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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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The ARM was designed for, and first used in, general purpose computers; I had an Acorn Archimedes on my desk in 1988, and an R260 (running BSD 4.2 with X11 and OSF Motif) on my desk two years later. BSD and the whole of Debian including Gnome and KDE are available for ARM, and with quad core chips and both MacOS and Windows 8 currently in development for ARM, new general purpose ARM hardware - mostly ultra-portable, but also desktop - is definitely on the way.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Radioshack has always sold a Macrovision remover. it was called the VHS video stabilizer. anyone that had a clue was able to get a device to defeat macrovision easily and cheaply.
And if you had a clue about electronics, you could easily turn down the AGC setting on the VCR and defeat it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Same video on YouTube, in case you don't want to go to an ad and javascript infested online mag.
You missed my point. I meant that "garage hacker" crowd, regardless of their line of business is going after discovering the new low hanging fruit. They have nothing to do in internal combustion engine for car fuel efficiency business anymore, as all easy improvements to the engine have been done and current advances require extreme levels of investment and expertise.
Similar thing will happen in the application stores in near future. All of the apps that are easy to make, provide a new and useful utility and haven't been done yet will be done. And then the revolution phase turns into evolution phase, where improvement takes place from inventing. At this point, "garage hacker" crowd goes looking for a new low hanging fruit, and larger commercial entities invest into improving the already existing pool of technology in the field.