Perhaps this'll fall on deaf ears - we'll see. To date I've found that HN is one of the easier places to speak out against "the herd"... but your comment has t

Perhaps this'll fall on deaf ears - we'll see. To date I've found that HN is one of the easier places to speak out against "the herd"... but your comment has to follow logically from the parent, and you have to back it up with some sort of evidence or reason for people to believe you. For example, your most recent comment, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5096081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5096081. The parent comment talks about Raspberry Pi, and how hackable and open it is, and how the iPhone is the opposite of this, which is why it's unpopular with hacker types. Your response doesn't make sense for a number of reasons: a) What bubble? Nobody is talking about bubbles. And who's "we"? b) you said "Products like the iPhone are for consumers. That's everybody." Er, then who is Android for? There are lots of people who buy Android, and lots of them are consumers too. So this statement is obvious nonsense. c) here you're arguing against a straw man. The "hackers" aren't pissed because lots of people are using iPhones, they're pissed because Apple lock their phone down and then play games trying to lock in more market share, and squeeze out more revenue from their developers and users. It's wise to remember that there's a long history of companies locking people into platforms or applications and then screwing them. You're ignoring that part of the argument in favor of a different one, which is that some mythical "hackers" hate "normal" people (which is completely untrue - they just hate "stupid" people). d) "Using iPhones" is not anywhere near "computing". Not even on the same continent, much less ballpark. So - what would I have done differently in your position? Well, the obvious one is just to gracefully concede the point - the iPhone is a lot more locked down than a Raspberry Pi. Assuming that you want to defend the iPhone on that front, you need to find ways in which the iPhone is also open. Hell, most people would settle for "ways in which the iPhone is more open than you thought". If you can find links to some of those, I'll upvote you :)