I wonder how true that really is. My only personal experience is being held up at gunpoint by some dude tryin to steal my only computing device that i couldn't afford to replace.
Don't worry comrade, if you step out of line politically or do anything we otherwise disagree with, your computer WILL have something illegal added to it, it's not a problem at all, especially if it leaves your control for a day or three.
My main point is: on a desktop/laptop personal computer, you can install software without any overlord's permission. On iOS, you can't. That's seriously messed up, and wrong. And, yes, a lot of business (and landlords) are Mafia like. I'm hoping for a strong left-wing party to come into power in the future, and completely turn this upside down.
> It used to be that when you bought a computer, it was yours. It did your bidding, nobody elses. Security features it had were about keeping other people out, not keeping you out of your own device.
Yeah, but when your device can infringe on others, it's ok to curtail those features. No one has unlimited rights.
And the root of the tyranny is devices you 'buy' without owning. Something the parent commentor has probably been trying to warn everyone about since it was first pushed in the 90s like most other long term linux users.
'trusted' computing is tyranniclal, petty managers and school boards exploiting it is its intended use case
>So I get my hands on your laptop for a few minutes, there should be nothing you can do to impede me from doing whatever I want to it?
Correct. This is true of all my other possessions as well.
Ultimately, the physical hardware of the computer cannot tell the difference between a legitimate user and an illegitimate one. The distinction is social, not mathematical - the kind of thing one might litigate in court, rather than by multiplying some large primes together. Technologically enforcing the concept of ownership over an object implies the construction of a parallel, extra-legal system of rights management, with some final higher authority that is neither you nor in all likelihood your government. Here's how that plays out: yes, you paid for the computer, yes, you "legally" own it, but you did something to it that Microsoft doesn't approve of and so we're afraid it doesn't work anymore. Might makes right. Too bad!
There probably are all sorts of weird “you may not use this computer to commit terrorist acts” agreements you implicitly or explicitly agree on when buying a computer
I find it interesting because I think a lot about computing on your own terms.
This is the norm: Vendor-locked hardware, operating systems that manipulate you into making choices that benefit others than you, software updates that remove functionality or render devices useless, access to multimedia that is revoked, services shutting down to make devices bound to them useless unless hacked.
And I think I seek problems when I insist on running Linux on known hardware. But I avoid. so. much. by doing do.
I've never been persecuted in the manner you describe. No one has called ever called me a terrorist or a pirate or worse. These anti-competitive strategies like bootlocking, and the sandboxed OS have been marketed, quite successfully, as protecting the privacy of their users. Most people go along with this crap out of fear, I wager.
My politics haven't changed though.
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