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The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

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Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#61

Post by the_only_law »

grawprog wrote: post #53

Phones, consoles, Chromebooks and other unrootable hardware, restrictive hardware licensing, arm's business model, abstraction over abstraction, SAAS, corporate cloud infrastructure, web apps over local, streaming over storing, walled gardens, signed binaries, nearly everything about 'modern safe computing' is all about taking control and responsibility away from users and handing it over to somebody else to be paid…

All this stuff has really started to take the fun out of programming and hacking for me

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#62

Post by johncolanduoni »

pessimizer wrote: post #43
new_realist wrote: post #2

These days, many computers only run authorized software, and trusted boot is fairly secure. They’re integrated hardware/software systems. This article is out of date, and a bit biased, to boot.

> This article is out of date Only if you're trying to say that the war is mostly over, and general purpose computing lost.

The general purpose computing doomsayers lost the average person caring whether they have a general purpose computer that they were never going to use as such anyway. They haven’t come within a light year of actually losing the ability to own devices that can run whatever code they want to.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#63

Post by octoberfranklin »

grawprog wrote: post #53

Phones, consoles, Chromebooks and other unrootable hardware, restrictive hardware licensing, arm's business model, abstraction over abstraction, SAAS, corporate cloud infrastructure, web apps over local, streaming over storing, walled gardens, signed binaries, nearly everything about 'modern safe computing' is all about taking control and responsibility away from users and handing it over to somebody else to be paid…

> Chromebooks

Actually the RK3399-based Chromebooks are the "most-rootable" device you can buy today, by a long shot. Far more rootable than any desktop machine still in production.

No Intel ME, no PSP, and with the Samsung Kevin laptop you can build coreboot to boot the device with absolutely zero blobs -- even the Cortex-M0 power management unit firmware source is in there. It's really one of a kind.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#64

Post by the_af »

grawprog wrote: post #53

Phones, consoles, Chromebooks and other unrootable hardware, restrictive hardware licensing, arm's business model, abstraction over abstraction, SAAS, corporate cloud infrastructure, web apps over local, streaming over storing, walled gardens, signed binaries, nearly everything about 'modern safe computing' is all about taking control and responsibility away from users and handing it over to somebody else to be paid…

I'm applauding your post furiously. It warms my heart there are still people like you.

Yet, it's disheartening that even in many online forums of so-called hackers, one can still find plenty of people who will argue in favor of walled gardens and against general computing. Or who argue against the FSF and the right to tinker.

If I had to choose one quote from your post is this one:

> The general purpose computer is hands down the most amazing, equalizing piece of technology humanity has ever created.

Well said.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#65

Post by Hokusai »

grawprog wrote: post #53

Phones, consoles, Chromebooks and other unrootable hardware, restrictive hardware licensing, arm's business model, abstraction over abstraction, SAAS, corporate cloud infrastructure, web apps over local, streaming over storing, walled gardens, signed binaries, nearly everything about 'modern safe computing' is all about taking control and responsibility away from users and handing it over to somebody else to be paid…

Great comment, I agree with it. Except for the blame part:

> Those people are the ones running the tech giants today, pushing locked down hardware, and trying to crush general computing as a thing.

To blame individuals will solve nothing. This is a systemic problem. There is a strong incentive to gate-keep computers for maximum profitability, put anyone in charge of a tech company and they will feel the market pressure to extract as much value as possible from each user and close doors to competition.

Only regulations that change the industry environment will make it work for consumers. And, that regulations are clearly needed. Or locked down hardware is the only hardware that will exist in the future controlled by a few corporations that have locked in everybody else.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#66

Post by vslira »

mullingitover wrote: post #35
city41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

To be clear, Richard "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children" Stallman is totally nuts (although I'll give credit where it's due, he finally walked back his stance on pedophilia). A stopped clock is still right twice a day.

Like all humans he is full of faults has a long track record of unfortunate postures and statements, but as a technologist the best analogy for him would be an atomic clock sent back in time to before we understood relativity.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#67

Post by eruleman »

samatman wrote: post #48
mjevans wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the course of my life the tinfoil to warranted concern has been the general trend. Mostly in areas where unchecked ambition for control, power, and influence have allowed greed to convince people to do evil unto others. The natural cost of information is the marginal cost of copying. It's the creation of new, useful information that needs to be incentivized; that's where UBI or some other hire more public works…

We need to do a lot better than UBI for FOSS to keep advancing. A caste of code monks who forgo a comfortable life to write free software from their Mom's basement, or a cabin in the woods, isn't nearly good enough. Might not be able to pay out a quarter million a year like the FAAAM crew does, but we need a bunch of jobs paying half that to write and maintain open source. If it isn't competitive with the other optio…

Good news: Crypto created the new business model for open source software.

Naval: "Ironic that the most monetizeable code in the world is now open source (running on blockchains). OSS has the best business model."

https://twitter.com/naval/status/867860551522598912

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#68

Post by vbezhenar »

massysett wrote: post #52
city41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

I didn’t think he was wearing a tinfoil hat. I agreed with RMS back then insofar as he saw things like TPM coming. However, he did not understand then and still does not understand that by using any device as complex as a computer, the user must trust _somebody_. His free software ideals lead him to think that if the user can read the source and modify it, he can trust it. But this is true of no one, regardless of hi…

I value free software because it's independent from its author. If author decides to abandon it, someone will continue its work, if that software is worthy for enough people. That's not the case for proprietary software.

And TPM does not allow other people to maintain that software.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#69

Post by SoSoRoCoCo »

How can we circumvent future legislation to prevent someone from pulling a 70's Woz and building/selling a PC from off the shelf parts that don't have any DRM in them? There needs to be pre-emptive posturing by the community to protect inventors who can create non-DRM/TRM open source general purpose computers. GNU for hardware, but using CPUs that aren't manufactured by the top 3 (or 10) CPU vendors. At some point an investor should be able to call up TSMC and make an open source, CPU/MCU, no?

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#70

Post by giantDinosaur »

massysett wrote: post #52
city41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

I didn’t think he was wearing a tinfoil hat. I agreed with RMS back then insofar as he saw things like TPM coming. However, he did not understand then and still does not understand that by using any device as complex as a computer, the user must trust _somebody_. His free software ideals lead him to think that if the user can read the source and modify it, he can trust it. But this is true of no one, regardless of hi…

Somewhat misleading to claim that 'one user' would be all there is auditing software. It's not 'one user' that audits your Linux distribution. Can something be snuck in that nobody notices into the source? Of course. But it's incredibly disingenuous to claim that because one user cannot audit all the software running on their machine that we should abandon the concept of auditable software in general and accept corporate lockdown. There's a massive difference between 'my operating system's code is open and many people have at least glanced at it' and 'this is a total secret beholden only to one corporate identity and nobody can have a look even if they had all the technical knowledge in the world'.
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