Metronomy: Free PC for watching advertisement

[asian1]

Hi
From BBC:
Metronomy offer 2 million free PC for customers
who must watch at least 1 hour advertisement every day.
Is it possible to offer  similar package with
Amiga / Pegasos machines?
Metronomy

[Cyberus]

Arggggghhhhh!

I almost applied, but what's this?

1) On screen advertising: In exchange for your free PC, you must accept up to 3 minutes of on-screen advertising per hour of PC use. Every month, you will receive a cd containing adverts to be shown over the following four weeks. Each disc must be loaded onto your PC for the system to update. Should you fail to do this, your PC will be disabled.

Argggghhh!
So what if I go on holiday for three weeks, my PC will be disabled as I haven't obeyed the terms of mein fuhrer?
And if I decided to play Diablo II, for example, would it get interrupted by adverts every hour, or could I just have one mammoth advert session once a month?
And how exactly will my PC be disabled? What if I format the hard disk, surely the offending software wouldn't work?

and this:

2) The PC is lent to you for a term of 36 months, after which you will be offered a new computer and a new agreement, or you can simply return the old machine to a local collection point.

Arggggggghhhh!

I know that there's no such thing as a free lunch, but this basically means that there's no point upgrading it because you have to return it after 3 years.

[Linchpin]

Hmm, im not gonna bother. Looks crap.

[Cyberus]

Ah, I took a look at the FAQ:

Q: What happens when the advert is served? Do you lose what was on your screen? For instance, what would happen if you were playing a game or in the middle of an online shopping transaction?
A: 60 seconds prior to advertisements being shown, a warning screen will appear, the screen contains an accept and delay button. Each advert broadcast can be delayed for 5 minutes to enable the customers to either pause a game or complete on-line transactions.

WTF!!!!

Q: What happens if I'm on holiday for 2 weeks? Will I have to watch all the ads in one go?

A: No, holiday periods are taken into account.

Ah, well, I take 12 x 3 week holidays a year...


Hmm, I was thinking of submitting a question to the FAQ - can I install my own OS, I would like to run FreeBSD and AROS, and maybe OpenBeOS, is this compatible with the adverts?

Hmm, thinking about it, could you get round the pesky adverts by booting an alternative OS from CD....?

The FAQ says that you have to watch 3 mins of adverts per hour of use, and that you are expected to use the PC for 30 hours a month, so I assume that means you have to use WinXP for thirty hours per month....

edit: So I wonder if they use the system clock to determine how long you've been using it? If so, you could have an advert watching session every morning - put the clock forward twenty minutes, watch an advert, put it forward twenty minutes watch and advert, put it forward twenty mins, watch an advert, and then boot linux... :-D

[Ilwrath]

edit: So I wonder if they use the system clock to determine how long you've been using it? If so, you could have an advert watching session every morning - put the clock forward twenty minutes, watch an advert, put it forward twenty minutes watch and advert, put it forward twenty mins, watch an advert, and then boot linux...

Heh... True.  I don't see why that wouldn't work.  If the machine doesn't have to be constantly connected to the internet, it really has no way of knowing if it's clock has been changed forward, so long as it is set right when it sends the packets home.  

Come to think of it, for more fun, just capture those packets the little bugger sends when it phones home.  And then manipulate them to show that you were a good consumer.  ;-)  Heck, you can write an exe to send those "watched the commercials" packets.  Throw it on a cron job that kicks off every hour.....

[dammy]

IMO, it's doomed to failure.  It was tried in the US awhile ago for ISP service, it didn't go anywhere.  Now, it will indeed succeed when the right formula is created.  Making enduser captive to watch mind numbing info commercials is not the way to do it, let alone making them load a fresh CD every week.  One has to question just what market they are targetting if they are going after people who don't own a computer in this day in age.

The only way I can see it working is when the software is the driving sales force, they will throw in a system for free.  This will of course not make the computer OEMs too happy as the years of "free" OS on their hardware will no longer do and force even futher thinning of profit margins for bulk orders.

Dammy