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                El Capitan is the captain around here, not me

One week ago [1], I wrote “[b]ut **no**, I do not, we do not, own our own
computing devices any more.” The context of my saying that was in the forced
“thou shalt **not** downgrade thy iPhone” I received from Apple [2] but it's
becoming more apparent that I don't “own” my Mac mini either—it's that Apple
has benevolenty allowed the use of their Mac mini by yours truly.

I've just now learned about the System Integrity Protection [3] “feature”
that El [DELETED-Presidente de Por Vida [4]-DELETED] Capitan [5] contains
(really Apple? Another series of pointless names for operating system
releases? What, exactly is so wrong with 10.11?).

root is no longer root [6].

Yup, not even root can delete all of /sbin, not that you would want to do
that, but the point is—Apple is making damn sure you, as “owner” of the
machine, don't go deleting files willy-nilly. Of course Apple can delete
files willy-nilly on “your” machine, because they know better.

And really, it's not quite as dire [7] as I make it out to be (it can be
disabled—link via Reddit [8]). I can understand why Apple does this—to
protect users from malware [9] but I feel as if I don't actually own my
computer. And now I'm just a bit more wary about upgrading my Mac mini [10]
(as I sit here, looking at the “Install El Presidente de Por Vida” icon, just
waiting for the 16G (Gigabytes) of RAM (Random Access Memory) to arrive).

Sigh.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2015/10/05.1
[2] http://www.apple.com/
[3] https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/system-integrity-protection-adding-another-layer-to-apples-security-model/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_for_Life
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_El_Capitan
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superuser
[7] https://reverse.put.as/2015/10/12/rootfool-a-small-tool-to-dynamically-disable-and-enable-sip-in-el-capitan/
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3oh4n9/rootfool_a_small_tool_to_dynamically_disable_and/
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware
[10] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2015/10/06.1

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