Also, to clarify, this seems to not be over SSL itself, but rather over "using a shared seed value to generate pseudo-random key values at a transmitter and a receiver." RTFA on CipherLaw Blog.

All it would take is Google or one other company with adequately deep pockets to actually take this guy to court and that would be the last we'd hear of Mr. Spangenberg or his trollish little company.

It's a misunderstanding/intentional mis-reading of the actual announcement. What he means to say is that the only way to install Metro apps will be through the app store; you can't just get them from websites and install them. Microsoft themselves announced this over a year ago, as referenced here http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-app-store-will-be-the-only-source-of-metro-apps/14873.

As far as I can tell, non-metro apps (that is, regular old programs) will still be available by whatever means you prefer.

What, exactly, do you have problems with? "I just can't accomplish anything, ever." isn't a very helpful phrase. Is it getting on-line that gives you problems? Using any of the office suites or e-mail clients? Is it that you can't make Windows-native program X work under Wine? Or is there something more fundamental that's causing the problems (say, it won't actually fully load the OS and/or GUI)? Some of us would genuinely like to help, but when you start with such a vague description of your difficulties, it makes it incredibly hard for us to figure out how to help you.

I wish I was joking, but I have clients who insist on running OpenSuSE. I think their justification had something to do with mono... Fortunately I don't manage their servers, so it never comes up except when they lock themselves out.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, but I'm fairly confident it's better than when the professor writes the book you use for class.

Seriously though, what programs require crap like this? I never had textbooks with such insane restrictions in any of the science courses. The closest it came was a CD-ROM filled with microphotographs and a few animations that came with my sophomore-year microbiology textbook.

For what reason, other than personal preference/nostalgia, would you boot into Linux and then run a media player in WINE? Is there some must-have function for you that Amarok, Exaile, XMMS, RhythmBox, or any of the other Linux-native players are missing? I just don't see the point...

Really? I found 14 to be fairly good. I skipped 15, went to 16 and found so many problems that I'm glad 17 came out a scant 10 days after my upgrade. On 17 I haven't had any issues yet aside from some KMail-specific ones related to opening external HTML in messages causing a segfault. But as far as SuSE goes, yes, I have to agree. I have too many customers who insist on using it, won't upgrade, and so lose all ability to patch one year after release. I feel for them since they can't be easily brought up to the latest security fixes, but I don't feel for them because they won't provide an outage window to do a full reinstall & upgrade.

I just want to know how this congresscritter somehow turned the biology of "excess energy (sugar) gets converted into a convenient, high-energy-density molecule (fat) and stored for later use" into "It's actually a poison for you, because your liver can't handle that huge amount of fructose.". An excess of a non-poison does not make it a poison.

The default as of RHEL/CentOS6 is sha512 as well. RHEL5 systems still use md5 by default though...

You, sir, have just made my day. If only I had some mod points...