if they are heavy users of said products, even at the ludicrous prices Microsoft charges for the full versions of Office Professional(which is more than most people need), even a user who upgraded with ev
Time to kick it old-school. (Score:2)
Luckily for me, my old manual typewriter costs only as much as the ink and paper I put in it. :)
When two is better than one (Score:5, Insightful)
And ads - don't forget ads...lots and lots and lots of ads.
Seriously, when is MS going to get off the same old profit-stump? Is there no one inside that company that can imagine fresh ways to make money besides licensing? Will MS ever come out of the ice age they fostered and find something to sell that the world actually looks forward to paying for?
Despite what MS would wish, software isn't a utility product that spins a meter at the sidewalk. It isn't a consumable that requires a refill after every trip to the coast. It isn't a treat that changes flavor every month according to some designer whim.
Software is part of a process. A process that can be solved by many means and anyone willing to devote the time. It doesn't come out of a strip mine in the Congo...market it according to the market, not to your desire to fill coffers and it will make money - I promise.
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MS has a hard time with licenses today for a simple reason: XP is "as good as it gets". It has everything you want. Actually, 2k already fulfilled this. Together with the 2k version of Office. They can do everything an office user wants. The key question for MS is, thus, why would someone buy a newer version and how can we convince him to do it? And that gets increasingly harder.
Yes, there's always new technology that one may want to include and that (miraculously...) doesn't get patched into older versions
8 cores, 3 Gb, 3 GHz? (Score:2)
According to the picture at Flickr, you need these days that kind of hardware just to do your homework!
How did our parents (err... how did I?) ever manage to pass school?
Re:8 cores, 3 Gb, 3 GHz? (Score:5, Interesting)
My kid has been told many times just to copy and paste from Wikipedia, I mean told by his teachers. Its most distressing.
I have brought the issue up at his school in meetings, but it seems that the tickbox teaching that the UK now relies upon is more interested in achieving teaching goals then actually educating the pupils.
Given that his IT class seems to really be 'how to use Microsoft products', I wouldn't be surprised if this service became part of the UK education provision system. Angry and disgusted yes, surprised no.
Lastly, dude, having a sig that would nuke a Linux system if applied isn't exactly friendly. On the other hand, I guess it would conform to the natural selection approach to weeding out morons, so perhaps its ok...
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I always thought it was a totem-pole-of-ducks emoticon...
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It would create an infinate loop, and you would have to reboot the computer to recover from it.
Three years ago whilst I was doing my ph.d. I was stupid enough to enter a command of this ilk 'to see what it did'. After having to walk two miles to reboot my servers I decided I'd learned my lesson...
Re:8 cores, 3 Gb, 3 GHz? (Score:5, Informative)
interesting new model... (Score:5, Insightful)
and billing gamers $1.25 for each hour of fun
Can we get a refund for a game if we play said without having said fun?
In the words of Open-Source supporters... (Score:2, Insightful)
Behold the Cloud! (Score:5, Funny)
The user jacks his credit card into our system.
We store user input.
We process user input.
We output processed data back to the user.
We suck money out of the user's credit card account.
Behold the cloud!
Thanks Microsoft (Score:2)
Could be debatable if that i.e. OpenOffice/Google Docs features match MSOffice ones, even taking in account what you actually use of them. But you will use the next hour some of the features you think are missing? The hour after it? You could save big bucks before hitting a moment where you need something extra, and maybe in that time you will realize that you don't need them anyway.
Depends on the options (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is going to be the only option, then it's crappy and destined to fail. But if this is going to be an additional option to purchasing Office (which I think is more the case) it may still fail, but is at least a decent idea. Most students use Office only for homework that requires it. If that is the only time you use it, what makes more sense, paying $200 for the full Office suite that you will rarely use (and definitely won't use half the programs) or paying $50 for the 50 hours you actually use it(which is probably being generous in the time students actually use Office)? And factor in that if you have an older computer, Office may run slowly versus this online version which (if done properly) should run smooth as long as you have good internet access.
If this is an additional choice, I think this may be a decent idea (though I don't think it will be a hit).
Re:Depends on the options (Score:4, Informative)
How about using say..Wordpad? It comes with Windows, so its not an additional expense. Has decent features and is very usable. Also you don't have to re-learn it every year.
Or Open Office, perhaps?
Hell, even notepad.
I've never purchased a copy of MS Office and I don't use it at home. I use Open Office at home, and MS Office on the computers at school and work.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
" ... or paying $50 for the 50 hours you actually use it (which is probably being generous in the time students actually use Office)? ..."
Well, I beg to differ. Not that students use Office Software more than you believe; they may or they may not. I'm referring to HOW students use Office Software. Put simply, they dawdle. The IM is open, there is texting to cellphones (via the PC, the cellphone, or both), there is music playing on the PC, there is a whole lot of stuff going on that is not really homework so
So how do they make sure I actually pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
free for kids (Score:5, Interesting)
Office is already $60... (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is already offering MS Office Ultimate for a one-time cost of $60. Why in the hell would I want to rent the same damn thing per hour and turn it into a $2000+ piece of software?
I don't get it. Every time I turn around, Microsoft seems to be trying to take one step forward...into another pile of shit idea.
If this doesn't send their users screaming towards (free) alternatives like Google Docs, I don't know what will...
Pardon me will I go don my Ballmer signature-series chairproof helmet...
Computing 101 Homework (Score:5, Insightful)
Assignment #1
Locate, download, and install Open Office.
Patent application != model for future. (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole summary is a troll. Technology businesses file many patents every year that they'll never implement. Patents are like munitions. You stockpile them in case you need to go to war, and to prevent others from attacking you. Balmer's saber rattling about Linux infringing on multiple Microsoft patents is the perfect example of this. (Though it's an example of the more sinister uses of patents).
Amazon EC2 and Amazon AWS (Score:3, Interesting)
The historical stupidity of the USPTO not withstanding, I'd guess that this application as written is DOA.
I'm sure there is other prior art out there, but having just read the application, it sounds almost exactly like Amazon EC2. You buy different computing configurations (hardware and software) from a menu of choices and then get charged a metered rate based on your choice. The only difference I see here is that this application has you pay up front and then draw down the time instead of paying as you go. That isn't a novel difference.
Cloud Computing Anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
What an awful summary!
The $/hour numbers and the homework example in the patent application are both simply illustrations. What the application is about is a method of creating, provisioning, and metering, and charging for a bundled unit of specific functionality within a cloud infrastructure. As I said in a previous post, I think they are too similar to EC2.
On the other hand, this sort of thing is a key enabler to any sort of broad SaaS infrastructure and people will use these services if the price is right. I just move several sites onto EC2 at a rate of ~$0.13/hr. For around $1100 a year I get a good infrastructure for less than what the server with no software and no connectivity would cost and I can make it bigger or turn it off whenever I want. Near as I can tell, the difference here is that instead of buying the power as a configured server instance, you are buying a configured service instance. This is a subtle, but important, difference. (But to my mind not a novel one).
So assuming they have some implementation to back up the patent application, I'm glad Microsoft is working on this because it's a necessary part of the infrastructure.
Vendor Neutrality in Schools (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another reason to protest and refuse when a school mandates a particular application for 'home work' ( unless its a class about that particular package of course ).
A word processor to write a term paper is not just 'Microsoft Word'.
Tagged "dystopia" -- no kidding (Score:3, Interesting)
I am among many open-source supporters who think Richard Stallman is generally too far out on the fringe, but I think the opinions illustrated in his sci-fi story "The Right to Read" [gnu.org] are a pretty dead-on assessment of what is going on here. Basically this is what happens when software vendors are confronted with the uncomfortable truth that software is not a tangible good and can't really be sold or rented out for a unit price, no matter how profitable it may be, and they redouble their efforts to force that business model into existence, to hell with the consumers.
If you use Microsoft Office, do yourself a favor and switch to OpenOffice as soon as possible. The sooner you do it, the fewer of your files you'll need to convert/jailbreak some day. (Plus you might help to stave off some big dystopian-future scenario, which is nice.)
do it and see your marketshare moving to GNU/Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
it is true (Score:3, Insightful)
Dead idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Per Hour vs Per Month (Score:3, Interesting)
Having users pay per hour is ridiculous. Nobody will stand for it. A flat monthly fee will be far more effective.
I'm not sure how it worked in other countries, but in Australia, our ISPs used to bill per hour. It was horrible. You would log on, and then feel this immense pressure to go to all the sites you had to go to as quickly as possible. Then in the early 2000s they all started charging a flat monthly fee (with a capped data rate) instead. Immediately the "product experience" changes.
Whether you're paying the same amount or not, it's a far better experience. You can just leave the Internet switched on all day and use it leisurely.
If they bill per-hour for MS Word, it will be the same degraded experience. You'll be in a rush to do your work. Every minute you spend in another window will feel like a minute wasted. You'll hurriedly close down all your documents if you have a coffee break.
There's no way out of this - charging per-hour for software equates to a horrible user experience. Nobody's going to switch to this from the current model.
Re: (Score:2)
Know your place in the chain!
While 'fanboyism' is certainly an interesting way to spend your thinking hours, getting upset at people who express their opinions for no other reason that to push back at them, is certainly much more entertaining.
The Chain:
1) Widget A
2) FanBois of Widget A
3) The dust behind my toilet
4) Those who dont get how funny they look telling group #2 that they should 'get a life' (hint: this one is you)
Nice touch, adding in that 'normal adult life' line. You have a firm grip on th
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Come on now, we can always pay more.
Nevermind you lost your job, you're upside-down on your mortgage and you can't get a loan. Where's that American "Can-Do" spirit?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It was outsourced overseas
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, I still remember my childhood when we had quite literally nothing but a more or less sealed roof over our heads (ok, it was leaky, but we knew the spots where it leaked). Christmas was a lot of selfmade stuff and clothing, and cars were... well, our cars did work, but me and my dad spent a lot of time in our garage fixing stuff.
Before you ask, no that wasn't right after the war, that was the 70s and 80s. Yes, there were poor people back then, and there were people who went from poor to well off by work
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly in homework these days REQUIRES M$ Office??
Seriously. What absolutely can't be done with paper and pencil, or at worst typewriter and paper? (Which in computer terms, is any text editor.)
If a kid's homework REQUIRES a specific software, then that homework is teaching the kid how to get answers out of that software, NOT about the nominal subject.