Dear Amazon,

I am writing to ask you to make my Amazon Instant Video purchases available for download, DRM-free.

I am a big fan of your service, and in the last year I have cancelled my cable service and begun to rely heavily on digital purchases from your store to bring new content to my family.

However, as we have settled into this, some major disadvantages of your service have become clear:

1) Many of my devices (phones, tablets, etc) do not have support for viewing Amazon Instant Video content.
2) If I'm having a bad internet night, I cannot watch the content I purchased.
3) If I am making a long drive for a vacation, my son cannot watch any Amazon content I have purchased.
4) I cannot lend my content to friends who want to check it out for themselves, like I can with DVDs.
5) I cannot back up my content in case something catastrophic happens to your service.

I am aware of the existing download option.  It is Windows-only and uses DRM and is therefore useless to me.  DRM'd files cannot be unlocked in the event of you turning off your authentication servers.  And, obviously, they cannot be played in arbitrary devices.

Now, if there were good tools for removing the DRM, this would not be as big of an issue for me as a consumer.  I would just remove it and go on my merry way.

Unfortunately, such tools do not exist.  It would be far easier for me to pirate content I've already purchased from Amazon Instant Video in order to watch on my tablet, make backups, lend to friends, and have offline access.

But it seems inevitable to me that if I begin taking the risk to pirate content I've paid for, I will quickly find that it is easier to never pay for it in the first place.  At that point, you will have lost me as a recurring customer.

I'm not trying to threaten you, but I think you should realize that I am becoming a dissatisfied customer of yours, and the natural consequence in order to get the sort of access I want to the content I buy appears to be piracy.

I love that your Amazon MP3 service is DRM-free.  I don't buy a lot of music, but I have very happily used your service for years when an album came out that I wanted.  I have preferred it heavily when compared to iTunes and similar services.

Please follow the great example you set with Amazon MP3, and make Amazon Instant Video purchases available for download without DRM as well.

Trying to stay a loyal customer,
Sandy Armstrong

Yesterday in Thessaloniki, Greece we went to celebrate the Release of Gnome 3.6 with the Greek Gnome Community. The release party was held at Cafe Alfa, i attended the event with a couple more LinuxTeam members mostly as volunteers for the event.

The party was very nice and full of attendees, friends we haven’t seen for a looong time and a load of new people :) There were discussions about The new Gnome release of course but also about Open Source in general, communities, a lot of drinking and people networking.

Photos from G+ album

Существуют два пакета утилит: shadow-utils и pwdutils (применяется в SUSE). Служат они для одной цели — редактирования групп и пользователей, но при этом значения набора параметров отличаются. Среди шестерки утилит user{add,mod,del} и group{add,mod,del}, к счастью, наблюдается некоторая систематика.

В shadow-utils следующие параметры имеют всегда одинаковое значение (в pwdutils отсутствуют, если явно не указано обратное):

Ключ	Значение
-D	изменяет значения по умолчанию
-K	key=value для значений по умолчанию
-R	запускать в chroot
-Z	пользователь SELinux

При этом ключи pwdutils другое (в shadow-utils отсутствуют, если явно не указано обратное):

Ключ	Значение
-D	DN для LDAP
-P	путь к /etc/passwd и /etc/shadow

Кроме этого, для каждой команды присутствуют индивидуальные особенности. Их условно можно поделить на три группы: ключ означает разные вещи; ключ отсутствует в одной из реализаций; ключ присутствует, значение совпадает, но это не отражено в документации.

С проблемами первой условной группы можно было бы бороться используя явные длинные названия. Это делает скрипт более длинным, но и более явным. Однако, для -e длинные варианты отличаются: --expiredate и --expire.

useradd

Ключ	Shadow	Pwd
-M	не создавать /home	нет
-N	не создавать группу пользователю	нет
-U	создать пользователю одноименную группу	маска umask для домашней директории
-b	базовый каталог, вместо /home	нет
-l	не добавлять в lastlog	нет

usermod

Ключ	Shadow	Pwd
-A	нет	добавить в группу (аналог -a -G)
-R	запускать в chroot	удалить из группы
-a	(вместе с -G) добавить в группу	недокументированный

groupadd

Ключ	Shadow	Pwd
-f	не ругаться, если группа уже есть	недокументированный

groupmod

Ключ	Shadow	Pwd
-A	нет	добавить пользователя в группу
-R	запускать в chroot	удалить пользователя из группы
-n	переименовать	недокументированный

As per this email KDE SC 4.9.2 packages for 12.1 and 12.2 openSUSE users are available in the KR49 repos.  Thanks to everybody who worked on the packaging!

Another news item to note is that the KDE repos at openSUSE are going to be re-organised, have already been respectively. Their structure does now fit the contributors’ workflow better. If everything goes as planned openSUSE is going to ship KDE SC bugfix releases as official updates, starting with openSUSE 12.3. If you are interested in that topic you can find the summary in the opensuse-kde archives.

• Buscamos un/a desarrollador  web, con experiencia preferiblemente en Ruby-RoR, aunque conocimientos de otros lenguajes y frameworks son también válidos. Nos gustaría que haya trabajado en proyectos orientado a cliente. Debe estar familiarizado con procedimientos de desarrollo colaborativo y herramientas de Software Libre como bases de datos, sistemas de control de versiones, herramientas de bug tracking, etc.

• Dado que este equipo desarrolla su actividad en la comunidad openSUSE (aproximadamente el 20% del tiempo de trabajo estará dedicado a acciones de comunidad), es interesante que el candidato/a disponga de experiencia previa en alguna comunidad FLOSS.

• El candidato/a representará a SUSE u openSUSE en diferentes eventos, impartiendo charlas, sesiones técnicas y foros técnicos de discusión. Debe por tanto disponer de buenas dotes comunicativas. Experiencia previa en eventos internacionales de comunidades de desarrollo será un elemento positivo para la evaluación.

• El puesto de trabajo está localizado en Nuremberg, Alemania, aunque se desarrollará enteramente en inglés. En función de la valía del candidato y su país de origen, es posible retornar a su localización de origen tras 18-24 meses de trabajo en nuestra sede, teniendo que desplazarse a Alemania un par de veces al año.

• En general, SUSE contrata desarrolladores de cualquier parte del mundo. Habitualmente ayudamos a los candidatos seleccionados a tramitar su permiso de trabajo en Alemania (u otras sedes donde se localice la vacante) si fuera necesario. Pero dado que necesitamos cubrir la vacante lo antes posible, aquellos candidatos que ya dispongan de ese permiso, o sean ciudadanos de la UE, tendrán cierta preferencia (no es un requisito imprescinsible). La vacante también está abierta a empleados de SUSE en otras sedes de la empresa como Taiwan, Beijing, EE.UU. o Praga.

Por cierto.... en SUSE nos gusta cada vez más el español.....

• Participa en el proceso de selección para este puesto .
• Participa en otros procesos de selección.
• Información adicional sobre vacantes en SUSE. 

Aplicando a la vacante a través del enlace, me llegará tu CV igualmente, así que te ruego sigas el procedimiento apuntado arriba...me ahorrarás trabajo y asegurarás que tu propuesta no se pierde en mi ya de por sí saturada Bandeja de Entrada. ;-)

Por último, quiero comentarte que solemos recibir muchos currículum para cada vacante. Los Team Leaders los revisamos todos. Sin embargo, debido a la cantidad de vacantes, el equipo de Recursos Humanos no puede canalizar el envío  personalizado de respuestas a todos los candidatos. Sólo aquellos que llegan al estadío final reciben dicha comunicación.

No es probablemente la respuesta que merece tu esfuerzo como candidato hacia nosotros, pero nos resulta imposible gestionarlo de otra manera. Te pido disculpas por adelantado si aplicas pero no recibes respuesta más allá de la automática. Y he pasado por ese proceso y no es agradable. Simplemente, no puede ser de otra manera.

A few weeks ago I published in this blog the general requirements of the opening for my team at SUSE. I come here again with another description for another opening we have for the openSUSE Team at SUSE. The basic requirements are the following:

We are looking for a web developer, preferably with experience in Ruby - RoR (although other languages frameworks are also valid), that have worked on customer oriented projects. He/she must be familiar with popular Free Software data bases, control version systems, bug tracking tools, etc.

Since this team is very community oriented (20% of the working time will be related with engagement activities), is interesting that the candidate have a FLOSS community background.

The candidate will need to represent the team or openSUSE project in events, giving talks, participating in training sessions, meetings, etc. He/she must have good communications skills. Experience in international community oriented events is a plus.

The position is located in Nuremberg, Germany, although only English is required. Depending on the candidate’s experience and origin, it is possible to move back to his country to work remotely after 18-24 months, having to travel to Germany a few times a year.

In general, SUSE hires people from all over the world. We usually help those who are from outside the EU to get the work permit to work in Germany or Prague. But since we need to fill the position as soon as possible, it will be a plus, not a requirement, if you are a EU citizen or already have permission to work in a EU country. The position is also open for SUSE employees from US, Taiwan, China or other countries.

As a mentioned in a previous post, SUSE are growing and has a very good combination of a hacker and customer oriented atmosphere. The openSUSE Team at SUSE is formed by employees that work full time in this community project, which I think that it gives the position a plus for those who enjoy interacting with contributors and professionals in a learning and innovative ecosystem.

Finally, if you apply for one or our openings but you better fit in another one, or there are several good candidates for a single position, take in consideration that each selection process is not isolated. So escalating through a process for any opening, increases your chances to succeed in another opening for a different department.

• Apply to the opening
• Apply for other openings
• Further information about openings at SUSE

Applying to the opening through the above link ensures that your CV will be received by me, so please follow it so we make sure your CV do not get lost in my Inbox. ;-)

Finally, I want to say that the Team Leaders at SUSE check every CV we receive through HR. But due to the high amount of candidates we usually have, we cannot send a personal answer to every candidate (through the HR Department). Only those candidates that get to the final step of the process received them.


This is probably not the answer that you deserve as candidate from us but we simply cannot handle it in any other way. So if you just receive the standard automatic response, receive my apologies.

After some iterations of updating the system with zypper dup or yast and some years of service with the system you will find out that there is a lot of dust which is obsolete or has been forgotten. Recently I had the problem that I need to move my 32bit system to a 64bit system and thus the way to go was to migrate the running system into an image description, build a 64bit image from it and install that on the 64bit machine. But the most important part was to cleanup the running system and find out what it really contains. The report kiwi migrate created here was helpful and so I think it might be helpful for others too. Just call:

kiwi –migrate mySystem

It will end up with some data below /tmp/mySystem which of course can be removed at any time without any risk. Most interesting is the html report generated which you can view with any browser. So far kiwi collects the following information:

• kernel version and kernel specific kmp packages
• hardware dependent packages
• installed gem packages
• repository checkouts
• rpm packages installed multiple times
• rpm packages which could not be found according to the current repo setup including version and repo information
• tree of modified files, packaged but changed
• tree of custom files, those which doesn’t belong to any package or other part of the bullet list

basically the use case of kiwi migrate is to migrate the running system into an appliance description but I’m not there yet. There is still room for improvement but I think it still can help to cleanup the system and to see what is installed on the system and not managed by a package manager

I have tested this since openSUSE 11.4

Remember to have fun