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Microsoft Invents $1.15/Hour Homework Fee For Kids
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!"
You gotta be fucking kidding me ...
MS has announced they will not enter the online porn industry until they can determine a way to charge by the erection - film at eleven.
Said S.Balmer "Things are lookin' up!"
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?"
Consonant vowel consonant consonant off...
I will never let my kid use any such service.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
'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
When I was a kid, we were assigned ~400 hours of homework a year. From what I hear, it's more now.
"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."
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.
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 $300 computers and free office suites, it's hard to see how they could make this work as a business model.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
We can be thankful that at least Microsoft is now being up front and honest about its true intentions. This has always been M$'s dream and ambition - to extort users by making them pay perpetually for the privilege of supporting M$ hegemony. Let us all remember that this is the M$ endgame every person is supporting when he or she chooses to buy and use Windows, buy XBox consoles and otherwise support that company. We can be relatively sure that Windows 7 will be a flop similar to flop that is Vista, and as M$ grows more desperate for revenue it will start introducing these mandatory "pay and pay and pay again to play" anti-consumer, anti-competitive schemes.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
This is worse than Microsoft Bob. I can respect Ray Ozzie's efforts of late, but not metered software usage. Metering is suitable for uses that deplete after use.
Software development isn't expensive... Keeping staff is. The only reason to keep employees on after they create massive products is so they won't go to your competitors. We get that. It's no secret anymore. If you can't play fair, though, the world would rather just get rid of you already. Your software is fantastic, but not worth the money anymore. Just go away.
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.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
wtf is this shit? This has nothing at all to do with computer advocacy/holy wars.
It looks like the "Linux/Mac fanboys" aren't the ones with the angst problem...
pay to compute, pay to watch tv, pay to do anything.
I understand that I'll always be paying rent (rent/mortgage/taxes/insurance/etc.) but when is enough enough?
I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.
Luckily for me, my old manual typewriter costs only as much as the ink and paper I put in it. :)
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
"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 $1.25 for each hour of fun. In addition to your PC, Microsoft also discloses plans to bring the chargeback scheme to your cellphone and automobile..."
And ads - don't forget ads...lots and lots and lots of ads.
Seriously, when is MS going to get off the same old profit-stump? Is there no one inside that company that can imagine fresh ways to make money besides licensing? Will MS ever come out of the ice age they fostered and find something to sell that the world actually looks forward to paying for?
Despite what MS would wish, software isn't a utility product that spins a meter at the sidewalk. It isn't a consumable that requires a refill after every trip to the coast. It isn't a treat that changes flavor every month according to some designer whim.
Software is part of a process. A process that can be solved by many means and anyone willing to devote the time. It doesn't come out of a strip mine in the Congo...market it according to the market, not to your desire to fill coffers and it will make money - I promise.
According to the picture at Flickr, you need these days that kind of hardware just to do your homework!
How did our parents (err... how did I?) ever manage to pass school?
bash$
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 the concept of irony, sir!
What kind of place would the world be if there wasnt a certain amount of self-absorbed adults who are unable to define themselves any other way than by being the opposition to someone elses thoughts?
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?
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
If this is true, fuck Microsoft and their dreams of perpetual revenue. I won't begrudge a company looking for a way to make a buck from their hard work, but this sort of story just begs a nuclear response from software users.
...fuck that.
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!
you managed to make free software alternative to your products to look even more affordable.
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.
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).
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
What's to prevent me from hacking the software/hardware to liberate it? Of course that is if I even buy one in the first place.
Children in Africa can live for a day on $1.15, Mr. Bill Gates philanthropist. How is this not a modern way of colonialism - if not outright slavery?
An economic disincentive for our kids to do homework. That is not what we as a nation or any society on this planet need. Somehow I think we are missing part of the proposal. Of course I haven't looked into it beyond one of the links. I just don't see how anyone is going to find this arrangement appealing! There will be a massive outcry if they try to force this on people and it will die an even more pathetic death than Vista. Well, that is my first reaction and I don't think I care enough to look into any further... Heh.
This would be good for Apple/*nix. If Microsoft does this, I doubt even they are that greedy, it would drive people away.
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
C - the footgun of programming languages
promote this as the best thing since sliced bread.
But do it anonymously.
What everyone is not supposed to know is that part of the anti-trust deals MS has had to do, includes reducing their monopoly abuse.
What better way to do this but to do things to hurt your own business without intent of hurting the competition.
So, do some math here. $1.25 an hour is $20 for sixteen hours. For $20, you can currently buy a number of greatest hits games, which for the sake of argument certainly have more than sixteen hours of gameplay in them. 40 hours is a good rule of thumb, more in some cases. I'm an extreme bargain shopper but I've been known to pour 100+ hours into a $17 game (I'm thinking FFX-2 100%-completion here), which is 17 cents an hour.
This, in addition to the documented preference humans have to pay one up front fee if it means avoiding the cognitive cost of having to think about hourly fees. For how many people is this a radical price increase over the current system? It'll never fly for those people, because there's no chance in hell the games will be any appreciably better than today.
Again, I'm an extreme bargain shopper so maybe the average gamer is already in the $1.25-hour range... but I doubt it's all that many.
It's a tax on clueless overly-wealthy helicopter parents Only over-involved parents who don't understand "Save As" [non-Word] file format will pay this. If anyone can figure out a way around the $$ gate, it's non-spoiled teenagers. OpenOffice, Google Docs, Linux, Notepad, OS X... It may be an excellent way to drain wealth from people too dumb to keep it.
Just buy a coffee machine and some beans. You'll have an Internet Café without leaving the house!
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Is that the zinger in this article is nothing but a wireframe mockup hosted on flickr. Seriously. What the fuck? So we are now reduced to using poorly compressed JPG's on flickr as an excuse to get up in arms about Microsoft?
Do you think, even if that photo was of the patent, the price in that image has any bearing on reality besides being a wireframe mockup? Seriously?
this isn't a charge for homework, that's just nonsense it's a student deal like their existing student discounts on packaged software. there is nothing stopping kids doing their homework with a pen and paper like i did.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
How about they lower it to $0.10/hr, and give me the PC for free?
8 cores?...pssh... I only need an atom for word processing and light photo work.
I don't know about you, but when I'm doing work, I feel like *I* should be the one getting paid - not the other way around. Watching dollars go up in smoke while I sit in front of my PC thinking is not very endearing.
If they end up moving to this business model, I think I'll just donate $10 to OOo and use OpenOffice. Although if they offered 1-user(*user - not PC) windows licenses for $60/yr, I'd be all over that.
Cause they are giving people more excuses to give it more business. Who would possibly be stupid enough to use this service, when you can get a better computer with linux, or if they keep this up possibly pirated windows.
my kids get free "hand me down" PCs & printer with Linux & OpenOffice pre-installed to do homework on, (no subscription necessary)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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...
'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!"
Haha, I can only hope that engineering students can qualify for this. 52 hours of homework is like 3-4 weeks for us.
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
Computing 101
Assignment #1
Locate, download, and install Open Office.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Wouldn't this discourage kids from doing homework? Hmmm... I can do my homework for the next hour for 1.15 or for 10cents more I can have fun for the next hour... which will it be, I wonder.
In the case of homework that requires Office, I might try using OpenOffice and saving in Word format. Unless the homework requires some of the more exotic formatting options, you should get away with that.
Besides, I doubt that an online version of Office would run faster unless your PC is a real fossil. Until a few months ago, I was using an old 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 with Office 2000 at work. That computer was five years old but still handled my documents at acceptable speed. There were a few other quirks in Word 2000 I found not so acceptable, but lack of speed was not one of them.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Rebel kids. Rebel. Just say NO to coercive economic systems.
Live Free!
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.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I don't care what kind of incentives they give me, but I would much prefer to own my stuff outright.
Or, you could open it up in Google Docs, make the change, and save it. No install or money required...
It's time for MS to be taken out of the marketplace via former customers kicking the habit. If the recession has a silver lining, it will be that this plan won't fly.
I'll pretend I only use my computer for 10 hours a day. In less than two weeks this model would cost more than XP.
Wow. As if Microsoft's overpriced software, and DRM stick beatings weren't bad enough. Now we get to slowly bleed to death while using them.
No thanks.
Besides... does anyone really think it will be the kids paying for it? No... it will be the parents. Yay... lets punish the parents even more.
If only purely out of curiosity. I would be amazed if this worked, and would love to see the outcome purely out of curiosity.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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).
AccountKiller
Wasn't this the original concept for OfficeXP back when they announced the .NET platform, like, almost **EIGHT** **YEARS** ago? I honestly thought they had given up on this! What a shame. I cannot imagine there is any sort of compelling market for this approach that isn't already tickled silly with the useful (if limited) Google Docs.
-GSA
Like of homework wasn't boring enough, now you have to pay to do homework?
Good way to demotivate students and make them skip homework.
Students should be payed to do homework.
http://www.openoffice.org/
"3) The dust behind my toilet"
That's not dust...
With all the free (as in beer) alternatives out there, this would be the dumbest thing anyone could think of.
wtf is this shit?
Whoa, settle down, sparky. Put your shirt back on and roll those sleeves down. You see, my good man, you've been trolled. Your post says more about you than it does anybody else and, like all religious zealots, you're itching for a holy war.
Why are you here when you could be beating up all of the old ladies and high school kids who use Windows?
I think we've had metered pay-as-you-go telephony experiences for most of the last century. Just ask AT&T how their business has worked over the decades. It's kind-of pointless indicating to the USPTO that there is abundant ancient prior art, but I expect that if Microsoft ever try selling a licence to this patent, it will get invalidated within seconds.
Not sure why they need a patent on this. They already have the patent on all of the "G" words in the dictionary -- including "Gouge" and "Greed"
If you MUST use Windows:
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en
If you're partial to macs you have the same options:
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en
If you're fed up with Microsoft and don't have a Mac (or if you have a Mac but are tiring of OS X):
http://www.opensuse.org/en/
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://www.xandros.com/
http://www.centos.org/
http://fedoraproject.org/
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Microsoft rocks!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
"The Ultimate Steal?" Is that how they think they can woo back the teenage pirate crowd?
"Dude, I was totally surfing Pirate Bay for some free music, and then all of a sudden I remembered my biology assignment due Monday! Oh wait, bro, check out this ad for the ultimate steal! Whoa, MS is totally mah n*gga!"
Please. Kids aren't that stupid... then again...
"In addition to your PC, Microsoft also discloses plans to bring the chargeback scheme to your cellphone and automobile â" GPS, satellite radio, backseat video entertainment system."
Ever since AOL courted Time-Warner, marrying pay-for provider and pay-for content, the plans were always an eventual pay-per-anything net economy. MS has enough embedded device coverage now or planned, and fairly developed DRM, that they could become the first such provider. Whoever is, will become the defacto clearing house for content owners, essentially becoming the content front for the mafiAA.
As for the homework deal, consider the fact that kids won't buy it -- parents will. The system that calculates the metering will report in detail the usage to the parents. The electronic babysitter of the future will also be a tattle tale. OTOH, it will provide for a great new excuse when work is lost to the BSOD: "Bill Gates ate my homework."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
This would quickly bankrupt most kids. Start Word, do some reading, some typing, talk on the phone, dinner, American Idol (for brain shrinkage) get back to work.
$5 a day will become $60 real quick; maybe it's to sell the $60 package.
"Kiss my shiny metal ass"
They are assuming that this will provide a legal alternative to piracy, for cash-strapped students. What they apparently fail to acknowledge is that the pirated copy will still be cheaper than $1.15/hr, and probably be less hassle too!
All it takes is one kid with a burnt disc - be it Office 2007 or Ubuntu - to circumvent the entire system.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Will they be able to keep the network up? I doubt it.
So another patent application for which it would be good to require a working implementation.
Someone who can really make this work will have to pay a license fee -- but the effort is somewhere else, not in "developing" this rather lame idea.
(Reference: The Google advantage is that their search engine works and is reliable; while Microsoft has had enough time to match this but has not been able to do so.)
Another lose - lose.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
no No NO! I am TIRED OF NOT ACTUALLY OWNING ANYTHING. We pay monthly bills, usage bills, never anymore can we just PURCHASE SOMETHING AND OWN IT. I'm tired of this. This is exactly what's wrong with mobile phones, what's becoming wrong with Internet/ISPs, and what is now becoming a problem for software. I honestly don't mind paying for software, but I do have a problem with continuously paying for it. Sure, it does have it's benefits, as long as the idea doesn't completely take over (which, if proved more profitable, probably will). Microsoft, I'm beginning to truly hate you. If it wasn't for Office 07, I would never speak your name.
Blow up my plane? Nuke ten of your airports.
I'm surprised that the US-PTO would even consider this. Given that the implementation is flakey, and it copies prior art, I can't wait until AT&T and the governments file infringement suits because of the similarity to long distance calling.
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.
Do the math:
:-(
($1 / hour) * (24 hours a day) * (365.242199) days in a year = $8,765.81 a year!
WTF?
Sure, no one person will use MS Office at 24 hourse a day all year. However, heavy users will see their bill add up quickly and surpass the cost of the student teacher version.
This is just stupid. How many school kids NEED some MS Office program to pass their class? If they need it to pass the class, then the cost of the software should be included.
I am a software developer, and I have seen very, very few times where MS Office was needed for the enterprise apps I have worked on.
How the heck are our kids being pulled into needing such crap to turn in their homework?
Is there a high school teacher out there that will fail a kid because he/she didn't hand in the assignment in some version of MS Word or something?
Stand up people and don't let corporate influence kill the ability for our American kids to learn.
Damn, it is bad enough that Asians and Indians are starting to kick our butts in math and science.
Before we know it, American schools will be worth nothing more than producing a bunch of mid-level managers with no real skills.
After the Vista disaster MS seemed to settle down and focus on making Windows 7 a better product. Just when you think MS is going to get it together, they pull out a large caliber weapon, pop in a fresh clip and proceed to empty it into their foot.
After which they claim it was good for them and their users.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This has become the Holy Grail of software developers and publishers: to substitute a revolving hourly/daily/monthly/annual "revenue stream" from subscriptions for the one-time purchases of licenses and upgrades.
Remember Borland Software? Remember their insane not-free upgrade schedules? That was a precursor to the subscription-model campaigns of today. It didn't make Philip Khan as wealthy as he'd hoped, because their customer base in that instance was highly intelligent educated programmers, who actually looked at what was being offered in by the upgrades in exchange for the price and realized they were being manipulated; all too often they simply said "No thanks" and waited for a major version change that provided changes or features they needed.
These subscription-model campaigns now are different: they're largely attempting to target a consumer base that doesn't know any better, and which has been economically indoctrinated to assume subscriptions are acceptable; they're already accustomed to paying monthly subscriptions for "content", so if Big Software can just get people to view software as content, they've got them by the balls. That is what's behind the big push for "Web apps", because if it's in a browser and not on the user's computer it's much easier to manipulate his perceptions and get him to perceive that remote software as content... and for which he should be happy to pay an hourly or monthly fee to use.
Please... don't just say no to this yourself: educate all your less knowledgeable friends and family to just say no as well. If THEY are taken in by this, those of us that do know better will unwillingly be dragged along for the ride.
This is what all the talk of cloud computing, software as a service, etc is looking to do. It is to me the antithesis of what the PC revolution promised (to deliver computing power to every person under their control.) MS made their business by supporting this and helping release people (well mostly businesses at first but eventually people) from the big iron/green screen lock it was under before. The problem is once they won, and had a chance to make a real difference, they got greedy. Too bad they didn't realize that by sacrificing the trust of their user base, they threw away an opportunity for even more money (imagine the good they could do - and money they could make from - doing things like personal identity management and web site trustworthiness certification.) There is no way on earth I would trust them with that now and from the failure of their attempt to move into this market in the early years of their .Net work, I think most others felt the same.
I have a, uhh, friend, who would have to pay around $150/mo just on World of Warcraft under this model.
Yeah, so obviously this is not an all or nothing model, but more of an option.
Some people have the habit of staying logged in, but afk.. I suppose that would come to an end at least.
I know people with over 100 days /played on a single character. Do the math. If they were playing under the $1.25/hr model, they would've paid $3,000 to play WoW....
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Awww thanks guys for moding me down. I love slashdot, where hating Microsoft is the cool thing to do. :rolleyes:
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.
Whether you agree or disagree with this business model how could anyone in their right mind argue that this is something that can be patented?
It's time the patent office charge for wasting their time, especially since it's obvious there is too much crap flung at them. Maybe a contempt of patent office fine. Perhaps, it should only apply to companies that file for patents more than x number of times a year.
This will be the Dawn of the Linux Desktop!
All these comments, and not a single person:
1. bothered to read the patent application;
2. understands what the claims say; or
3. is discussing the merits of what the novel parts of the specification disclose.
Are you geeks? Really? Is it that hard for you to read something? No wonder so many scientific publications are of such dismal quality. I don't think you guys realize just how pseudo-intellectual you really are. Pathetic.
This seems like one of those ideas that sounds great when your in a room full of like minded people. IE people who can't see past MS everything on computers. But in the real world it has so many failure points it's laughable that it even got out of that room.
I can only see this pushing more people to use OO and such. The idea that I would pay per hour to use anything that would not normally have to be networked, IE like MMOs, is laughable.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Is it me or will this help enormously the software "pirates"? Now, they would have to actually commit a crime y downloading a illegal copy of the software, which could be traced by authorities. Now, they'll only have to download it from Microsoft's website, pay the minimum and then run a "fake" authentication server that would tell Office you paid 9999 hours.
That was how it Call of Duty 1 worked: the game would contact the Activision server and send it's key for verification. The server would then respond if it was OK or not. So you could (and some people did, it was just half a dozen lines of code) make a "fake" server.
CoD2 and subsequents killed it by making the Game Server asking the Activision server if the game had passed the verification. But as the Office doesn't need to use online services this couldn't be implemented.
Dilbert RSS feed
Fast forward 15 years into the future and software companies still refuse to let go of their "SAAS" fantasies where they earn recurring revenue from every sale.
The concept is great for banking, online RPGs and a host of other things... General purpose horizontal applications are not even remotly close to being on that list.
Recommend MS spend their time improving their products to remain competitive with other software companies.
I did do my homework, miss, only i didn't have enough money to buy it back from Microsoft.
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'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If I'm buying the equipment, I'm not going to pay monthly for something I currently get for free.
But you see that is the point, to get people ( kids ) used to paying and slowly remove all the 'free' ( or flat rate purchase ) routes.
Get the next generation used to "pay-to-play" and it will be the standard way of doing things in 15 years.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Here's what worries me with this model - At the moment, when Microsoft needs to boost revenue, Office is one of their top money earners. When Microsoft drops a new version of Office on the market, they sit back and watch the cash flow in as people clamour to get a hold of the 'new and improved' version.
How does the development of new versions fit into this model? If MS is already making money out of you every hour you're using the application, then why would they bother to innovate and develop new features? Are they going to be upgrading your hourly fee for the privilege of using their newer version with more bells and whistles or, (on the extreme end of things) do they simply not bother with new versions any more as there's little major financial incentive for them to do so...
MS might actually be insane. Just refuse. I don't support crazy people. Save that shit for Robert Mugabe.
How is this different from how we used to pay by the hour and meg back in the 70's? I remember having to prune cycles from my jobs to keep them within budget, as CPU time was expensive.
Get Open Office. Best move of your life.
Avoid Word at all costs. It butchers your files, and every time they update, you need to buy a new copy for your files to be compatible between your place of employment and home.
Microsoft just likes picking America's pockets.
OpenOffice.org is freely available from OpenOffice.org with versions for the Mac and for Linux, as well as for Windows, so there is no reason to be shelling out money to Mickey$oft! I myself, will refuse to purchase or use anything, either hardware, or software that forces me to pay, and pay, and pay to anyone in Redmond WA!!! The time has come for everyone to turn Mickey$oft into the true"Alternative" O/S, and to make Linux the Mainstream O/S!!!
MS has announced that a special version of Vista will be available with the "pay per click" feature! Only $1 per click and $1.5 per double-click! (Triple-click is just $1.75! AMAZING!)
*roll eyes*
Now, now, who has the "pay per click" patent already?
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" 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.)
Thank you Microsoft, Thank you so much. This is like a late Christmas present. The only reason Microsoft products are still used is because everyone is using them and hence developers are developing for Microsoft(Windows). Maybe after this destroys Microsoft we can all go to using Open Office and various free distributions of linux such as Ubuntu. One more time, thank you Microsoft and please go through with this.
Microsoft isn't doing this: it's just another patent. The 1.15/h and 1.25/h prices aren't actual prices, they are just example numbers in the patent, which don't mean anything. Let me tell you why Microsoft won't implement this. Because it'll skew the usage of their software and force people to get "smart" about alternatives.
.docx (1 hour).
Right now, to use Word, you either pay the full license (which is affordable to students today), or use alternatives.
If you had the option of going legal with metered usage, you'd just write and edit your papers in Notepad, WordPad or OpenOffice (say 10 hours), and then import the content in your metered MS Office just for formatting and saving a
The end result of this is, 1) you produced an MS Office file 2) you paid almost nothing 3) you're legal, so MS can't complain.
So in essence that will be Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot.
Now already substandard educators will have an excuse for not assigning homework.....
If it becomes an accepted excuse, then my excuse of "My dog ate my homework" is just as valid.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Google Docs hasn't always been around and doesn't always do everything you need to do.
Fuck that noise. Goodbye Microsoft.
Wouldn't it be better to pay the students for homework, and ask for money when they play games?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I really want them to implement this business model, because it would be a great push for greater GNU/Linux adoption.
Isn't that appropriate?
Where in this idiot scheme is the originality that would make this patentable? There is nothing here that is patentable. Taking capabilities away from prior art doesn't make what's left behind into something new and patentable. Adding those capabilities back at extra cost doesn't make it patentable. Renting technology that was available earlier for purchase doesn't make the technology patentable. Maybe the MS strategy is to simply buy off the USPO. In some ways they seem to have more expertise in black politics operations than they do in technology development.
As to the business model proposed in this patent-- in the short term its one of the better things that could happen for Linux and OpenOffice. Just having Microsoft talk about possibly doing this right now is going to increase interest in migration from their products to FOSS and FOSS-based service models. In the long term, maybe this won't be so good since it hasn't yet been demonstrated that FOSS would continue to innovate and improve without some competition from commercial products.
So its confirmed now the marketing guys from vista has lost their minds. No customer will accept this, luckely by the time it will be ready linux will be grown up. I think later or soon, the monopoly breaks downs the tree is starting to fall. Any empire ends, and i think this could be just the reason fir it.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
I use Access pretty much daily and have found nothing like it; while its big huge queries are slow (because the Jet engine is pretty lame), it is astonishingly easy to be productive with it, especially with complex multi-table relational databases.
I tried OOo Base and couldn't get it to do anything. Well, maybe the proverbial "I have ten bottles of wine in my collection" one-table demo, but it didn't seem to do much more than that. Oh, it could hang up like a broken driver if I tried to import an MDB from Access.
What's the secret of getting Base to do anything that couldn't be done more easily with something sophisticated like, say, Notepad?
At my high school, you could hit 52 hours of homework in a (really) hard week. 2-3 weeks is more reasonable, and you're probably failing out if you're doing less than 52 hours in a month.
Gee, I thought services like these were dead ideas. Remember the AOL days when you had to pay per minute usage fees? These days are no more. Microsoft really doesn't have a patent on this. When it comes to computing, metered services have been pretty much thrown out the door.
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?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
MS has wanted to push people to SAAS and/or monthly subscriptions for years but i'm sure they know that pushing too hard would be suicidal.
I bet if this does see the light of day it will be as an additional option and few people will buy it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I guess M$'s priorities are clear. Scrooge would be proud.
as a university student, I can tell you that I use office for all my homework. So this will, certainly fails for universities.
Each week in a term I spend about 15 to 20 hours on MSOffice or O.O.
I juste think that's it's another way to make easy monney for microsoft
The actual patent doesn't look like they're charging per hour to use Office, but rather per hour to use the entire computer -- whatever hardware and software you need.
So rather than paying $2000 for a gaming computer when most of your family needs what a $299 computer will provide you pay $1 an hour for them and $5 when gaming (or whatever).
I have no idea how it would work for home use though. It's probably aimed at business or educational customers.
Wha? (Score:5, Insightful)
...
You gotta be fucking kidding me
Why can't we rate moderation as (5, Funny)? This (5, Insightful) mod is even funnier than the post.
...that the corporate scum can keep education out of the hands of the poor.
If taxation is legalized theft, then Capitalism is a prolonged rape followed by a slow death.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They can go to hell. Fuck Ballmer and Gates.
They're nothing but a bunch of evil, Nazi fucking pricks who want to enslave you all.
FIGHT BACK...WITH LINUX!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a great model.
Current computers encourage waste buy allowing people to 'own' computers and software.
Leave your computer on 24x7? That's waste.
When you will pay to use a Microsoft computer, you will get your work done faster. You won't dawdle on solitaire for 45mins, because you would be charged for it.
We need to get rid of these concepts of 'ownership' and 'private property'. Software should be like electricity, pay as you go. Same with most commodity hardware.
I would like to see a world where people don't really 'own' anything.
You don't need 'your' home, you just need commodity lodging.
You don't need 'your own' clothes, you just need all-purpose coverings.
This will enable a workforce that is available 24x7 , able to relocate on a moments notice.
... the lead inventor's name is DOOFUS?
we make poor people poorer!
Or you can use Free Software.
- MrX_TLO
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.
In other words... the way mobile carriers bill for their services is the future MS wants for all technology products.
Or perhaps they expect Office will run primarily on cell phones, where the public is trained to accept chicanery.
Next up, a 30 inch plasma TV that only incurs an initial cost of $500 but gets most revenue by charging $0.08/hour monthly license fee for viewing time (with payment of a required minimum of 42 hours per month billed).
Oh, $0.08/hour is base viewing price for overages over the 42 hours.
The 42 hours received per month are weekdays 8am to 5pm.
Any viewing outside that window costs $0.30/hour for evening or early morning, and $0.50/hour for night or weekend viewing. And the "42 hours" minimum plan don't count toward that.
I can't be the only one who sits for hours with a blank Word document open before writing something. The way I do homework, I'd be paying for 12 hours every time I tried to write a paper.
From the Patent Application:
The key words are "for example", you can't pick on clearly made-up pricing structures when prefaced with the words "for example". You can't really even argue with the concept that some pay-per-usage uses may cost more than others, which is the entire concept this item in the patent application is trying to express.
Pay-per-use has been on the radar of MS and others for a long time, ever since internet access became ubiquitous, enabling remote activation/de-activation of software.
That the original poster felt that a contrived pricing structure used as an example in a patent application was a commitment to pricing structures in the near-term is just ridiculous. I heard that limosuine companies have a pricing model that has customers paying more or less for rides of similar length/duration, based on the car they choose (i.e. sedans rent out for less than stretch limos, whinc rent out for less than stretch "novelty" cars (Hummers, etc.)), bus companies charge more for renting larger busses compared with smaller busses for the same time/distance, etc.
There is nothing here to justify a patent - if this can't get tossed out, I weep for our patent system.
Ken
Screw Office. LaTeX is where it's at. No, it's not graphical, but it produces far prettier documents than Office ever can.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The Death of Microsoft.
May Thee Evil (Money Sucking) Destroy Itself ,
And By Time It Will Vanish .
Well, why is economists says that people will go for Open Source OS's rather than Money Suckers(Dra-Money-Cula) which will make you pay/per (blink/time=factions/button pressing/ ect).
Merry Christmas Open Source
Now it suddenly all makes sense. All those ackward dialogs with completely non-sensual default settings. If they actually do those fees every little click the user has to do sums up to thousands of dollars for Microsoft.
Seriously they could do anything. Nobody who is using Microsoft Office will switch to any other package. People who use office software, no matter from which vendor, typically don't care about costs or efficiency. Otherwise they would use more efficient ways to do work.
Seriously, there are far better free software solutions availiable other than Microsoft Office.
In the first half year after switching to Linux I have learned more than during the years using different versions of Windows.
1 - there ARE alternatives. Cost is a major driver for people at the moment to overcome the usual resistance to change.
2 - Excellent idea to psychologically associate MS Office with school work. I think only their anti-piracy drive is more likely to switch off children as future MS customers.
Dumb.
Insert
That's not an invention, it's a business plan.
I laughed at "Year of Linux Desktop" every year. Never expected MS itself would make it happen.
(moderate me -5,since Its a parallel universe where its 5th year of Linux Desktop)
Doesn't AT&T already nickel and dime you to death for the privilege of using hardware that you supposedly own?
Want to use the internal GPS receiver? That'll be $10/month. How about playing games? Well, that'll be another fee.
The last thing I want is MS monitoring anything about my keystrokes in combination with easy access to my credit card. And I'm not even paranoid...
MS is becoming just like the Mafia. And they are ready to do anything to get what they want.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
They said that the tally only adds up "if you do more than 52 hours of HW per year!" Who are they kidding? Even the underachievers do over 2 hours of homework a week... This is retardedly unbalanced for consumers.
This will only work if they make un-metered applications illegal and move OS functionality to the cloud and of course patent cloud computing ..
davecb5620@gmail.com
I'm sorry to kill your newly found hatred for Microsoft, but common people: IT IS AN APPLICATION. Anyone can file anything they please in an application, whenever they want (granted they can pay the fees). So if I have money I can file a Patent APPLICATION for picking my nose, which would be just as ligitimate as this MS Pat. Application. Stop posting stories about applications and more about GRANTED Patents please.
Applications postings are only useful when the prior art isn't obvious and you want to help out the future assigned Examiner. Thank you, and please come again.
I wouldn't accept any that was handwritten, half that crap is ineligible.
Assuming that by "ineligible" you actually mean illegible, a simple policy here would be to give the student a crap mark for the first assignment, on the basis that s/he has not made sufficient effort to make his or her ideas understandable.
They'll get the message. There is no point in learning to write with a pen at all if nobody can read what you write. Communication should be possible without the requirement for a computer.
This isn't a bad introduction to university level studies where there are plenty of disciplines where pencil-and-paper assignments are appropriate and indeed preferable, so there's nothing to be ashamed of in not submitting typed work.
Welcome to "The Cloud".... or A.S.P.(Application Service Provider). For about 10 years there has been this concept floating around of how to create a constant income stream from software, beyond one time purchases, upgrades and license's. What better way then to nickel and dime you all the way to the Bank than to charge you on a hourly basis.
-Eric
So, make sure you do all your work without breaks (washroom or otherwise)...
overall productivity using the Windows platform and assorted applications has dropped to a all time low...
SCNR;)
My Office runs Ubuntu Linux and uses OpenOffice. This is just another good reason why my decision to dump windows completely from the office was a very good business decision.
;)
For the rest, Microsoft just made piracy 10x more attractive to them.
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MS wants almost a third of my paycheck to play games?
I do have to wonder what's on their list and if there's any initial cost.
Still I'd rather pay $50 for XBox live (since presumably these would be MS games and be Windows Live games) and $50 per game so I could total maybe $300 a year for new games and multiplayer with my friends on XBox live rather than up to $12,000.
Also, God forbid that someone else uses my computer while I'm away or doing something of actual use with my free time!
Consider the costs if they decided to do something like that with Visual Studio. That'd just help kill .NET :/
Okay so I am looking at a bill of about 50$ a week for office? Buying is cheaper.. Since Outlook runs on my pc all day. and Excel most of the day. I am broke before I even start.
Anyone else out there remember a time when we used to pay hourly rates for internet service?
We grew out of that as an industry; the climate necessitated a change to remain competetive.
This is a substantial step backwards for anyone who owns a computer.
Any student who does less than 52 hours of homework per year (for those of you less mathematically inclined, that's an average of one hour per WEEK) is going to have bigger problems than how to purchase Office.
Gamers will find that renting a game at their local store will become a better bargain after just a few short hours of gaming.
Frankly, this idea doesn't benefit anyone but Microsoft.
Way to backslide, guys.
aren't they essentially patenting time sharing? Isn't there prior art from the 1950's through 90's?
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
IMHO, this signals either impending doom for M$ or the increased piracy of their products, at least the products still capable of being pirated. Pay as you go? That is the most ridiculous idea, for consumers anyway, not for M$. I love this: "Both users and suppliers benefit from this new business model". Users benefit from this, how? Paying for crapware doesn't benefit them now. Paying MORE for crapware is absurd. I guess if people are stupid enough to "pay as you go", that's their business but I for one will not be.