*Shrug!* So set up a dual-boot system, defaulting to Linux. Linux can read/write Windows partitions quite well, TYVM, although the opposite isn't true. (There may be third-party software for that but if so, I'm not aware of it.)

No, no, no! It's Obi-Wan Torvald!

Windows 7; paid for, ad free, and I can control the updates.

Linux. Just as ad free, just as easy to control the updates and it doesn't cost one, red cent.

The OP may have meant "nearing," instead of "past." One of the reasons we went through so many FAE weapons during Desert Storm is that they were close to their Best Use By date and it was cheaper to expend them in combat than pay to dispose of them.

And your point is? At least I included a link to the reference because even I don't expect most Slashdotters to recognize that one! (To be honest, what I remembered was the name of the island, and worked from there.)

That course would have ended up at Zero Zero Island and Colonel Bleep had to take action to keep his headquarters secret.

(Data syncing by default)

And thus does opt-out rear its ugly head, yet again. Not only that, if what you write is true the average user won't even know that it's happening, that they can stop it or that they have any control whatsoever over what gets sent to the cloud. Now, consider what happens when you're on limited bandwidth and you get a bill for far more traffic than you can account for. If I ran Windows (I don't.) this would be one more reason for me to avoid Windows 10 like the plague.

I don't live out in the country, but I often have to drive country roads at night. Here in California, there's a white line marking the division between the road itself and the shoulder, and there's something built into the shoulder that makes it rumble when a car goes over it. This makes it much easier to stay on the road, even in rain or fog. (We don't get snow here, but I'd imagine that the sound from the shoulder would still work even if you couldn't see the line.)

So what's to stop you from editing that file right now so that if and when you need it, it's ready?

I sit corrected. The article I used as a reference only told how to activate it on a working system, not how to make it active by default, and I misread. If you want it active at boot, you need to add the line kernel.sysrq = 1 to /etc/sysctl.conf.

Microsoft Windows nearly single-handedly created the antivirus industry by neglecting security (and still does to this day).

Microsoft, yes Windows no. I can remember using McAffee anti-virus on MS-DOS long before I started using Windows.

If you expect to need it, create the file /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq with the contents set to 1. This makes the key combo active by default, and survives rebooting. Of course, you need to test it while the system's in good shape because different mobos respond to different combinations. (I had one, once that needed Left-Ctrl, Right-Alt and SysRQ to work, and only that combo worked.)

One thing for sure: that completely lets out Barry O'Bama.

Today, as a matter of fact.

This morning I received the Administration's response to a petition to update the ECPA, agreeing that the law is seriously in need of updating and that the Administration is, "...encouraged by the strong bipartisan support for updating this legislation in both chambers of Congress..." and that they're looking forward to having the law address today's needs correctly.

It may be possible to install software without root access, but it won't be able to do any damage to your system files, or have access to lots of other stuff that malware likes to modify.