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How Proprietary Software Lets Companies Cheat (locusmag.com)
"Proprietary software makes it possible to design products to cheat ordinary users..." writes Richard Stallman -- linking to a new essay by Cory Doctorow:
Carriers adapted custom versions of Android to lock customers to their networks with shovelware apps that couldn't be removed from the home-screen and app store lock-in that forced customers to buy apps through their phone company. What began with printers and spread to phones is coming to everything: this kind of technology has proliferated to smart thermostats (no apps that let you turn your AC cooler when the power company dials it up a couple degrees), tractors (no buying your parts from third-party companies), cars (no taking your GM to an independent mechanic), and many categories besides.
All these forms of cheating treat the owner of the device as an enemy of the company that made or sold it, to be thwarted, tricked, or forced into conducting their affairs in the best interest of the company's shareholders. To do this, they run programs and processes that attempt to hide themselves and their nature from their owners, and proxies for their owners (like reviewers and researchers). Increasingly, cheating devices behave differently depending on who is looking at them. When they believe themselves to be under close scrutiny, their behavior reverts to a more respectable, less egregious standard. This is a shocking and ghastly turn of affairs, one that takes us back to the dark ages.
All these forms of cheating treat the owner of the device as an enemy of the company that made or sold it, to be thwarted, tricked, or forced into conducting their affairs in the best interest of the company's shareholders. To do this, they run programs and processes that attempt to hide themselves and their nature from their owners, and proxies for their owners (like reviewers and researchers). Increasingly, cheating devices behave differently depending on who is looking at them. When they believe themselves to be under close scrutiny, their behavior reverts to a more respectable, less egregious standard. This is a shocking and ghastly turn of affairs, one that takes us back to the dark ages.
At least on PCs I could figure out what was crap, and delete it. With my phone, I know what's crap but I can't delete it. Worse, that crap lives in internal memory, which is usually too small and too expensive compared to an easily installed SDCC card (why is a 64G SDCC card cheaper than a 16G internal storage upgrade?).
I've love to see a class action suit filed that would force Facebook, Groupon, Snapchat, and dozens of other apps I'll never use explain why they are taking up precious and expensive space in my phone.
Hopefully once that hurdle is cleared it will create a precedence for the other abuses.
I think Richard Stallman must feel like Cassandra these days. All the bad tidings he's been warning about for years are coming true.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
Corporations do not have customers, they have marks.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
. . . there are cell providers who will sell you a cheap phone from a generation or two back, but have the image set so you CAN'T re-flash it with a generic image. . . .
Hint: if it's last-year's phone and offers "free" cell and net. . .steer far away. . .
The crapware and mandatory upsells after your tiny allotment of "free" minutes and data are not worth the (alleged) savings. . .
This sort of behavior works great for companies...until it doesn't anymore. When it stops working the companies which relied upon it start to fade away. IBM once relied on a similar lockin strategy. When they lost it, they began to fade. They are only still around because they had so many real assets (as in real estate).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Shit will continue to happen as long as you keep categorizing stuff into "left-wing vs right-wing" boxes.
Forget politics, look at what's happening and think for yourself, not for some political group that DOES NOT have your best interests at heart.
#DeleteFacebook
"Increasingly, cheating devices behave differently depending on who is looking at them."
Great gaslighting tool!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
Why this guy continues to get trotted out as some self-ordained sage is beyond me.
It's not a "proprietary software" problem.
It didn't start with printers. "Vendor Lock-in" has been a very real problem that started back with Standard Oil. GM and Ford did it with customized bolt and but sizes and styles requiring special tools. Even government gets involved with HD broadcast and cellphone standards.
Microsoft via Windows 10 and Apple already snoop and direct used actions (or had Cory missed the rewrite of the music player on the iPhone to direct users to their streaming service) and so does the NON-proprietary Firefox which captures users data and directs ads at them.
As for the thermostats that are power company controlled - well that's thanks to proprietary government intervention that's trying to save the earth from global warming Cory. It's all government approved. It also why you can't get plasma TVs anymore because California mandated a massive surcharge on plasma TVs sold within the state because they use too much power.
What you're rebelling against here, Doctrow and Stallman, isn't evil fat cat corporationy people. You're arguing against central government control and planning dictating winners and losers with an insane need for data collection to make sure everyone is behaving.
This is what you get with an always on world and groups of people trying to impose their morality on others - which increases the value of data and polling to the point it's too valuable to not collect. Even limited government won't stop it because you need a big enough government to regulate it which will promptly become corrupted by the power to use the data for itself.
TL;DR - it's not proprietary software - it's a systemic issue worldwide.
When they believe themselves to be under close scrutiny, their behavior reverts to a more respectable, less egregious standard.
Doesn't that sound familiar?
It's Dieselgate writ small -- and this time around, there is no government agency tracking this sort of shit. That's why I rather suspect it will fail to make the radar of lawmakers until something particularly egregious happens. It probably will happen though.
Making a plan now and waiting until it's politically expedient to trot it out is better than having to make up policy on the fly, although it also allows greater chances of nasty poison pills getting embedded in it.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
The phone companies are acting like a monopoly in that regard. They add as much malware as their competitors, effectively making the whole market the same. To be fair it's partially the consumers fault for being willing to pay twice as much as long as its spread out over two years and some of it comes from their soul instead of their wallet.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Sufficiently difficult-to-maintain open source software is indistinguishable from proprietary.
Absolutely!
Because, you know what? its actually IMPOSSIBLE to buy a phone thats not from a carrier, IMPOSSIBLE I say!
Oh, wait a minute, they are everywhere, and there is actually no need to buy a carrier phone in the first place.
plague
Check. http://www.npr.org/sections/go...
public hangings
Check. Hangings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Executions more broadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
horse shit in the streets
http://www.historic-uk.com/His...
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
So companies are delegating the terms of the contracts, and deciding what their customers get. Because there is some feature of the phone that is such a hot ticket item, perhaps one of those "no-no's" mention in the OP? Don't really see a solution to this. Apparently the gains outweigh the losses for most individuals.
For years Eben Moglen has been pointing out "Stallman was right" in his talks. Moglen regularly cites how Stallman got there years before the corporate-minded press (and thus repeater sites like /. don't promote that point of view). It's very much the problem we see with the open source advocacy for nonfree software (or, put differently, the open source enthusiasts' unwillingness to stand by their pitched development methodology). I understand it rankles to read someone pointing out that free software and open source aren't the same, but when it comes to endorsing proprietary software they certainly are not and this endorsement ought not be pushed aside. Red Hat has a cozy relationship with Microsoft which includes bundling .NET software despite patent claims that render such software nonfree particularly if one wants to do something with the software they can do with free software—adding covered code to another project.
You still see people here (even on this topic) posting something that demonstrates an unfounded belief they have more control over their nonfree OS-running computer than they have. "At least on PCs I could figure out what was crap, and delete it.", for example. Taking "PC" not to mean "personal computer" but computer running Microsoft Windows, there are plenty of examples of programs that either don't include working uninstallers or installers that purposefully leave something behind which can't be easily uninstalled (Sony's rootkit which also interfered with CD ripping, for example).
/.'s user-driven censorship scheme effectively increases the odds that freedom-talk goes unseen. If you want to see your post never get moderated up (and thus be less likely to show up for most /. readers using default settings), try pointing to any of the GNU Project's malware pages. These pages are highly informative lists which are helpfully divided into useful subcategories. They all explain how nonfree or proprietary software most computer users run deserve the alternative name "user-subjugating" and point to stories written by others, naming names and leaving no doubt as to their authenticity. /. wants clicks and like any click/like-oriented publication, adherence to established corporate norms is the heart of the effort. Stories like this come along once in a while but clearly the mainstay of tech press is convincing people to argue over minor technicalities while they narrow the allowable debate to which proprietary programs shall run on one's system.
Digital Citizen
I loved "Walkaway".
Fascinating book about a future with unlimited free energy and bots to make anything you need for free but most people were trapped into thinking that they needed useless jobs and had to pay "the man" for stuff.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Actually, he is referring to alchemists and demons.
If you RTFA, you'll understand his point.
Here's part of it:
"Increasingly, cheating devices behave differently depending on who is looking at them. When they believe themselves to be under close scrutiny, their behavior reverts to a more respectable, less egregious standard.
This is a shocking and ghastly turn of affairs, one that takes us back to the dark ages. Before the Englightenment, before the scientific method and its peer review, science was done by alchemists, who worked in secret.
Alchemists – like all humans – are mediocre lab-technicians. Without peer reviewers around to point out the flaws in their experiments, alchemists compounded their human frailty with bad experimental design. As a result, an alchemist might find that the same experiment would produce a ‘‘different outcome’’ every time.
In reality, the experiments lacked sufficient controls. But again, in the absence of a peer reviewer, alchemists were doomed to think up their own explanations for this mysterious variability in the natural world, and doomed again to have the self-serving logic of hubris infect these explanations."
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
So you think it's bad to tell developers that they shouldn't ship malware to their customers?
As for making a decent living, our customers get the source code to all our software. Mostly because they need about $3,000,000 of our hardware to run it, so it's pretty much useless to anyone who doesn't buy that from us.
But we do real work, rather than pushing malware on our customers.
You don't own the software. Worse, you agree the provider/manufacturer of the device, can change the software at any time.
Who do I complain to when a Samsung firmware update installs Facebook? Software isn't held to the 'built to purpose' responsibility that hardware is. But again, you didn't buy the software.
How many printer reviews mentioned the RRP and expected output of the required printer cartridges? How many phone reviews and retailers list the crap-ware installed by the provider/manufacturer?
This is the problem with a "shoe-event horizon" or a "build it and they will come" market: Pointless demand means there's no need to supply a better product. Worse, a new phone will be dumped in 2 years, so the provider/manufacturer is driven to avoid accountability until its enforcement is pointless.
THIS!!! Absolutely THIS!!! I'd have a lot more respect for him had he and his FSF actually built a total GNU based system, complete w/ (say) Replicant, gnu, gnustep or gnome, gnu Network, gnu Social, and all the other good stuff listed in the GNU page. Create a package, then create a tablet/phone/netbook that can work these, price it something that would cover both the costs as well as the FSF union, and then market it. If it's a phone, it can use SIMs from anybody, except the legacy CDMA guys, it can use WiFi. Heck, he can even build around it some AGPL 3.0 services that can be sold packaged w/ that to offer IP calls, both audio and video. In fact, build a whole ecosystem around it, and sell it!!!
Instead, he comes up w/ stupid slogans and names for products he doesn't like, like iBad. Reason: for all his denials, he just hates capitalism and the free market (just check out Stallman.org for his latest cause de jour, which today happens to be the 9/11 assassination of President Allende of Chile & his replacement by Pinochet. Looking forward to his denunciation of the death sentence of Socrates next week.) He's incapable of either organizing nor backing a company that could transform his supposed dreams into reality (as Red Hat's former CEO Bob Young once said, Stallman knows how to treat his friends as his enemies).
And it's not like Corporate America would shun the likes of him either. If anything, Corporate America has shifted far left today - its backing of DACA, Paris Accord, support to Antifa, et al. Although I'm sure he'll still find reasons to find fault w/ them, just like he did w/ common Linux distros
I just posted on the thread about Equifax about how they identify more with hackers than customers. We have reached the bizarre and unsustainable state where in computing, the customer is simultaneously the customer, the product, and the enemy.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
netflix can drop the rooted phones block or google can enforce some rules / have dev mode be able to do more.
Building a phone is not the mission of the FSF, the FSF's concern is about the wider politics of software users and software distribution. The FSF are happy to partner with projects that have the goal of promoting user freedom through phone software and phone hardware. Anybody is free to run such a project, it's just that there isn't any investment capital to do such a thing within the existing FSF associated projects.
The preaching is important because without it, nobody will demand for a change in the status quo and then invest into that change - nobody will understand that there is a problem that needs fixing. First the education has to happen before society will choose to invest into changing the status.
hardware and software, i want to be able to install my choice of Linux on it and know all the hardware will function properly because the hardware is open source so the open source Linux will be able to run the phone's features & functions
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
In RMS' world, end-users are honest and can support themselves.
In real life end-users lie, cheat, and do stuff to equipment then say to support "I have no idea why it doesn't work, you need to replace this POS."
Unlike RMS, companies live in the Real World, where incompetent people do dumb things then complain when you can't fix it.
Put RMS on level 1 support and see what he thinks afterwards.
Damn, and I thought Macs were expensive!
#DeleteFacebook
All else being equal, a free system would be superior because it wouldn't have the additional overhead of DRM and other such crap.
The difference is that there isn't so much investment behind the free options, because companies see more profit to be made by locking their customers in and squeezing them than by offering them a superior product.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
A free market is an unattainable dream, just like true communism or true freedom.
If people have true freedom then inevitably some will abuse that freedom in order to subjugate others for their own ends.
The purpose of government, and indeed of the GPL is to impose some restrictions in order to ensure a fair system where everyone is guaranteed the same level of freedom. Governments for instance typically don't allow you to go around killing or enslaving people, because in doing so you would be taking away their freedom.
The same is true in a free market, companies would quickly realise that there are greater profits to be had by colluding and merging. You'd end up with one large supplier controlling the entire supply chain and noone else would have the resources to ever compete with them.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
This is a shocking and ghastly turn of affairs, one that takes us back to the dark ages. /quote
Well, guess I missed the news about the Black Death being back in town...last I looked we still had aircon and running water too.
The handset is powered by Qualcomm's beastly Snapdragon 820 SoC, and offers 4GB of RAM along with 32GB storage.
How do you expand that built in 32 GB storage? Would a hammer be enough or does one need powertools or corrosive chemicals?
Same goes for that 4GB of RAM, choked with processes and services and various crap you simply don't want to be running in the background, trying to be "smart" for you until you're barely managing not to throw the phone at the wall.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
For the *most* part I am always a bit surprised about the complaints. I mean it is like buying a shovel, that is designed to have spikes on the handle, for the only discernible reason being so that you also have to buy their special gloves in order to use it... When said persons are questioned on if they think that was a good idea, inevitably the response is, "Ya but it is a really GOOD shovel". But is it?
This is of course predicated on the fact that there are many other shovels laying around without spikes one might purchase. In some cases, either one industry is so dominated by either one company, or that the few companies that do exist, but more less all collude together to the same business model of screwing their customers VIA said locked in software. In that case it is truly detestable as there isn't much the consumer can do about it (provided they actually NEED said services/products). One would hope that is where government and consumer protection might step in (of course provided they aren't taking political contributions from said companies).
I could accept a proprietary baseband if it was perfectly isolated from the rest of system,
communicating only through a narrowly defined interface,
or if it needs DMA, protected by an IOMMU.
True. Open source is not, and never has been, a panacea. It's just better than the alternatives.
This concept that a manufacturer can dictate what you can do with a purchased piece of tech has precedents going back over 150 years. The Edison Trust lawsuits set precedent that such a practice is unlawful. Time for some more class action to reinforce it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company
NRRPT/RCT
If a theater critic can find nothing but flaws in every play, then yeah, it's worth a shot. Or else, just stop watching them, and find another line of work. It's one thing for a critic to like some things and dislike others, but that's not what Stallman does. As an example, look at his criticism of all Linux distros that have any popular following: the only ones he endorses are fringe ones like gNewSense, Trisquel and so on.
Stallman would have us all live like the Amish, while he himself plays in a time warp in the 70s, where everybody worked on teletype terminals on really arcane software. Computing has advanced eons since then, but he's still stuck there. People are not going to abandon things like FaceBook & Twitter - flawed as they are in terms of freedom of expression - when those things have not only helped people keep in touch w/ each other w/o bringing down phone lines, but also, have helped people in critical situations like in Harvey & Irma.
The issue is not that he's right about something, but that he criticizes everything, w/o ever having a viable alternative. It's like people who rant that 'politics suck' but refuse to support people they most agree w/ b'cos 'they have no chance of winning'. He doesn't have to start a company or anything himself: he can put together a concept, get together w/ any startup and agree w/ them on a marketing plan that helps that company produce something that satisfies all his requirements while at the same time having a business model that keeps them afloat.
But his problem is that he's an all or nothing guy - 'my way or the highway'. TiVo uses a Linux based box to do DVR and pause live TV: his solution is to come up w/ GPL3 and an 'anti-TiVoization' clause that makes it potentially impossible for any company like TiVo to make money while still being in compliance w/ both his license and content producers' copyrights. All the projects that FSF/GNU have come out w/ have been half baked, and largely unfit for human consumption, unless the consumer happens to have grown up on lisp and emacs. Hey, let him or someone who likes him produce a tablet that has Replicant and an entire slew of AGPL services, and I'll happily eat my words, w/ a generous side-dish of crow!
Technology in general is almost becoming too complex to resolve this on the side of user freedom. Clearly what's needed is an open source computer design. Everything from BIOS/FIRMWARE/CPU/GPU/NETWORK/SOUND needs to be open source/open spec. I doubt it'll ever happen though. There's just not enough money/demand in it. Everyone wants an open computer platform with the caveat that it runs at 3-4ghz speed and runs x86 software. This is always going to be a fatal hindrance to it existing. x86 is locked up so tight by Intel and AMD noone is ever going to break that dominance unless China pulls off some sort of miracle, but then the CCP will probably build their own controls in.
People should be trained in what software freedom means and why it matters. Instead they're trained in evaluating all options on the basis of price (and misstating the price, at that, because no price is placed on their privacy or their other rights), convenience (without regard to other values), and on fashion (functionally, there's very little that separates the older button-oriented look & feel UI from the modern swiping and OpenGL-effects-laden UIs but that the latter requires more expensive hardware which can mostly be operated only with nonfree software).
So people should determine how computers are used by critically examining ethical arguments they're never taught to value until it's too late. This puts most computer users at a severe disadvantage and software freedom activists are up against very wealthy adversaries. But we all know that software freedom treats people in a defensibly better way we can explain in detail. We should argue for improving public education along lines that matter—software freedom and the underlying ethics of that social movement—not price, fashion, and convenience in the moment.
Digital Citizen