[Arm-netbook] Mysteries of Lemote Yeeloong MIPS netbook

[Simon Kenyon]

On 10/17/12 23:30, freebirds at fastmail.fm wrote:
> (3) Mystery of Chinese backdoor or abuser's crackers' tampering. Redflag
> linux, a Chinese variant of Debian is preinstalled on the Yeeloong.While
> shutting down, there are two POST messages are very quickly flash on the
> screen. Yesterday, I turned my Yeeloong on and off 30 times to write
> down the messages. I could not get all the messages on the second
> screen.

and operating system and the programs that run on it are by design and 
construction very complicated.

100's of thousands of man years of effort have gone into the programs 
that make up a typical installation.

some of these programs are quite old. some are over 30 years old.

10's of thousands of programmers have been involved.

there are millions of bugs in all this code.

in summary. it requires quite a bit of effort to understand how this all 
fits together.

if were to put me in front of an Apple Mac i would be all at sea.
it certainly would take me many months to work out what was going on to 
a level that *i* was comfortable with.

you have a deep seated concern that your safety and security is 
compromised by the technology that you use. without a *firm* grasp of 
the underlying principles that guide the design and construction of that 
technology; you are forever beholden to rely on others.

you might consider going to a good bookshop and getting a few good 
(paper) books. pretty much everything by o'reilly is worth looking at. 
"linux in a nutshell" might be a good place to start. there is of course 
a wealth of information on the web. maybe you can assess this at your 
local public library. nearly all public libraries in the USA provide 
free access to the internet.

hope this is of some help
--
simon

PS a good tip for reading messages that flash up of the screen. video 
them with a phone or camera and then play it back slowly.