On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 01:10:55PM -0300, Cristian Rodr?guez wrote:

Dave Feustel escribió:

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that there are security problems introduced by the presence of kde code.

What security issues ?

I am the sole user of my computers. I run a very small set of programs. When things don't work normally (particularly in the browser), I suspect security problems. Without going into detail, a lot less of that is happening on Fedora since I deleted the kde code. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 04:29:43PM -0600, Rajko M. wrote:

On Sunday 25 January 2009 11:09:14 am Dave Feustel wrote:

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On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 01:10:55PM -0300, Cristian Rodr?guez wrote:

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Dave Feustel escribi?:

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that there are security problems introduced by the presence of kde code.

What security issues ?

I am the sole user of my computers. I run a very small set of programs. When things don't work normally (particularly in the browser), I suspect security problems. Without going into detail, a lot less of that is happening on Fedora since I deleted the kde code.

Hi Dave,

I would like to rephrase the question: "Can you give few examples of things that work different, not normal, from what you expect."

Konqueror from 4.04 on would often return a 404 for pages which Firefox would find immediately. That error happened this morning on Suse 11.

I would like to know more details.

KDE just as any other desktop has some common workflow to all desktops, but it has it's own features. Telling that those features present, in your opinion, possible security problems, and keeping details for yourself is not considered ethical in opensource community, but sharing your concerns, with necessary details that will allow others to discuss them, is welcome.

I used to try to bring up these problems, but I gave up. The 'necessary details' that you mention are impossible to convey to sceptics who look for any excuse to discount my reports. It has become clear that taking direct action on my own system to stop any strangeness ocurring on my system beats by a mile trying to report the problems to Bugzilla in terms of the effort required.

For instance: What desktop you are using to run Firefox?

I run Firefox on both Fedora and Suse 11.0.

Why that desktop is in your opinion better?

I use F9 as my main system and Suse to experiment with. (Actually, I experiment with F9 a lot too :-) ). I am command line oriented and I understand F9 better than Suse in that regard.

What particular features you don't like?

'Don't like' is not what I feel. Suse features work well, but I have picked them up much more slowly than F9 features. I do like Suse mailing list better than Suse Forums. I get a lot out of the mailing lists.

What events you consider as sign of security problems?

Starting up Konsole and having the Konsole window fill up with 'i's (This happened while I was still running OpenBSD and KDE) before I even could click on the window. This started up one day out of the blue and happened every time I started Konsole. It was the main reason I quickly switched to xterm and ksh. I've stuck with xterm/ksh ever since. Having the bios report checksum errors at boot time. Being unable to enter the bios by pressing delete during boot up.

-- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 26 January 2009 00:23:24 Dave Feustel wrote:

Konqueror from 4.04 on would often return a 404 for pages which Firefox would find immediately. That error happened this morning on Suse 11.

A 404 message comes from the server. It means "file not found". It has nothing to do with the client at all. There is however a known problem with konqueror where it will try to connect to sites using IPv6, which nearly never works, whereas firefox uses IPv4 only. It is annoying, but you can work around it by disabling IPv6 systemwide in YaST's network settings

I used to try to bring up these problems, but I gave up. The 'necessary details' that you mention are impossible to convey to sceptics who look for any excuse to discount my reports.

Hm, I haven't seen any issues reported by you before. Can you give an example of where this has happened? Bug reports should be taken seriously

...

What events you consider as sign of security problems?

Starting up Konsole and having the Konsole window fill up with 'i's (This happened while I was still running OpenBSD and KDE) before I even could click on the window. This started up one day out of the blue and happened every time I started Konsole. It was the main reason I quickly switched to xterm and ksh. I've stuck with xterm/ksh ever since.

I would suspect a stuck keyboard key, but I guess if xterm works we can discount that

Having the bios report checksum errors at boot time.

Being unable to enter the bios by pressing delete during boot up.

These two have nothing at all to do with the OS, and only indicates that you have hardware problems. I don't know which BIOS you have, but I would bet that the checksum errors come from memory tests, and indicate that you have problems with bad RAM The BIOS tests run long before any software from the OS gets loaded (even before the boot loader is touched) and cannot be caused by any bug there. Anders -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday January 25 2009, Dave Feustel wrote:

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And regarding the tin-foil hat: that actually is a step in the right direction. The reason is that ambient rf radiation (from cell towers, wifi, gwen towers, etc) is now a TRILLION times greater than twenty years ago (Source: Dr. Ricard Deagle at nutrimedical.com. Listen to his internet radio program at gcnlive.com M-F 2-5pm CDT). All that radiation is making people sick. Have you noticed how many people are getting tumors behind the ear they use with their cell phones. Ever read the paper "The Mind Has No Firewall"? Ir-blocking material won't do. But Aluminum space blankets on the walls and ceilings will do the trick. You can also sleep in a Faraday cage.

Ah, yes. I get it... You're writing a screenplay. Good one! Cheerio!! RRS -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-01-26 at 01:05 +0100, Anders Johansson wrote:

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Having the bios report checksum errors at boot time.

Being unable to enter the bios by pressing delete during boot up.

These two have nothing at all to do with the OS, and only indicates that you have hardware problems. I don't know which BIOS you have, but I would bet that the checksum errors come from memory tests, and indicate that you have problems with bad RAM

It can be the cmos checksum test, and usually means a low cmos battery.

The BIOS tests run long before any software from the OS gets loaded (even before the boot loader is touched) and cannot be caused by any bug there.

Absolutely. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkl9D0MACgkQtTMYHG2NR9X3agCdFc+Rm5aJf8RDiE76EnvlBOx2 8P4Ani4kjgxwpDdO/8moGDf6JsprKrxv =Z836 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 26 January 2009 04:03:45 Dave Feustel wrote:

The bad checksum error can occur if the bios image has been patched and the checksum has not been recomputed and replaced.

I hope you don't think dropping KDE from your system is going to have an effect on this. Anders -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 25 January 2009 09:11:49 pm Carlos E. R. wrote:

On Monday, 2009-01-26 at 04:03 +0100, Dave Feustel wrote:

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It can be the cmos checksum test, and usually means a low cmos battery.

The bad checksum error can occur if the bios image has been patched and the checksum has not been recomputed and replaced.

Oh, yeah, and you thing kde did that? Get real.

:-D It is bad CMOS checksum. Replace battery, follow procedure described in manual to reset CMOS and load defaults. BIOS will refuse to start computer on a bad BIOS checksum. http://www.google.com/search?&q=bad+bios+checksum With dated and very cheap motherboards it means look for MB replacement, while newer offer option to flash BIOS with recovery CD. It seems as old computer that really can run better without KDE, or any other current desktop environment. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday, 2009-01-25 at 19:45 -0800, Tony Alfrey wrote:

Anders Johansson wrote:

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On Monday 26 January 2009 04:03:45 Dave Feustel wrote:

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The bad checksum error can occur if the bios image has been patched and the checksum has not been recomputed and replaced.

I hope you don't think dropping KDE from your system is going to have an effect on this.

Use WD-40

ROTFL! X'-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkl9MxEACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UHIACfWKZCXzxy/cGe0gwzfLVpKqxe 1tMAoJkMThfoizvaTvo15w5OBxdy6gph =PWJM -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 26 January 2009 00:19:32 Dave Feustel wrote:

Have you noticed how many people are getting tumors behind the ear they use with their cell phones.

Nope. And I've been practising medicine for the past 34 years. Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.1, Kernel 2.6.27.7-9-default, KDE 3.5.10 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 4GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9200GS -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, January 26, 2009 13:49, Dave Feustel wrote:

Actually I assume my systems have already been rooted quite a while ago.

Actually I think that the question isn't *what* has been rooted, but *who* ;-)

The removal of the kde code is an experiment which has revealed the presence of a simpler window manager which I find I like, but which is missing just a few essential amenities.

Absolutely true: ion, xfce, windowmaker,... are all very light compared to KDE. I'm still missing a causal relation between you being rooted in your BIOS and a fast desktop, but please ignore me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 04:18:59AM -0800, Tony Alfrey wrote:

Amedee Van Gasse wrote:

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On Mon, January 26, 2009 01:19, Dave Feustel wrote:

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And regarding the tin-foil hat: that actually is a step in the right direction. The reason is that ambient rf radiation (from cell towers, wifi, gwen towers, etc) is now a TRILLION times greater than twenty years ago (Source: Dr. Ricard Deagle at nutrimedical.com.

<snip>

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Please move it to the off-topic list. And by the way, tin foil hats actually *increase* the amount of RF radiation that reaches your head. It works as an antenna...

I'm thinking that his tin hat might be way too long to act like a quarter-wave dipole at 2.45 GHz (typical cell phone microwave) and is thereby not resonant at 2.45 GHz. And tin is not a very good conductor, so I'm thinking that his hat might make a better heater. He could test this by putting a tin hat on a melon, and sticking the whole affair in a microwave oven. And don't forget the WD-40.

AHA! Another cellphone employee trying to discount the truth about the effects of cellphone and microwave radiation! Note that amateur radio operators experience twice the level of leukemia as the general population, presumably as a result of exposure to ambient rf radiation in the shack, although possibly from breathing smoke while soldering. Also, keep in mind that the entire body aborbs radiation. Don't forget to read the article "The Mind Has No Firewall" published by the US Military in 1998.

-- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org