I'm a dyed in the wool fan of the 2nd who carries a firearm with him on a near daily basis. I think that, by itself, is enough to make me qualified to opine but I've many other qualifications if I need to list them.
Let me just say, the idea of everyone carrying a firearm and, more so, them all carrying a firearm into a heavy metal concert (or even an opera) is just plain stupid. Owning a firearm doesn't make one a good tactician or a good shot. That takes practice, dedication, and good judgment and education.
If these concert going folks had been armed then, assuming they still didn't just run away screaming, the chances are really good that the air would have been full of even more flying bits of lead and even more people would have died.
I was watching a documentary with Louis Theroux (spelling) where he, a fairly wimpy and geeky looking guy, was stomping across the planet and going to exceptionally dangerous places and then getting scared while explaining the news and history of the area he was visiting. I don't remember exactly where this was but it was in France. Somewhere near the Riviera, I think. Marsait (spelling)?
Anyhow, they have areas where the cops will not go. One, in specific, was really interesting. They called it Le Castile or something like that. It's a housing projects that was built "nicely" in its day. It's all brick, with a nice high wall around it, and it has a couple of gates. The buildings are tall and actually make good fortification unless you plan on using bombs and tanks.
Not even the cops enter. This is in France. Yes, France. That France. I've stomped across the world in my many years and I've even visited combat zones where even children ran around with real assault rifles. (They're not the rifles that silly media calls assault rifles when there's a mass shooting in the US. They're real, fully automatic, rifles - a 'battle rifle' if you will.) In very few places are there areas where cops will not go. In the US, my home, I don't know of any where the cops won't go - they'll go in force and be pissed about it but they'll go.
At this place, in France, they would not enter and when someone died they relied on the people who lived their to bring the body out or to deliver injured to emergency responders. As mentioned, I've stomped across the globe, even to places where my own State Department gave me stern warnings and told me that they would be unable to assist me if there were problems, and there are very, I mean very, few places like that. Usually, rough areas like that will actually be under the control of a local power who does their policing or they're subjected to very violent police forces who are actors of the state. Such areas exist but they're really, exceedingly, rare and finding out about such places in France was really quite surprising.
Are you aware that the US doesn't actually get jack shit for oil from any of these countries? We get our oil from our own soil, Canada, Mexico, and a couple of places in South America. We, literally, don't rely on Middle Eastern oil to run our automobiles. (We do get plastics and other petrochemicals from nations that do use oil sourced from the Middle East.)
Another way to look at it is that atheism is a belief that there is no god(s). Thus, it is a dogma, a belief system. That may offend your delicate sensibilities but, it's true. You take it, on faith, no less, that there is no god. It's very much a faith-based belief system. It's okay, just be honest with yourself.
One caveat, the agnostic who literally does not believe but simply does not know. The agnostic is, technically, also an atheist as they do not believe in a deity. They, an exception, do not necessarily believe that there is no god.
For the record, I'm an Atheistic Buddhist, a secular Buddhist if you wish. My reincarnation is that my atoms will be used again. My karma is my belief that doing good things makes me a better person than I'd be without such behavior. My attempts to rid myself of desire are certainly lacking. What's funny is that I've had people try to argue with me about my beliefs - specifically telling me what I don't believe or do believe and opining on how Buddhists would feel about me. Yet, every time I go on refuge, I openly express, am understood, and am accepted as well as given direction. Funny, that. For simplicity sake, we'll just say that I'm an atheist but some thinking has led me to conclude that I'm really agnostic as I truly can't be sure.
Not even the Crusades were about religion. The people fighting thought that they were but, no. They were about land expansions abroad and power grabs at home.
The claims of WMDs came from someone on the ground in Iraq, someone whom is believed to have been a member of Saddam's Revolutionary Guard. It's even possible that such existed and were moved to (thoughts were/are) Syria. It's also possible that it was a lie. It's also possible that the powers that be believed it to be unreliable intelligence. Except...
There were, indeed, WMDs in Iraq. The narrative that such did not exist is odd. We have search engines. It's pretty easy to find a LOT of information concerning this. Here is one such link - if you'll accept Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
For some additional reading (those injured by chemical weapons during the Iraq War) then I find this to be a fairly well balanced article: http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
I served. This means that I learned the various ins and outs of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. I am not a lawyer. I am not an international lawyer. I have seen the video in the past. I'm *really* certain that it's neither a war crime nor would be considered a war crime by the US. What it is, potentially, is sad and unfortunate. What it isn't, is a crime.
Given the vast coverage of that event, had there been any crime, this would have been prosecuted. Or, if you wish, you can believe a bunch of people conspired to keep further secrets, give cause to additional outrage, and didn't prosecute evil criminals for - well, I don't actually know why they'd do that.
As an aside: There are some things in the Geneva Convention that I'm simply going to ignore in the middle of combat. If you're out of ammo and attacking me with a bayonet then I'm going to shoot you. If you're dropping in a bunch of paratroopers, I'm not going to wait nicely for you to land. Sorry. No, I won't be prosecuted for it. The other side wasn't going to listen either.
This is going to sound cold but... Err... Okay, it is cold.
This is war. Nominally or not, it is war. In wars, bad shit happens to good people. If you think drones are bad then I'd suggest looking at the alternatives more objectively. I can assure you that a drone with a Hellfire is much less costly than 2000 pound JDAMs or smarter bombs. I can assure you that the loss of life, on the side of those with the drones, is at a much smaller risk. I can assure you that there are fewer lives, on the side with the drone, at risk than they would have if they put boots on the ground.
War is not about playing nice - it's not even about being fair. If you think this is bad then you do not know any history. This? This is tame. The Russians, for example, lost 24,000.000 (that's the *low* estimate) people in WWII.
My only advice is this: If you're in a combat zone - get to ground or get out. Or join the combatants and be willing to die, I guess. That's a choice one can make. Shit happens. This, this is pretty minimal.
No, that's an attempt to reduce it to the absurd but you know that. How about protecting the borders, preventing monopolistic business abuses, and allowing the citizens a modicum or rights? No, I don't think we need to be trying to use tax money to control behaviors - not even with businesses. We've got courts and fines for that. Taxes are a whole different thing - they're something you're obligated to, regardless of your behavior.
We're not going to agree. I, for one, don't really want the government telling you how you should behave so long as you're not harming anyone and I sure as hell don't want them taxing you to control your behavior. That's not what taxes are for but, frankly, you knew that too.
No, they've now made it nearly perfectly circular, with spokes, and out of alloys. I dare say it has been re-invented. Unless you'd care to say that re-writing code that does the same thing isn't re-inventing as well, that is. I mean it is, by definition, doing the same thing or improving on the concept. (I'd certainly say that going from one wheel type to another is certainly a qualified but I'm sure you'll try to figure out something trivial to argue.) They've reinvented it, over and over and over again.
Ah well... Feel free to drool on yourself a bit more. We're used to it around here.
I love Slashdot. Thanks for taking the time to type that out. Nobody else said thanks so, I will. I suppose some would be like TL;DR but I appreciated it.
My own 'complaint' isn't really a complaint but just an FYI. It's "per se" and not "per say." Why do I know this? Someone on Slashdot corrected me.
ReactOS isn't going anywhere but much can be done on GhostBSD - except they'd need alternatives to their Windows software. I can't think of anything that I, personally, need from the Windows side of things so I'm quite happy without it. There is, literally, not one piece of compelling software that makes me even consider using it in a VM. If they've a compelling reason to remain on Windows then I'd probably just leave them on 7 or 8.1 and hope that the tide turns at Microsoft before those are completely EOLed. ISTR that 7 was due to get security updates until 2020 or maybe 2022. So, you've got some space to work with.
According to Dr. Bettany Houghes (spelling?), the Arabic/Muslim expansion across the straits, to El Andaluse (spelling, again), was pretty tame and the populace was pretty damned happy until the Catholics came and kicked them out and kicked out another group of Christians whose name I've forgotten - they didn't say a whole lot, were pretty tame, and ended up getting asylum from some dude in a castle but the Roman Catholic Church managed to Inquisitor the Holy Fuck out of them and their little dog Toto too. There are several other documentaries that come to mind that seem to indicate there may be truth in that there nugget of history.
The one I'm thinking of is something along the lines of "When the Moors Ruled Europe" or something like that. (I watch 'em for entertainment, it's not a scholarly pursuit. Thus dates, names, etc are just stored in/swap and are lost on reboot. My data recovery software's not working as well as it used to - I think it's partially due to bit rot.) It's a pretty good documentary, however. The Spanish have a holiday that they recount some of this and it's pretty much the exact opposite of what actually happened but that's how they choose to remember it and celebrate it. There's also a nice section about mathematics.
What's broken in Opera? I use all three builds (dev, beta, and stable) on a fairly regular basis. I suspect you've either not used it or not used it in a while. It was pretty rough when they moved to the Chromium fork but they've made it damned stable and fairly light. The added bonus is that it doesn't have the Google tracking shit in it. It has been pretty good since about ten versions ago.
You can get uMatrix which is a billion and three times better than NoScript. I'm an Opera user and was disappointed with the lack of NoScript but then I found uMatrix and took the time to learn to use it. It's much, much more powerful. There is a slight learning curve but it's all good. You can export your settings as a.JSON and import them or back them up. 'Tis pretty awesome once you get past the learning curve and it's not that steep. It's like an old-school software firewall for your browser.
What do your customers do with their computers, usually? Check out GhostBSD or even PCBSD. If you want a decent ecosystem in the Linux world, that means systemd is going to be there, if not now then shortly. Personally, it's not bad at all in my experience. However, if you want to stay away from it, GhostBSD would probably be a good choice for you and your customers - it's solid, secure, and pretty easy to figure out. If you've just got average customers doing average things then it may well be an option.
If they'd have hit France first they'd probably have had to go through the Maginot Line and that would have been suicidal. So, whack Poland first and stomp around France to the north to attack it from the top - pretty much like they've done throughout history. And France is continually surprised by this. And no, we American's aren't much better. Sure enough, the Germans came stomping through the Ardennes (only headed towards Antwerp this time) and surprised the Americans with something known as the Battle of the Bulge. I bet, when Germany starts WWIII, they do so with stomping north and then heading east, again.
Aside: If France had grouped their superior in number and ability tanks together and faced the onslaught they probably would have ended the war right then. However, tactics at the time, kept them spread out and in smaller numbers. If the UK and France had actually attacked Germany to help defend Poland then their chances of success were pretty good. Hindsight is a hell of a thing.
Do you really think france will just abandon their tradition of a very liberal atheist society because of a few terror attacks? "Welp guys, it was a good run for the last few hundred years, but now its time to give sharia a try. Can't afford any more dead bodies!".
If WWII is any indication then... Well... Maybe.;-)
Seriously you crazy Frenchmen, keep your heads down. Looking at the reporting on BBC indicates that this may not be over, just yet.
I believe the number 57 comes from (and this is concerning) the number of domains that are still contacted after turning off everything that you can disable with the GUI selections. The larger number is what's being contacted with everything enabled. Disturbing is that, after you've disabled everything the user can disable, it still has things that can't be disabled. (Some are time, some are update servers, some are Windows Store update polling, etc.)
Thanks for the link. They could turn off a bunch of those and some they may not want to disable - things like updates, I'd kind of want those if I were a Windows user but, to each their own, I guess.
I figured there had to be some confusion. I knew that I was, in no way, condoning Microsoft. It's possible to condemn one while still not supporting the other. I do believe that, with this hyper world, it may be easy to misinterpret things. However, I'm a pretty big fan of controlling my operating system and think that others should have the ability to do so, as well. Unfortunately, Microsoft has pretty much decided that the user is no longer allowed full control of their OS - and I'll leave the data leakage as an obvious side effect of that.
As for BSD... I'm *mostly* a user these days and most of my time is in a desktop. So, my choice is GhostBSD. I want, very much, to move it to the bare metal while forcing myself to use it exclusively for six months or so. Unfortunately, I am unable to find a browser that I enjoy and I can't get VMWare for it. I do own a small number of servers and administer my own network as well as have a leased cage. I also have, literally, dozens of computers around my home. I'm a typical user, right?;-)
Anyhow, GhostBSD is solid as a rock and pretty speedy. There are a lot of things that I want to learn about it that I don't know already and, I'm afraid, I might not learn unless I sit down and force myself to use it. I don't have a compelling reason except for curiosity and a desire to learn new things and break things in new and interesting ways. (I seem to learn best by breaking stuff and then fixing it. Oh, man, my programming skills are legendary in their inefficiency, lack of comments, and a complete and total failing of anything resembling a quality user interface.) So, I want to learn to break stuff in BSD-land next. I spent a long time in Unix (my company was a Sun shop) so I really want to go break stuff and learn new things. Being retired gives me some joys.
Either way, it's good to see that this was figured out. I was really confused for a while. Hindsight, being what it is, says that I could have been more clear in my posting but I thought the reference to there being fewer than the alleged amount would be a sufficient indicator of my stance. I even included a smiley face.
But, if you're a FreeBSD fan and a desktop user then I absolutely, very strongly, recommend taking a look at GhostBSD. It is so less... Less clunky. FreeBSD is functional, which I like, but it is clunky. Using it on a desktop is akin to using a standard cab pickup truck to take the family on vacation. You can do it, and it will suit just fine, but there are more elegant solutions. I'm not into a glossy desktop with loads of silly features - I like light and fast, which FreeBSD is. However, GhostBSD just seems so much nicer, as it if is designed specifically for desktop use. (I've never actually read why they made GhostBSD or what their purpose for existing is. I'll do that...)
Err... So it appears I was correct in my findings. I just spent way too long reading their site and going over a bunch of the stuff their. They used MATE to reach their goal of being a familiar workstation with FreeBSD's code beneath it. It's a bit more involved but I am pretty sure that I needn't explain it to you. You probably know more about it than I do.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a dyed in the wool fan of the 2nd who carries a firearm with him on a near daily basis. I think that, by itself, is enough to make me qualified to opine but I've many other qualifications if I need to list them.
Let me just say, the idea of everyone carrying a firearm and, more so, them all carrying a firearm into a heavy metal concert (or even an opera) is just plain stupid. Owning a firearm doesn't make one a good tactician or a good shot. That takes practice, dedication, and good judgment and education.
If these concert going folks had been armed then, assuming they still didn't just run away screaming, the chances are really good that the air would have been full of even more flying bits of lead and even more people would have died.
As a firearm aficionado, gun nuts piss me off.
I was watching a documentary with Louis Theroux (spelling) where he, a fairly wimpy and geeky looking guy, was stomping across the planet and going to exceptionally dangerous places and then getting scared while explaining the news and history of the area he was visiting. I don't remember exactly where this was but it was in France. Somewhere near the Riviera, I think. Marsait (spelling)?
Anyhow, they have areas where the cops will not go. One, in specific, was really interesting. They called it Le Castile or something like that. It's a housing projects that was built "nicely" in its day. It's all brick, with a nice high wall around it, and it has a couple of gates. The buildings are tall and actually make good fortification unless you plan on using bombs and tanks.
Not even the cops enter. This is in France. Yes, France. That France. I've stomped across the world in my many years and I've even visited combat zones where even children ran around with real assault rifles. (They're not the rifles that silly media calls assault rifles when there's a mass shooting in the US. They're real, fully automatic, rifles - a 'battle rifle' if you will.) In very few places are there areas where cops will not go. In the US, my home, I don't know of any where the cops won't go - they'll go in force and be pissed about it but they'll go.
At this place, in France, they would not enter and when someone died they relied on the people who lived their to bring the body out or to deliver injured to emergency responders. As mentioned, I've stomped across the globe, even to places where my own State Department gave me stern warnings and told me that they would be unable to assist me if there were problems, and there are very, I mean very, few places like that. Usually, rough areas like that will actually be under the control of a local power who does their policing or they're subjected to very violent police forces who are actors of the state. Such areas exist but they're really, exceedingly, rare and finding out about such places in France was really quite surprising.
Are you aware that the US doesn't actually get jack shit for oil from any of these countries? We get our oil from our own soil, Canada, Mexico, and a couple of places in South America. We, literally, don't rely on Middle Eastern oil to run our automobiles. (We do get plastics and other petrochemicals from nations that do use oil sourced from the Middle East.)
Another way to look at it is that atheism is a belief that there is no god(s). Thus, it is a dogma, a belief system. That may offend your delicate sensibilities but, it's true. You take it, on faith, no less, that there is no god. It's very much a faith-based belief system. It's okay, just be honest with yourself.
One caveat, the agnostic who literally does not believe but simply does not know. The agnostic is, technically, also an atheist as they do not believe in a deity. They, an exception, do not necessarily believe that there is no god.
For the record, I'm an Atheistic Buddhist, a secular Buddhist if you wish. My reincarnation is that my atoms will be used again. My karma is my belief that doing good things makes me a better person than I'd be without such behavior. My attempts to rid myself of desire are certainly lacking. What's funny is that I've had people try to argue with me about my beliefs - specifically telling me what I don't believe or do believe and opining on how Buddhists would feel about me. Yet, every time I go on refuge, I openly express, am understood, and am accepted as well as given direction. Funny, that. For simplicity sake, we'll just say that I'm an atheist but some thinking has led me to conclude that I'm really agnostic as I truly can't be sure.
Not even the Crusades were about religion. The people fighting thought that they were but, no. They were about land expansions abroad and power grabs at home.
The claims of WMDs came from someone on the ground in Iraq, someone whom is believed to have been a member of Saddam's Revolutionary Guard. It's even possible that such existed and were moved to (thoughts were/are) Syria. It's also possible that it was a lie. It's also possible that the powers that be believed it to be unreliable intelligence. Except...
There were, indeed, WMDs in Iraq. The narrative that such did not exist is odd. We have search engines. It's pretty easy to find a LOT of information concerning this. Here is one such link - if you'll accept Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
For some additional reading (those injured by chemical weapons during the Iraq War) then I find this to be a fairly well balanced article:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
Oh, I love history! I'm quite an aficionado. What real wars, in modernity, and how were they ended? What should the OP see from them?
I served. This means that I learned the various ins and outs of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. I am not a lawyer. I am not an international lawyer. I have seen the video in the past. I'm *really* certain that it's neither a war crime nor would be considered a war crime by the US. What it is, potentially, is sad and unfortunate. What it isn't, is a crime.
Given the vast coverage of that event, had there been any crime, this would have been prosecuted. Or, if you wish, you can believe a bunch of people conspired to keep further secrets, give cause to additional outrage, and didn't prosecute evil criminals for - well, I don't actually know why they'd do that.
As an aside: There are some things in the Geneva Convention that I'm simply going to ignore in the middle of combat. If you're out of ammo and attacking me with a bayonet then I'm going to shoot you. If you're dropping in a bunch of paratroopers, I'm not going to wait nicely for you to land. Sorry. No, I won't be prosecuted for it. The other side wasn't going to listen either.
This is going to sound cold but... Err... Okay, it is cold.
This is war. Nominally or not, it is war. In wars, bad shit happens to good people. If you think drones are bad then I'd suggest looking at the alternatives more objectively. I can assure you that a drone with a Hellfire is much less costly than 2000 pound JDAMs or smarter bombs. I can assure you that the loss of life, on the side of those with the drones, is at a much smaller risk. I can assure you that there are fewer lives, on the side with the drone, at risk than they would have if they put boots on the ground.
War is not about playing nice - it's not even about being fair. If you think this is bad then you do not know any history. This? This is tame. The Russians, for example, lost 24,000.000 (that's the *low* estimate) people in WWII.
My only advice is this: If you're in a combat zone - get to ground or get out. Or join the combatants and be willing to die, I guess. That's a choice one can make. Shit happens. This, this is pretty minimal.
No, that's an attempt to reduce it to the absurd but you know that. How about protecting the borders, preventing monopolistic business abuses, and allowing the citizens a modicum or rights? No, I don't think we need to be trying to use tax money to control behaviors - not even with businesses. We've got courts and fines for that. Taxes are a whole different thing - they're something you're obligated to, regardless of your behavior.
We're not going to agree. I, for one, don't really want the government telling you how you should behave so long as you're not harming anyone and I sure as hell don't want them taxing you to control your behavior. That's not what taxes are for but, frankly, you knew that too.
No, they've now made it nearly perfectly circular, with spokes, and out of alloys. I dare say it has been re-invented. Unless you'd care to say that re-writing code that does the same thing isn't re-inventing as well, that is. I mean it is, by definition, doing the same thing or improving on the concept. (I'd certainly say that going from one wheel type to another is certainly a qualified but I'm sure you'll try to figure out something trivial to argue.) They've reinvented it, over and over and over again.
Ah well... Feel free to drool on yourself a bit more. We're used to it around here.
I love Slashdot. Thanks for taking the time to type that out. Nobody else said thanks so, I will. I suppose some would be like TL;DR but I appreciated it.
My own 'complaint' isn't really a complaint but just an FYI. It's "per se" and not "per say." Why do I know this? Someone on Slashdot corrected me.
ReactOS isn't going anywhere but much can be done on GhostBSD - except they'd need alternatives to their Windows software. I can't think of anything that I, personally, need from the Windows side of things so I'm quite happy without it. There is, literally, not one piece of compelling software that makes me even consider using it in a VM. If they've a compelling reason to remain on Windows then I'd probably just leave them on 7 or 8.1 and hope that the tide turns at Microsoft before those are completely EOLed. ISTR that 7 was due to get security updates until 2020 or maybe 2022. So, you've got some space to work with.
According to Dr. Bettany Houghes (spelling?), the Arabic/Muslim expansion across the straits, to El Andaluse (spelling, again), was pretty tame and the populace was pretty damned happy until the Catholics came and kicked them out and kicked out another group of Christians whose name I've forgotten - they didn't say a whole lot, were pretty tame, and ended up getting asylum from some dude in a castle but the Roman Catholic Church managed to Inquisitor the Holy Fuck out of them and their little dog Toto too. There are several other documentaries that come to mind that seem to indicate there may be truth in that there nugget of history.
The one I'm thinking of is something along the lines of "When the Moors Ruled Europe" or something like that. (I watch 'em for entertainment, it's not a scholarly pursuit. Thus dates, names, etc are just stored in /swap and are lost on reboot. My data recovery software's not working as well as it used to - I think it's partially due to bit rot.) It's a pretty good documentary, however. The Spanish have a holiday that they recount some of this and it's pretty much the exact opposite of what actually happened but that's how they choose to remember it and celebrate it. There's also a nice section about mathematics.
http://www.opera.com/download/...
Why? Everybody wants to get paid. You know, damned well, that they're getting a kickback from the ad revenue from the Pocket folks.
What's broken in Opera? I use all three builds (dev, beta, and stable) on a fairly regular basis. I suspect you've either not used it or not used it in a while. It was pretty rough when they moved to the Chromium fork but they've made it damned stable and fairly light. The added bonus is that it doesn't have the Google tracking shit in it. It has been pretty good since about ten versions ago.
You can get uMatrix which is a billion and three times better than NoScript. I'm an Opera user and was disappointed with the lack of NoScript but then I found uMatrix and took the time to learn to use it. It's much, much more powerful. There is a slight learning curve but it's all good. You can export your settings as a .JSON and import them or back them up. 'Tis pretty awesome once you get past the learning curve and it's not that steep. It's like an old-school software firewall for your browser.
What do your customers do with their computers, usually? Check out GhostBSD or even PCBSD. If you want a decent ecosystem in the Linux world, that means systemd is going to be there, if not now then shortly. Personally, it's not bad at all in my experience. However, if you want to stay away from it, GhostBSD would probably be a good choice for you and your customers - it's solid, secure, and pretty easy to figure out. If you've just got average customers doing average things then it may well be an option.
There are some strange installers on Linux. I'm used to this. However, Pale Moon is just the strangest one that I think I've ever seen.
Today's tragedy suggests that might not be very good research.
If they'd have hit France first they'd probably have had to go through the Maginot Line and that would have been suicidal. So, whack Poland first and stomp around France to the north to attack it from the top - pretty much like they've done throughout history. And France is continually surprised by this. And no, we American's aren't much better. Sure enough, the Germans came stomping through the Ardennes (only headed towards Antwerp this time) and surprised the Americans with something known as the Battle of the Bulge. I bet, when Germany starts WWIII, they do so with stomping north and then heading east, again.
Aside: If France had grouped their superior in number and ability tanks together and faced the onslaught they probably would have ended the war right then. However, tactics at the time, kept them spread out and in smaller numbers. If the UK and France had actually attacked Germany to help defend Poland then their chances of success were pretty good. Hindsight is a hell of a thing.
Do you really think france will just abandon their tradition of a very liberal atheist society because of a few terror attacks? "Welp guys, it was a good run for the last few hundred years, but now its time to give sharia a try. Can't afford any more dead bodies!".
If WWII is any indication then... Well... Maybe. ;-)
Seriously you crazy Frenchmen, keep your heads down. Looking at the reporting on BBC indicates that this may not be over, just yet.
I believe the number 57 comes from (and this is concerning) the number of domains that are still contacted after turning off everything that you can disable with the GUI selections. The larger number is what's being contacted with everything enabled. Disturbing is that, after you've disabled everything the user can disable, it still has things that can't be disabled. (Some are time, some are update servers, some are Windows Store update polling, etc.)
Thanks for the link. They could turn off a bunch of those and some they may not want to disable - things like updates, I'd kind of want those if I were a Windows user but, to each their own, I guess.
I figured there had to be some confusion. I knew that I was, in no way, condoning Microsoft. It's possible to condemn one while still not supporting the other. I do believe that, with this hyper world, it may be easy to misinterpret things. However, I'm a pretty big fan of controlling my operating system and think that others should have the ability to do so, as well. Unfortunately, Microsoft has pretty much decided that the user is no longer allowed full control of their OS - and I'll leave the data leakage as an obvious side effect of that.
As for BSD... I'm *mostly* a user these days and most of my time is in a desktop. So, my choice is GhostBSD. I want, very much, to move it to the bare metal while forcing myself to use it exclusively for six months or so. Unfortunately, I am unable to find a browser that I enjoy and I can't get VMWare for it. I do own a small number of servers and administer my own network as well as have a leased cage. I also have, literally, dozens of computers around my home. I'm a typical user, right? ;-)
Anyhow, GhostBSD is solid as a rock and pretty speedy. There are a lot of things that I want to learn about it that I don't know already and, I'm afraid, I might not learn unless I sit down and force myself to use it. I don't have a compelling reason except for curiosity and a desire to learn new things and break things in new and interesting ways. (I seem to learn best by breaking stuff and then fixing it. Oh, man, my programming skills are legendary in their inefficiency, lack of comments, and a complete and total failing of anything resembling a quality user interface.) So, I want to learn to break stuff in BSD-land next. I spent a long time in Unix (my company was a Sun shop) so I really want to go break stuff and learn new things. Being retired gives me some joys.
Either way, it's good to see that this was figured out. I was really confused for a while. Hindsight, being what it is, says that I could have been more clear in my posting but I thought the reference to there being fewer than the alleged amount would be a sufficient indicator of my stance. I even included a smiley face.
But, if you're a FreeBSD fan and a desktop user then I absolutely, very strongly, recommend taking a look at GhostBSD. It is so less... Less clunky. FreeBSD is functional, which I like, but it is clunky. Using it on a desktop is akin to using a standard cab pickup truck to take the family on vacation. You can do it, and it will suit just fine, but there are more elegant solutions. I'm not into a glossy desktop with loads of silly features - I like light and fast, which FreeBSD is. However, GhostBSD just seems so much nicer, as it if is designed specifically for desktop use. (I've never actually read why they made GhostBSD or what their purpose for existing is. I'll do that...)
Err... So it appears I was correct in my findings. I just spent way too long reading their site and going over a bunch of the stuff their. They used MATE to reach their goal of being a familiar workstation with FreeBSD's code beneath it. It's a bit more involved but I am pretty sure that I needn't explain it to you. You probably know more about it than I do.
If not then, well, here:
http://ghostbsd.org/
Meh... It worked pretty good for the US. That's pretty much how we got our country - oddly enough, by playing the victim card to the French.