> "There's a lot of good stuff in Pd, and a lot I like about it. There's also a lot I don't like, and am scared of. My fear is that Pd will lead us down a road where our computers are no longer our computers, but are instead owned by a variety of factions and companies all looking for a piece of our wallet. To the extent that Pd facilitates that reality, it's bad for society. I don't mind companies selling, renting, or licensing things to me, but the loss of the power, reach, and flexibility of the computer is too great a price to pay."
I think his fears have come true to some extent in iOS, but knowing what we know now about government surveillance of everybody, it may no longer seem like too great a price to pay. That is, if you trust the vendor. Apple seems to be worthy of that trust. But Microsoft...?
> I think his fears have come true to some extent in iOS, but knowing what we know now about government surveillance of everybody, it may no longer seem like too great a price to pay.
We're already paying that price, essentially. An iPhone won't run arbitrary code, a replacement OS, or accept code from arbitrary sources. It's already an exclusively vendor-curated platform. If you're already going to buy into that model, I don't see the point in not going for the greatest amount of protection that you can get. (OK, yes, a dev can compile their own code and push it to their own device. I'm actually not sure why I don't hear about this happening more often as a way to run "unacceptable" programs on iOS devices).
I thought that's the opposite of what Palladium did. Doesn't it make it so the apps and data on your computer aren't actually yours? Like Microsoft would have total control over what you put on your computer? I was under the impression it didn't do anything to protect your privacy: instead it actually put backdoors in your computer that Microsoft could access any time they wanted?
Of Palladium, Bruce Scheier said:
> "There's a lot of good stuff in Pd, and a lot I like about it. There's also a lot I don't like, and am scared of. My fear is that Pd will lead us down a road where our computers are no longer our computers, but are instead owned by a variety of factions and companies all looking for a piece of our wallet. To the extent that Pd facilitates that reality, it's bad for society. I don't mind companies selling, renting, or licensing things to me, but the loss of the power, reach, and flexibility of the computer is too great a price to pay."
I think his fears have come true to some extent in iOS, but knowing what we know now about government surveillance of everybody, it may no longer seem like too great a price to pay. That is, if you trust the vendor. Apple seems to be worthy of that trust. But Microsoft...?
Edit: formatting