{"id":21126,"date":"2013-07-17T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T05:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21126"},"modified":"2013-07-15T13:48:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-15T18:48:41","slug":"qotd-the-war-on-general-purpose-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/07\/17\/qotd-the-war-on-general-purpose-computing\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The war on general-purpose computing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>As we wait for dessert, I ask him about his recent speeches at technology conferences discussing the \u201cwar on general purpose computing\u201d. He runs through the argument with practised fluency. Computers are by nature general-purpose machines. It\u2019s impossible to make a computer that does all the kinds of things we want computers to do yet is somehow disabled from making copies of copyrighted material, or viewing child pornography, or sending instructions to a 3D printer to produce a gun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh my God, that\u2019s good,\u201d says Doctorow after his first mouthful of crumble. My peanut butter shortbread is fantastic too, if absurdly calorific. We are interrupted only by another waiter dropping a tray of glasses.<\/p>\n<p>He continues with the argument. The impossibility of making limited-purpose computers won\u2019t stop governments or corporations trying to put on the locks, or changing laws to try to make those locks effective. But the only way these limits can possibly work is subterfuge: computers therefore tend to contain concealed software that spies on what their users are trying to do. Such software is inevitably open to abuse and has often been abused in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Digital rights management systems intended to prevent copying have been hijacked by virus-writers. In one notorious case, the Federal Trade Commission acted against seven computer rental companies and the software company that supplied them, alleging that the rental companies could activate hidden software to grab passwords, bank account details and even switch on the webcam to take photos of what the FTC coyly calls \u201cintimate activities at home\u201d. As computers surround us &mdash; in our cars, our homes, our pacemakers &mdash; Doctorow is determined to make people realise what\u2019s at stake.<\/p>\n<p>Tim Harford, <a href=\"http:\/\/timharford.com\/2013\/07\/cory-doctorow-has-lunch-with-the-ft\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Cory Doctorow has Lunch with the <em>FT<\/em>&#8220;, <em>TimHarford.com<\/em><\/a> (originally published at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/2\/9a344ea2-e8af-11e2-aead-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Yqwgd6hw\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Financial Times<\/em><\/a>), 2013-07-15<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we wait for dessert, I ask him about his recent speeches at technology conferences discussing the \u201cwar on general purpose computing\u201d. He runs through the argument with practised fluency. Computers are by nature general-purpose machines. It\u2019s impossible to make a computer that does all the kinds of things we want computers to do yet [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41,15],"tags":[109,476,661,911],"class_list":["post-21126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-technology","tag-computers","tag-espionage","tag-regulation","tag-surveillance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5uK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21126"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21128,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21126\/revisions\/21128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}