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Doctorow: the Coming War On General-Purpose Computing
GuerillaRadio writes "Cory Doctorow's keynote at 28C3 was about the upcoming war on general-purpose computing driven by increasingly futile regulation to appease big content. 'The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.'"
If you don't have time for the entire 55-minute video, a transcript is available that you can probably finish more quickly.
Devices like the Raspberry Pi prove him wrong. If anything the backlash has already started: geeks are reclaiming their devices and building the systems that they want.
The music industry realised they were on to a losing battle five years ago. The movie industry will realise the same, soon. In fact, I give it less than five years before Google are producing their own content and streaming it world-wide, without restrictions.
If we can't make the argument for general purpose computing then we get what we deserve.
Most users never wanted freedom, they wanted to get work done or enjoy themselves. Unfortunately you don't need freedom for that. This is why the loss of basic and HyperCard doesn't matter.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I read the transcript, and by the time he started saying things like this:
I'm immediately reminded of countless Slashdot posts decrying the rise of appliance computing and lamenting the industry's move away from "general-purpose computing." That phrase is actually a euphemism for "nerd playground made by nerds for nerds," because that is what is actually being missed. Nerds feel power when they invest time and master a system, but non-nerds have neither the time nor desire to make computing a hobby. To them, computers are simply a means to get a job done, and that's the extent of their interest.
Doctorow argues that an appliance computer isn't a specialized computing device but a general-purpose computer running "spyware." This is a highly politicized perspective to take. But more importantly, it signifies a perspective that's out of touch with mainstream people; i.e., non-techies. Non-techies aren't interested in installing custom software or knowing what processes are running or uncovering their technological secrets. Those are things only techies care about.
Doctorow conflates this lament for nerd power with a lot of talk about copyright, DRM, and that all-important buzzword, "freedom." Not only does it make techies feel powerful to have mastery over the system, but it makes them feel important if they believe that their hobby is not just a lone expenditure of free time but the actions of a freedom fighter. However, I believe this is a confusion of issues. Appliance computing and DRM are necessarily not intertwined (look at the DRM-free iTunes Music Store), and appliance computing is just a derogatory (among nerds, anyway) term for an accessible product that most people can use. That such accessibility often necessitates the removal of configurability is simply unfortunate and incidental.
Stick-shift automobiles are generally more efficient gas-wise because you are able to directly control the gears used to move the vehicle, but most people today drive automatics. They don't want to mess with things, or tweak things, or dissect things. The car is a tool, and that is also true of computers.
Doctorow ends the talk with this:
Disregarding the pandering videogame terminology for a moment, this is a perfe
"Sufferin' succotash."
He mentions U-EFI bootloaders, but gives Apple a pass on their walled garden. I think that's one of the big factors making a lot of this sort of control more acceptable. And before you bring it up, yes, I realize that the OS X still lets you install any software you want. I'm specifically referring to iOS here. I think it's rise is the knee in the downward curve of general purpose computing.
While there is a small hacker subculture, and while they ever innovate and add features people want, the public (or at least some of them) will flock to the more open devices.
It isn't exactly something we can write laws about, because enforcement is hard, and it isn't something that is going to become law in every single country...
Standard PC hardware is used absolutely everywhere now days, even places it really has no business being; ATMs, voting machines, automatic train control systems, etc.
I'm sure Cory is trying to argue against locked-down devices -- the same argument he's been making for years -- but now he's repackaged the argument in a way that simply isn't true.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What these guys aren't counting on is the obsolescence of multibillion dollar CPU fabs. The advent of graphene as the substrate material threatens to turn the whole game on its head with resilient communities routing around the damage with flexible manufacturing and mesh networks. Disintermediate or die.
Seastead this.
If I can write a program and install it on my (unjailbroken) iOS device, is it really walled?
Sure, it might be unnecessarily difficult but that never stopped a true nerd.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HUEvRyemKSg http://bit.ly/sTTFyt
The worlds governance, both state and business eve where such distinctions are meaningful systems are largely corrupt and stupid and like Dodos or the Easter Islanders unable to adapt. Trying to eliminate the tools that can start to force them to change or replace their systems entirely or baring that co-opt them for their own survival is the only step they could take.
We need "rational" solutions but with a species that largely solves things through "who you know" rather than "what we know" getting there is hard. We need to, probably for species continuance or to avert civilizational collapse but I am not we'll get it.
No computing appliance can be all things to all people and nobody is going to buy 6 different appliance to do the job of a single general purpose computer.
The popular success of iOS and other closed systems doesn't mean there aren't choices out there. I have an easily-unlocked and rooted Android phone, and I love it. Would my wife appreciate the command-line access and Python scripting facilities? Probably not -- she didn't even want a feature phone -- even an iPhone would be overkill for her use cases.
HTC just announced that going forward, all their phones will have unlocked bootloaders. Not everything is going closed.
What we need more of is science!
What a douche, Doctorow is. Since the first TPM chips came out, there have been attempts to take away our control of our computers. Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End, written over five years ago, had one old character who managed to keep a computer that wasn't completely rooted at the processor level. The war started awhile ago. Cory is just so myopic, he only saw the skirmishes.
Doctorow argues that an appliance computer isn't a specialized computing device but a general-purpose computer running "spyware." This is a highly politicized perspective to take. But more importantly, it signifies a perspective that's out of touch with mainstream people; i.e., non-techies.
it doesn't make him wrong about that point, though. he is, in fact, entirely correct.
Not really. Appliances usually won't have the RAM, GPU, storage, etc that a general purpose will have. Furthermore the "spyware" characterization is erroneous. Locked down and digitally signed perhaps, but that is something different than spyware.
It's a problem that we the techies should be going out of our way to apprise the less nerdly of so that they can make intelligent decisions.
You are proving the GP's point. The less nerdy are making rational intelligent decisions. Locked down helps avoid malware and other maintenance issues. They just want to turn it on and read email and browse the web, they don't want to be a weekend system administrator. What is rational and intelligent for we techies is not necessarily so for the less nerdy, its all relative based upon what we want out of our devices. Until we techies realize this we are not likely to convince the less nerdy of anything.
I think Mr. Doctorow errs in assuming two things: 1) that there's an intrinsic value in the total openness of programmable electronic devices, and 2) that the new "walled garden" approach adopted by Apple, Microsoft et al. is somehow being done to benefit the estate of Jack Valenti (thank God the Supreme Court couldn't extend his lifetime).
Before you mod me into oblivion, hear me out.
Most people do not give a good goddamn about having control over the code execution path. In fact they don't want control because they can get confused into letting viruses and other malware execute. They want their devices to make life easier, whether that means keeping track of information or playing games to pass the time or some other convenience, and given a two-dimensional optimization choice over the convenience/freedom axis they'll pick convenience every time. And they're not wrong or stupid or evil to do so. They just don't agree with your set of principles.
And thank God for that, because I for one would not want to witness the consequences of a Melissa or Slammer-type worm infecting every Android or iOS device in the United States. We would just stop.
There will always be vigorous and enthusiastic communities centered around truly general purpose devices. You need only look to the many devices other posters here have mentioned, such as the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and dozens of other hackables. Hell, through Amazon you can rent time on an infinite mountain of general-purpose computing if you're interested.
Let's face it -- hackers, by which I mean the folks who want to push devices to do things they were neither designed nor intended to do, are a teensy minority in the world of users.
"They" (Big Content) want to turn the computer into the Television, where they control every aspect of what you do, see and hear.
The thing is it wouldn't be much of a war because all people have to do is stop consuming their content and they go away, but people just can't seem to do that, one other thing, why is every challenge in America labeled a "War" the war on piracy, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, etc.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Guess who the controlling does.
bjd
He just breaks it down in a way that makes me want to send ANOTHER email to my representatives about SOPA.
Hopefully everyone who reads this feels the same and takes a moment to contact their representatives to make sure that this puppy stays dead.
Down with ZOMBIE mpaa legislation!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The first half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against fascism. The second half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against communism. We are now engaged in a third great war: where governments try to gain total monitoring capabilities—where everything everyone does and says is monitored.
The goal will be to have everything tracked and recorded. The technology will certainly exist, and governments will certainly try to deploy it. And most people will acquiesce. Because the governments are doing it "to protect the children", or "to stop terrorism". Or maybe it will be done just for convenience (e.g. portions of the Internet now require a Google account—and having a Google account now requires giving Google your phone number). Just remember, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".
This war will last decades, like the first two. The outcome is anyone's guess.
Doctorow argues that an appliance computer isn't a specialized computing device but a general-purpose computer running "spyware." This is a highly politicized perspective to take.
And easily disproven. Appliance computers will usually not have the RAM, GPU, permanent storage, etc that a general purpose computer will have. Unless of course the definition of general purpose is bringing up a terminal app.
My *Kindle* has 64 times the RAM and 40000 times the mass storage capacity of my first general purpose computer. Not to mention a faster CPU and a way better operating system. Yes, it's not as awesome as a current rig, but it's definitely general-purpose.
iOS/Android smartphones/tablets are not appliances. They are general purpose handheld computers designed to handle everything from email to office productivity apps to video games. Appliances would be something like Apple TV, a device that downloads movies from the net, downloads videos from your phone, downloads photos from your phone or camera and displays them all on your TV. A general purpose computer could do all of this. The hardware in the Apple TV probably resembles a general purpose computer in many respects, but designers will probably leave off various unneeded things to reduce costs.
And your plans to neuter computers.
HTC just opened up their phones. There's tonnes of cheap tablets that are open. Thing is, even big guys like IBM want to keep things open. Look at HTML5. They're all too scared of Microsoft to risk a complete lock down.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Personally speaking, I use computers pretty much as a time-waster (browsing the web, chatting on a few forums), none of it is necessary or essential to me.
My internet "personal-details-footprint" is pretty much non-existent. I certainly don't need any of it. In fact when I get away for a few days - down to the coast where I have no computer - I feel so relaxed. I can spend my time doing far more productive things - like kicking back and reading, going fishing, sitting on my bum and doing nothing!
I know many, many people who are in the same boat. Computers are an appliance, in the same way as a microwave, or vacuum-cleaner. The fact that they're networked is of little or no consequence.
Many of these alarmists are so inward-looking that they can watch their own breakfast digesting. Unless they have a conspiracy to fret over they have no life.
Here's an idea - switch your PC off and go out into the real world.
General-purpose CPU - check
Ability to load, execute and replace arbitrary programs in storage - check
RAM, permanent storage, lots of I/O devices - check
Nope, still full fledged computer. First and second parts especially divide them from appliances - those usually have either specialised ASIC or Harvard architecture CPUs with program stored in on-chip flash.
... do not mean malware free computing, it means corporate sponsored malware the user is unaware of and can't get rid of. You people are dense who think walled gardens are going to be a panacea. The good thing about open systems at least is that they are analyzed by lots and lots of eyeballs. Closed systems will let nefarious organizations do whatever they want without your say or your knowledge.
... in the fight to keep technology as a way to empower society, not be enslaved by it.
Like most of his speeches and posts, I think you need to look beyond the alarmist examples that he uses to get your attention and actually think about the underlying message. This is not about whether PCs still have BASIC interpreters. I think it's about the deeper concepts of personal privacy and that we can not passively rely on corporations or the government to act benevolently and "do the right thing". We need to control our own destinies and manage our freedoms or we will lose them. Cory Doctorow wants to make us think.
The idea of the war against general purpose computing suggests that virtualization of computing and IO resources will come to the end and servers end up as concrete appliances. Both directions can certainly be seen happening right now but the economical arguments surely overcome the infinite sea of appliances point of view and the dreaded future will not happen as long as energy, space and raw materials are limited resources. ;) ) copying. Consumer PC could become similarly limited destroying DIY markets in the process for our security (After all, the components could be used to create a cluster to simulate chemical "Ali", "Ajatollah" nucular and "Ruski" bug weapons! oh-the-horror.), while workstation market would be resurrected beyond death. Unlimited content creation machine, now starting at $15k for you college students somewhere out there!
Then again, the consumer DAT recorders did have copy protection while the professional models allowed unlimited (and therefore creative by default
Otherwise, we would all be renting computing time from the nearest residential server farm without even thinking about the various surfaces, displays, projections, eye pads, control devices and interfaces we are using while transparently interacting with the services rented or otherwise provided. Our society and civilization would become clouded, replicated and automatically backed up, terminal devices encrypted and streaming fashion statements (they are already, almost) and our personal virtual computing spaces like our houses in terms of utilities consumption and customizability. "Want to build something as a hobbyist? Rent some workshop time from the local community college. Guidance available for the static analyzers and the clustered build environment."
Oh, I forgot. Annual price rise 5% above inflation for all services, bubbles classified as exceptional circumstances outside of provider's control..
Good reason to contribute to the FSF fundraiser
Blaming the pirates for DRM is like blaming terrorists for the porn scanners at the airport. The terrorists didn't take put those scanners in the airports; our own government did. The pirates didn't add DRM to our multimedia content and apps; the manufacturers did....
We are each responsible for our own actions. People pirating movies does not excuse the industry's reaction to it any more than foreign terrorists crashing some planes into buildings on September 11th excuses unlawful searches, unlawful wiretapping, unlawful detention, etc. It takes two to tango. It is far better to deny the other side battle than to pursue a course that leads to totalitarianism.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
of fighting forward.
All these multibillion dollar corporations, a web this big in size, incomparable amount of tech professionals in i.t. than any other field, and what ?
nobody is doing nothing. just eff and a few other organizations fighting futile battles in bought-out courts.
What have you done for your internet ?
Read radical news here
I suggest general computing may go the way the auto industry did. There was a time when my father was a young man (the 1950s) when you could build and modify cars any way you wanted (I am in Australia, your experience may be different). You had to have it approved to drive on the roads but it was relatively easy to do and lots of men had the skills and interest to do it. The last remnants of these skills are seen in the small number of people who build hotrods or modify 4x4's. Government regulations since the 1980s have made this increasingly difficult. Auto repairers are no longer allowed to use second-hand parts for repairs to cars and entire panels must be replaced rather than filled, sanded and repainted. All modifications must have a private automotive engineer inspect work done and certify the quality. This is also expensive. Increasing safety regulations in new cars has made then more expensive and heavier. I apologise for the automotive analogy, but computing may go the same way. 99% of people will just buy cheap off the shelf consumer devices to watch YouTube clips and use FaceBook. They will have no interest in using computers for anything else. People who want to "build" their own computers and modify or write custom software will go the way of back yard mechanics - they will be regarded with suspicion and seen as dangerous to the interests of society. They will be considered as subversives, or worse, libertarians ;)
And to tie back to cars again, governments will eventually mandate tracking devices in cars for charging a per kilometer/mile tax and mandate automated speed limiting will be enforced. Police (or the TSA in the US) will push for remote kill switches to be compulsory on the grounds that high speed chases are too dangerous. Remote door locking by the police to prevent escape will be included. Safety proponents will also lobby for fully automated cars that will not be allowed to be controlled by human drivers while on major roads and freeways/toll roads. Drivers who hack their cars to circumvent these controls will be criminals.
Today those who agitate against laws like SOPA are seen by governments as potential terrorists. Imagine the crazy laws against home-brew computer enthusiasts that will be proposed by the big content entities and bureaucrats pushing for the SOPA twenty years from now. Twenty years ago no one imagined the Patriot Act could have existed, but it does and is unlikely to ever be revoked.
Governments have no interest in having computer technology empowering society.
Again, sorry for diverging from the primary topic.
updated 4 the 21st century: to include the right to keep & bear compilers;-)
Wow - a full blown war? Really? So the hackers have been using - what M16s, grenade launchers and IEDs? And the Content Providers have been using nukes?
Please, please, please - will people stop using the word "war" unless real weapons are in use and people are dying.
In some cases, it's all still there in the chipset, they just don't add a connector. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find a USB port internal to an embedded computer just for the debugging port in the EHCI. Load a firmware that inits it and you can connect whatever you want to it.
RMS saw it coming in 1997, except that his timetable is about 70 years too late: The Right to Read. In fact, the scientific literature is already closed to most people...not unlike the Dark Ages when most books were hidden in monasteries and an education outside of Big Religion would most likely get you executed, either burned or drawn and quartered...
In the long run, intelligence is merely another fatal mutation in the twisted and tortured evolutionary road.
I always have time for 55 minute videos, here's how you can, too:
1) download the video. When it's about half downloaded already,
2) start mplayer $VIDEO
Press the [ and ] keys a few times to speed up time to your liking. For talks I usually do x1.46, but YMMV. Start slowly, and when you're comfortable increase the speed. Keep increasing until it's too hard to understand.
As a rule, all the TV type media I watch is speeded up, and takes only half the normal running time to view. Try it.
I love how he handled the attempt at 48:40 to get him to give up a bitcoin soundbite. He just asks for another question without even answering LOL! A very disciplined speaker.
> "Blaming the pirates for DRM is like blaming terrorists for the porn scanners at the airport."
The difference is that terrorists aren't blowing things up with any regularity. Pirates, on the other hand, are all over the place. It was slashdot, afterall, that reported a few months back that 85% of the people who were attempting to connect to Stardock's servers to play "Demigod" had pirated it. 94% of the people who played COD on Windows had pirated it. So, yes, I would say that "Blaming the pirates for DRM is like blaming terrorists for the porn scanners at the airport." is an accurate analogy if terrorists were bringing down planes every week, and if they were bringing down planes every week, then we could absolutely blame airport scanners on them. As things currently stand (with the lack of actual terrorists), there doesn't seem to be much point to airport scanners. They exist because of our fear.
The year is 2072 and the internet is under strict government control. After the Silicon Valley jihad of 2065 the United Earth Government grasped software and hardware development by the balls. Consequently all new processors have built in digital rights management and all compilers are issued by license. All written code is screened for non government approved uses by the Godaddy-Apple Megacorporation. So called "free" microprocessors are an ancient myth talked about in the back rooms of shady nootropic bars, given that 98% of electronics were eliminated during brief upper atmospheric accidental nuclear war of 2059. As Alek Desmall was unzipping his clean room suit all he could think about was how tired he was of seeing and hearing the mother-#(@$(@) Apple load screen on his holotable every morning. A unconscious technician was sleeping in his chair, not having realized that his coffee tasted a little funny. Alek entered the lights-out CNOL (carbon nanotube and optical light) control room and began to "renovate" the system....
Even the Raspberry Pi disproves your point: the video drivers are "closed" -- i.e. even the docs for the more "interesting" processor within that Broadcom wonderchip in there are secret (and most probably covered by hundreds to thousands of patents).
Not that I'm disparaging Raspberry's effort here. I'm downright thrilled by what they're doing (and might even buy a couple of 'em).
Still, we should keep our eyes open and know what is -- and what isn't. And fight for more.
When the iPhone and the App store became popular, I predicted that eventually they would try to lock own the personal computers as well.
As an Apple Mac OS developer I can say that if you want to write application software t sell in the Mac OS App Store, you have to write your application using the new "sandbox" technology, otherwise it will not be approved. For many versions now, Microsoft Windows has had an admin setting that only allows signed for net apps to run, not native code programs. Should the day come that the powers that be decide all desktop machines must have that setting, we would only be able to write managed code. But managed code cannot perform against well written native code, and the bug vendors will still use native code and manage to get it authorized. Microsoft can't let developers create something that runs better on Windows than Office...
Can I please say one thing on this? IMHO, there are many more intelligent people on /. that I love reading comments from. Every single time this guy comes up in a story, I place a snide comment, and I usually get a good chuckle. Its not that his ideas are totally fucked up, I just get the HIstory Channel's "Ancient Aliens: vibe fom him. To me, you guys on /. are the smartest people I know, and thank god its an amalgamation of thought, because you can pick and choose what you identify from articles. Can we please stop holding ANYONE as an authoriy on ANYTHING?
Hey kids, I have a great idea. Let's get a fiction writer known for his great essays on scary subjects like gold mining and surveillance to give us a speech about computer security. There's no way he could possibly be working an angle on this to promote a book, so we're safe.
Again, /.ers, YAWN! wake me when there is a real problem.
And all of you who have been supporting Apple and other peddlers of curated computing devices with money, arguments (employing advanced mental gymnastics), and "don't worry Mr. Frog the water's still cool" rhetoric have been aiding the enemy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I generally agree with the view that we are going down a slippery slope when it comes to individual liberties being subverted to fit the model of special interest groups like the copyright cartel. A couple of things I thought about.
-1) It's worth remembering that Hollywood became what it was when the young movie industry felt stifled and encumbered by Thomas Edison's legal challenges asking everyone to pay license fees to use his inventions on the East Coast, so they decided to move West. (sounds familiar?...) People and companies will move again if there is no breathing room left in the US.
-2) Between China and India there are over 2.5 billion people on the planet to whom this makes no difference whatsoever, as for all intents and purposes, copyright enforcement is non-existent. The market they create is too big to ignore, and general-purpose computing boxes that are fully open and customizable will always be around because of them.
The ability to bring up a terminal may very well be the ultimate sign that you are using a general purpose computer. Anything less implies the makers are dictating how users can interact with the device.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Spoken like someone who has never lived in the Middle East. They're blowing things up with regularity. Just not in the U.S.
Also, it's not really relevant. There's no evidence that DRM actually increases sales if any cheaper alternatives exist (or any non-DRM alternatives, regardless of cost). If someone cannot pirate the game they want to play, they are likely to pirate something else rather than buy the game.
All the pseudo-studies that ask people if they would have bought some product if they could not pirate it are completely missing the point. Most people don't generally pirate things that they can afford. Thus, we can safely assume that they would have bought only some subset, X, but would not have bought or used a much larger subset, Y. By trying all of the titles in X U Y instead of just X, the pirates provide free word-of-mouth advertising based on the larger set of titles, leading to sales of Y that would not otherwise happen. This counteracts many of the lost sales for X.
Further, those studies completely ignore network effects. The term "network effects" refers to the perceived value of a service increasing as more users join that service. For example, when there were only three people on the Internet, it wasn't that interesting. Now that almost everybody is on it, you're looked at as a luddite if you don't have an email address. Network effects affect some products more than others, but they are a major factor in sales of multiplayer games and creative software.
With creative software, network effects come into play when people start mailing files around; at this point, most people who buy Microsoft Word buy it because of network effects. They know they're going to get lots of files in that format, so it is to their advantage to use that format. Further, they know that if they create files in that format, most people will be able to read them. I remember a statistic that showed that most copies of Word in China were pirated. Given that most U.S. products are manufactured in China, if China had not pirated MS Word, there are a large number of companies in the U.S. that would be unable to use Word files to communicate with their partner companies in China, and thus there are a lot of copies of Word that would not have been sold to companies in the U.S.
The same effect occurs with multiplayer games. The enjoyment that people get from a multiplayer game depends to a significant degree on how many people are playing. Sure, if the servers are overloaded, this can be a negative, but on the average, having more players is a net positive.
Also, many people buy games because their friends are on there. If one of those people buys a game and makes a copy for three friends, that's one sale. If that one person is deciding whether to buy that multiplayer game and can't copy it for those three friends, that may well result in zero sales.
For this reason, every study that has looked at actual numbers instead of doing bogus surveys has consistently shown that piracy increases sales on the whole. Most people don't pirate what they can afford, so the downside of piracy is bounded. Because of the network effects plus the free word-of-mouth advertising, the upside of piracy is basically unbounded. Therefore, the notion that DRM could improve sales is unfathomable.
So yes, it's just like the porn scanners. It's a lot of extra expense that makes life miserable for everyone, but provably does not improve things in the slightest and in many respects makes things worse, instigated as a knee-jerk reaction by a bunch of overpaid higher-ups who didn't really think things through.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The lockdown, etc., is on cheap commodity consumer general purpose computers. What you're really looking at is going back to the hacker days of the 70s and 80s. the non-locked down computer is either very low end (see Arduino and PIC) or expensive (see 1979 vintage Z80 or 81 vintage IBM PC at thousands of dollars).
What you won't have is huge flexible horsepower available at impulse buy price points ($100-200), because ultimately, that low price point is really enabled by the use of the technology in distributing paid-for content. The hacker market cannot support the volumes to get $100 PCs. The business market doesn't mind paying $5000, because the wetware sitting in front of the computer costs $50-100k/yr, and business isn't sufficiently high volume to drive the price down (and further, they don't much care about lockdown... they want it for their own purposes).
Only the consumer market has volumes in the 100 Million plus range where the 10s of million in development costs for that new processor can be recouped at $0.10/unit
How quickly we forget that the iPhone initially did not allow locally installed apps.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
How quickly we forget that the iPhone initially did not allow locally installed apps.
Even so they were designed to handle a wide variety of applications and games. That original iPhone has the same CPU, GPU and RAM as the iPhone 3G, the later being the phone that was launched at the same time as the store. The original hardware didn't preclude any type of application, it was the 1.0 operating system. The App Store was an iPhone OS 2.0 feature. However the SDK and the future ability to write 3rd party apps was announced during 1.0's heyday.
> "Spoken like someone who has never lived in the Middle East. They're blowing things up with regularity. Just not in the U.S."
So, what's your point? It's obvious that you were talking about airport scanners in the US. Now, you want to change things up and talk about blowing things up in the Middle East? Additionally, when bringing up the Middle East, you've decided not to confine "blowing things up" to airports anymore (which is the whole point of airport scanners). So, I'm calling you out on: (1) switching the subject from the airport scanners in the US to airport scanners in the Middle East, (2) hardly any planes blow up in the Middle East, largely because Israel is so heavy-handed about scanning people going on planes. My point still stands and it's pretty obvious that the existence of airport scanners is dependent on the rates of terrorism. If airplane terrorism rates are low, then airport scanners are a waste of time and money and are only a product of our fear, but if airplane terrorism is high, then the existence of airport scanners is reasonable and prudent. So, whether airport scanners are reasonable or not is dependent on the rates of terrorism. To pursue the analogy: comparing US airport scanners to DRM is a bad comparison given that airport terrorism in the US is low but piracy rates are high.
> "There's no evidence that DRM actually increases sales if any cheaper alternatives exist (or any non-DRM alternatives, regardless of cost). If someone cannot pirate the game they want to play, they are likely to pirate something else rather than buy the game."
First of all, if you're assert a statement like "There's no evidence that DRM actually increases sales if any cheaper alternatives exist" without evidence, then I'll assert the opposite: "There's no evidence that DRM DOESN'T actually increases sales EVEN if any cheaper alternatives exist". Afterall, if there's no evidence on either side, I'm not going to let you get away with suggesting that your side is right without evidence. Also, I don't believe that's true. In fact, I can think of a specific case where a girl told me that she pirates all her music. But, sometimes she can't get her iTunes to sync her music with her iPod, so she actually buys a copy of the song since that seems to help things sync. I also think that sometimes pirates really want something and if they can't get it through piracy, they will buy it because they want to play it that badly - and other games just aren't a good substitute.
> "All the pseudo-studies that ask people if they would have bought some product if they could not pirate it are completely missing the point. Most people don't generally pirate things that they can afford."
A few months back, I was hanging out with some friends and somehow it came up that one of my friends pirated a copy of Photoshop. But, the thing is that the guy who pirated it comes from an extremely rich family. I've been told that his dad made over $100 million last year. He has plenty of money, but he still pirates shit. (And I've got plenty more examples further down on this comment.)
> "Further, those studies completely ignore network effects. The term "network effects" refers to the perceived value of a service increasing as more users join that service."
Oh yeah, we should be thanking pirates for their piracy. There's evidence to the contrary. First, the music industry's revenue has declined by 2/3rd over the past 10 years - where are all the "network effects"? Second, sales of games on the PC (the easiest platform for piracy) have also declined over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, console sales (which are much more difficult to pirate on, thanks to hardware) have skyrocketed. I looked up the sales of COD on the PC versus the XBox 360. There were almost the same number of people playing the game on the PC as the XBox360, but the rates of piracy were so much higher on the PC that the game sold 20x as many copies on the XBox360 as on the PC. W
Or it just simply ran the most convenient set of hardware at the time for booting a *nix kernel and run a modified OSX environment. That the same hardware proved itself capable of running native apps do not signify that Apple had any intention of actually allowing that. Then again, ol' Jobs was a master of subterfuge.
Perhaps we may never know what they really had planned at the time. All we do know was that they made a big fuzz about webapps (tho badly handled, as one could not keep a web app open beside a browsing session), and only after jailbreakers released videos of phones running native code did they release the app store. If this was planned all along, or simply a "oh crap, the cat's out of the bag" reaction, has even odds. Hell, they kept a tight leach on multitasking until very recently. And even then only certain kinda of apps are allowed to multitask. Any other need to dump state once the home button is pressed as they risk being shut down to free ram at any moment. This is behavior not seen on Android, nor was it normal behavior on a desktop PC back when similar ram amounts was common.
All in all the app environment of a iphone is more like a swiss army knife (or a electric drill with interchangeable bits). Multiple tools, only one of which can be used at any one time.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Doctorow makes light of:
And yet I worry: What will happen if somebody gets their hands on a killer virus and builds it with a DNA assembler?
If nuclear weapons could be built with cheap lab equipment, we probably would have destroyed ourselves, or at least our civilization, already. Aren't killer virus codes just as bad? Is it better to have free information exchange, or to prevent the spread of truly dangerous information?
Or what if it's impossible to stop the spread of such things? This might explain The Fermi paradox.
My *Kindle* has 64 times the RAM and 40000 times the mass storage capacity of my first general purpose computer. Not to mention a faster CPU and a way better operating system. Yes, it's not as awesome as a current rig, but it's definitely general-purpose.
iOS/Android smartphones/tablets are not appliances.
Just to clarify, Kindles in general (exception: Kindle Fire) are not smartphones and not tablets and run neither iOS nor Android. They are very much designed and marketed only for reading books. Still, inside they are very much general purpose computers.
Big shops make the big things and indie shops and hobbyists make the original, innovative stuff.
But this also means that "original, innovative stuff" has to either be single-player or suffer the lag of online multiplayer because local multiplayer is reserved for consoles, and consoles are reserved for big shops.
There's a big difference between Apple's qualification to develop for an iPod touch and Nintendo's qualification to develop for a DSi or 3DS.
The typical smartphone of today offers you a route to get custom software onto it so long as you're willing to sell it to other people
Applications used internally within a business are not made to be sold to other people, nor are the programs written by a computer science student in the course of his or her studies. But fortunately, that's not a problem, as the plurality OS on North American smartphones is Android, and any device that comes with Android Market allows the user to adb install arbitrary self-signed APKs.
And what's your excuse for not counting the N900? It's a mass-market phone
Not in the United States market. Slashdot is run from the United States, and I live in the United States. On May 15, 2010, I walked into a Best Buy store, a T-Mobile store, and a RadioShack store in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In each, I asked to try a Nokia N900 phone, and in each, I was disappointed.
Content providers could require that some API report that the processor has DRM built in, but that is the beauty of software layers: they can report whatever you want.
Which is why the report would have to be digitally signed by hardware with a certificate that the publisher trusts. Look up trusted platform module on Google to see how.
First, between ubiquitous data plans and wifi, sheer size of content
A typical smartphone data plan is enough for about one 2 GB movie a month, after which point the carrier begins to charge prohibitive overages. Airplanes also tend not to provide affordable broadband Internet access. So how is this a strike against offline playback of video?
They are general purpose handheld computers
A general-purpose computer is capable of simulating a universal Turing machine, (or, if you want to get technical, a universal linear bounded automaton because it has limited RAM). The iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad cannot because there exist programs for the universal LBA that Apple categorically refuses to digitally sign.
I agree with you in principle that voting with one's wallet is ideal. But buy what instead? For example, I disagree with the lockdown policies of Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. So what should I buy instead of their game consoles?
I happen to have a GE toaster with a digital countdown clock on it. It also has a bagel button; I guess that sets some combination of time and power that's best for bagels. But then I don't really use it for anything but Pop-Tarts anyway.
Toasters are better at toasting than my washing machine.
Both a toaster and a washing machine could be described as peripherals controlled by some sort of computer. Compare to the fact that a printer is better at printing a document than a modem.
I do not carry my workstation around with me to make phone calls.
Yet. Smartphones are almost to the point where you could end up using a phone as a computer by plugging in an HDMI monitor, pairing to a Bluetooth keyboard, and using your phone as a trackpad.
Now clearly, there are times when devices get over-specialized
And arguably, a computer that looks like a general-purpose computer but is locked down to run only applications digitally signed by its manufacturer has become over-specialized.
So all that needs to happen is for people to make clear they don't want DRM in hardware, and the industry will have to comply, because otherwise they'll lose a lot of money. So I'll keep pushing in that direction.
And unfortunately for both of us, people who don't care because they don't feel a need to do things that the DRM prevents could end up outpushing you because they still outnumber you.
Compare Archos's Android media players with an iPod touch
Archos 43 has no multitouch. Archos 43 has no legit access to the official app store. Sure, it has AppsLib, Amazon Appstore, Soc.io, and SlideME, but (for example) Chase Bank doesn't make its check deposit application available anywhere but Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. So an iPod touch can run it but an Archos 43 cannot. The 9th-gen devices have solved this, but so far there's a 9th-gen Archos counterpart only to the iPad, not to the iPod touch. I haven't yet had a chance to try the recently released Samsung Galaxy Player, which I'm told is finally Android's complete answer to the iPod touch.
I mean, at the point where you're paying $200 for a phone, plus ~$80/month in service
iPod touch: $200, and $0/mo in service. Yet it still needs $396 in certificates over its expected four-year service life and a $599 Mac to compile the programs (instead of the computer that one already owns or can pick up for under $200 at a used computer shop). Now what was your point that others haven't already addressed?
buying a used Mac
Macs hold their resale value quite well. A lot of the used Macs that I see listed on eBay for less than the price of a new entry-level Windows PC are pre-2006 and therefore incapable of running the Intel-only iPhone SDK.
But whatever, $99 isn't prohibitive
Multiply it by the number of years that one expects to use a device and it becomes $396, which is harder to justify.
Don't make iPhone software
And others have explained to you exactly why they don't.
"reason" doesn't appeal to me without some specific supporting evidence that I'm likely to be harmed.
The reason is that if people quit buying open devices, then companies will quit making them, and people who want them will have nowhere to get them. This has already been happening in video games: all of the platforms designed for local multiplayer (two to four gamepads and a large monitor) are cryptographically locked down.
purpose is inherently flexible
Manufacturers of locked-down devices will claim that purpose is whatever the box says purpose is. And since sometime in 2008, Nintendo's box says purpose is "unauthorized technical modifications will render your game or system unplayable".
The best legislation, then, would be to require computational devices and software to be subject to lemon laws.
How would this mesh with the ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY found in typical free software licenses?
They want their devices to make life easier, whether that means keeping track of information or playing games to pass the time or some other convenience, and given a two-dimensional optimization choice over the convenience/freedom axis they'll pick convenience every time.
And when they want to play a specific game, and the lockdown regime makes it inconvenient to install that game, the convenience they seek can come only from adding freedom.
such as the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and dozens of other hackables
As long as these remain legal to sell to the general public and not classified along with locksmith tools.
Hell, through Amazon you can rent time on an infinite mountain of general-purpose computing if you're interested.
You make a point. But there's general-purpose computing, and then there's interactive general-purpose computing. Internet lag and completely disconnected situations (e.g. Wi-Fi-only iPad on public transit, or anything on an airplane) keep the possibility of renting time on a server from being a cure-all.
HTC just opened up their phones. There's tonnes of cheap tablets that are open.
But not game consoles. Let me know when the maker of a set-top video gaming device opens up its devices and makes a binding promise to keep it open without eventually forcing the end user to choose between openness and the primary promoted purpose of the device.
People and companies will move again if there is no breathing room left in the US.
Where, now that the United States has been pushing its agenda on the rest of the developed world through treaties (e.g. WIPO Copyright Treaty) and executive agreements (e.g. ACTA)?
for all intents and purposes, copyright enforcement [in China and India] is non-existent.
How many refugees from the U.S. copyright regime are China and India ready to absorb?
general-purpose computing boxes that are fully open and customizable will always be around because of [China and India]
Around, but stopped at the border.
will people stop using the word "war" unless real weapons are in use
When an alleged infringer's home gets raided by armed officers, aren't real weapons in use?