Want to rent your OS?

[GreyGeek]

According to this article Microsoft is going to charge a per user monthly fee for Win10 enterprise customers.

How long do you think it will be before they begin charging consumer users for their "free" Win10? TINSTAAFL in Microsoft's world.

[dequire]

Yepp we were talking about this on G+... Just think MS is going to charge $10/mo for Windows PLUS $10/mo (more or less) for Office 365...For every employee the company has...every month...forever. Can you say Cha-Ching?!!!!

[oldgeek]

Maybe this will push more consumers into Linux. I have W10 on a dual-boot, but if they try to charge me to use it I'll simply erase it and forget about Microsoft forever.

[GreyGeek]

Maybe this will push more consumers into Linux. I have W10 on a dual-boot, but if they try to charge me to use it I'll simply erase it and forget about Microsoft forever.

I doubt it. Back in early 2000's where I worked management was asking the dev crew which database to use to replace the mainframe stuff. Most recommended Oracle but I recommended PostgreSQL. They couldn't believe that a free DBMS would have good "support", so they bought into Oracle. Roll forward a decade and they are now spending several hundred thousand a year on oracle per/cpu licenses and updates. The support? Oracle's "TechNet" was so poor that the db admin, my son, used the free support site which was inhabited by other oracle users, just as the PostgreSQL sites are. I've often wondered how many jet fighters and pacific islands my state has purchased for Ellison over the years. Just like Oracle, corporate use of Win10 will continue because that's what the purchasing department will upgrade/buy. The contracts are signed for several years at a time. We had five year contracts with DELL, even though during periods of that time we were sending back 50% of their monitors and HDs which were DOA. Purchasing just RMA'd them and ordered more because DELL had the cheapest bid. $240 per person per year for Win10 and Office? They'll shrug. Only the mom and pops will tell MS to take a hike and move to Mac or Linux.

Il dual booted with WinXP on my laptops before I retired in 2008. After that I kept it around for three or four years but got tired of wasting the space I never used, about half of the HD, so I recreated it as a guest OS under VB with only 40 GB or so. I'd log into the guest OS about every three months to update it and MS Security Essentials. One time I had 27,000 updates, but Steve Riley said that wasn't so many. I did that until a couple years ago but since I rarely used either the dual boot XP or the guest OS XP, except to update them, I archived my WinXP.OVA. A couple days a go a client I had from 15 years ago wanted me to change some coding on a project I coded for him so I decided to reinstall my guest OS WinXP. Microsoft blocked every attempt to register it, a task I did several times as I reinstalled WinXP under VB with my license. Even Microsoft's contact page listed on the rejection panel was empty. So, I am going to use WINE to run the code.

[oldgeek]

I can afford to forget about W10 because I rarely use it--just for 3 astronomy programs, two of which I couldn't install on Kubuntu even using Wine. The other one is Universe Sandbox, which unfortunately crashes every so often on Linux but hasn't so far on Windows. I'm retired as well and thus have no worries about Office compatibilty (especially Power Point) which was my main problem as a teacher using Libre Office. But I understand that corporations think differently. My school shelled out a lot of money each year for Microsoft licenses. Once they switched to an Ubuntu server, but as Linux service in Peru (where I live) is all but non-existent, the systems department went back to Microsoft. The teachers would probably have resisted it as well, which seems odd since many of them had no trouble going from Windows to a Mac OS.

[GreyGeek]

I can afford to forget about W10 because I rarely use it--just for 3 astronomy programs, two of which I couldn't install on Kubuntu even using Wine. The other one is Universe Sandbox, which unfortunately crashes every so often on Linux but hasn't so far on Windows. ... .

Mmm... I have a Steam account as well, and Universal Sandbox^2 is my favorite. It runs twice as fast under 16.04 as it did under 14.04. In Trusty I had to turn off the particle count to get the planets to orbit the Sun smoothly. Collision simulations would lag severely if I used more than a couple colliders or the collision produced multiple particles. Under Xenial it runs smoothly with all features and even the most complex collisions are smooth. When I run Steam I get a dialog box saying my version of Steam is out of date but I ignore it and press on. No problems. US^2 is great! I've never had it crash on either 14.04 or 16.04 with Neon on top.

I once checked Emanual Velikovsky's claim that a chunk of Jupiter blew out and became venus (his book "World in Collision") but never could get a copy of Venus to have any affect on the inner planets. I test velocity vectors from retrograde to retrograde+175 degrees without success. Without inner planet interaction it would be impossible for Venus to assume a near circular orbit between Mercury and Earth, and throwing Mars out to its current position wouldn't allow for Mar's near circular orbit as well. It was fun playing with his hypotheses but he should have stuck to psychiatry.

[oldgeek]

In my opinion, Velikovsky's main contribution to astronomy was to highlight the fact that the early solar system was probably a pretty messy place. What with the hot Jupiters and other oddballs around the universe it's obvious now that our solar system is hardly a standard bearer or perhaps not even 'normal.' Of course he got all the details wrong--I'm not even sure you get could something like Venus out of a gas giant like Jupiter. I haven't got the skills to test his theory on Universe Sandbox, but there are a lot of other things to do. My program, when it doesn't crash, is quite beautiful to watch and very smooth. Some day I'll learn how to set up my own models to see what happens. The tutorials are interesting but I'm sure they barely touch the surface.

[Snowhog]

This has shifted rapidly off-topic. Please get back on-topic or start a new thread.

[GreyGeek]

... . I haven't got the skills to test his theory on Universe Sandbox, but there are a lot of other things to do. My program, when it doesn't crash, is quite beautiful to watch and very smooth. Some day I'll learn how to set up my own models to see what happens. The tutorials are interesting but I'm sure they barely touch the surface.

In my last "off topic" closing post to my own thread, running US^2 on Linux has never crashed on me, and it is twice as fast on 16.04 than it was on14.04. Finally, I'd never run Win10 if MS gave it to me for free and never charged me rent.

[jpenguin]

Doesn't surprise me

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

[bendy]

This is about squeezing every last cent out of enterprise customers who don't have a choice (or don't think they have). Win 10 Pro is crippled compared to Win 7 Pro. If you want to control windows updates using using WSUS and keep the telemetry off your system (and any business or Government department should really want this) then you need Win 10 Enterprise now. Any business stupid enough to have let their office Win 7 Pro office machines take the "free" update to Win 10 Pro got shafted in traditional MS fashion.

In my office we will cling to Win 7 Pro for as long as we can, despite the fact that MS will make life increasingly difficult for hold-outs like us. They have already started bundling updates together so that you can't cherry pick the ones you want/need whilst avoiding the ones that break some systems or spy on you.

Bastards.

[GreyGeek]

Windows is the best spy machine the government ever supported. To bad it used mainly to spy on US citizens. More foreign governments are smart enough to install their own versions of Linux.

[woodsmoke]

Microshaft floated this idea prolly 8 years or so ago and they probably think that now is as good a time to try it as any.

An ancillary concept is that i have seen a steady increase in the number of students who are purchasing the "cloud" version of our textbooks which self destruct at the end of a given time.

They don't think of textbooks the way that "usins" did in college, I still have my marked up textbooks from undergrad.

Since the books were basically black and white, never intended to be "entertainment" of the larger pool of less motivated students, I observed that a lot of people fully intended to keep the book to use as reference later.

Nowadays it would bring a look of HORROR on the face of a student sitting next to a student who actually WROTE in a book not because of "defacing" the book but because it has to be sold back at even chump change prices to purchase the next semesters door stops.

What I found hilarious about Win9 was that it would not find quite a few installed apps ( like software from a science company that had been around for maybe 8 years, and populate the start menu with them! One had to use a gussied up terminal to search for the app by typing in the name! :0

At least Win 10 will populate the menu but it also has really odd stuff going on with the hybridized menu with "blocks" of apps that are displayed pictorially, and also a classic menu! :0

One HILARIOUS THING.... that even the students DERIDE Win 10 for... because they see what is going on when I am on the projector and open FF and there is a balloon asking if I want it to be the default browser.

I initially checked the "don't ask again" box, and clicked yes.

THEN.... ANOTHER box shows up asking the SAME question!

And, when one closes FF and later opens it.....one has to go through the whole rigamarole every time one opens FF.

Quite a few students have commented about it as being quite a joke.

Soooo...

Maybe the strategists at Microsith think that if the general populace will put up with all that then they will look at "renting" the thing as just a not a big deal .

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

.....

An ancillary concept is that i have seen a steady increase in the number of students who are purchasing the "cloud" version of our textbooks which self destruct at the end of a given time.

They don't think of textbooks the way that "usins" did in college, I still have my marked up textbooks from undergrad.

Not so many from my undergrad years but many from my grad days.

.....Since the books were basically black and white, never intended to be "entertainment" of the larger pool of less motivated students, I observed that a lot of people fully intended to keep the book to use as reference later.

Nowadays it would bring a look of HORROR on the face of a student sitting next to a student who actually WROTE in a book not because of "defacing" the book but because it has to be sold back at even chump change prices to purchase the next semesters door stops.

My last month as a college prof was June, 1992. Back then, it was NOT uncommon for students to pay $150-200 per text book, then get stunned when they got only $15-30 per book back from the bookstore, less if they were marked in. Used books sold for around $100. Now, I can only imagine what kind of gouging is taking place. The free market principle is that because the demand is low (not many undergrads and even fewer grads) the costs of text books will be higher. But that kind of cost has most certainly been offset by improvements created by computers in both writing, printing and distributing books.

.....What I found hilarious about Win9 was that it would not find quite a few installed apps ( like software from a science company that had been around for maybe 8 years, and populate the start menu with them! One had to use a gussied up terminal to search for the app by typing in the name! :0

At least Win 10 will populate the menu but it also has really odd stuff going on with the hybridized menu with "blocks" of apps that are displayed pictorially, and also a classic menu! :0

I don't keep track of Windows much but I never saw Win9. When did MS release it?

.........

Maybe the strategists at Microsith think that if the general populace will put up with all that then they will look at "renting" the thing as just a not a big deal .
...

American sheep will put up with anything and swallow anything the MNM tells them. I saw a piece by Judy Woodruff interviewing the Green Party candidate. PBS clipped out the major section of Stien's response to Wooodruff's last question because it was critical of Hillary.

[woodsmoke]

Yeppers, the whole thing is sad.

I actually spent well into 21 hours a few weeks back researching all, as in all, of the possible "online" Physics book alternatives and it is just sad.

A) There is only one, real, attempt to have a "hyperlinked" physics text and it was done by a professor and a bunch of students and is very good for the topics that it covered but, it basically links to articles in Wikipedia and one HAS to go through the school's portal. That is ok, but not what "we all thought" that we would have by now.

B) There are quite a few physics textbooks "online" that are basically .pdfs some of less than stellar quality.

C) The only real, comprehensice, physics textbook is that produced by Microsith, et all, "Open stack" but it also, suffers from "having to go through the portal", or downloading the 1,400 pages.

D) So the profs in the dept. were thinking that we could do a kind of 'hybrid" of people with tablets or willing to work off a computer and we would provide the pdf printoffs, but the cost for the good ones are well back into the cost of the plain text.

E) and.........what nobody talks about is that a LOT of students will try use their phones for the online text and there then is the cost for "data plan". Yes, they can do wifi at the college or at home, but what about when they are someplace without wifi?

There are many, many, HIDDEN COSTS associated with what seems to be a "free" or "low cost" online book.

G) The "Educationists" talk a big talk and hype "technology" while having no clue as to what technology is and think that if they shout loud enough that "the people" will think that they are actually improving teaching.

H) The Open Stack books are very good for what they are but, the elephant in the room that Microsith et. al are not talking about is that they are going to give away the online book "for free" but then come the powerpoints, lab books, etc, which will be SOLD by Microsith.

I) The "online" books by the book companies are just their books in a format which is, at best, clumsy to use.

So, we are making our own lab books, which, one would think that a "physics professor" should be able to easily do, but no.... it is all ego, and really, deep down, not wanting to put forth the effort. But we are at least attempting to do it.

The "workbooks" and "mastery books" are literally junior high quality and laughed at by the students.

The simple fact, when it comes right down to it, is that the plain textbook can be in a backpack on the floor, the teacher says get the text and turn to page this and that and the student who has the book is on the page in a few seconds and the student with the phablet is still fumpling around. The textbook is easily viewed in any light and the phablet is not. And who wants their phablet on a lab table with chemicials in a beaker?

And, to reiterate the "online book" gives absolutely no, as in no, "added value",

The book companies, even Open Stack are NOT doing any kind of meaningful "hyperlinking" in the "online book". Open stack uses a botched up mix of a web browser and the portal, when one does a search and provides a bunch of generic results which, to the introductory student are less than useful.

There is very little "hover and view" popup information or hover and click to jump to other parts of the text.

And it is not as if it couldn't be done, it CAN be done, it is just that the "online book" providers know that if it really ever IS, done then they would ALL have to do it and textbooks really would be revolutionized as opposed to being cash cows.

But, I've taken up too much server space,
sorry
woody.