Microsoft’s Future Vision of Windows – Pay As You Go

Several news sources today have reported that Microsoft surreptitiously applied for a patent for licensing usage based on an hourly ticker. Microsoft seems to be unaware that there is prior art for this method of extracting payment used by say internet cafe, cellphone, internet, cable, car lease, and utility billing.

Now, having worked at Microsoft as an intern in the past, I can attest that the insider mindset, at least at the executive level, is to move away from the software licensing model, which easily falls prey to long upgrade cycles and piracy, to a constant and predictable revenue stream. In other words, by amortizing the costs to a usage based model, a consumer never fully owns something by paying a lump sum but rather is perpetually in debt by leasing the right to use a computer for a seemingly low hourly cost. At least for things like WoW’s monthly charge, the payment allows the player to play for an unlimited time during a month.

Microsoft can’t even claim that the action is necessary to justify its costs, unlike utilities where increased consumption actually equals increased resource usage for the provider. Microsoft pays nothing extra if you use its software for 24 hours instead of 2 hours. This is a blatant excuse to suck even more money out of its monopoly pot-of-gold, made even sweeter by disguising the plan as a flexible benefit and marketing it as saving the consumer money.

Let’s do a bit of number crunching. Microsoft’s Windows Vista Home Premium OEM version costs $99 as of today. Buying that entitles the owner to the license in perpetuity. Tacking on Office 2007 brings to total price to $214.98. With Microsoft’s office bundle’s tentative price of $1 per hour, using the computer for 8 hours a day for just 30 days brings the cost to $240, already greater than before.

For further reading on this topic, Steve Burke has an insightful piece on why Microsoft is proposing this change.

Fashion Alert – viv&ingrid

I’ve always had a soft spot for small mom & pop shops that exist in local communities, and I try to frequent them over more established chain restaurants despite the higher price. In some cases, like with Cody Books, this support has not kept the place from collapsing, much to my sorrow.

Despite that, I’m blessed to be surrounded by so many fine local bookstores, restaurants, and game shops here in Berkeley, which is why I want to cast some light on a local establishment started by two home-grown Bay Area girls, who also just happen to be Berkeley grads – viv&ingrid.

I first heard about them through a Visa commercial last season, probably during the Olympics (full disclosure: I am a Visa shareholder). Then I visited their website and found the heart-touching sentimental bio:

One was a traveler, trekking through exotic lands across the Atlantic. The other was a designer, focused on fashion runways in the city. Postcards kept them in touch while apart; a sewing machine brought them together…

Vivian Wang and Ingrid Chen met as young girls and remained close friends through adulthood. Growing up in the Bay Area, both completed their undergraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Vivian graduated with a Business degree, emphasizing in Marketing; Ingrid received her BA in Physiology.

Preferring to enhance the human body rather than dissect it, Ingrid switched her pursuit to an MFA in Fashion Design at the Academy of Art College. Meanwhile, Vivian traded the corporate scene for a life on the road, backpacking through Europe, Asia and Australia.

In January of 1999, while discussing the latest fashion trends over coffee, they realized that they were a design team waiting to happen. Vivian with her free-spirited flair, Ingrid with her refined detailing, both obsessive compulsive; they set out together to create a new philosophy in accessible luxuries for the modern woman.

Do Australian Chicks Bang on the First Date?

NSFW

Liberals and Conservatives

I’ve just had another realization. The most fundamental difference between the two (and the most frequent source of discord) is that liberals want everyone to pay a “fair” share for services through taxation whereas conservatives expect (because it’s so natural for them) everyone with the means to have the freedom to make charitable donations to provide for much of the services. A corollary of this is that liberals don’t give donations and conservatives don’t like to be taxed.

Edit: Joel Stein has a much more eloquent description of this and other differences.

Edit2: Mormons are a prime example of a community that relies on donations rather than doles.

The Purpose of Blogging

I’ve just had a realization. Blogging is the polite evolution of mailing lists that people maintained. You know, the collection of friends you message every week or so with the lastest life updates, funny stories, and shopping deals. I say blogs are more polite because they are open and opt-in. If you don’t want to be on a mailing list, it can be offensive to ask to be removed; no such problems exist with blogs. Also, the information is now archived and open to anyone on the web. This is the triumph of open networks and collective information-sharing.

Intel and Atom (Redux)

Remember my predictions and investigations a while ago regarding the performance of the Atom CPU? Well, it turns out that Intel has carefully designed its chipset and OEM restrictions to prevent the Atom from cannibalizing its product line all the way to the C2D. Crafty! But the history of capitalism has shown that if you deliberately castrate a product to prevent it from filling pent-up demand, a competitor will not hesitate to muscle into the playing field sans restrictions. Indeed, the recent reports out of Taiwan about Nvidia’s Ion platform and VIA’s Trinity fit this perfectly. Oh, where are you, AMD?

Done with Finals!

For most of us at Berkeley, Saturday concluded the last finals of a brutal fall semester noticeably affected by budget cuts.

I was “completed” on Monday (thankfully), but the realization that normalcy had returned didn’t hit me until Friday, when Julia came down to Berkeley and hung out with me for two days. We wandered the streets and bookstores of Berkeley doing some window shopping, ate at Gelato Milano, Pizza My Heart, and Little Hunan,  and watched The Tale of Despereaux at a late-night theatre in Emeryville. It was all very low-key and surreal.

My actual final exams went terribly. Due to flying all over the country for interviews, I missed the entire last 1/3 of MCB 110 and IB 131 lectures, which were my earliest finals (both on Friday Dec 12). MCB 110L also decided to throw in a professional lab report and final exam earlier that week. So, I ended up pulling an all-nighter using online tips to keep myself awake. I’d say that the cram session was helpful in that I definitely knew all the material for MCB 110, but I was just so tired during the exam that eating a chocolate bar (not recommended!) to energize myself ended up making me crash midway through the exam. I had to resort to Wendy’s techniques of chewing and biting my tongue just to keep my neurons firing.

IB 131 went a little better considering that I was deep into the B range (the class has no +/-) after the first exam. A perfect paper on the second exam helped things, but that left me with needing to score 46/50 or better on the final to be at 90.5% and right on the brink of the abyss (shades of French AP in high school). So, right after MCB 110, I had 3 hours or so to rest and compose myself by surfing Phoronix and Electoral Vote on the EECS computers. Then, I headed over to a crowded Wheeler Auditorium for the IB 131 final. I was reasonably confident on 43 questions of the final, but the 7 problems that Prof. Diamond didn’t review caused me some heartache, considering that I was clueless about the last 1/3 of the course and didn’t have time to webcast them. Some very educated guessing and reasoning using other problems gave me 3 out of the 7, landing me right above the cutoff. Needless to say, I was quite ecstatic (in my subdued way) upon receiving the results, but that paled in comparison to Julia’s excitement after I told her. If memory serves, her face lit up and she gave me a pseudo-hug.

As for medical school applications, the tidings on that front is not good. Out of the 20 schools that I applied to, all have given me secondary applications, but only 5 have interviewed me so far (chronologically: UCLA, Michigan, Washington University in St. Louis, UCSD, and Minnesota), even though my stats are way above the average scores at every single school. Though none of those 5 have rejected me so far, the extended hold (likely meaning deferment until January) is not a good sign. *sigh* The first acceptance is always the hardest; getting it would mean a big load off my back. Also, comparing myself to other applicants on SDN made me regret being an overrepresented ethnic group.

Now that I have recuperated and recovered from the devastating all-nighter by sleeping for 10+ hours every single day since, I am set to resume my regular life over winter break by catching up on reading, blogging, replying to emails, AnimeONE, and coding. I’ll also look into studying for next semester’s courses ahead of time, even though the actual courses are in flux.

Added Incentive for Medicine

So, when am I eligible for the train of babes?

In all seriousness, I am in favour of the following passage:

Entertainers, along with corporate executives and lawyers, were voted as being the most overpaid, while homemakers and educators were among those seen as being underpaid.

When comparing the amount of work that a corporate executive does (and the number of mistakes) compared to a schoolteacher, this makes even more sense.

Obama’s Transportation Secretary

is caught attempting to assassinate him.