Thar She Blows!

[RoyGBiv]

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080319910%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080319910&RS=DN/20080319910

From the Slashdot story:

"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!"

[Shardik]

1. YIKES!

I don't like the way that sounds at all.

[hobbit709]

2. Screw Gates and the horse he rode in on.

Micro$haft keeps this up and open source will take over.

[RC]

3. Well in that case at least reach around. Keep them happy. Let M$ do its thing.

We need more open source.

[RoyGBiv]

4. I'm torn for that very reason ...

It's like a bully who keeps picking on people and one day goes too far. You know it, and everyone else knows it ... if the bully crosses that line, the whole schoolyard will pummel him.

The problem I see here, though, is the corporate stooges and others lacking knowledge who'll just take whatever beating is coming as long as "someone else" gets beat harder.

Having seen from the inside some of the stupid decisions IT heads do, I'm not overly optimistic they'd make the intelligent choice. The head of IT where I work now has a degree in political science and wormed his way into the job from another department only because he knows more than the guy who did the hiring. He thinks PNG is a dead graphics format and that Firefox and Opera are "way behind" Internet Explorer, to name two of his gems.

He's the kind of guy who could easily be convinced that $1/hr for access to WORD is a whole lot better than using Open Office.

And that's where this will hurt the most at first, with students who are effectively locked in to using their school's computer systems and software to do their homework.

Of course, we don't have any idea how this might actually be implemented. This may be a trial balloon and/or some sort of hedge against Google in the on-going patent wars.

But I knew this was coming. All the roads for the last couple years have been leading straight to this hell.

[hunter]

5. If they really want to sell it they'll need to make it do homework.

Paperclip, write me a ten page report on George Washington, something that won't set off any flags at turnitin.com...

Paperclip, do my algebra homework...

Then I'd like to play Nude Jello Wrestling with that big blonde one, you know, the one who tried to strangle me with her hair. That was hot. Call her Betsy Ross. And order me a Pizza too.

"Alfred, I better not catch you looking at pictures of naked women again!!!"

Ah geez, mom, I'm doing my homework!

[RoyGBiv]

6. Update ...

Story from ChannelWeb:

Five Reasons Microsoft Wants A Pay As You Go Model

3. Microsoft Wants Your Credit Card.

It's no small matter that Microsoft points out that the pay as you go model will be based on access to a prepaid or billed account. Microsoft wants a monthly recurring payment similar to those that you pay to your cell phone provider or your cable company. To put it simply Microsoft wants your credit card.

Microsoft sees all the money being made by the telecommunications and cable giants locking in consumers and businesses and it wants a piece of the action. You think your cell phone and cable TV bills are hard to decipher wait till you get a load of what Microsoft has to offer when it starts billing you for word processing, browsing, and database access.

Microsoft has finally figured out that the old software licensing model is dead. Salesforce.com and all the other SaaS players have the right business model particularly in an economic downturn.

More ...

Also from a blog called VentureBeat

That sounds like a recipe for frustration, to me. In fact, that kind of pay-to-use model is exactly what Philip K. Dick skewered in the opening chapters of his novel Ubik. Dick’s dystopian future probably isn’t a great model for consumer technology.

More ....

[canetoad]

7. More, from Computer World

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9124459&intsrc=hm_list
Microsoft's plan would instead monitor the machine to track things such as disk storage space, processor cores and memory used, then bill the user for what was consumed during a set period.

"A different business model may allow a more granular approach to hardware and software sales," Microsoft argued. "A computer may have individually metered hardware and software components that a user can select and activate based on current need. When the need is browsing, a low level of performance may be used, and when network-based interactive gaming is the need of the moment, the highest available performance may be made available to the user."

Fees would be lower for low-performance chores, such as writing e-mail or surfing the Internet, and higher for high-performance tasks.

For consumers, Microsoft said, the advantage of such a model would be a lower price at the outset for a powerful PC. Computer makers would gain the ability to standardize on higher-end systems, it added. But the company admitted that the overall cost to the user might be higher than for a standard PC purchase. "Although the cost of ownership over the life of the computer may be higher than that of a one-time purchase, the payments can be deferred and the user can extend the useful life of the computer beyond that of the one-time purchase machine," Microsoft contended.

Sounds nice and simple. Not much could ever go wrong with this scheme. :banghead:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. That just might be...

The best Linux marketing model I have ever seen.