Control of Computers/information systems is going to become one of the only real ways to exercise control over people in the future, because it will encompass everything else.
Its sad to see people welcome locked down shit like apple products, here with open arms.
How long will it be until RIAA tells Congress that "Microsoft is not doing enough to stop piracy (even though they have the capability)", just like they are doing now with Google, and then gets them to remove "unlicensed" songs from your PC?
I think stores are fine. They are a pretty good way to show you the best apps for the platform, and they also help a bit with safety, but they should still allow you to download and install whatever you want from the Internet if you choose to.
Android has a pretty good model here. They have the Market, and then if you really want to, you can get apps from other sources, too. Although, I don't think they should even ask you if you want to "enable 3rd party sources" in Settings. It should be enabled by default, and maybe just give you a warning whenever you want to download a 3rd party app, just like they do in Chrome.
The point is I don't want to lose any of the freedoms of what I can do with my computer, just for the sake of having a store that streamlines app discovery and makes me safer when I use it. I should have both.
I want to point out a couple things here, since there seem to be a lot of misconceptions. 1) UEFI is not the problem -- it's one specific feature called 'secure boot'; UEFI is a very good thing overall, so we should point out the bad part and not the awesome whole, 2) MS isn't requiring that secure boot be required, or even that they have a signing key for it -- they're purely requiring that it be on by default, 3) the reference implementation and all known shipping versions of secure boot have a switch to disable it if the user so chooses, so it's not much of a lock-in facility -- it could be in the future, but it's not now, and MS isn't making it into one.
That said, despite being a huge Windows fanboy, Windows 8 is seriously making me consider switching back to Linux. This sort of lock-down is terrible for everyone, most people just don't realize how bad it is.
Matthew Garrett reported a while back[1] that some vendors will not provide an option to disable secure boot.
But now we see bills like SOPA and ProtectIP, and now we already have computers that you can't run any program you want on it, and all these other stories hinting that there are companies out there as sinister as RMS suggested. I find RMS less and less eccentric with each of these things that comes to light.
That said, RMS has been able to get attention. Whether we would be in a better place with an "normal" RMS is impossible to say. Maybe having both Doctorow and RMS is critical to the fight.
What if another nation, say China, decides that it doesn't need to lock down general purpose computing, and instead promotes the availability of unfettered general purpose computing within their borders as a competitive advantage? (Though, sadly this might be due to the sufficiency of political/network dampers on freedom.)
This would make for an interesting world: one divided between a totalitarian regime with free computing and democratic countries with locked down computing.
Its a long process of acclimatization, don't believe me? Take a look at android, which in most respects is far more locked down than any desktop operating system, yet is hailed as "open".
As long as I also have a proper computer, I welcome the simplicity of the tablet. If it looks like I will no longer have the option of buying or owning a proper computer, I'll join you with the pitchforks.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
It's a great argument for the anti-technology side because it seems to make sense to those that aren't technical, but let's not start spouting that fallacy on hacker news like it's actually true.
I would welcome more freedom on the iPad. If a switch showed up in the advanced settings that allowed side-loading of unsigned apps, that would be great. But it's not a deal breaker for what is a completely auxiliary device compared to a proper computer.
Ease-of-use in the real world is only partially a user-interface design issue, even though that is what software devs spend all day talking about. Turning on a device and being sure that no viruses are going to infect your computer, no malicious people are going to steal your email, and your device will probably just work is a giant ease-of-use feature. It makes your device easier-to-use when you don't have to worry about what your software will do, and that only comes when every single piece of software on your device comes from an authorized source that has been vetted by fairly reliable people who have the power to remotely fix problems on your device (for example, removing apps that turn out to be malicious). Don't kid yourself, even though you might disagree philosophically, removing developer flexibility is very much an ease-of-use feature for consumers.
Do you complain that your microwave oven firmware isn't hackable? Do you think that it's no fun that you can't reprogram your car's fuel system? Do you bitch that your TV isn't user serviceable? How's that "locked down shit" HP calculator?
A computer is no longer a general purpose tool but a special purpose appliance for most people.
So long as there's a market for open systems, they will be made, but don't expect grandma to want one.
Why is this so hard for some people to accept? For most people "open" means they'll have to assume responsibility for protecting themselves against threats and managing things they don't want to.