[Discuss] Class action against "Secure Boot"

[Derek Martin]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 07:29:04PM -0400, Richard Pieri wrote:
> Except for Apple's first-party applications which know how to tell
> Quartz and Quartz Extreme to override this scaling and use the
> native pixel density.  Now factor the glued-in battery pack which is
> good for 300 charge cycles before requiring the entire device be
> replaced. Factor the fused display panel.  Factor the soldered-on,
> non-upgradable RAM.  Factor the proprietary SSD.  Now tell me how
> this is a general-purpose computer.

Easy.  Neither the permanence of affixment of its parts, nor the
inability to upgrade them relate at all to whether or not a device is
a general purpose computer.  That is purely a function of its
hardware's capability to execute instructions to achieve a variety of
purposes.  Typed with a serenely straight face.

Concern about the loss of general purpose computing devices might be
pretty reasonable, however.  Here's an article which I found expresses
that concern rather well:

  http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

The article makes what I think is a pretty astute observation:
Vendors' own circumvention prevention mechanisms behave rather a lot
like malware.  It might bear investigation into whether or not the
slew of anti-malware laws which have been passed, in their various
forms in various locales, can reasonably be used against the vendors
themselves...

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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