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Comment by chaz72 | Hacker News Reader

It would be ridiculous for a bad swimmer to blame the creator of his or her swimwear.

On the other hand, a bad swimmer might be pretty upset with the creators of his or her boat, if hypothetically the goal is to stay out of the water.

It's just possible that it depends on what you expect from the device when you buy it.

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Except that for many users, they would GREATLY PREFER to have the RIGHT to acknowledge the risks entailed, and use the device how THEY WANT TO USE IT. They purchased a physical device, and they deserve to be able to use it how they want. This is just another example of why the DMCA needs to be dismantled.

I've been spending some time trying to understand this today, and I don't understand why such users don't just go buy a device they can root and take full control that way. Why blame a vendor that doesn't ship what you want? Why not just... buy what you do want?

Separately: The DMCA needs to be dismantled, absolutely.

There's no good alternative, except maybe the MiPhone in China. Android is pretty horrible and saddled with all kinds of Google integration.

Well, I agree with you there (in general I mean, I don't know the miPhone). I would love to see a truly open source handheld computer. I've thought about picking up a Firefox OS phone. I just don't think it's Apple's job to create it. That's not what they do.

> Except that for many users, they would GREATLY PREFER to have the RIGHT to acknowledge the risks entailed, and use the device how THEY WANT TO USE IT.

Let's face it: These people (rightly) buy Android and Nexus devices.

I am not sure I follow how you arrive at the conclusion that "many users" would prefer this. What platform are those users on? It appears that many users (certainly a financially measurable majority) have indicated their preferences already.

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