Sage

Being the typical Slashdot geek, I'm the default tech support for most of my family. I have very few "rules" in place seeing as this is informally helping out family members, but I've had to make it VERY clear to them that if iTunes is on the computer, I will not support the computer.

The sheer number of friends and relatives bringing their shiny new computers to me (The resident geek) begging me to upgrade them from Windows 8 to Windows 7 says otherwise...

I suspect most of these people did not voluntary opt into Microsoft's "Track Me" program either.

I'm a libertarian, so I'm so far to the right, I'm actually on the left.

(or so far to the left, I'm actually on the right, if you prefer.)

cnn.com had been my home page since the early days of the internets, but after their latest redesign made my eyes bleed I couldn't take it anymore... Using news.google.com as my homepage now, although I'm casting about for alternatives... Tried BBC for a while, just didn't click with me...

Autorun, by Mark Russinovich at Microsoft, gives you a complete checklist of everything that's started at bootup or login. With checkboxes that turn it off. This is worth running just to see what's in there. You may turn too much off and break something, but you can run Autorun again and turn it back on.

There's plenty of stuff worth turning off, like those useless programs that keep polling to see if Adobe Acrobat or Sun Java came out with a new version. Some of those programs are too aggressive, too. Adobe's poller seems to try to re-associate PDF files with Acrobat, after I'd changed the ".pdf" association to launch Sumatra PDF.

It's annoying that even legitimate updaters seldom schedule themselves as periodic tasks, which Windows does well and which have no overhead when they're not running. No, they have to have their own little executable in memory.

But, see, you keep talking about Gmail's downtime which I've tried to explain is relatively arbitrary to me.

Ah but GP is acknowledging both ways whereas you're concentrating on what works for you. I'd prefer to keep local access and control myself but I can understand why others may prefer to use cloud computing.

Falcon

How clearly I remember the captain of the wrestling team accosting me in gym class in my sophomore year, throwing me against the wall, and sneering, "You know, you could really benefit from a more diverse set of interests."

Of course not. But part of why nerds are picked on is because they don't relate well to others. If you like computers, but also literature, soccer, skateboarding, backpacking, or whatever, it's more likely that you'll make friends and not be "that kid who sits alone reading fantasy novels."