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Great post -- I hope this will eventually trigger some serious discussion about hardware openness. People should realize it is (at least!) a serious freedom of
by mbq 14y ago
Great post -- I hope this will eventually trigger some serious discussion about hardware openness. People should realize it is (at least!) a serious freedom of competition issue, not only an odd fetish of weird bearded men.
- Udo 14y agoWhile I share your hope that posts like these will one day trigger serious discussions about hardware and software openness, my rational side is far less optimistic about the future. So far the normal everyday user doesn't seem to care for openness, in fact I believe a huge portion of that demographic would assert that computers are too powerful right now ("confusing", "difficult", "full of nerd jargon", "I don't want to learn how to do these things") and they'd welcome any development that made their MacBooks work exactly like a smartphone - including heavy-handed censorship and everything. I am convinced that the computers of the future will be severely limited devices and people will love it.
- ttt_ 14y agoThere's no reason both ways cannot coexist. Just put a gateway out of the walled garden so people can come and go as they please.
- taligent 14y agoIf only it was that simple. Those "people" who come and go as they please include those "people" who are trying to run bots, steal information, spam etc.
- maxerickson 14y agoDoesn't the ongoing creation of jailbreaks make this difference mostly hypothetical?
- mbq 14y agoWhat about a law-enforced, sealed jumper under the battery? You break it with a screwdriver and a gadget permanently enters "open" mode in which original, proprietary OS performs suicide and decodes the bootloader. Hostile jailbreak is hard and won't get unnoticed, producer software is safe and advanced users can't be ignored.
- jiggy2011 14y agoThe problem with that is there is no way to compare it to what could have been. Let's assume that one or two manufacturers get a monopoly on computing and control everything that can be done with bits and bytes, of course people will be happy whenever there is a major improvement to these platforms.