This. At least for the general public. The whole idea of a "computer" is simply a result of how primitive they are. That the software that controls them requires the user to understand concepts such as operating system and application, networking and device drivers. People don't really ever want to know they are "running a word processor" or "launching a web browser". They want to accomplish specific things, like writing a note (or video chatting) with a friend, looking something up or watching a movie.

The technical crowd loves to complain about Apple's walled garden, but this is exactly the genius of Apple. They get that. They get that they have to evolve the thing called a computer into a thing that people don't ever have to fiddle with. That simply exists to provide useful services for their life. The other computer manufacturers understand that to a smaller degree and then wonder why their tablets aren't as successful.

The personal computer, as technical people know it, is going away. It's growing up into what the vast majority of people really want. And thank God. I'm glad I don't have to stand in front of my car turning a crank to get it running.

But all is not lost for technical people. There will always be ways to have your own device. The free software and maker movements will ensure that. In some ways things are better today than ever. In the 1980s (some consider the heyday of the open personal computer) we had the 8-bit IBM PC. Today we have a gamut of programmable devices ranging from Arduinos to $35 linux computers to set top boxes to multi-core, multi-cpu computers more powerful that super computers of the last century. All totally accessible.

Have you seen the classic "A Boy and his Dog"? An advanced society might make the process efficient by just cutting to the chase as quickly as possible. Over and over again.

Experiences must vary. Maker culture isn't overrated in my experience. A project at my local hackerspace just got some NASA funding. Other projects there include some pretty amazing art installations with heavy-duty FPGA-based circuitry and algorithms. The sharing of expertise is really useful and helpful. And it's heartening to see those with a lot of experience as engineers mentoring those who are new to electronics or mechanical design.

I've found 3d printers useful for prototyping plastic parts. One just needs to understand their limitations. Many people are just playing around with them now but they will continue to evolve and just like the evolution of the PC a wider and wider group of people will find the technology useful for solving real-world problems.

Sparkfun has created a fantastically successful business encapsulating electronic technology in a way that is useful for people to design their own custom electronic systems. The boom in inexpensive or free easy-to-use IDEs and cheap dev boards is bringing embedded computing to a huge audience. I still use expensive dev tools and environments for some jobs but it's really easy and fast to program an Arduino to do something simple. Spend some time looking at a site like hackaday or even instructables and you'll see a wide breadth of very creative maker creations.

From the article, the read-only registers may be configured to be written:

"At this point we went back to those JTAG registers which were non-updatable as well as FROW to check whether we could change their values. Once the backdoor feature was unlocked, many of these registers became volatile and the FROW was reprogrammable as a normal Flash memory. Actel has a strong claim that 'configuration files cannot be read back via JTAG or any other method' in the PA3 and in their other latest generation Flash FPGAs [18]. Hence, they claim, they are extremely secure because the readback access is not implemented. We discovered that in fact Actel did implement such an access, with a special key used for activation."

After reading the article, I'd bet that this "feature" of the FPGA is either for some manufacturing reason or was requested by customers (e.g. the US government) so that they can access/reprogram certain supposed read-only parts of the FPGA. I see nothing about any correlation with the Chinese using it as a backdoor.

Hacktivists Say Verizon Now Biggest Corporate Net Threat

Exactly. Mr. Sherman's RIAA works to prop up a dying business model by attacking the business' customer. This protest may have been enabled by Wikipedia and others, but it was the consumer speaking. Consumers have proven they will pay for music, given a reasonable and fair business model. SOPA and PIPA were not about moving the industry more towards a reasonable and fair business model.

I see devices like this as a way for those who say they value the philosophy Linux represents to put their money where their mouth is. I'm pretty OS agnostic but I'm going to buy one. I like the idea of having a little self-contained Linux box that I can hack -- and via the USB ports and hopefully some internal TTL-level serial port - turn into all manner of cool controller and interface. It seems like a great tool for a hacker.

I wish I had mod points because this is just about the most concise description of American reality I've seen in a while.