11 ms·

The coming civil war over general purpose computing

279 points by Create 14y ago

monochromatic 14y ago
That site design gave me an aneurysm.
- artichokeheart 14y ago
  I was put off at first but discovered that by using Page Down it was more slide show-ish (and I'll admit kind of cool) and less headache inducing.
gcb 14y ago
This is basically the most famous text from RMS but with pop culture references. Not less true because of that... And that's why i own a touchpad running a cyanogen build from me instead of the latest Apple fad. Or why i use Debian and gentoo instead of Ubuntu. (that last one will make the more clueless jumpy)
16s 14y ago
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.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  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.
  - CapitalistCartr 14y ago
    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.
chm 14y ago
TLDR please?
parasubvert 14y ago
tl;dr Once Apple loses and Android (or "open platforms", whatever that means) win the general purpose computing war, and every technology illiterate device owner is telling their phone, computer, tablet boot loaders what software sources they trust (Ubuntu, ACLU, EFF, and Wikileaks, natch), we still have a problem. Computers are everywhere, from vending machines to subway turnstiles, to pacemakers, and that users are going to be easily oppressed by owners' restrictions. Thus we need user-overrides to be able to overcome this oppression. This is all about the effectiveness of decentralized decision making and thus was supported by both Hayek and Marx for opposite reasons. Thus libertarians shouldn't whine about property rights violations. In fact they should support it, because it's just a natural extension of why the "general purpose computing war" was won in favour of openness, it was all about regulation (by Apple, or the Government) vs. owner's property rights to run what they want on their computers. And property rights will win (we presume). (Insert lots of debatable philosophical asides, historical allegories, and modern anecdotes to justify this thesis.) In summary, defeating the forces of regulation (:hint: Apple :hint:) is what I call the "war" on general purpose computers, and this war is all about defending owner's rights to run what they want on their computers. And though I don't explicitly say it will be won by the forces of openness, it's completely obvious that the world will determine that regulating computers is the wrong way to solve problems and we'll all be happily using trusted bootloaders that only run owners' approved code (not what Apple, or the government, wants us to run). The following war after THAT one is won, will be a "civil war" for users rights... and that I can't solve. "Agreeing to disagree on this one isn't good enough. We need to start thinking now about the principles we'll apply when the day comes. If we don't start now, it'll be too late." [end synopsis] I can't quite respond to this yet... words fail me. edit: Rewording on tl;dr
mark_l_watson 14y ago
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 device that probably would never be hacked, but in a sense it is already hacked as far as my privacy goes. I happen to like Apple products, running OS X on my Air and just Linux (Ubuntu) on my MBP. From a freedom and privacy perspective I would really like to a bit more fully control my devices by running Linux but I find I can get some types of work done just a little faster using OS X rather than Linux. DRM is not a problem for me on Linux because my Samsung Galaxy S III can play Netflix as can the Nexus table. I went so far as signing up as an Apple developer early this year to get an early version of Mountain Lion and bought an iPad, but listening to Doctorow and other people who think more deeply about personal rights and freedoms than I do, I am more often thinking of paying the small Linux productivity tax. BTW, if Apple continues to rule digital markets, it would be ironic if Microsoft saw a business opportunity to make Windows devices respect personal freedoms.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- tikhonj 14y ago
  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 even worse than Apple by conflating the somewhat free Windows on x86 with the entirely locked-down Windows on ARM.
  - pyre 14y ago
    > 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.
fmstephe 14y ago
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 that the government might be watching my internet habits. I think that we, as programmers, enjoy a luxury that is almost unreproducible in any other field. My wife is a structural biologist, and as much as she loves what she does you can't crystallize proteins in our living room. I truly hope that however this unfolds that my son will be able to hack on something, freely and happily (if he so desires) in the future.
- thronemonkey 14y ago
  I think your fear is totally justified. Programming for play is many people's first step towards a deeper understanding of the machines that run so much of the world these days, and that's important.
- nirvana 14y ago
  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.)
SudarshanP 14y ago
Some day, Owning a computer that cannot be bricked by govt or "Intellectual Property Owners" at their whim will regulated like the brewing of alcohol. You will have to pay through your nose to run even lame apps. Maybe even your government can get a cut so that it can go chasing weapons of mass destruction using the money extorted from the gullible masses.
Steko 14y ago
tl;dr: DRM doesn't work and is bad regulation doesn't work and is bad the gubmint's jackbooted thugs will force cochlear implants on you to make you patriotic because the market won't demand free as in stallman computing I've decided to frame it as a human rights issue
parasubvert 14y ago
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 no company will be your trusted for keeping your computers "safe" and "not lying to you". I think it's rather utopian. As far as I can tell, web-of-trust approaches only work in the software world, the hardware manufacturer ultimately has to be trusted to some level, either de facto by consumer belief or de jure by regulation. Ultimately, his whole premise about "owner freedom" vs "user freedom" may be fatally flawed. It assumes a) Apple wants to control both owners and users to do what they want, and b) owners must be able to control what happens on devices, and this is a necessary precondition to user freedom. I would argue a) Apple just wants to help users with a better experience and b) it's unlikely owners will ever be technically savvy enough to control things, they will always want to delegate things to some degree -- even technical people do this, looking at the number of devs that use Apple laptops. Cory also oversimplifies the ownership problem. No device owner actually "owns" the software they install, they license it - even with open source. Apple arguably has been the a great force for "user freedom", by constraining what "owners" (i.e. software developers) can and can't do on Apple devices, thus enabling freedoms to the users themselves -- freedom from malware, bad user experiences such as poor battery life, etc. They enable the end user to work around restrictions on content available on the native device by providing a completely open and high quality web browser to get at anything they want in a sandboxed environment. But they also allow the device owner to restrict user actions in the "open web" with (e.g.) parental controls. Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners -- they're about improving the user experience. Clearly the device owners trust Apple today, but Apple could fairly easily move to a TPM-based "certainty" approach where owners get to pick their App Store, if that's what consumers eventually want, and they lose sales over it. But, for now, the market doesn't seem to be arguing in favour of this kind of nuanced approach. edit: typos
- batgaijin 14y ago
  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.
yk 14y ago
Likely an important talk, however I think it is googled-down too much compared to the original talk at the 28C3 [1]. ( Android as model of a free OS is just a tribute to the organizers methinks.) In the 28C3 talk Cory developed the argument against DRM ( and locked down computers) more carefully. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
- hammersend 14y ago
  "Android as model of a free OS is just a tribute to the organizers methinks." Yeah, I'm sure the fact that you can download the source code to it, make any changes you want, and redistribute that source code or that you can install any app you want on an Android handset whether it's in the blessed market or not has nothing to do with it being open. Nothing at all.
anigbrowl 14y ago
This misses the mark, as I've said before. Privacy is the #1 problem; just as computers and the internet make it trivially easy to copy other people's IP (agree with the existence of IP or not, it's a fact of the modern marketplace), it also makes it easy for other people to monitor you, whether those others are governments, corporate proxies for governments, corporate proxies for private interests, or private actors. Hyperbolic anxiety attacks over lockdown? GMAFB - the modern world is a hacker's nirvana compared to the functional rigidity that was the norm during the home computer revolution of the 1980s. Back then, electronic devices were much more expensive than today, so that while non-digital things like VCRs were far easier to explore with a soldering iron, they were also engineered to within an inch of their lives and were not easy to repurpose to other tasks. The whole kerfuffle about 'general-purpose computing' is a foolish distraction. It's like citing the existence of ready-made wood furniture as evidence of a war on general-purpose carpentry. General-purpose computing is easier than ever because it's accessible at a wider range of scales than ever before, from geek-friendly microcontroller kits to distributed clustering architectures. The issue is privacy, and the fact is that the US doesn't have a well-defined legal standard for it, nor any authority dedicated to its preservation. On the up side, while this is going to lead to a good deal of conflict I have hope that most of that is going to take place within markets and via legislatures.
- gizmo686 14y ago
  I've always viewed privacy and user freedom as 2 sides of the same coin. The lack of privacy on the internet is not because of the nature of the internet, it is because when you go to a website, you send unnesasary information that you are not aware of, and the current model is that the website owns your data.
msg 14y ago
Rainbows End: "No User-Serviceable Parts Within". Technology is depicted as black boxes all the way down. Cars shut down when driven outside of sanctioned roads. LARP content unavailable unless you have the rights. Reflections on Trusting Trust: "You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself." The proposal is that Trusted Computing is supposed to defeat this truism. I have my doubts. I hope that we will be able to do irreparable damage to Trusted Computing and make it untenable. This large jail will be broken out of like all the others. We already live in a world where the rich can buy new legs and survive HIV better than the poor. The poor are already shamefully misused by social, legal, and economic systems stacked against them. Adding computers just adds a more explicit level of control. The solutions to the new problems are the same as the solutions to the old problems: enfranchise the poor, make government responsive to them, give them the tools for mobility and independence. The hackers will continue opening the technological ways. As a kind of Gotterdammerung last resort, the printable gun, the darknet, PGP keys. And that means that the problems are more scary because of future shock and culture shock than anything else. They're Hollywood nightmares about the future, but the future turns out to be, good and evil, the same old thing.
meric 14y ago
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/Software_agent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent [1] This is probably the wrong answer, but just a thought.
- jarman 14y ago
  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.
dave9999 14y ago
Have you ever thought about having to fight for your rights to install Linux? Not 'call your congressman' fight, but actual take to the streets, civil war, fight, for that right?
protomyth 14y ago
Sadly, I believe a lock down of computers is inevitable. Look at what happens when there is a security incident or some perceived violation of privacy. Lots of press and a visit by your company's C-level executives to Capital Hill so lawmakers can put on a circus. If you believe Android will continue to be more open than iOS, then I would just say a couple of more visits to DC will cure that. I wonder how many fortune 500 address books kept in Outlook of their salespeople were uploaded by an Windows app? Put the machine in your pocket and the cries for safety and privacy win. These Post-PC devices are amazing tools except for the people who make them sing and dance. I really would love a open hardware platform just for programmers.
ivan_ah 14y ago
At around 51:30, there is an off-topic question from the audience, which leads to an great answer: Q: What can you say about making a living writing things. Will you advise it? A: If you want to make a living writing things I would advise you to stop trying, because that is a bit like saying “I want to make a living buying lottery tickets”. Sounds like a If you don’t have a plan B for earning a living, you have the wrong career. Writing is a very very high-risk entrepreneurial venture that almost everyone who tries it fails at. Some people have succeeded using CC and some fraction without using CC, but they are rounding errors against all the people who try to earn a living with writing. Ouch! As a founder of a textbook startup it makes me wonder on this Monday morning. I guess he is talking specifically about writing fiction. Textbooks must be OK, Right?
mindslight 14y ago
He lost my interest halfway through when talking about TPM and failing to examine Remote Attestation. Yes, owners having control of the platform verification keys is quite important. But even in that world, if the TPM has a user-inaccessible signing key, the battle is set to be lost. If the sheer majority of the consumer market trusts a handful of OSs, banks et al will start requiring use of those "trusted" OSs to access online services. We're then right back in the same situation with no control over the computer in front of you. I think in the sheer majority of situations (excepting eg ATMs), fail-dead tamper resistance is a terrible goal. Ultimately, you either have to trust the physical security of the hardware in front of you or a third party service - there is no middle ground. Evil maid attacks are local, targeted, and user-mitigable through physical security and tamper-evidence. The requirements of trusted third parties are centrally developed, systematic, and mandatory.
expralitemonk 14y ago
In the future, if a developer wants to write and distribute software without having to ask permission from 10 different platform manufacturers, he will have to stick with web apps.

279 points by Create 14y ago

monochromatic 14y ago

That site design gave me an aneurysm.

artichokeheart 14y ago
I was put off at first but discovered that by using Page Down it was more slide show-ish (and I'll admit kind of cool) and less headache inducing.

gcb 14y ago

This is basically the most famous text from RMS but with pop culture references. Not less true because of that... And that's why i own a touchpad running a cyanogen build from me instead of the latest Apple fad. Or why i use Debian and gentoo instead of Ubuntu. (that last one will make the more clueless jumpy)

16s 14y ago

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.

sliverstorm 14y ago
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.
- CapitalistCartr 14y ago
  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.

chm 14y ago

TLDR please?

parasubvert 14y ago

tl;dr Once Apple loses and Android (or "open platforms", whatever that means) win the general purpose computing war, and every technology illiterate device owner is telling their phone, computer, tablet boot loaders what software sources they trust (Ubuntu, ACLU, EFF, and Wikileaks, natch), we still have a problem. Computers are everywhere, from vending machines to subway turnstiles, to pacemakers, and that users are going to be easily oppressed by owners' restrictions. Thus we need user-overrides to be able to overcome this oppression. This is all about the effectiveness of decentralized decision making and thus was supported by both Hayek and Marx for opposite reasons. Thus libertarians shouldn't whine about property rights violations. In fact they should support it, because it's just a natural extension of why the "general purpose computing war" was won in favour of openness, it was all about regulation (by Apple, or the Government) vs. owner's property rights to run what they want on their computers. And property rights will win (we presume). (Insert lots of debatable philosophical asides, historical allegories, and modern anecdotes to justify this thesis.) In summary, defeating the forces of regulation (:hint: Apple :hint:) is what I call the "war" on general purpose computers, and this war is all about defending owner's rights to run what they want on their computers. And though I don't explicitly say it will be won by the forces of openness, it's completely obvious that the world will determine that regulating computers is the wrong way to solve problems and we'll all be happily using trusted bootloaders that only run owners' approved code (not what Apple, or the government, wants us to run). The following war after THAT one is won, will be a "civil war" for users rights... and that I can't solve. "Agreeing to disagree on this one isn't good enough. We need to start thinking now about the principles we'll apply when the day comes. If we don't start now, it'll be too late." [end synopsis] I can't quite respond to this yet... words fail me. edit: Rewording on tl;dr

mark_l_watson 14y ago

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 device that probably would never be hacked, but in a sense it is already hacked as far as my privacy goes. I happen to like Apple products, running OS X on my Air and just Linux (Ubuntu) on my MBP. From a freedom and privacy perspective I would really like to a bit more fully control my devices by running Linux but I find I can get some types of work done just a little faster using OS X rather than Linux. DRM is not a problem for me on Linux because my Samsung Galaxy S III can play Netflix as can the Nexus table. I went so far as signing up as an Apple developer early this year to get an early version of Mountain Lion and bought an iPad, but listening to Doctorow and other people who think more deeply about personal rights and freedoms than I do, I am more often thinking of paying the small Linux productivity tax. BTW, if Apple continues to rule digital markets, it would be ironic if Microsoft saw a business opportunity to make Windows devices respect personal freedoms.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tikhonj 14y ago
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 even worse than Apple by conflating the somewhat free Windows on x86 with the entirely locked-down Windows on ARM.
- pyre 14y ago
  > 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.

fmstephe 14y ago

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 that the government might be watching my internet habits. I think that we, as programmers, enjoy a luxury that is almost unreproducible in any other field. My wife is a structural biologist, and as much as she loves what she does you can't crystallize proteins in our living room. I truly hope that however this unfolds that my son will be able to hack on something, freely and happily (if he so desires) in the future.

thronemonkey 14y ago
I think your fear is totally justified. Programming for play is many people's first step towards a deeper understanding of the machines that run so much of the world these days, and that's important.
nirvana 14y ago
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.)

SudarshanP 14y ago

Some day, Owning a computer that cannot be bricked by govt or "Intellectual Property Owners" at their whim will regulated like the brewing of alcohol. You will have to pay through your nose to run even lame apps. Maybe even your government can get a cut so that it can go chasing weapons of mass destruction using the money extorted from the gullible masses.

Steko 14y ago

tl;dr: DRM doesn't work and is bad regulation doesn't work and is bad the gubmint's jackbooted thugs will force cochlear implants on you to make you patriotic because the market won't demand free as in stallman computing I've decided to frame it as a human rights issue

parasubvert 14y ago

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 no company will be your trusted for keeping your computers "safe" and "not lying to you". I think it's rather utopian. As far as I can tell, web-of-trust approaches only work in the software world, the hardware manufacturer ultimately has to be trusted to some level, either de facto by consumer belief or de jure by regulation. Ultimately, his whole premise about "owner freedom" vs "user freedom" may be fatally flawed. It assumes a) Apple wants to control both owners and users to do what they want, and b) owners must be able to control what happens on devices, and this is a necessary precondition to user freedom. I would argue a) Apple just wants to help users with a better experience and b) it's unlikely owners will ever be technically savvy enough to control things, they will always want to delegate things to some degree -- even technical people do this, looking at the number of devs that use Apple laptops. Cory also oversimplifies the ownership problem. No device owner actually "owns" the software they install, they license it - even with open source. Apple arguably has been the a great force for "user freedom", by constraining what "owners" (i.e. software developers) can and can't do on Apple devices, thus enabling freedoms to the users themselves -- freedom from malware, bad user experiences such as poor battery life, etc. They enable the end user to work around restrictions on content available on the native device by providing a completely open and high quality web browser to get at anything they want in a sandboxed environment. But they also allow the device owner to restrict user actions in the "open web" with (e.g.) parental controls. Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners -- they're about improving the user experience. Clearly the device owners trust Apple today, but Apple could fairly easily move to a TPM-based "certainty" approach where owners get to pick their App Store, if that's what consumers eventually want, and they lose sales over it. But, for now, the market doesn't seem to be arguing in favour of this kind of nuanced approach. edit: typos

batgaijin 14y ago
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.

yk 14y ago

Likely an important talk, however I think it is googled-down too much compared to the original talk at the 28C3 [1]. ( Android as model of a free OS is just a tribute to the organizers methinks.) In the 28C3 talk Cory developed the argument against DRM ( and locked down computers) more carefully. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

hammersend 14y ago
"Android as model of a free OS is just a tribute to the organizers methinks." Yeah, I'm sure the fact that you can download the source code to it, make any changes you want, and redistribute that source code or that you can install any app you want on an Android handset whether it's in the blessed market or not has nothing to do with it being open. Nothing at all.

anigbrowl 14y ago

This misses the mark, as I've said before. Privacy is the #1 problem; just as computers and the internet make it trivially easy to copy other people's IP (agree with the existence of IP or not, it's a fact of the modern marketplace), it also makes it easy for other people to monitor you, whether those others are governments, corporate proxies for governments, corporate proxies for private interests, or private actors. Hyperbolic anxiety attacks over lockdown? GMAFB - the modern world is a hacker's nirvana compared to the functional rigidity that was the norm during the home computer revolution of the 1980s. Back then, electronic devices were much more expensive than today, so that while non-digital things like VCRs were far easier to explore with a soldering iron, they were also engineered to within an inch of their lives and were not easy to repurpose to other tasks. The whole kerfuffle about 'general-purpose computing' is a foolish distraction. It's like citing the existence of ready-made wood furniture as evidence of a war on general-purpose carpentry. General-purpose computing is easier than ever because it's accessible at a wider range of scales than ever before, from geek-friendly microcontroller kits to distributed clustering architectures. The issue is privacy, and the fact is that the US doesn't have a well-defined legal standard for it, nor any authority dedicated to its preservation. On the up side, while this is going to lead to a good deal of conflict I have hope that most of that is going to take place within markets and via legislatures.

gizmo686 14y ago
I've always viewed privacy and user freedom as 2 sides of the same coin. The lack of privacy on the internet is not because of the nature of the internet, it is because when you go to a website, you send unnesasary information that you are not aware of, and the current model is that the website owns your data.

msg 14y ago

Rainbows End: "No User-Serviceable Parts Within". Technology is depicted as black boxes all the way down. Cars shut down when driven outside of sanctioned roads. LARP content unavailable unless you have the rights. Reflections on Trusting Trust: "You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself." The proposal is that Trusted Computing is supposed to defeat this truism. I have my doubts. I hope that we will be able to do irreparable damage to Trusted Computing and make it untenable. This large jail will be broken out of like all the others. We already live in a world where the rich can buy new legs and survive HIV better than the poor. The poor are already shamefully misused by social, legal, and economic systems stacked against them. Adding computers just adds a more explicit level of control. The solutions to the new problems are the same as the solutions to the old problems: enfranchise the poor, make government responsive to them, give them the tools for mobility and independence. The hackers will continue opening the technological ways. As a kind of Gotterdammerung last resort, the printable gun, the darknet, PGP keys. And that means that the problems are more scary because of future shock and culture shock than anything else. They're Hollywood nightmares about the future, but the future turns out to be, good and evil, the same old thing.

meric 14y ago

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/Software_agent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent [1] This is probably the wrong answer, but just a thought.

jarman 14y ago
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.

dave9999 14y ago

Have you ever thought about having to fight for your rights to install Linux? Not 'call your congressman' fight, but actual take to the streets, civil war, fight, for that right?

protomyth 14y ago

Sadly, I believe a lock down of computers is inevitable. Look at what happens when there is a security incident or some perceived violation of privacy. Lots of press and a visit by your company's C-level executives to Capital Hill so lawmakers can put on a circus. If you believe Android will continue to be more open than iOS, then I would just say a couple of more visits to DC will cure that. I wonder how many fortune 500 address books kept in Outlook of their salespeople were uploaded by an Windows app? Put the machine in your pocket and the cries for safety and privacy win. These Post-PC devices are amazing tools except for the people who make them sing and dance. I really would love a open hardware platform just for programmers.

ivan_ah 14y ago

At around 51:30, there is an off-topic question from the audience, which leads to an great answer: Q: What can you say about making a living writing things. Will you advise it? A: If you want to make a living writing things I would advise you to stop trying, because that is a bit like saying “I want to make a living buying lottery tickets”. Sounds like a If you don’t have a plan B for earning a living, you have the wrong career. Writing is a very very high-risk entrepreneurial venture that almost everyone who tries it fails at. Some people have succeeded using CC and some fraction without using CC, but they are rounding errors against all the people who try to earn a living with writing. Ouch! As a founder of a textbook startup it makes me wonder on this Monday morning. I guess he is talking specifically about writing fiction. Textbooks must be OK, Right?

mindslight 14y ago

He lost my interest halfway through when talking about TPM and failing to examine Remote Attestation. Yes, owners having control of the platform verification keys is quite important. But even in that world, if the TPM has a user-inaccessible signing key, the battle is set to be lost. If the sheer majority of the consumer market trusts a handful of OSs, banks et al will start requiring use of those "trusted" OSs to access online services. We're then right back in the same situation with no control over the computer in front of you. I think in the sheer majority of situations (excepting eg ATMs), fail-dead tamper resistance is a terrible goal. Ultimately, you either have to trust the physical security of the hardware in front of you or a third party service - there is no middle ground. Evil maid attacks are local, targeted, and user-mitigable through physical security and tamper-evidence. The requirements of trusted third parties are centrally developed, systematic, and mandatory.

expralitemonk 14y ago

In the future, if a developer wants to write and distribute software without having to ask permission from 10 different platform manufacturers, he will have to stick with web apps.