Software is today hardly delivered on CD or other media, but is considered a “service in the network”. What does that mean?
Kanye West, multimillionaire rappers, it’s tough , Among other things, because his little daughter Northwest, 2, an app has downloaded, and this app contains so-called in-app purchases, so the opportunity to spend even more money after downloading to make the app more interesting, colorful, fast or otherwise what to do. The concept is popular especially in games that you no longer can play without spending extra money from manufacturers. West takes the concept not as good. He tweeted: “Fuck any game company did puts in-app purchases on kids games !!!” About: To hell with kids apps that encourage further purchases. 39,000 retweets and countless favorites star suggest that a few people Wests divide opinion.
Apart from the children rip indicated the rapper-Tweet on a much larger trend. Software is not a completed product more. To understand this, one must dare a glance back
It used to be:. Software was purchased, installed on DVD or CD and. Between the commercial center and the installation was a physical barrier. With ever faster lines and flat rates, it was only a logical step that software can be downloaded. First, smaller programs for a few years even entire operating systems. Today’s software usually online. From the servers of the manufacturer or supplier can either be downloaded or used directly on them.
The boundaries between them are blurred. Because on the one hand cloud computing, in which data – such as a text file – even applications – such as a word processor – on a server, the “cloud”, are instead to be installed locally on the computer. Then there is the world of apps over which Kanye West so excited.
These are programs that are local, so saved on the phone or computer of the user, which are constantly but with the network in conjunction to get – often in exchange for money – to be supplied with new software components. Apps and cloud computing are now so established that many users still use small applets only or your browser, where you can access cloud applications. A generation of devices emerged from this realization: the lightweight, portable notebooks, which may not have much longer to start than a browser, where the user just then doing his job
The change is economically superior to – and. inexorably
But even the software that needs to be further installed on the user’s computer because of its complexity, is now permanent with the servers of the manufacturer in conjunction. For example, to check whether the user is at all authorized to use the program. This authorization can then be withdrawn at any time
This is the economic dimension of development. The sales strategists of software manufacturers have recognized that it is possible with the permanent connection of the software to implement entirely new payment models. Previously, graphics professionals have bought the expensive, very good image-editing program Photoshop once and could use it then, to technological progress has called for a newer version. Today you can only rent the program. Although it is installed on the user’s computer, but only those who pay regularly, it may also use any.
provide the model, software as a service, the software industry is changing currently strong, each group has the goal as often as possible to contact the customer in touch and ask him as often as possible a bill. Pricing strategies that were created with psychological instinct, maximize by repeatedly pending payments the sum of what a software vendor can demand from a customer. One who helped develop these strategies for the computer game giants Valve , incidentally, was Greece’s Ex-Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis – before he tried to tease out from the Troika maximum payments with less psychological intuition
The pirates scene bites at these concepts from the teeth. Who wants to use illegal software, you have to fail into the net access. That restricts usually function and safety programs massively.
One hat as users no choice. That is questionable. After all, the new models offer the one hand benefits, such that manufacturers can update software automatically or that you can work on the same document with other users. On the other hand, the user is incapacitated in its digital rights continue. The loss of control of the person who thinks he operator’s computer even yourself, will be continued.
cloud computing, apps and Software as a Service are terms that juxtapose only be limited leave. You are not clearly defined, there is a risk to mix economic and contextual characteristics. But they represent a trend that is typical in the current stage of development: technologically sense, economically optimized, little attention from politics and society – and part of an ethical discussion worthy change. The rental models throw so questions about the ownership of digital goods: Whom the software actually belongs? The one who rented? Why then, as in Photoshop, parts stored on the user’s computer? On the other hand have central locations, such as they exist in cloud computing, are discussed as part of the debate on global data protection and just tilted Data Safe Harbor Agreement. The boundary between content and applications becomes blurred, and the possibilities to spy on the user, rising for all those who have access to the software server, to infinity.
Yet awareness is scarce, and it forms Also just out slowly, because the benefits for all parties are obvious, but the disadvantages. Perhaps help a few high profile issues with celebrity children.
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