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Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

The guy in the park with the "Jesus Saves" sign thinks his protest needs to be loud, too.

The point is, Cory Doctorow is in a small, small minority. The minority isn't small because people don't know what he's saying -- it's small because they don't care. He's protesting the very philosophy that gives Apple products the quality that people who buy Apple products desire. And honestly, making the openness of Apple products your raison d'etre is a bit like getting furious about the mechanical details of your favorite brand of dishwasher. The answer is always the same: don't like it? Don't buy it.

Cory is more than welcome to continue to post these sorts of rants on his blog, of course, but let's not turn them into more than what they are: one guy, forcefully advocating an opinion about something that really doesn't matter that much to most people, and that he can't really change.

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And honestly, making the openness of Apple products your raison d'etre is a bit like getting furious about the mechanical details of your favorite brand of dishwasher.

I'd guess Cory's complaint is not specifically that iPads are closed, but that Apple and others are trying to create a future where closed systems are the default, and open systems are either illegal or heavily marginalized. If you accept the premises, that actually is a big deal.

one guy, forcefully advocating an opinion about something that really doesn't matter that much to most people, and that he can't really change.

So, pretty much like nearly any public advocacy of anything.

>but that Apple and others are trying to create a future where closed systems are the default, and open systems are either illegal or heavily marginalized.

I myself find it difficult to imagine a future where the vast majority of applications are not web apps hosted on private servers. If you take that to be the likely future, then what you can and can't run natively on your computer (with the exception of the browser) becomes irrelevant. Debating whether or not you have the freedom to run arbitrary native code will be like arguing over having the freedom to install your own BIOS.

The "if you accept the premises" is, well, one hell of a big "if".

Cory seems to believe that companies are not in the business of making money, but rather are in the business of controlling peoples' lives as totally as possible, and proceeds from there. The mismatch of this belief with actual reality, and the resulting conclusions drawn with respect to, e.g., vast multinational conspiracies attempting to micromanage individual people, is of a sort which, given any other target, would result in institutionalization for paranoid psychosis.

Cory seems to believe that companies are not in the business of making money, but rather are in the business of controlling peoples' lives as totally as possible, and proceeds from there.

Not at all. I don't think Apple wants closed systems for their own sake, but I do think they believe that closed systems will be more profitable for them. The end result is the same.

Consider the line I quoted when I originally replied:

Apple and others are trying to create a future where closed systems are the default, and open systems are either illegal or heavily marginalized.

This does not express the opinion that Apple believes they can make more money from selling closed systems. This expresses the opinion that Apple's goal is not to make money but rather to impose control on people for... well, I'm not honestly sure what reason.

And that sort of implication is everywhere in discussion on places like HN, despite the fact that it literally goes off the deep end into unfounded paranoia; "Steve Jobs wants to keep me from using Google Voice" is taken not as a statement about how he'd prefer to have his company get your money, but as a statement about how he's an evil megalomanic obsessed with controlling peoples' lives. Which is really only a step away from (and logically about as sensible as) "he's working with the Bilderbergers and the lizard people to cover up the truth about JFK's role in 9/11".

> The minority isn't small because people don't know what he's saying -- it's small because they don't care.

People don't care because when they hear nay-sayers predicting dystopian futures, they think things like 'that could never happen here' or 'that could never happen to me.' The reality is that I doubt very much that if you had polled Germans in the 1920's about whether they thought that the atrocities of WW2 could ever happen to them or in their country, they would say the same thing, 'not here' or "people wouldn't stand for it."

People that predict doom and gloom are often called crazy, but not always because they really are. Most of the time people don't want to think that the worst could happen even when reality paints a different picture. If I had published a paper in 2005 predicting that Wall Street would crumble due to highly-inflated real-estate and that the government would spend $700+ billion propping up banks that were 'too big to fail' I would have been called crazy and people would have ignored me stating that my concerns were 'unfounded.'

Please don't use "people don't care" as some sort of argument against someone's beliefs. I mean, if his blog post is getting up-voted enough on HN to reach the front page obviously enough people here care about it to discuss it, but for some reason you're trying to tell those people that they really don't share Doctorow's opinion and that they need to wake up to that fact.

Godwin! You win the thread :-)

"Jesus Saves" isn't backed up by any facts. Consider this as more of an educational campaign, to proclaim loudly the facts about these devices and why alternatives might be more attractive.

>but let's not turn them into more than what they are

Speak for yourself. I happen to agree with Cory and am sure I am not alone.

To those that down-voted:

The parent poster goes on for length operating under the assumption that no one on HN that is participating in this discussion or up-voted the news item shares the same views that Doctorow does. How one can draw that assumption escapes me, because it would stand to reason that a number of people (most?) would up-vote the blog post because they either: 1) share Doctorow's opinion or 2) want to participate in a discussion of Doctorow's views. The parent poster acts as if HN readers/participants are just like rats dancing to the Pied Piper's tune, that need to be woken up.

The parent poster goes on for length operating under the assumption that no one on HN that is participating in this discussion or up-voted the news item shares the same views that Doctorow does.

I believe you have misinterpreted. The parent post does not refer to HN readers, but to the obviously ambiguous "most people". The post it was in reply to distinguishes between "Most of the world" and "we" (meaning HN readers), and I propose to you that it is the former group that was meant.

The parent poster acts as if HN readers/participants are just like rats dancing to the Pied Piper's tune, that need to be woken up.

That appears to be precisely the attitude it is rejecting, in reference to Cory's desire (as described by the parent to that post) to protest loudly something that it is said few who don't already know actually care about.

I would also point out that you yourself drew parallels to the specter of Nazism (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1237826) and of unheeded warnings. Are you yourself not acting as though others need to be woken up?

Good analogy - I wouldn't buy a dishwasher from Sears if it meant that I had to buy all my futures dishes, glasses, and silverware from Sears too. (App Store) I wouldn't buy it if I had to have a special Sears approved connecting pipe to hook it into my existing plumbing. (Dock connector) And I wouldn't buy it if I had to bring it back to Sears whenever I ran out of soap. (Battery)

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