Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing (2011)

#61

Post by tom_ » Sat, May 11, 2019, 12:38 AM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #37

tom_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right click bundle icon, click `Open', follow instructions (such as they are). It's been like this for years. You might have to tick the 'App Store and identified developers' option in the General section of the Security & Privacy preference pane? - but my recollection is that if you don't, you just need to right click a bit more often... I was a mite concerned when they introduced this stuff, but the net effect has…

And people complain that desktop Linux is arcane and full of obscure configurations

They do.

Re: Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing (2011)

#62

Post by qhwudbebd » Sat, May 11, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

craftuser wrote: post #36

ChuckMcM wrote: post #31

I like the essay but it fails to realize the goal posts are not fixed on the field. General purpose computing is alive and well and cheaper than ever, you can build the equivalent of a PC/AT for about $50 in parts. What Cory misses is that when we were building CP/M machines and IBM PC clones, there already was a big pile of computers that were locked down so that somebody else could make money off of you using them.…

> You just can't run gcc on your TV. I'd be interested in speaking with anyone who has tried. =] But moreover, I think your point about the goal posts is apt given "the goal" is to have "cheap GPC" since the definition of cheap changes (in dollars adjusted for time) but the definition of GPC also changes. And so, you might say we're even moving them in (at least) two dimensions.

You could run gcc quite nicely on the little rockchip boards in a lot of smart TVs (people do repurpose them quite a bit) but I bet you'd melt the TV if you tried to compile gcc on there!

Re: Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing (2011)

#63

Post by dTal » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #57

dTal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already the case for mobile networks. Open source basebands are illegal. The best you can do is sequester your proprietary government-aproved co-processor as far as possible from your main processor, but most computers with such network adapters built-in aren't designed this way - they're designed to promiscuously share memory.

> This is already the case for mobile networks. Open source basebands are illegal. The best you can do is sequester your proprietary government-aproved co-processor as far as possible from your main processor, but most computers with such network adapters built-in aren't designed this way - they're designed to promiscuously share memory. I don't think open source basebands are illegal per se. I thought the legal encu…

It's not that there's a law (that I'm aware of) forbidding baseband software where the source is public - it's that operating a device with uncertified firmware is illegal. That means that devices with user-modifiable baseband firmware are also illegal (or at any rate, no manufacturer will take responsibility). So open community development of baseband firmware, in the usual model, is impossible - you can't legally test it (at least not without a questionably-legal SDR, a femtocell, and a faraday cage) and you can't certify it.

So while it might, technically, be true to say that open source basebands aren't illegal per se, the fact remains that they are functionally impossible because of the law.