Now imagine the same scenario but with a computer and an operating system. How about a website and a browser? This is the false argument presented to technology consumers throughout the modern history of technology. And increasingly, consumers accept it without much more than a blink and a click.

Apple’s Mac OS X, built on top of a BSD kernel, is perfectly capable of running atop any hardware configuration the kernel supports. The only thing preventing a normal person from doing so is bypassing some encryption and ignoring the dire warnings in the End User License Agreement. The technical challenges are not insurmountable, but doing so violates the contract of sales and bypassing the encryption is a criminal violation of the DMCA. Psystar, a company monetizing on the ability to put OS X on non-Apple hardware, was sued successfully for doing just that. The implication in the suit is that one ought never separate Apple’s operating system from Apple’s hardware offering, even if one can.  Much like the fridge that will only hold one vendor’s foods, Apple’s software is only legally allowed to reside on Apple’s hardware. Would you pay twice for the Apple fridge just to hold Apple’s fruit? If you do, Apple will guarantee you the best food preservation experience in the industry.

In April of 2010, Sony removed the OtherOS feature from the PlayStation 3. Doing so was a response to iPhone hacker Geohot having compromised portions of the PS3 security features through a hardware glitch. The method he used required a venue of access provided by the PS3 running Linux, the OtherOS feature Sony touted during the product’s launch. The original marketing positioned it as a feature to provide an open platform for developers interested in the Cell Engine to experiment. Even then, the platform was limited to what was available through Sony’s hypervisor, a piece of software allowing selective access to the system hardware. When Sony’s control over the hardware was threatened, they removed the feature altogether in the name of security which was perfectly allowed by the End User License Agreement the hardware owner must accept to use the hardware. Sony demonstrated that their fridge will not only not allow you to put “unauthorized” foods in, it will protect you, the consumer, by locking the door so you never make that mistake again.

Data, in the purest sense, are simply bits of information which, outside their context, has no intrinsic value. Computing machines, in their purest sense, are simply machines that manipulate data. They are as separate as your hair and your razor, your food and your fridge. And unlike in chemistry, they do not do some sort of fusion dance for extra magic. It is understandable that an entertainment company like Sony would want to protect their profit venues by maintaining control over distribution. It is also understandable that Apple being a consumer electronics company would want to preserve their image. However the unfortunate casualty in all such contests of control is the consumer. When a consumer or body of consumers is willing to put in the effort and time to make a hardware machine do something outside the expectation of the machine’s makers, why should words on a screen prevent it? What moral right does a corporate entity have in banning the use of products fully paid for? Do car enthusiasts have to agree not to tinker under the hood when they buy a car? Or are we, as technological consumers, simply renting the privilege to use technology in ways deemed “secure”?

The binding between hardware and software is enforced only by laws of man, rather than of nature. Since when is true innovation a crime?

Aintaer: It’s too late
Aintaer: I know you
Aintaer: You will one day, through scheming or through your own free will, dress up as a loli
CC: what do you mean it’s too late
Aintaer: The seeds have already been planted
CC: what
Aintaer: and after a germination period, you will feel strange desire to dress in black thigh-highs and skirts.
CC: …
Aintaer: what are you denying this
CC: I AM NOT TSUNDERE
CC: I SWEAR
Aintaer: Are you saying you don’t wish it
Aintaer: See you’re already being tsundere
CC: AM NOT
CC: I refuse to agree to any of this
Aintaer: You don’t have to agree
Aintaer: You just have to fail to disagree
CC: dammit
CC: how did I get here
CC: where did it all go wrong

And so commenced a month-long campaign of psychological manipulation and hunting through the urban taigas of Soho. You thought it couldn’t be done; you thought I would give up.

You were wrong.

Have a good year in Italy.
Your bestest friend, Aintaer

Looks like further work has been done in the field of alternate condom usage.

Observe:

• Freedom Explorer
• Freedom Visual Studio
• FreedomBox 360
• Freedom Windows
• Freedom Flight Simulator
• Freedom Word
• Freedom Live
• Freedom Outlook
• Freedom Paint
• Freedom Access

I know I would buy four copies of Freedom Access. I love accessing my Freedom. Oh but wait, there’s also:

• Freedom Bob

…

You open up Google Chrome, go to Google Mail to check your e-mail. While there, you find your friends on Google Chat and they request some pictures. So you use Google Desktop to search for those pictures. When you find them, you remembered you wanted to look up that shop in the picture so you head to Google Maps and use Google Streetview to look through the neighborhood. After all that’s done, you progress to Google News to find out what’s going on in the world, Google Reader to keep up with your feeds, Google Images to find cute pictures of bunnies, Google Calendar to schedule your day, only to find out you need to call your friend in Europe so you have Google Voice connect your call…

It is virtually impossible to avoid Google in life now, its services being so pervasive and easy to use that in a few short years Google has gone from simply a search provider to an entire Internet experience provider. Google’s hegemony on the net and its ability to make money has allowed the company to grow beyond the confines of the Internet into other businesses: merchant transactions, browsers, operating systems. And in all Google’s offerings, one overarching goal unites them. Push toward a web-based world.

It is clear to see why. Google’s dominance on the web is undeniable, and every step we take toward a web-based society, with data stored on the Internet, is a step that Google is eager to pave a path for so that it can index that data, parse that data, and ultimately sell ads based on that data.

Because of this business model, Google can always be counted on to push for a more open Internet, standardized Internet, free Internet. And it would never “become evil” because it is one of the first companies to realize that community goodwill is a resource, and has spent time cultivating this resource until it has received almost a subconscious cult-following. But sooner or later, we must come to realize that what Google is pushing for, and what we are slowly training ourselves to depends on, is one fact.

Google is Internet.

No matter how benevolent the organization, how strong its ethics, there remains something fundamentally flawed to trusting all services to a single, for-profit vendor. Recently a Google SSL certificate snafu disabled secure connections to all Google services. Suddenly I was unable to chat through Google Chat. Though I had other means, such as AIM, the Web-as-Google future would not be so fortunate.

Cloud computing, the social web, and software-as-a-service are all pushes for a usage pattern that stresses the Internet more than just as a content delivery platform, but a complete computing platform, a lifestyle platform. Under such a platform, the focus would be moved away from the hardware device. The device with which you access the Internet becomes almost inconsequential as your storage has moved to the network, your software has moved to the network, and indeed, your entire identity has moved to the network. And it is this future that Google is primed for.

By relinquishing control over technology to the network, we are in essence giving up control over what makes us individuals for what makes us a community. It is not a dystopia we head toward, and Google is not the next “Evil Corp,” but at a point, we must determine for ourselves how much is ‘we’ and how much is ‘me.’

⒜⒧⒧ ⒨⒤⒨⒮⒴ ⒲⒠⒭⒠ ⒯⒣⒠ ⒝⒪⒭⒪⒢⒪⒱⒠⒮ ⒜⒩⒟ ⒯⒣⒠ ⒨⒪⒨⒠ ⒭⒜⒯⒣⒮ ⒪⒰⒯⒢⒭⒜⒝⒠

Google Analytics showing a brilliant 709% increase in traffic

I don’t mind the extra visitors, but I feel like I am shorting them on their intended purpose of being entertained by a circle of jerks. So until we can sort this out, please don’t e-mail me asking where so-and-so went.

• Times New Greek: like the Roman variant but with more pederasty.
• Tacoma: similar to Tahoma, but will crash your computer irrecoverably if you type at a certain rhythm.
• Sebastien: the crabbier version of Arial.
• Millennium Gothic: impractical due to being ten times the size of Century Gothic.
• AOL Instant Courier: unused because it always comes out as neon pink Comic Sans telling people to look at your pix.
• Garados: evolved from Garamond at level 20. Learns Dragon Rage.
• Onager MS: in the same class as Trebuchet MS but uses torsion-powered kerning.
• Hallucida Sans Unicode: its got trippy code points all over, despite all of them changing and tasting like purple. Also, U+262D is a unicorn and U+2363 can kiss my ass.

Key to this is the Great American belief in entitlement. Each individual, so the bicentennial wisemen state, has the right to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. It is also held by them that such rights are self-evident and unalienable. I hold that it is far from evident what they even mean by the three words, much less how they are evident of themselves or how they cannot be violated. I will start with Life.

Life is the center of most controversy in all of human history. Mostly with its removal. But never is it clear what Life truly is. We all feel we know what life is, but when pressed on the point, our understanding dissipates and we can only resort to analogies. Life, the Buddhists say, is like a flame. This I think is not unacceptable. Life to me is a process, much like a flame. A flame consumes resources, and outputs energy, leaving behind smoke and carbon dioxide. Life consumes resources, and outputs lethargy, leaving behind dung and carbon dioxide. Already the similarities are striking.

However, if Life is to be a process, it must be a special one because we do not harbor such concepts as “Right to Fire.” What then, is so special about Life that it must be protected at the expense of all else? Probably the difficulty in its continued existence. A fire provides the same functions as any other fire, but one life does not do the same as another. Telling a parent who has lost a child “It’s okay you can have another one” just doesn’t quite have the same effect. But given its special nature, the right to life ought to reside in the life itself. Yet the same proponents who cry the unborn deserve life refuse the right to life of one choosing death.

If there were such a thing as Right to Life, then there must also exist such a thing as Right to Death. After all, death is the natural conclusion to life. Yet somehow, individuals are granted one but not the other, probably for purposes of continued taxation. If Life were really an inalienable right, then how can Nature, State, and Man take it away at a whim? Obviously there is no such right, or if there was then it is alienable by everyone. And to entitle a living person with the right to live is a state-issued intellectual slap-in-the-face, akin to giving water the right to be wet.

Life is not a right, life is a privilege: a privilege bestowed upon the bundles of chemicals doing nasty things to each other that we call a person; one that is loaned to us to take advantage of, and if we were any bit grateful, we would pay back the debt. All that the wig and stockings sporting men of the 18th century have put forth then is an ideal, far removed from reality…

Postscript: Lack of Right to Life does not imply granting the Right to Death to everybody and anybody, Government least of all.