Someone just rang me up from a newspaper that shall be nameless, asking for a piece on the sobig worm. I said, which is true, that I am too busy today. It is also true that I have no ideas at all about it and would only have any if I were feeling very broke. But I did manage to squeeze out one line, about the changing economics of the business and the move to renting, not buying stuff. “It used to be that software was sold like cars: a big purchase, that came with manuals and which you wouldn’t upgrade for years. Now they want to sell it you like petrol: a little purchase, endlessly repeated.”
This is different to the shift from paying for printers to paying for ink cartridges, because no one is trying to conceal what’s happening.