Pay per use MS Office on the way?

A Church article with View Comments posted 27 December 2008.
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This article is #4 in the 8 part series Freedom Software and the Church

A new Microsoft patent application was noticed by someone on Slashdot today. They want to offer Microsoft Office services on a pay-as-you-go basis. I took the liberty of fixing it so that everyone can see what this could eventually mean for the church.

microsoft-per-sermon

If you go with a system like this, you are dependent on the future availability of a particular online service offered by a particular company (not to mention your ability to pay!) for the continued availability of your data. On the other hand, if you use open-standards based freedom software like OpenOffice.org, you’ll always have free access to your work because no corporation can hold your data hostage. Just another reason to pick open standards and freedom software as often as you can for church work.

Strangest Search Engine

A Tech article with View Comments posted 29 January 2007.
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Who says that Microsoft doesn’t have a sense of humor? Well, pretty much everyone – but apparently they are wrong. Enter Ms. Dewey, the strangest search engine to date. This is the first and only search engine that I have actually watched, as opposed to used. In the past five minutes, I have been heckled, treated to disco dance moves, and been ‘lasso’d’ by this megalomaniacal woman.

Beyond the eye-candy factor, this is just a wrapper around Windows Live Search – and a pretty useless one at that – so this has got to be proof that Microsoft does in fact have a sense of humor!