<story><title>The coming civil war over general purpose computing</title><url>http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fmstephe</author><text>When I read articles like this my fears always move straight to a future where it has become harder to program for play.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&apos;t crystallize proteins in our living room.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>The coming civil war over general purpose computing</title><url>http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mark_l_watson</author><text>I just watched the whole thing. I liked how Cory Doctorow acknowledged that some of these problems he didn&apos;t know the answers to but he seemed satisfied just to get the conversation started.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>