Microsoft Patent no. 20080319910
Metered Pay-As-You-Go Computing Experience
A computer with scalable performance level components and selectable software and service options has a user interface that allows individual performance levels to be selected. The scalable performance level components may include a processor, memory, graphics controller, etc. Software and services may include word processing, email, browsing, database access, etc. To support a pay-per-use business model, each selectable item may have a cost associated with it, allowing a user to pay for the services actually selected and that presumably correspond to the task or tasks being performed. An administrator may use a similar user interface to set performance levels for each computer in a network, allowing performance and cost to be set according to a user’s requirements.
Microsoft published on Christmas Day a new patent that changes out current vision about computer and software prices. They propose a “Pay-As-You-Go” method meaning that the user will (probably) get a free PC and will pay for its usage.
As wrote above in the patent’s abstract, Microsoft wants “a computer with scalable performance level components and selectable software and service options has a user interface that allows individual performance levels to be selected”. So the user will be able to choose low Read the rest of this entry »
Merry Christmas!
Dear visitor,
Merry Christmas from Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit!
Open Source – a bad practice?
This article is about operating systems on home/personal PCs.
One of the biggest paradoxes: Linux is free and most people prefer to use paid operating system. Or ever worse they struggle to find a pirated version of a paid OS, get infested with viruses, spend many hours installing and formatting, get nervous when updates cannot be installed because of the Genuine check etc.
In a recent study I’ve seen that only 3.8 percent of users use Linux, 5.5% use Mac OsX and the rest use Windows. Well, Linux cannot be that bad…
The normal PC user doesn’t want to search the Internet in order to find the right package for his distribution, configure applications in text mode and read hundreds of pages of documentation. He wants a product that can be used out of the box and can be installed with no headaches.
If we are to consider the Windows world as a continuous line, the Linux world is like a set of discrete points – there are many distributions, many versions of the same application, platform specific versions, distribution specific versions etc. This is the price paid by the open source solutions. There are users who want to make their own version of an application in order to improve it or just want to get some credits and they consider that anything not made by them is junk.
Also there are communities that develop their own version of Linux – maybe a small distribution, for a specific device. In time that version evolves, includes more and more features and becomes like any other distro. Repeat this process for a few communities and we get a pretty large number (for an OS) of distributions that run their specific applications, require specific configuration and even platform.
An inexperienced user is afraid of this continually evolving world. He wants stability; he wants to be able to learn something now and apply it the same way after 5 years and wants to use a new application just like he uses the old one. Linux does not have a central authority that controls how things evolve. There are different size communities but sometimes there is no connection between them; is a pseudo-chaos: inside communities everything is OK but when their products meet is bad.
On the other side Windows does not expose its source code, Microsoft dictates controls what and how must be done, users are happy even though the product is not always good, applications respect a certain pattern and everything seems to work fine. And they even make money.
Creating open source products is a bad thing on long term?
Posting from Microsoft Word 2007
I am writing this post from Word 2007.
This is an image:
This is a link to a tutorial about installing DDWRT firmware on Asus WL 500 G Premium.
Windows Hibernate – Cool!
Today I started to build the entire solution I am working on (it takes about 5 hours to complete) and after approx. 3 hours I had to leave. Without having the possibility of pausing the operation and because I don’t want to transport my laptop while it is powered on I’ve done a crazy thing: put Windows in hibernate mode.
Hibernate is a Windows function that saves the entire RAM memory on the hard drive and powers off the computer. When the computer is powered on the session is restored.
I’ve done this [put windows in hibernate] many times but never while compiling. Guess what? It worked like a charm – the build process continued as nothing happened.