They were bought out by "attachmate" -- a maker of appliance like office support stuff. Suse was a desktop & server company, now they are focusing on a closed & secure boot for supporting user-tamper proof appliances -- not that it won't be usable for laptops and such, but makes user control and configuration much more difficult.

They claim that they are following in the steps of redhat on many of these issues who's also going to have a secureboot offering (booting w/binaries signed by MS-certs.

*shiver*.

Good luck w/that.

I hope you don't expect to update any SW on your system for a while.

opensuse has gone out of their way to make their systems NOT be systemV compat... including moving to a requirement for booting from a ramdisk image (because systemd doesn't handle PATH, it uses fixed paths for it's binaries), integrating the power, device, udev and logging subsystems into systemd, with logging going to a binary MS-like format that is, by default, not saved.

Also put all the var/run files on ram disk, so progs that were used to their own directory for run /var/run/dir/xxx so they could run as non-root, need to have it recreated each boot....

it can be real hairy trying to get around all those problems and opensuse's official position is that any other config (including booting directly from your hard disk) is not supported.

When the computer industry was "young", there was little likely hood the NSA had co-opted your developers & SW providers. Now?

With every update you need to wonder if it contains a new backdoor at the request of the NSA, asked via a "security letter", which makes disclosure illegal.

Examples in linux abound as vendors stumble over each other to provide secure-boot distro's, complete with windows-like service managers (systemd), that move config control out of scripts where you can see what they are doing, into binaries, that you have to verify come from a source that is likely too large for most of us to audit -- not to mention the problem looking for a backdoor that might be very well hidden these days... (ex. pre-solved factoring keys for AES encryption), etc... You got the latest certs downloaded from *where-ever* (needed for https and such)? How many aren't already cracked?

I wouldn't have a problem with the NSA's spying, *IF* they didn't share anything not related to national security -- but our entire justice system is predicated on law-enforcement being 'human' and needing warrants to search private stuff -- but now? The NSA doesn't need those, and any info it finds is shared with generic, domestic law enforcement. It's already been seen that the FBI has been getting info dumps from the NSA that it's been using to start determined "take-down" efforts against *persons*. I.e. they just watch the people they want, and find some excuse to 'legally' find out the info, OR, find something else to bust them on.

Of course it's been well documented here on "/.", how both foreign visitors and US citizens lose their constitutional rights when they are at a border -- losing laptops and having decryption keys demanded.

What crap!.

One rectifying solution would be to have any illegally leaked evidence taint prosecution of someone for *any, "hidden", charge*, for some number of years (whatever statute of limitations might be).
By hidden, I mean things they'd have to probe into to find out -- not armed robbery or such...

It sounds problematic, and the details would have to be ironed out, but between that, and the profit motive for "charging" a "rightless" property with "crimes" instead of the person, our legal rights as citizens are falling below western standards and down into the "outcast/illegal/brutal" regimes that we supposedly "invade" for....

Who's gonna invade us to save us from our government? I think the only ones with the ability to save us are "us".

You could always read the "Windows [OS] Internals" books and find that it's trying to keep disk indices up to date, keep time and certificates up to date/current with appropriate servers, looking for updates, optimizing disk access, looking for changes in propagated rights and restrictions (which get "pushed" down from above), so old credentials are timed out and/or updated (effects of group policy, primarily, as group membership doesn't change dynamically)...checking that subscriptions are up-to-date (multiple formats (url based, rss, email, other messaging, etc).

Window's supported API is much larger than what most other OS's provide -- with MS still supporting programs from the XP era 10 years ago as well as modern DirectX11 progs .. vs. Linux. HA!... My linux vendor can't be troubled to support **one level** of previous-releases with any current release.

Linux doesn't really have a 3rd party market API to support. Many WinXP games work on Win7. Show me 1 3D-graphics prog from 2000 that runs on the linux of that day and today with no changes. Doesn't exist.

With a move of data to the cloud, with slower data rates and constant updates, (you do want your phone to beep when you have a new message, right?), devices need to stay on longer to get info. Windows has LONG been about supporting centralized business control over client machines. Vista was about creating a trusted computing core that could be known to be "integrous" so it could play encrypted digital media in a way that would be able to give guarantees to media owners about the media being protected -- something still in infancy in Linux, but with companies like RedHat & SuSE(now an "AttachMate" subsidiary) getting closer to secure boot & running of signed-only SW and central service control with Systemd.

The Linux versions that don't use much power are not providing those newer features and likely aren't systemd based.

What windows does in background is well documented -- and is a considerably longer list than what Linux provides. I can't even install and run a newer generation of "perl" on my linux box without being told it is "unsupported", vs. Windows providing Visual C interfaces from 2000-2013 in side-by-side libs that usually work).

I can't believe a comment based on ignorance got rated so highly for "insightful".....

(None of the above should be thought to indicate a love for MS or Windows... which give me ample reasons to hate them... But the wild-west development and support[sic] existing in Linux is getting worse as time goes on and giving me more reasons to appreciate the MS elephant in the room...)

Why is it that every half wit thinks that bitcoin is all about drug transactions and prostitution?

Because it's the propaganda spread by Federal law enforcement to get people "not to care" about something that is only used for such. That way, they have far more freedom trample on rights w/o the public at large being shocked or as upset...

I'm sure the ""Federated"-LargeBankClub (sometimes called the Federal Reserve Board, or "the Fed", like it has anything to do with the Federal government) is also trying to manipulate public perception. If they lost control of both issuing and constantly devaluing the currency -- and a currency like Bitcoin was perceived as not devaluing, (relative to other currencies), then deliberately devalued currencies (like the dollar -- usually only 2-3%/year, but, since Bush handed over ~ 50% of a years budget to his finance buds, it's been closer to double that (~6%/year).

The standard of living in the US as a whole continues to drop as we are told that a shrinking dollar is really "flat" inflation... yeah, right.

Now try to buy foreign-made products that would normally have gotten cheaper over the past 6-7 years as tech ages and becomes cheaper to produce. Instead of that -- prices have remained flat or gone up in areas where before there were about 15-20% price drops/year (as measured in $$/constant unit, where constant unit= things like CPU seconds (of some fixed generation), or $$/processor, or $$/diskspace unit, or memory... you name it, hasn't dropped nearly as much as before we were Bush-Wacked!

So if you create a website, and like nearly everyone else, you try to get ad-slots (probably using google) filled, to defray the costs or support server upgrades, wouldn't that allow them to call you "commercial"? I.e. if you take ads from them or anyone are you commercial?

Suppose you take "donations" -- and in return give "benefits" (examples include more space, on server, more downloads of "valued material" (whatever it is that people on the site want), or voting rights of what features will be implemented in 'vim'). The way things stand, google already supports such ventures through various google "offerings" (google groups, for example).

Are they going to set a limit of how much you can make per/year to be considered non-commercial? If you are a non-profit organization (or religious or political organization) are you exempt?

What a mushy, arbitrary line -- perfect for selective enforcement and abuse.

China is doing a great job of accumulating it's own massive debt. At some point it will probably turn into a race to see who gets there first although I'd give China the edge because I think their economy is not sustainable. For at least a decade some have suggested that China has been exaggerating it's economic growth and from what I know I tend to believe it. Sure things are great, for a very small subset of the population. Meanwhile the majority is exploited in the name of economic success.

And this is different from the US, how? Top CEO's earn 1000's of times what their exploited workers make:

$378 million for 2011, Apple's Tim Cook takes the cake for the highest Fortune 50 CEO-to-typical-worker pay ratio. Indeed, it takes 6,258 typical Apple worker salaries to match Cook's total pay..

The US is in the difficult position that they're the world's military.

And how did that come to be? By lying to their citizens, exploiting them and corrupting the government officials that were suppose to be protecting our interests.

China may not have doodoo that does not smell, but that doesn't mean they don't make valid points at times.

[blockquote]Let me repeat this, so it's clear: In the US, commercial TV broadcast is funded by advertising time. (And, in part, by selling rebroadcasting rights to cable channels.) That's why it's been classically "free" off-air to viewers. It's a different model from other countries, where you get taxed for owning a TV. The only exception is the US government sponsored PBS channel, which is still "free" to receive but is funded in part by income tax.[/blockquote]

The above model is seriously messed up in many areas were you can't receive more than 1-2 over-the air channels and need cable just to get the main 3 networks.

What's worse, IF we have cable , rebroadcast rights have already been paid by the cable company. I bitched to the cable company about having to pay extra for digital to get free-off-the-air digital channels. Comcast in my area is a monopoly, and sets their prices as they wish.

The TV broadcasters, sounds like they are simply making a play to demand more money from end-users. It's nothing about their rights being violated. Their rights have been paid for by cable and advertising fees. Now they want more just because I can record something and watch it elsewhere?

It's all about the entire entertainment industries desire to move to paying for each "play" of "their material"....

Notice how distribution is shifting away from hard goods -- and even they often need online connections for stuff to be validated? You can't buy many goods anymore -- just "license them"... which should be crap.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions... The new generation of script kiddies think little of being major pains. They've grown up in a world with no real feedback -- they don't have to see your face, nor be afraid of reprisals...

Gaming DOS's? Witnesses first hand a site down for 2 weeks over some 16'y/o being told to read the rules (which he'd violated in multiple ways) -- not that he was told in anything remotely, what I would call, a polite manner (i.e. the site "asked" for the treatment they got...). It was trivial though for him to just fly off the handle over a slight magnified by adolescent hormones and lack of experience. He was only stopped because the site had international members and one finally drove to the city where the kid lived and talked to his parents...

The BIG problem is that you (original poster) CANNOT stop or deal with the DOS on your end. It doesn't matter what you do with your router -- by the time it hits your router, the connection from you ISP to you has already been saturated. Do the wireshark thing(s) and gather evidence, but enlist your ISP's help -- technically, it is your ISP that is relaying the packets to your computer -- and if the traffic can be characterized, they could put in a filter at their end to disallow incoming traffic that fits some abusive pattern (with the idea that the filter would be a temporary solution)....

Good luck!

This is dangerous. This is very very dangerous. We openly acknowledge that those in charge have been fucking it up royal. But the media circus has convinced everyone that "my guy isn't the problem....

Not entirely -- the problem is that only a minority of people vote. Most of those who do are not the 89% who disapprove.

How do you think CA LOST legalizing same-sex marriage, when other states won? CA was thought to be a bell-weather state, and the mormons spent huge amounts of money to influence the "low-education" conservative voters to vote against it "en masse"... While they bought the election, in CA, it still passed elsewhere and by US-constitutional law, is likely valid in CA now as well.

Why do you think conservatives are against good public schools?

They just did. They closed the US Gvnmt.

Now if only it would stay closed.

I propose we have a constitutional convention now, quick, why the old government is officially shut-down.

[blockquote]GMail scans and extract the meaning of the communication ... they are extracting, saving, using and building a database of meaningful content from your email ...[/blockquote]
----
It depends on what algorithm they are using, but if it is a Bayesian type analysis, they aren't extracting meaning, but a mathematical pattern which correlate to certain subjects that trigger ads.

You can see this type of behavior in results and it doesn't show much in the way of intelligence or actually finding "meaning", any more than looking for 2+2 and giving 4.

Pattern recognition is a machine level, non-thinking action -- that can be correlated, statistically (another numeric formula w/probabilities) to give formulaic outputs that can be used to trigger ads.

That isn't the same as deciphering meaning.

You don't think MOST of the NSA's scanning is automated?

Just because it is automated, doesn't mean they don't pick out information they want and act on it.

How is this different than if a human scanned it?

You don't understand -- the prison industry is a growth industry fueled by owners like Dick Cheney, who aren't about to let one of their biggest "feeds" into their system become "legal". The US prison industry is one of the few that continues to grow despite[due to] budget cuts and bad economic conditions. It grows during good times, and grows even faster during bad times.

On top of this, there is the move toward privatization where profits can really be had as economies of scale increase and provided "benefits" are cut below ethical levels, but still passing "official" guidelines (which are set by those making money by cutting them).

It's also a way of creating a new "underclass". With racism coming under constant harassment, some women making more than men, children's work restricted, a new class of low-wage slave laborers is needed. Those with prison records get to face all sorts of legal discrimination in housing and employment. It's a ripe market for development!

Happy OpenSuSE users? Ha! W/the switch to away from initd to a windows systemservicesd that takes over the HW operations of other daemons in preparation for licenses tied to your HW config as on windows? Yeah, real happy.