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Microsoft Invents $1.15/Hour Homework Fee For Kids

Posted by timothy on from the defining-the-edge-of-invention dept.

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!"

15 of 580 comments (clear)

  1. In other news... by djupedal · · 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 - film at eleven.

    Said S.Balmer "Things are lookin' up!"

    1. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    2. Re:In other news... by Jim4Prez · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, the way MS is going, wouldn't they want to charge by "inch"? :-)

      $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 ...cough, cough, cough. >:-)

    3. Re:In other news... by Opportunist · · Score: 3, 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!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. The Ultimate Steal? by Anonymous Coward · · 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?"

    1. Re:The Ultimate Steal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      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 you the number of people I've met who thought they were Office power users, and then watched them manually apply formatting to every heading, and create columns by hitting the tab key 6000 times.

    2. Re:The Ultimate Steal? by trolltalk.com · · Score: 3, 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? :-)

      --
      Kevin Smith on Prince
    3. Re:The Ultimate Steal? by Inner_Child · · Score: 4, Funny

      At least he's consistant!

      --
      Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
  3. Behold the Cloud! by MarkvW · · 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!

  4. Re:8 cores, 3 Gb, 3 GHz? by TheoMurpse · · Score: 3, Funny

    :(){ :|:&};:

    having a sig that would nuke a Linux system

    I always thought it was a totem-pole-of-ducks emoticon...

  5. Re:New model? by FluffyWithTeeth · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well, at least it's a nice hotel.

  6. Re:Only 52 hours of homework? by FluffyWithTeeth · · Score: 4, 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..

  7. Re:pay to park,....... by mikerubin · · Score: 3, Funny

    It was outsourced overseas

    --
    I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.
  8. Re:New model? by caerwyn · · 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...

    --
    The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
  9. Re:Wha? by mysticgoat · · Score: 3, 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.