Why I hate all of Apple's new hardware

The iPod, the iPhone, and the new iPad. I hate them all. They are a horrible abomination that appeals to the worst in us, the part that thinks if we all just let someone else handle all the details for us that everything will be OK and we don't need or want to take any personal responsibility for the things we own, for the attitude that convenience beats freedom.

And this isn't because they are small and not a 'full-fledged' computer or anything like that. I would love a world full of tiny useful gadgets that help people get stuff done without getting in their way. No, I hate them because you can't open them up and tinker with them. You can't make them do anything you want them to do, you can only make them do what Apple wants you to be able to do.

And this author has distilled for me at least one incredibly important reason why this freedom is so important in his short essay "Tinkerer's Sunset".

I got my start with computers because of that exact sense. This is the ultimate gadget! I can make it do absolutely ANYTHING! I just have to figure out how to tell it in a language it can understand.

None of the products I mention have that. They all treat 'developers' as a special class that you have to jump through hoops to become a member of (and what kid is going to go do that?). And even then, people who choose to be in that class still don't get to make the machine do anything, just what Apple approves of. That is very, very not OK.

I'm not an Apple hater here. I own one of their laptops because I get root access on it, just like I would own an iPhone if I got root access on it. The laptop is a good piece of hardware, and it's the only laptop I've ever used that I've really enjoyed using.

The most excusable of them all is the iPod. It masquerades as a simple, single-purpose device. But even then, the fact that Apple purposefully hobbles the platform in various ways in order to try to keep you from doing things Apple doesn't want you to do has kept me from even considering buying one.

It's my hardware! MINE! I should get to do whatever the heck I want to with it. This whole 'joint ownership' thing (especially when they pretend it isn't happening) with some large corporation is totally broken. It really distresses me that so many choose convenience over freedom (hint: it doesn't have to be a dichotomy, and I suspect that Google will get this right). My only, rather bitter, consolation is that such people will get the future they deserve.

Note, that I am most definitely not insisting that everybody should open up their appliances and tinker with them. I don't want you all to become developers or anything like that.

What I'm insisting on is that you choose appliances that you can open up and tinker with. Not because you know you want to, but because having the freedom to do so taken away from you is very bad for everybody, especially children who will never get the chance to learn they enjoy tinkering because their corporate overlords forbid them from doing so.

Unfortunately, people who buy such devices may also end up, by their aggregate choices, dragging me into a future that I don't want. Network effects (as in marketing speak network effects) are king on computers. If freedom destroying gadgets become popular, it starts to become really hard to use anything but freedom destroying gadgets.

Edited 2010-02-01 00:14 PST: People who commented before then are commenting on a diatribe where I didn't try nearly so hard to separate the nice things the gadget does from the freedom destroying effects of the policies of the corporation that makes it.

Syndicated 2010-01-31 19:32:38 (Updated 2010-02-01 08:15:51) from Lover of Ideas

This captures my feelings perfectly

I found a fantastic quote that I have to save, though it's only funny (or really irritating) to computer programmers.

Question: What's the difference between Java and Javascript?

One is essentially a toy, designed for writing small pieces of code, and traditionally used and abused by inexperienced programmers.

The other is a scripting language for web browsers.

Syndicated 2010-01-25 20:08:28 from Lover of Ideas

I'm pleased with myself

In answering a question on StackOverflow I appear to have independently re-invented the Curiously Recurring Template idiom as applied to polymorphic copy construction.

Until I tried to answer that person's question I never realized there was such a nice and convenient way to avoid having to copy&paste cookie-cutter clone methods.

Syndicated 2010-01-14 17:10:38 from Lover of Ideas

Clearwire is being very annoying

I purchased Clearwire for tazfrog because Speakeasy was being annoying about getting DSL into her place (so annoying that I dropped them myself) and Comcast was totally unpalatable for any number of reasons.

It worked out well. I set up a nice Linux based router for her that would automatically configure a nice 6to4 IPv6 tunnel with the public IP address that Clearwire assigned to it. It would act as a NAT and a firewall for all the machines inside the network.

Well, recently Clearwire 'upgraded' all of their boxes. And now the boxes assign themselves the public IP address and force all of your computers to use NAT. No more IPv6 tunnel. It's very, very irritating, and also just plain wrong. If you get a fake IP address, you aren't really getting Internet service.

They claim that Motorola, the manufacturer of these boxes, just delivered them that way and there is no way to turn the NATting behavior off. The nice support person gave me a way to log into the web UI of the Motorola box and set up port forwards and such (which doesn't really help for what I actually want to do). But poking around the UI makes it seem like Motorola was intending to support more modes of operation and just never got around to finishing them.

I'm kinda peeved. I was considering outright anger as I was suspecting this was a policy decision on Clearwire's part. But it appears to be simply incompetence and not a policy decision. Being evil by accident seems somehow more excusable than being evil on purpose. And I think giving people NATted IP addresses is definitely evil and wrong. It's not real Internet service.

It's like the phone company putting you behind a PBX and not telling you the extension. Sure you can make all the calls you want, but nobody can call you. And, of course, when you complain you're asked "Of course you have phone service! You can call anybody you want to. What? Why would anybody want to call you?! You're just a dumb consumer! Everybody wants to call in to the radio shows and stuff, that's what the phone is for. We can't be bothered to support your little 1% use-case here! Look, if you want people to talk to you, just dial up one of those conference line places like everybody else. They'll hook you up.".

Syndicated 2009-12-11 07:51:45 (Updated 2009-12-11 07:54:36) from Lover of Ideas

My first Erlang program!

I put my first Erlang program in a pastebin. It's a concurrent prime sieve. Likely not the most efficient way to do things, but I'm still all pleased with myself. :-)

I may or may not choose to program more sophisticated things in Erlang, but I figured a passing familiarity was in order. Especially since I'm thinking of using CouchDB for something and it's written in Erlang. While knowing Erlang isn't necessary to understand CouchDB, I figure that it certainly can't hurt.

Syndicated 2009-11-07 22:56:33 (Updated 2009-11-07 22:58:10) from Lover of Ideas