Comments on: iPad http://freshtracks.us/technology/ipad/ The general blog of a philosophically minded software developer. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:46:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Stephen Paul Weber http://freshtracks.us/technology/ipad/comment-page-1/#comment-7282 Stephen Paul Weber Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:58:03 +0000 http://freshtracks.us/?p=348#comment-7282 "you cannot expect a corporation trying to maximize profits to build a broad open platform" Windows and OS X are both pretty open platforms that seem to disagree with your statement. Solaris is even libre, beyond being an open platform as well... and that seems like a large profit-seeking company (Sun) to me... “you cannot expect a corporation trying to maximize profits to build a broad open platform”

Windows and OS X are both pretty open platforms that seem to disagree with your statement.

Solaris is even libre, beyond being an open platform as well… and that seems like a large profit-seeking company (Sun) to me…

]]> By: Stephen Paul Weber http://freshtracks.us/technology/ipad/comment-page-1/#comment-7281 Stephen Paul Weber Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:56:23 +0000 http://freshtracks.us/?p=348#comment-7281 I think you've misunderstood the freedom camp. It's not about vorbis or hacking, it's about freedom. You say "DRM" as though you don't believe the iPad's OS has any. Yet what else would you call a system that uses cryptography to prevent the user of the system from using it for a particular purpose (in this case, to prevent the installation of alternate OSs or unapproved applications). That's the definition of DRM. The other large fear (DRM and other freedom issues aside) is the "generativity" fear. We hackers and coders got our start tinkering with systems. If the iPad had been the ordinateur-de-choix in my house (instead of MSDOS PCs) I would never have tinkered, and never become what I am today. I think you’ve misunderstood the freedom camp. It’s not about vorbis or hacking, it’s about freedom.

You say “DRM” as though you don’t believe the iPad’s OS has any. Yet what else would you call a system that uses cryptography to prevent the user of the system from using it for a particular purpose (in this case, to prevent the installation of alternate OSs or unapproved applications). That’s the definition of DRM.

The other large fear (DRM and other freedom issues aside) is the “generativity” fear. We hackers and coders got our start tinkering with systems. If the iPad had been the ordinateur-de-choix in my house (instead of MSDOS PCs) I would never have tinkered, and never become what I am today.

]]>