The WorkShop

Stumbled upon this today , A patent has been filed for Microsoft advertising services architecture which intends to deliver targeted advertising to the consumer . The most interesting part of this is that this feature will be built into the OS . The abstract of the patent application is as follows

“An advertising framework registers context data sources and advertising display clients from a variety of resources on a local computer. The ad framework may then receive context data and display triggers from the registered context data sources. The context data and display triggers may be processed and an advertising request generated and sent to an external advertising source. Non-advertising content may also be supported. When a targeted advertisement is received in response, a display manager may send the ad to an appropriate display client. When the ad has been presented a the advertising framework will communicate to the advertising supplier who may apportion and credit advertising revenue to the participating parties.”

There are a lot of other interesting claims which the patent application makes, and then goes on to state the importance of targeted advertising . Point taken .. but was ‘nt MS aginst this , with the spam and spyware blocking crusade . Oh .. I get it ,Instead of others flooding you with all sorts of unwanted ad’s , let Microsoft do it for them .

Well , I finally did it . Over the last weekend I moved to Ubuntu 7.0 feisty fawn Amd64 edition , and boy it sure does rock . I’ve used other distributions like Fedora core and Suse before , but for the first time I feel that I can get rid of my windows installation for good.

This is not about how to install and configure Ubuntu, trust me! its simpler than you think, so I ll leave that to the readers. What this is about is Why you should move to Linux .

The strongest reason to move is Freedom , and by freedom I don’t mean price . Once you have Ubuntu installed , you have access to a list of thousands of applications which you have the freedom to download install and modify to suit your needs . It doesn’t matter if you are an expert computer user or a newbie , Ubuntu’s software library provides enough to suit everyone’s needs . There are no trial versions or registration keys , no exe’s to patch, no more crackspider or astalavista

I believe the key to the success of Windows lies in its usability , Ubuntu is not yet on par with Windows XP or Vista on this front , but it’s awfully close . Installing new software is a breeze, no restarts , no configurations . The package managers downloads, installs and configures the software for you. All you need is a good broadband connection.

Hardcore gamers will have problems moving because games as of now remain a Win32 exclusive. but there are some utilities like Wine which can run Windows applications efficiently.I am an Arcade fanatic and all popular emulators like Mame etc are available for Linux and Yes! they do perform better than their windows cousins.

If for nothing else you should move to Linux for the change, Its faster and more efficient than Windows XP. I won’t compare Ubuntu with Vista because I’ve never used the latter. Readers are free to comment
My rig is powered by an Amd X2 processor and 1 GB of DDR2 RAM running on a nVidia 430 chipset , and I’ve got Ubuntu running with all its glory. If you may need any help with your rig, do write to me .

Spread the word , go Linux.

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