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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

#21

Post by tikhonj »

parasubvert wrote: post #13

The issue I have with arguments from folks such as Cory is that they presume too much in favour of openness. Many prefer to be regulated rather than have to make decisions on every little detail, that's arguably the whole Apple appeal in a nutshell vs. Linux, and why it's so productive. (Distros like Ubuntu arguably do this too at a much smaller scale.) Cory is effectively advocating "technology survivalism", where n…

I really don't see how Apple's approach is any better than good defaults with hidden configuration. Nobody is arguing that you should have to configure and manage everything yourself--just that such an option should exist and be relatively accessible. If you don't want to do it, just ignore that option; if you do, it's right there and reachable.

Your argument seems to be similar to something along the lines of "porn is bad, porn filters are good therefore we should ban all porn from the internet". The best solution is to allow you to block it--maybe even by default--but also allow you not to block it.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#22

Post by veidr »

Steko wrote: post #20
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…

"The Soviet Union made a similar" Oh come on, one is a market proposition and the other is a forced choice at the barrel of a gun. Is the "no shirt no shoes no service" sign at the store down the street the second coming of Stalin too?

Ha ha, OK I admit that analogy was too heavy-handed for the context. It didn't feel so as I wrote it, maybe because I had already walked it back from 'Arbeit macht frei', which was the first thing to come to mind.

The point I wanted to make was that it feels kinda creepy when people start believe the propaganda (of a government, corporation, cult, or whatever it may be) that calls it "freedom", when it's actually the other thing.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#23

Post by Steko »

tikhonj wrote: post #21
parasubvert wrote: post #13

The issue I have with arguments from folks such as Cory is that they presume too much in favour of openness. Many prefer to be regulated rather than have to make decisions on every little detail, that's arguably the whole Apple appeal in a nutshell vs. Linux, and why it's so productive. (Distros like Ubuntu arguably do this too at a much smaller scale.) Cory is effectively advocating "technology survivalism", where n…

I really don't see how Apple's approach is any better than good defaults with hidden configuration. Nobody is arguing that you should have to configure and manage everything yourself--just that such an option should exist and be relatively accessible. If you don't want to do it, just ignore that option; if you do, it's right there and reachable. Your argument seems to be similar to something along the lines of "porn…

"I really don't see how Apple's approach is any better than good defaults with hidden configuration. "

Because nothing is really hidden? Because a decent percentage of users would download pirated apps and sideload trojans?

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#24

Post by maxerickson »

parasubvert wrote: post #13

The issue I have with arguments from folks such as Cory is that they presume too much in favour of openness. Many prefer to be regulated rather than have to make decisions on every little detail, that's arguably the whole Apple appeal in a nutshell vs. Linux, and why it's so productive. (Distros like Ubuntu arguably do this too at a much smaller scale.) Cory is effectively advocating "technology survivalism", where n…

So why don't they build in an escape hatch?

It would be simple enough to have a very annoying warning when the user turned off the lockdown.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#25

Post by novalis »

parasubvert wrote: post #17
batgaijin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. How is it improving my experience when they ban apps that turn the device into a wifi hotspot? Oh right, they prefer money to letting users have the freedom to choose such a thing.

Has nothing to do with Apple's money. The carrier's money, sure. And things like trust, battery life, etc. But that's everywhere.

So actively enforcing a way for the carrier to exploit for further income doesn't bring preferenciality when being picked up by said carrier as a middle stage profit model enabler ?

Should we all show this good will towards all brands and just call all lock downs the greatest neutral thing ever because they are clearly just the bios chips makers fault ? Who wins with stuff like that. It's not like those sorts of actions and their ramifications bring advantage to anyone else down the line...

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#26

Post by otneusnocuh »

parasubvert wrote: post #17
batgaijin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. How is it improving my experience when they ban apps that turn the device into a wifi hotspot? Oh right, they prefer money to letting users have the freedom to choose such a thing.

Has nothing to do with Apple's money. The carrier's money, sure. And things like trust, battery life, etc. But that's everywhere.

You don't think Apple protects carriers' money to also protect their own? You honestly think that the iPhone would have been a huge success without carrier support?

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#27

Post by Steko »

veidr wrote: post #22
Steko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Soviet Union made a similar" Oh come on, one is a market proposition and the other is a forced choice at the barrel of a gun. Is the "no shirt no shoes no service" sign at the store down the street the second coming of Stalin too?

Ha ha, OK I admit that analogy was too heavy-handed for the context. It didn't feel so as I wrote it, maybe because I had already walked it back from 'Arbeit macht frei', which was the first thing to come to mind. The point I wanted to make was that it feels kinda creepy when people start believe the propaganda (of a government, corporation, cult, or whatever it may be) that calls it "freedom", when it's actually the…

You're right that it's certainly not freedom that Apple is selling.

The correct counterargument to Doctorow et al has to take the freedom issue head on, it looks like this:

When people move from the country to a small town they are forced to give up some freedoms. When the small town turns into a large town even more. A large city, even more.

I can't crank the stereo to 11 and play it at all hours every night on my block of dense apartment buildings. I also can't keep a pet rhino, walk around outside naked or throw my tv out the window onto the sidewalk 14 floors down. I could list these all day and there are some legitimate things I should be free to do but I can't, that's a slightly harmful byproduct we accept for convenience.

Regulation is an easy scapegoat but every 'wild west' town with no rules either got a serious government willing to make those trade offs or it died out. That's universal not just in the US.

One of the well known promises of technology is to shrink the world and connect everyone to everyone. In short we'll all be much closer cyberneighbors then today and there will be large sacrifices to privacy and other freedoms just like people who moved or found themselves in cities had to make.

Another well known byproduct of technology has been the amount of potential damage a small group of people can do (Aum cult, McVeigh, Unabomber, Amerithrax). This again will act as a multiplier on the trade offs we will be forced to make as we move from the ability to 3d print guns to bomb materials to nuclear and biologic molecules.

The deeply interconnected world of tomorrow will need people to wear virtual pants. QED.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#28

Post by nirvana »

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, and you can develop iOS Apps and run them in the simulator (to distribute these apps via apple's store, you only need a $99 membership, which is pretty affordable, compared to the past when it cost $500-$5,000 for such suites of software.)

Its never been easier to be a hacker! And that isn't going to change anytime soon, at least on Apple systems.

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

Hell, you can even develop iOS apps without using any apple tools and distribute them on the web to anyone, for free, and without any regulation by apple. You just have to use javascript and web technologies, but the full iOS UI is available, including things like touch tracking, gyroscope, GPS, etc.

People are so adamant that the iPhone is locked down that many people don't even know this, but it has been in iOS since day one-- in fact it was how Apple wanted everyone to develop apps originally (outside apple's control!) but people kept demanding native apps so apple created the appstore, and the curation of that is a consequence of not wanting malware. (Hard to write javascript malware.)

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#29

Post by pyre »

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…

  > You can't install a different OS
This only applies on ARM chips. Intel is going to be entering this space soon with x86 chips, IIRC. We'll see how Microsoft responds to that.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#30

Post by CapitalistCartr »

sliverstorm wrote: post #8
16s wrote: post #3

After reading this, I'm reminded of a famous Ben Franklin quote, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." DRM and walled gardens are often said to reduce malware and provide safer computing, but at what cost? As technologists, we can change this and have a say. I'm concerned though that it may already be too late.

As I understand it, Franklin was talking about policies of appeasement. He was not, after all, a stone-cold anarchist- yet folks insist on interpreting that quote as if he was.

Appeasement is what we'd all be doing if we allow locking down the BIOS. It isn't to solve the malware problem; it isn't to make computing "safe"; its to put OUR computers in the ownership of a few large corporations.

These same corps have long used bureaucracy, paperwork, a maze of rules, large costs to shield their business model from real competition, and that's how they'll do this. Getting the privilege to have access to our own property will be obstructed by all these barriers. Barriers which are minor for a large corp, but insurmountable by private citizens or open-source programmers.

To be suspicious of those who have long shown a disregard for the greater good isn't promoting anarchy; its plain good sense.

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