(CNN) -- Anytime you tinker with something that millions of people use daily, you're going to upset some folks. Remember those redesigned $20 bills a decade ago -- the ones people said looked like Monopoly money?

That may explain why Facebook's new makeover is sparking strong opinions -- hysteria, even -- among the more than 100 million users of the popular social-networking site.

More than a week after Facebook began forcing users to its redesigned pages, a backlash is still rippling through the online community.

"The new version is cluttered and there's no continuity to it," Valerie Stayskal of Addison, Illinois, told CNN. "I don't like the tabs they've got. When you get to the news feed, you see all these fonts, and it's just a mess. Very hard to navigate."

"Some of these [changes] just seem kind of pointless. The reason I joined Facebook is because it was simple and easy. Now they're just making it more complicated, and I really don't like that," said Kyle Aevermann of Gilbert, Arizona, who sent his complaints to CNN in an iReport video. "I just wish they would have kept it how it was." iReport.com: Watch Aevermann's Facebook review

Facebook's new look separates users' personal profiles into different areas of the site and provides more tools meant to make it easier to share information and photos. The changes also shift users' applications to the bottom of their home page and create more white space -- a move some users fear will lead to more ads on the site. iReport.com: What do you think of the new Facebook?

Facebook unveiled the makeover in July and let users decide whether to switch over to the new format or keep using the old one. But that transition period ended almost two weeks ago, when Facebook eliminated the previous version. Users logged on to the site to discover the information on their personal profiles had been rearranged.

"We are just beginning the process of moving people over to the new Facebook and saying goodbye to the old Facebook," wrote Mark Slee, product manager for Facebook, in a September 10 blog post on the site. "We set out to make Facebook simpler, cleaner, more relevant, and easier to control. With your feedback and participation ... we believe we've gotten to the best Facebook yet."

But many users don't agree.

In the past week, CNN has received more than 200 unsolicited e-mails from people complaining about the new Facebook. Several online petitions are circulating that urge Facebook to give users the option of returning to the old format. One, Petition Against the New Facebook, was launched by Scott Sanders, a student at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and has more than 1.5 million names.

"Facebook was once the classy alternative to MySpace. Now it's the classy girlfriend you once loved, but you begin to feel distant from because she wants to move into your house and tell you what colors to paint your walls and how to arrange your furniture," said iReporter Sara Campbell, 26, of Louisville, Kentucky. "You're given an ultimatum -- marry me or it's over. I wonder how many of us will give into the demands?"

Many other users defend the new Facebook, saying they find it better organized and easier to navigate.

"Quit your whining. It just takes time to get used to. You just have to be patient," said iReporter George Topouria of Tbilisi, Georgia. "I actually like the new design. It may seem to be giving less information on one page, but at least it doesn't take a century to load."

"When a company like Facebook doesn't change, it leaves open the possibility that one of countless other social-networking sites will make the changes that Facebook didn't," said Zack Colman, 24, of Los Angeles, California. "For those of you who don't think the Facebook system was broken, consider how hard it was to sift through all of the applications on someone's page before finding the relevant information you wanted. Or even just to write on their wall. Now, what you want is right in front of you."

In a September 18 blog post on the site, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said that almost 100 million people around the world are now using the new design.

"It's tempting to say that we should just support both designs, but this isn't as simple as it sounds. Supporting two versions is a huge amount of work for our small team, and it would mean that going forward we would have to build everything twice. If we did that then neither version would get our full attention," said Zuckerberg, who launched Facebook from his Harvard University dorm in 2004.

"That said, Facebook is a work in progress," he said. "We constantly try to improve things and we understand that our work isn't perfect. Even if you're joining a group to express things you don't like about the new design, you're giving us important feedback and you're sharing your voice, which is what Facebook is all about."

The recent makeover isn't the first time Facebook has seen its users protest a change to the site. In 2006, the Palo Alto-based startup angered users by introducing a tool called "news feeds" that automatically broadcast users' personal details.

That furor eventually waned. Facebook is counting on this one subsiding as well.

"The new Facebook may upset a lot of people at first, but eventually we will get used to it and probably enjoy it more than we used to," Colman told CNN. "I'm sure in a few weeks everything will die down and in a few months everyone will have forgotten completely about the old Facebook."

How to Disable SELinux

You've setup a new system, or installed something new on your Linux system and its not working. You get the feeling that SELinux is the cause of the problem. This page was written to help.

Contents

     Overview
     Should you really disable SELinux?
     Temporarily switch off enforcement
     Permanently Permissive
     Fully Disabling SELinux
     Re-Enabling SELinux

Overview

SELinux has two major components on your system. There's the kernel mechanism which is enforcing a bunch of access rules which apply to processes and files. And secondly, there's file labels : every file on your system has extra labels attached to it which tie-in with those access rules. Run ls -Z and you'll see what I mean.

Should you really disable SELinux?

Be aware that by disabling SELinux you will be removing a security mechanism on your system. Think about this carefully, and if your system is on the Internet and accessed by the public, then think about it some more. Joshua Brindle (an SELinux developer) has comments on disabling SELinux here, which states clearly that applications should be fixed to work with SELinux, rather than disabling the OS security mechanism.
You need to decide if you want to disable SELinux temporarily to test the problem, or permanently switch it off. It may also be a better option to make changes to the policy to permit the operations that are being blocked - but this requires knowledge of writing policies and may be a steep learning curve for some people. For the operating system as a whole, there is two kinds of disabling:

• Permissive - switch the SELinux kernel into a mode where every operation is allowed. Operations that would be denied are allowed and a message is logged identifying that it would be denied. The mechanism that defines labels for files which are being created/changed is still active.
• Disabled - SELinux is completely switched off in the kernel. This allows all operations to be permitted, and also disables the process which decides what to label files & processes with.

Disabling SELinux could lead to problems if you want to re-enable it again later. When the system runs with file labelling disable it will create files with no label - which could cause problems if the system is booted into Enforcement mode. A full re-labelling of the file system will be necessary.

Temporarily switch off enforcement

You can switch the system into permissive mode with the following command:

echo 0 >/selinux/enforce

You'll need to be logged in as root, and in the sysadm_r role:

newrole -r sysadm_r

To switch back into enforcing mode:

echo 1 >/selinux/enforce

In Fedora Core and RedHat Enterprise Linux you can use the setenforce command with a 0 or 1 option to set permissive or enforcing mode, its just a slightly easier command than the above.

To check what mode the system is in,

cat /selinux/enforce

which will print a "0" or "1" for permissive or enforcing - probably printed at the beginning of the line of the command prompt.

Permanently Permissive

The above will switch off enforcement temporarily - until you reboot the system. If you want the system to always start in permissive mode, then here is how you do it.

In Fedora Core and RedHat Enterprise, edit /etc/selinux/config and you will see some lines like this:

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=enforcing
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
# targeted - Only targeted network daemons are protected.
# strict - Full SELinux protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

... just change SELINUX=enforcing to SELINUX=permissive, and you're done. Reboot if you want to prove it.

For the other Linuxes which don't have the /etc/selinux/config file, you just need to edit the kernel boot line, usually in /boot/grub/grub.conf if you're using the GRUB boot loader. On the kernel line, add enforcing=0 at the end. For example,

title SE-Linux Test System
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-selinux-2003040709 ro root=/dev/hda1 nousb enforcing=0
	#initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-selinux-2003040709.img

Fully Disabling SELinux

Fully disabling SELinux goes one step further than just switching into permissive mode. Disabling will completely disable all SELinux functions including file and process labelling.

In Fedora Core and RedHat Enterprise, edit /etc/selinux/config and change the SELINUX line to SELINUX=disabled:

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=disabled
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
# targeted - Only targeted network daemons are protected.
# strict - Full SELinux protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

... and then reboot the system.

For the other Linuxes which don't have the /etc/selinux/config file, you just need to edit the kernel boot line, usually in /boot/grub/grub.conf, if you're using the GRUB boot loader. On the kernel line, add selinux=0 at the end. For example,

title SE-Linux Test System
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-selinux-2003040709 ro root=/dev/hda1 nousb selinux=0
        #initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-selinux-2003040709.img

You will have to reboot to disable SELinux, you just can't do it while the system is running.

Re-Enabling SELinux

If you've disabled SELinux as in the section above, and you want to enable it again then you've got a bit of work to do. The problem will be that files created or changed when SELinux was disabled won't have the correct file labels on them - if you just reboot in enforcing mode then a lot of stuff won't work properly.

What you need to do is to enable SELinux by editing /etc/selinux/config (for Fedora/RedHat) or by adding selinux=1 to the kernel boot line, then boot into permissive mode, then relabel everything, and then reboot into (or simply switch to) enforcing mode.

After booting into permissive mode, run fixfiles relabel

Alternatively, in Fedora and RedHat Enterprise Linux you can run touch /.autorelabel and reboot or put autorelabel on the boot command line - in both cases the file system gets a full relabel early in the boot process. Note that this can take quite some time for systems with a large number of files.

After relabelling the filesystem, you can switch to enforcing mode (see above) and your system should be fully enforcing again.

The creation and creativeness enrich our life.

They are really unique.

In the real world, money governs everything.

Lawyers normally make a lot of money (comparing to inventors).

Smart/Innovative people have no reason to be an inventor, but a lawyer.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some of the biggest players in the technology industry complain that the U.S. patent system is broken -- putting too many patents of dubious merit in the hands of people who can use them to drag companies and other inventors to court.

And Blaise Mouttet, a small inventor in Alexandria, Virginia, thinks he knows why. The problem, he said, is that "there are too many lawyers and not enough inventors involved with the patent system."

So Mouttet is taking part in an experimental program launched in June 2007 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and backed by the technology industry that is intended to give the public -- including inventors -- more of a voice in the system.

The concept behind the program, called Peer-to-Patent, is straightforward: Publish patent applications on the Web for all to see and let anyone with relevant expertise -- academics, colleagues, even potential rivals -- offer input to be passed along to the Patent Office.

By using the power of the Internet to tap the wisdom of the masses, Peer-to-Patent aims to dig up hard-to-find "prior art" -- evidence that an invention already exists or is obvious and therefore doesn't deserve a patent.

The goal is to locate prior art that Patent Office examiners might not find on their own -- and to produce better patents by reducing ones granted on applications that aren't novel. The hope is that this will drive innovation by improving the patent process and reducing the patent infringement lawsuits clogging the courts.

"The Patent and Trademark Office is the agency of citizen creativity, and it needs more and better information to do its job of awarding patents to those citizens who are truly the most creative," said New York Law School professor Beth Noveck, who came up with the idea for Peer-to-Patent while teaching a patent law class. "A patent is a pretty significant monopoly, so we want to make sure we are giving it to the right people."

Peer-to-Patent has attracted financial support from a cross-section of the technology sector and foundations and is in its second pilot year. In the first year, the voluntary program focused on software, computer and information security patents -- drawing applications from industry heavyweights such as International Business Machines Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp., General Electric Co. and open source software pioneer Red Hat Inc., as well as small inventors like Mouttet.

Mouttet, a former Patent Office examiner and now a graduate student in electrical engineering, submitted an application on electronic uses of nanomaterials. Although the Patent Office has rejected his claim -- in part because of prior art unearthed through Peer-to-Patent -- he is appealing the decision and optimistic he will eventually get his patent. And he is confident it will be stronger for having gone through the process.

But it is the big technology companies that have the highest hopes for Peer-to-Patent since they are some of the most vocal critics of the existing system.

They warn that the Patent Office has been overwhelmed by a sharp increase in patent applications in recent years, particularly in computing. The agency has more than 5,800 examiners with specialized expertise in a range of areas, but they are sifting through a mountain of applications: 467,243 were submitted in fiscal 2007, up from 237,045 in fiscal 1997 and 137,173 in fiscal 1987.

As a result, said Dave Kappos, vice president of intellectual property law for IBM, it is taking big technology companies with huge patent portfolios longer and longer to get applications through the system. The Patent Office had a backlog of nearly 761,000 applications at the end of fiscal 2007, with applicants waiting an average of two years and eight months for a final decision.

That is tough for an industry built on rapid innovation, short product life cycles and technology that can become quickly outdated, Noveck said. Indeed, a key benefit of participating in the Peer-to-Patent program is the promise of an expedited review, with a preliminary Patent Office decision in as few as seven months.

Backlog is only part of the problem, however. Poor patent quality is just as big a concern.

There are plenty of examples of controversial patents in different industries, such as the one awarded to Amazon.com Inc. for its "1-click" online shopping feature or the one granted to J.M. Smucker Co. for a crustless peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

But some of the most contentious patents have come out of the tech sector since software and other-cutting edge technologies are relatively new to the Patent Office and evolving quickly, explained Mark Webbink, director of New York Law School's Center for Patent Innovations, home to Peer-to-Patent, and former general counsel for Red Hat. That means that patent examiners don't have long-established databases of existing inventions to consult in reviewing these applications.

"With technology, the prior art often can't be found in existing patents or academic journal articles," Noveck said. "It could exist in a string of computer code posted online somewhere that isn't indexed."

The result of substandard patents, tech companies say, has been a sharp increase in costly infringement lawsuits that eat up valuable resources and threaten to keep innovative products off the market. According to James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer of Boston University School of Law, 2,830 patent lawsuits were filed in U.S. district courts in 2006, up from 1,840 in 1996 and 1,129 in 1986.

Technology companies are particularly vulnerable to infringement litigation since their products can contain hundreds if not thousands of linked patented components critical to their basic operation. In one closely watched case, a protracted legal battle nearly forced the shutdown of the popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail service.

The BlackBerry has in fact become a rallying cry for technology lobbyists pressing Congress to overhaul the patent system. Among other things, the industry wants to streamline the patent approval process and limit damages and injunctions awarded to patent holders who win infringement cases. But with those proposals stalled in the Senate, Peer-to-Patent offers another way to improve the system, said Curtis Rose, director of patents for Hewlett-Packard.

Not everyone is sold on the concept of Peer-to-Patent. Stephen Key, an inventor in California who has patented everything from toys to container labels, worries that the program requires applicants to put their ideas out there on the Web for anyone to see -- and potentially steal.

Boston University's Meurer also questions how effective Peer-to-Patent will be since he believes the real factor driving the increase in patent litigation is not a lack of prior art, but rather the vague, overly broad scope of too many patent claims today.

"Applicants come in and ask for the sun, moon and stars and they say: `Let the Patent Office tell me what is and isn't patentable,"' said John Doll, U.S. Commissioner for Patents. "It's a burden on the system."

Indeed, said Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley, the challenge facing the Patent Office is to find a balance between awarding patents in order to encourage innovation without making it too easy to obtain a patent that can be used to abuse the system.

Noveck believes Peer-to-Patent will help strike that balance. The Patent Office reports that it has issued preliminary decisions on 40 of the 74 applications that have come through the program so far. Of those, six cited prior art submitted only through Peer-to-Patent, while another eight cited art found by both the examiner and peer reviewers.

The question now is whether the program can be scaled to review hundreds or even thousands of applications that extend far beyond the technology arena. So in its second year, Peer-to-Patent is being expanded to include claims covering electronic commerce and so-called "business methods," a controversial category of patents vital to the financial services sector.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., for one, is submitting a number of applications, including one for an equities trading platform used to raise capital without a public offering. John Squires, Goldman's chief intellectual property counsel, has high hopes for the program.

"This is a way to harness the wisdom of the crowds," Squires said. "Why should the Patent Office have to operate without the benefit of all the information on the horizon?

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