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The coming civil war over general purpose computing

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Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#61

Post by klez »

parasubvert wrote: post #41
veidr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners I would think you were making a joke if not for the earnest tone of your post. But, come on, that is a ridiculous statement to make. We had free as in freedom, free as in beer, and then Steve Jobs came up with free as in "freedom from porn". You appear to buy into that doublespeak redefinition of freedom without irony. The Soviet Union made a sim…

You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to mention an app marketplace NOT controlle…

> All owners of that software have a restriction on your behaviour with that software, including free or open source software.

Quoting the GNU GPL (v2, since it's less legalese-esque):

> The act of running the Program is not restricted

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#62

Post by gizmo686 »

chao- wrote: post #59
gizmo686 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows hacker? Finding information about system internels is more often then not an easter egg hunt on google.

Say what you will about Windows (and I will even join you), but Microsoft can put out some alarmingly competent docs. I say "can" and not "always do", because where they are lacking, I agree it can be frustrating. That said, in one such scenario the solution for me was to get in touch with a PM at MS and say: "You designed [system #42]. I'm trying to accomplish [nifty goal] that is an obvious extension of what you su…

What you are talking about sounds more like windows developer than windows hacker. Still, almost all of my programming experience has been based on greping source trees in place of documentation. When I do get good documentation (it does happen) I don't know what to do with it and still look at the source.

What really sets open source apart for me in terms of hacking is that I can change the way any component operates, instead of having to jerryrig what would be a simple change using external APIs.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#63

Post by rdl »

ekianjo wrote: post #58
rdl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were still basically locked down on the phone/baseband part, with a PDA glued on. They weren't anywhere near as closely coupled as today's smartphones.

I think we were talking about applications when we say "locked down"...

The applications didn't have API access to anything "phonelike" about the phone; it was just a PDA glued onto a phone. You could write your own PDA apps, but nothing really interesting.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#64

Post by bitdiddle »

klez wrote: post #61
parasubvert wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to mention an app marketplace NOT controlle…

> All owners of that software have a restriction on your behaviour with that software, including free or open source software. Quoting the GNU GPL (v2, since it's less legalese-esque): > The act of running the Program is not restricted

Good point, it strikes me that with the changing landscape perhaps Eric Raymond and others who claim "open source" has won and we no longer need "free software" may want to rethink that.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#65

Post by guard-of-terra »

parasubvert wrote: post #41
veidr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners I would think you were making a joke if not for the earnest tone of your post. But, come on, that is a ridiculous statement to make. We had free as in freedom, free as in beer, and then Steve Jobs came up with free as in "freedom from porn". You appear to buy into that doublespeak redefinition of freedom without irony. The Soviet Union made a sim…

You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to mention an app marketplace NOT controlle…

"Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them" This is only relevant for USA, not the rest of the world. All around the globe you could walk into a store, buy any phone you wanted, buy a carrier's SIM and insert into that. So the Apple model is a kind of dropback.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#66

Post by Auguste »

nirvana wrote: post #28
fmstephe wrote: post #7

When I read articles like this my fears always move straight to a future where it has become harder to program for play. I appreciate that this concern is somewhat superficial compared with some of the issues raised in this article, but I feel profoundly grateful to be able to tinker with computers in my spare time. I feel this more deeply than the fear that my music collection might not survive a computer upgrade or…

This is one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Apple, despite all the misguided gruff they get here. Apple always ships free (or near free) development tools with their systems. In the Apple II days it was built in to the ROMS. Nowadays on the Mac AppStore you can download Xcode, for free. (though at one point I think it was $5 for some reason.) You can develop any mac apps you want, and run them to your hearts content…

  (All the apple bashing on HN is from the google distortion field, it isn't reality.)
Wat?

The world isn't divided into Apple users and Google users. I'm sure I'm not the only person who avoids both, and there's plenty out there who love both.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#67

Post by meric »

I read it this morning and have had a thought:

He talks about determining the

sole

user of a computer.

He also says that a Boeing 747 and a Car are both examples of computers.

So, the thought I had was, when you have 1000 passengers in a automated train, it would be impossible to determine the

sole

user of the train.

It may also not be wise to allow

any

user of the train to control the software.

?

Therefore, there will be no civil war and users will be doomed to not have control over devices they are using.

The "debate" is akin to asking "What happens when slave owners finally wrest control of their slaves from the government? When someone is being served by a slave, that slave, is really, acting for their owner's interest. The slave could be eavesdropping on conversations, poisoning food on behalf of the owner, not acting to the user's interests to the exclusion of everyone else's."

What about computers that are not controlled by any entity, period. ?

I'm not saying that computers ARE slaves, just that the current debate resembles one ABOUT slaves. I'm not talking about "Strong A.I." either, just software that can provide a service and earn enough money to pay for the CPU time they use.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent

[1] This is probably the wrong answer, but just a thought.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#68

Post by jarman »

meric wrote: post #67

I read it this morning and have had a thought: He talks about determining the sole user of a computer. He also says that a Boeing 747 and a Car are both examples of computers. So, the thought I had was, when you have 1000 passengers in a automated train, it would be impossible to determine the sole user of the train. It may also not be wise to allow any user of the train to control the software. ? Therefore, there wi…

Problem is not depriving users of control, problem is transfer owner's control to third party.

So (in your example) it's not about giving train control to passengers, it's about train being controlled by transport company who bought it, not by manufacturer or some other third party.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#69

Post by buro9 »

tikhonj wrote: post #19
mark_l_watson wrote: post #6

I just watched the whole thing. I liked how Cory Doctorow acknowledged that some of these problems he didn't know the answers to but he seemed satisfied just to get the conversation started. Near the beginning he flashed a picture of an iPad as an example of a device that records everything you do and there is nothing you can do about it. I had never thought of that; instead I had viewed the iPad as a nice little dev…

Microsoft seems to be doing exactly the opposite--they are making their devices more locked down in what appears to be an attempt to emulate Apple. The restrictions on WinRT make this entirely clear and unequivocal--Microsoft is asserting complete control over the device you purchased. You can't install a different OS and you can't install any software outside of the App Store. If anything, they're threatening to be…

>> -they are making their devices more locked down in what appears to be an attempt to emulate Apple

Providing you can build the walls high enough and the garden large enough, there is nothing as profitable as a walled garden.

All companies that could get away with it would do it.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#70

Post by rapind »

tikhonj wrote: post #19
mark_l_watson wrote: post #6

I just watched the whole thing. I liked how Cory Doctorow acknowledged that some of these problems he didn't know the answers to but he seemed satisfied just to get the conversation started. Near the beginning he flashed a picture of an iPad as an example of a device that records everything you do and there is nothing you can do about it. I had never thought of that; instead I had viewed the iPad as a nice little dev…

Microsoft seems to be doing exactly the opposite--they are making their devices more locked down in what appears to be an attempt to emulate Apple. The restrictions on WinRT make this entirely clear and unequivocal--Microsoft is asserting complete control over the device you purchased. You can't install a different OS and you can't install any software outside of the App Store. If anything, they're threatening to be…

While I agree this sucks, and I'm personally not interested in Windows devices myself anyways, I'm not sure how you draw the conclusion that this is worse than Apple with iOS... It's exactly the same no?

MS is the old tyrant (continuing it's tyrannical ways). Apple is the new tyrant. If either of them are better than the other, it's pretty much irrelevant since they are both so far beyond what I would describe as acceptable behaviour.

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