Does anyone have the solution to stopping FileZilla from phoning home?

"Jonathan N. Little" wrote

| That's could be considered an example of the lease intrusive bit of
| advertising... and how much did you spend to get the application?
|

The software is open source. The ad is just
for the company paying for the traffic on the
update itself. So maybe some conscientious
OSS fans might host with them because they
help out OSS.
If you want to support the developers you can
buy the pro version.

Am Sat, 14 Apr 2018 15:41:00 -0400, schrieb Mayayana:

For what it's worth, here's what I have:

Setting name="Update Check" type="number"0/Setting
Setting name="Update Check Interval" type="number"7/Setting
Setting name="Last automatic update check" type="string"2010-03-11
02:01:33/Setting
Setting name="Update Check New Version" type="string" /

"Update Check New Version" is an empty value.

Now that is super interesting!
I certainly have my settings set to NOT update, and yet, mine is not an
empty value.

Setting name="Update Check New Version"nightly 2018-04-14
http://filezilla-project.org/nightli...la_3_setup.exe
8394456 sha512
dabaaf3c8bdbf7fbf5bf84e735286ad54b00c9a8d1a3a861d4 3c51a813393fa194f5927a39c02166dd25b172abe768c6ce19 7756a0b5e46724032c8e2437b40f
release 3.32.0
https://dl1.cdn.filezilla-project.or...in64-setup.exe
7924192 sha512
fc29cbf2d642d889a35f04caac3a830d678a7a590b941e0e1e 4557eaafb310cbddbfcc2b8d889d5de2b6e5f27fe271a5b985 0a50727b08c255d03bf0bf72e640
/Setting

Am Sat, 14 Apr 2018 15:42:49 -0400, schrieb Nil:

What version are you on?

Whatever is the latest. I usually keep up pretty closely with the
latest updates with Filezilla Client and I've never had a problem,
including the one you're complaining about.

Hmmm... OK. It's likely only me then since you're not the first person who
said that the setting to never update is working for you.

But you did't actually say what your setting is.
If your setting is to update, I'm sure that's working.

What's not working is the setting to not update.
It's not sticky.

I don't know what changes it back to update, but it's constantly updating
when I constantly reset it to not update. So I admit I'm confused as to
what the heck is going on.

By the way, you have a corrupt header in your posts - two lines are
concatonated:

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bitX-Complaints-To: http://abuse.usenetxs.com

This causes my Android newsgroup reader to crash.

Thanks. I changed the headers to match yours.
Let me know if that fixes things for you.

To be more clear, my headers are meaningless. They're pulled out of a
dictionary lookup, since I use "vi" as my "newsgreader" and telnet-based
scripts that just shove headers because newsreaders and news servers like
headers.

Am Sat, 14 Apr 2018 15:31:08 -0400, schrieb Mayayana:

Actually, I'd say that in my experience, updates are
more likely to be worse than better.

I agree with Mayayana that updates are more likely to be worse than better.

For example, I have the last good version of quite a few free tools, for
example, SharePod, where the current versions *require* iTunes, which is
about as bad as it gets because the whole point was to *avoid* using iTunes
bloatware. So Sharepod is one example.

Another example is Super, which I also have the last good freeware version.
Same with Adobe Acrobat, although that's not freeware, where version 6 is
the last non-Internet enabled version.

This problem of each version getting worse rather than better happens in
spades on the mobile device, where what you find is things like ES File
Explorer getting more and more clumsy with ads and home screens, to the
point that most people are dropping it.

Even the venerable Irfanview started adding checkboxes for Google crap, as
I recall.

Recently I picked up a new version of uTorrent where I was utterly appalled
at the crap that it contained. I don't use it all that often, but I
remember the older versions being quite usable, but this version had to be
deleted, it was that bad.

The point is that newer is almost always _not_ better.

Am Sat, 14 Apr 2018 15:36:56 -0400, schrieb Mayayana:

This might be a longshot, but are you sure
that Windows isn't blocking you writing to the
config file and lying to you about it?

Hi Mayayana,
Something is going wrong, that's for sure.
It's been happening for about a half year, so it's not something all of a
sudden. It just got to me today, which is why I finally gave up and asked.

I think what Paul found is a likely story, which is that the setting is
touchy. What Paul found seemed to indicate that you can set it, and it will
stick, but it won't stick if you touch something else (the manual check for
updates button perhaps?).

I did notice that even today, the settings were NOT at NEVER which is what
I set it at, so, it's flaky.

I can't explain why others don't have the same problem though. I don't know
why I would be any different, although if what Paul found is any
indication, it's button-press dependent.

Also it may be version dependent since they clearly modified the algorithm
a few times according to the version update that Jonathan pointed us to
previously.

Am Sat, 14 Apr 2018 20:42:48 +0000 (UTC), schrieb Ragnusen Ultred:

I don't know what changes it back to update, but it's constantly updating
when I constantly reset it to not update. So I admit I'm confused as to
what the heck is going on.

I just checked, and darn it, my setting is back to update weekly!

Something is changing the setting.

I don't have a clue what.
But, I'm hoping that the hosts file additions will solve that problem.

"Ragnusen Ultred" wrote

| Now that is super interesting!
| I certainly have my settings set to NOT update, and yet, mine is not an
| empty value.
|

I wonder about your comment that you clicked
the check for updates button. That *shouldn't*
change the setting, but it's conceivable. I've
never actually done that, with any software.
I prefer to go to the website, see if there are
updates, and check them out. Then i'll download
the installer and do it myself, holding onto the
older version installer as backup in case there
are problems.

On 4/14/2018 11:21 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote

| OTOH, ignoring maintenance updates
| could cause problems.
|

My copy seems to be dated 2013. I don't have
any problems. I do see problems, however, with
the assumption that newer is better. After all,
that's how you got stuck with Win10.


Apparently, you don't read the fixes included in the FZ updates. After
all, that's why you think XP is a good OS.

--
best regards,

Neil

On 14 Apr 2018, Ragnusen Ultred wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

But you did't actually say what your setting is.
If your setting is to update, I'm sure that's working.

I thought it was clear from the context: "it has always respected the
"Never check for updates" setting." It is set to not automatically
check for updates, and it does not.

What's not working is the setting to not update.
It's not sticky.

It is for me, on multiple computers and for many years.

If I were you, I'd completely uninstall and then reinstall the latest
version.

"Neil" wrote

| Apparently, you don't read the fixes included in the FZ updates. After
| all, that's why you think XP is a good OS.
|

I like XP because I don't read Filezilla update docs?

Maybe you meant that I like XP because I don't keep
up with Microsoft updates and therefore don't
realize how badly outdated XP is? Do you just
swallow any old marketing they throw at you?

I have Win7. I prefer XP because it doesn't get in
my way. It does what I want. It responds instantly.
It doesn't call home and never tells me I'm not
authorized to access my own files or the system files.
It never tries to update itself. There's no Metro muck
connected to the Microsoft Store. There are no ads
showing up on the Start Menu. I've never had a problem
with malware. It dosn't break any of my software...
What's not to like?

You seem to have a very odd system for assessing
software. Compile date is all that matters to you?

It's none of my business if you want the latest of
everything. But I hate to see such unthinking nonsense
repeated over and over as advice to others. Then lots
of other people start believing that it's true -- that
they need to always install the very latest of everything,
no matter what, lest the sky should fall or their computer
be taken over by Russian hackers.

Neil wrote:
On 4/14/2018 11:21 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote

| OTOH, ignoring maintenance updates
| could cause problems.
|

My copy seems to be dated 2013. I don't have
any problems. I do see problems, however, with
the assumption that newer is better. After all,
that's how you got stuck with Win10.


Apparently, you don't read the fixes included in the FZ updates. After
all, that's why you think XP is a good OS.


The extent to which you should be "fixated" on
patches, depends on the development model.

If a product has a fixed feature set, the developer
promises not to rewrite the code, and only patch
the bugs, we would expect the bug rate to drop
with time. In such a situation, accepting patches
is a good thing. You expect to "win" by doing so.

On products where there is back-sliding, the author
keeps rewriting code modules, adds new features,
in effect creating a "rolling release", then the
updates delivered amount to a treadmill. You
can cut off a treadmill at any time, and expect
a constant bug rate for your trouble. Come back in
five years time, there are just as many bugs
and new security issues, as there were when you
cut off updates.

It all boils down to whether patching is used solely
to fix security issues and actual program bugs. Or
whether you use the patch system to create a
treadmill (with missed quality targets) for your
customers.

For example, the broken webcam on my Win10 install
right now, begs to be let off the treadmill. If I'd
pulled the network cable on Windows 10 around 14393
or so, my webcam would still work. Pulling the latest
patch today, earns me a webcam that "freezes" before
any pictures come out. If they can break my webcam,
what other millions of lines of code in scrypt
modules or important stuff, also got broken ?

Paul

Am Sat, 14 Apr 2018 21:32:19 -0400, schrieb Paul:

For example, the broken webcam on my Win10 install
right now, begs to be let off the treadmill. If I'd
pulled the network cable on Windows 10 around 14393
or so, my webcam would still work. Pulling the latest
patch today, earns me a webcam that "freezes" before
any pictures come out. If they can break my webcam,
what other millions of lines of code in scrypt
modules or important stuff, also got broken ?

We're all old men so take this as a huge generalization about old men.

There are two kinds of old men.
a. Realistic
b. Scared ****less

Those who have dealt with software for years, and who have, as a result,
been burned enough to know that there is almost never anything good that
comes of new release versions is going to be "realistic" about software IF
.... IF ... they're not also scared ****less.

Those who are scared ****less *always* say you have to have the latest
release.

Why?
They don't even know why.

Most of the time the "scared ****less" old men sputter something about the
"latest bugfixes" and mostly they spout the latest 'security
vulnerabilities", but in reality, they're just scared ****less because they
can almost never, if always never, actually elucidate any real risk
involved.

The pragmatic old men take a more realistic approach.

They don't update unless there's an actual reason to update (and there
almost never is - and - in fact - there's almost always a reason NOT to
update),

The point is that the realistic old men need a reason to update.
In the absence of a reason, they don't update.

The scared ****less old men have the opposite attitude.

They need a reason not to update; otherwise they update.

Two different philosophies.
a. One is driven by pragmatics,
b. The other is purely driven by abject fear.

This has been an opinion only.

"Ragnusen Ultred" wrote

| Those who are scared ****less *always* say you have to have the latest
| release.
|

That's a bit harsh. It's not just frightened old men
who can't resist buying New and Improved!! Acme
Dish Soap!! With More Scrubbing Bubbles!!

More bubbles than what? They never say. What's a
scrubbing bubble? Sounds technical. Who knows? But
why take a chance that we might be using loser dish
soap?... I'll just buy a bottle to be on the safe side....
Oh, look, if I buy the big size I get 33% more for free!!
33% more than what? They don't say. But why take
a chance that I'm not getting the best deal? I'll
just buy the mega-mega size. I can keep it in the
garage....

I think most people don't trust their own judgement.
So we look for someone to sell us judgement. We look
for heroes, project superiority on them, then hope a little
will rub off onto us. Why do people stand in lines to pay
too much for a cellphone they don't need? Because
Steve "P.T. Barnum" Jobs has the charm of a winner...
or a psychopath... What's the difference? Both seem
to be confident. And that's what's important.

Why do people overpay for chocolate marshmallow
breakfast cereal when anyone with any sense would
know that's not proper food? Because they saw it on
TV, of course. Along with the scrubbing bubbles. If it
was on TV then the worst that can happen would be
that the cereal is a loser product, but at least a lot
of people would have got tricked. We wouldn't be alone.
Thank God.

Ditto for people buying glyphosate toxin to spray
their driveway in the "war against weeds". Ditto for
people paying $5 for 8 cents worth of watered down
bleach to spray their shower in the "war against mildew
and germs".
No one who thought about what they were doing would
buy such products.

That's why it's so harmful to have these things repeated
mindlessly.
The marketers say we need updates because, of course,
software is going out of style and cloud is the future.
The lapdog, mainstream media repeat the marketers' press
releases faithfully. Not only because they depend on ad
dollars from software companies. They also don't trust
their own judgement. If they start reporting straight news
then people won't be able to handle it and the mainstream
media will no longer be mainstream. The job of the mainstream
media is to maintain public consensus, which is almost
indistinguishable from corporate marketing these days.

I remember years ago when I used to often get computer
magazines (my first office suite, WordPro 95, I think, came
from one of their CDs) PC World once ran a fluff article about
"What's the Best Browser?". Firefox was getting well known
by then, but PC World was mainstream. They couldn't risk
comparing a newcomer. Their article was about IE vs Netscape.
No FF. No Opera. We were celebrating the information age,
yet PC World couldn't risk sharing the information about
FF when only perhaps 10% of the public was using it. It
was too fringey.

It's the same reason that you might see
Chocolate Marshmallow Gunk in a cereal ratings article, but
you won't see Ace Breakfast Cereal, no matter how good
it is, if Ace is not mainstream and advertised on TV.
Because that would mean the "journalists" used their own
judgement in rating cereals. Which would mean there's no
mainstream, consenus truth. Which would mean we're up
loser's creek without a compass.

Around the same time as the PC World article there was
a very interesting media situation. Bush Jr had just invaded
Iraq. Some journalist gave a sympathetic interview to some
Iraqi official. But we were at war! Iraq must be the apex
of evil if we're systematically murdering them, no? So the
journalist must hang. He's fraternizing with pure evil. He was
working for Nat. Geo at the time. Nat. Geo. were shocked.
Shocked! They immediately fired him. I don't remember his
name.
Then the mainstream news gravely announced that he had
been fired for his unspeakable transgression. And it was,
indeed, unspeakable.They wouldn't say what they were
talking about. It took me days to find out what the story was,
because even the very idea that the enemy might be
interviewed suggested a dangerous flexibility and relativity
to mainstream, consensus Truth. To know that an ally had
extended an assumption of humanity to a brand new
arch-enemy would have been dangerously incongruous.
To publicly reflect on the idea could have caused rioting.

And of course every witchhunt, from commies to MeToo
transgressors, works on the same principle. When Truth
wavers it must be fortified. So don't forget to eat your
Wheaties and do what Bill Gates tells you to. Because, as
we all know, Gates is a genius. But surely you already
know that. It was in the papers.

Am Sun, 15 Apr 2018 08:26:29 -0400, schrieb Mayayana:

We're all old men so take this (with salt) as a huge generalization about old men.
There are two kinds of old men.
a. Realistic
b. Scared ****less

Those who have dealt with software for years, and who have, as a result,
been burned enough to know that there is almost never anything good that
comes of new release versions is going to be "realistic" about software IF
... IF ... they're not also scared ****less.

Those who are scared ****less *always* say you have to have the latest
release.

Why?
They don't even know why.

That's a bit harsh.

I was making a point, so, perhaps I was a bit dramatic.

It's not just frightened old men
who can't resist buying New and Improved!! Acme
Dish Soap!! With More Scrubbing Bubbles!!

I understand. I've modified my philosophy... to...

There are two kinds of we old men.
a. Those that believe in "better bubbles", and,
b. Those whose bubbles are just fine as they are.

More bubbles than what? They never say. What's a
scrubbing bubble? Sounds technical. Who knows? But
why take a chance that we might be using loser dish
soap?... I'll just buy a bottle to be on the safe side....
Oh, look, if I buy the big size I get 33% more for free!!
33% more than what? They don't say. But why take
a chance that I'm not getting the best deal? I'll
just buy the mega-mega size. I can keep it in the
garage....

Yup. To that point, Irfanview of ten years ago does the same thing as
Irfanview of today and tomorrow. Microsoft Office of ten years ago does the
same thing as Microsoft Office of tomorrow. FileZilla of ten years ago does
the same thing as FileZilla of today.

With software, there are those who feel a desperate need for the latest and
greatest version ... and .... there are those whose bubbles are just fine.

I think most people don't trust their own judgement.
So we look for someone to sell us judgement. We look
for heroes, project superiority on them, then hope a little
will rub off onto us. Why do people stand in lines to pay
too much for a cellphone they don't need? Because
Steve "P.T. Barnum" Jobs has the charm of a winner...
or a psychopath... What's the difference? Both seem
to be confident. And that's what's important.

Yup. I have studied the Apple Usenet poster perhaps more than any man
alive, where they want to "feel" safe and to "feel" stylish.

Take the example of the Apple-branded wall worts where Apple made a huge
stink where one unbranded wall wort killed a lady in China. For months, the
Apple newsgroups were abuzz with the admonition that you can only use an
Apple branded wall wort. Nothing else was safe.

That's just preposterous.

Likewise, Apple Marketing is currently touting Animoji like you can't
believe, and the color "red" for its phone. The color! And animoji!

For heaven's sake - it's a proven fact there is zero app functionality on
iOS that isn't already on Android, and there are tons of app
functionalities on Android that aren't on iOS - and they tout animoji and
the phone color for heaven's sake.

Apple Marketing knows their customer well.
a. They want to feel safe
b. They want to feel stylish

Functionality is not even in the equation.

Why do people overpay for chocolate marshmallow
breakfast cereal when anyone with any sense would
know that's not proper food? Because they saw it on
TV, of course. Along with the scrubbing bubbles. If it
was on TV then the worst that can happen would be
that the cereal is a loser product, but at least a lot
of people would have got tricked. We wouldn't be alone.
Thank God.

Yup. To the main point here, there are people who feel a need to have the
latest version because, somehow, somewhere, in some way, they already
*need* the update.

Then, there are others, like you and me, who were and are perfectly fine
with Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat 6, Irfanview from God
knows when, Super from before it went over to the dark side, uTorrent
before it went over too, etc.

Ditto for people buying glyphosate toxin to spray
their driveway in the "war against weeds".

I think this glyphosate argument is slightly different in that there are
those who are afraid of all poisons (whether it be glyphosate for weeds or
warfarin for rats, etc.) and those who use them wisely understanding the
use model and precautions.

In the case of glyphosate (i.e., the main ingredient in "roundup" brand
weed killer), it makes the plant grow to death, where I buy a 2.5-gallon
60-dollar 41% concentrate once a year, and I put it full strength with a
drop of dish detergent as a wetting agent, and then I cut the Scotch Broom,
Spanish Broom, and Poison Oak, and immediately I pull the spray bottle off
my belt hook, and spray the cut end until it's wet (about four or five
pumps). That has a kill rate of almost 100%, where not applying glyphosate
will have a kill rate of around zero % (since they sprout back with a
vengeance).

Notice that the proper application doesn't cause an overspray.

Likewise with the chunks of warfarin that we can't buy anymore because
people left them outside where they are slow acting so animals ate animals
who ate animals who had eaten the warfarin, allowing a super concentrate to
form in any one animal's body.

You have to put the warfarin in locations that only the target animal will
inject them, e.g., inside your tool drawers, where I keep a chunk in each
drawer in the basement.

Ditto for
people paying $5 for 8 cents worth of watered down
bleach to spray their shower in the "war against mildew
and germs".

For bleach, you have to realize it's just sodium hypochlorite at usually 5%
by volume concentration (as I recall), which actually has one advantage of
being dilute, which is it actually lasts longer the more dilute it is.

The bathroom bleaches are, as I recall, only 3%, so they're watered-down
still.

What I use is pool chlorine, which is 12 percent by weight, as I recall,
and which is the best bang for your buck (for your pool anyway). I dilute
it to 6% by weight and let the wife use it on clothes and to kill mold.

I've written many articles on the proper bleach for pools, by the way, as
there are *plenty* of ways to kill microbes in a pool, bleach being just
one of them.

Bleach works for mold rather well - but what most people use on toilets is
a crime. I use hydrochloric acid, 29% by weight, I think, from the pool
supply house, which I use straight, but boy oh boy, you don't want to
breathe it in, so run the bathroom fan and hold your breath.

But man, does it work on toilets! Whooooeeeeee! It works beautifully. I
have written entire tutorials on all the different chemicals, including
phosphoric acid - but I find muriatic acid works best, albeit, you have to
have some high-school chemistry to not hurt yourself or the glass lining of
most toilets.

No one who thought about what they were doing would
buy such products.

Well, I look at ingredients. I know that, for example, the poison oak
remedies contain a large surfactant, an oxidizer, an abrasive, a wetting
agent, and a small surfactant.

So I make my own, although the small surfactant (spermicides) is harder to
come by (nonoxynol 9). Again, I've written entire tutorials on the
chemicals, where you have to understand them to use them properly, but the
alternative is the $40 per ounce expensive creams at the store.

To be clear, the main ingredient of all the poison oak removal creams is
the large surfactant, where Costco Dawn or Palmolive dish detergent works
just fine (you cover your body three times head to toe, and you use the
hottest water you can stand because it's bull **** that your "pores open"
since your skin pores can't open if they wanted to).

The smaller surfactant is a miracle chemical, because spermicides are small
molecules. Really small. So small that the surfactant molecule actually is
about the size of the poison oak analog that is attached to the underlying
cells in your skin and it slips between the cracks of your skin cells, just
as the poison oak oil did, and it swaps places with the oxidized urushiol
deep in your skin layer.

But even without that miracle surfactant, the dish detergent is generally
enough to remove all the poison oak that you're gonna remove. For the
stubborn spots, you put some toothpaste, which has the abrasive needed to
scrub away the outer later of skin, and you can add a drop or three of the
wetting agent (any household alcohol) and the oxidizer (any household
bleach) and you have concocted, for almost nothing, the same solution as
the forty-dollar-an-ounce poison-oak removal creams.

For the prevention of poison oak, the hint is the history of the creams
that firefighters willingly pay tremendous amounts for since they don't
pay, we do. Normal deodorants with activated bentonite is what is in the
name-brand stuff, which is cheap as dirt bentonite clay.

Yes, I've written tons on this, as I don't just guess on anything.

That's why it's so harmful to have these things repeated
mindlessly.

I don't take the same approach you do, but I take a similar approach.
My approach is to know thine enemy. Don't just guess.
Once you know your enemy, you learn its weakness.
And then you use those chemicals against its weakness.

The marketers say we need updates because, of course,
software is going out of style and cloud is the future.

Yup. Don't even get me started on renting my data on the cloud.
Just don't!

The lapdog, mainstream media repeat the marketers' press
releases faithfully. Not only because they depend on ad
dollars from software companies. They also don't trust
their own judgement. If they start reporting straight news
then people won't be able to handle it and the mainstream
media will no longer be mainstream. The job of the mainstream
media is to maintain public consensus, which is almost
indistinguishable from corporate marketing these days.

I have a slightly different tack on the mainstream media, which is that
they need a headline every single day. Well, you can't have "Japs bomb
Pearl Harbor" headlines every single day ... but they have to invent the
news.

In the end, it's not all bad that they have to invent news, as they go
hungry and have to dig a bit for news, where they find stuff that is below
the surface, so, it's not all bad as long as people can "comprehend" that
which they read, which is a skill sorely lacking in a huge number of
people, I believe.

Take for example, almost any California proposition. OMG. None of them are
what they appear to be. Not one. A proposition to "modernize the lottery"
has absolutely nothing to do with modernizing a lottery, for example; it's
just a way to put the lottery revenues into the general fund.

There should be a law that the government has to tell the truth, where I
like the way the IRS names documents, e.g., 401K, 1040EZ, etc., instead of
euphemistic names that are nothing more than marketing gimmicks.

I remember years ago when I used to often get computer
magazines (my first office suite, WordPro 95, I think, came
from one of their CDs) PC World once ran a fluff article about
"What's the Best Browser?". Firefox was getting well known
by then, but PC World was mainstream. They couldn't risk
comparing a newcomer. Their article was about IE vs Netscape.
No FF. No Opera. We were celebrating the information age,
yet PC World couldn't risk sharing the information about
FF when only perhaps 10% of the public was using it. It
was too fringey.

Yup. I think most of those "reviews" are merely shills, where I used to
avidly read the car and motorcycle magazines, where Road & Track was for
the morons, and Car & Driver was a cut above, and Motor Trend a cut below
the worst, where you'd find all sort of such comparisons in all those
magazines, which, in the end, were basically useless since they almost
never compared the stuff you were comparing.

Same with Consumer's Union, where I used to read every issue cover to
cover, but I've since learned that they test things strangely, e.g., for a
motorcycle, they care a lot about decibels, which, I guess is important for
the people who don't ride, but most bikers aren't buying bikes by the
decibel (Harley patent attempts notwithstanding).

It's the same reason that you might see
Chocolate Marshmallow Gunk in a cereal ratings article, but
you won't see Ace Breakfast Cereal, no matter how good
it is, if Ace is not mainstream and advertised on TV.
Because that would mean the "journalists" used their own
judgement in rating cereals. Which would mean there's no
mainstream, consenus truth. Which would mean we're up
loser's creek without a compass.

Yup. As I said, I think most reviews are shills. Take for example the
classic search whenever we need a tool for the "ten best" where the first
few pages of Google hits come up with lots of lists, almost never with the
same tools in all the lists. How can that be? It can't be.

In the end, you're *lucky* if the tool that is actually in the ten best,
such as FileZilla, Irfanview & ShotCut are, at least show up in the ten
best lists of a few articles.

Around the same time as the PC World article there was
a very interesting media situation. Bush Jr had just invaded
Iraq. Some journalist gave a sympathetic interview to some
Iraqi official. But we were at war! Iraq must be the apex
of evil if we're systematically murdering them, no? So the
journalist must hang. He's fraternizing with pure evil. He was
working for Nat. Geo at the time. Nat. Geo. were shocked.
Shocked! They immediately fired him. I don't remember his
name.

Ummmm.... er ... ok. Politics is something that I'm only slowly coming to
grips with. As Roosevelt said, nothing is by accident in politics, so,
there's always some subterfuge going on...

Then the mainstream news gravely announced that he had
been fired for his unspeakable transgression. And it was,
indeed, unspeakable.They wouldn't say what they were
talking about. It took me days to find out what the story was,
because even the very idea that the enemy might be
interviewed suggested a dangerous flexibility and relativity
to mainstream, consensus Truth. To know that an ally had
extended an assumption of humanity to a brand new
arch-enemy would have been dangerously incongruous.
To publicly reflect on the idea could have caused rioting.

This "unspeakable transgression" concept reminds me of when I learned that
cops never know the direction of shooting for weeks, and even months, when
it's in the back. It's always the "torso" for weeks when they shoot someone
in the back.

Likewise, cops never can find the gun for days when there is no gun, as in
the "ferocious firefight" which injured a deputy, of over 200 shots,
against what turns out moments later to be a prostrate Boston Bomber, lying
unarmed in the hull of a boat. For three days, Commissioner Davis spouted
this "ferocious firefight", and he wouldn't say there never was a gun
involved, which is something they knew within minutes, and yet, the police
won't admit that for days, until they're literally forced to admit it.

News has to be taken with a grain of salt, which is why I have a bit of
factual fun with the Apple users, since they utterly hate facts which tell
the truth about their beloved system, since they don't buy on truth.

Windows users, Linux users, Android users, all, can handle facts about
their operating system - but not the Apple users. Why? I'm not sure why,
but I think certain mentalities gravitate to certain operating systems
naturally, where the marketing people know their customer well.

And of course every witchhunt, from commies to MeToo
transgressors, works on the same principle. When Truth
wavers it must be fortified. So don't forget to eat your
Wheaties and do what Bill Gates tells you to. Because, as
we all know, Gates is a genius. But surely you already
know that. It was in the papers.

McCarthyism comes to mind...

In article , Ragnusen Ultred
wrote:

Take the example of the Apple-branded wall worts where Apple made a huge
stink where one unbranded wall wort killed a lady in China. For months, the
Apple newsgroups were abuzz with the admonition that you can only use an
Apple branded wall wort. Nothing else was safe.

that's not what was said and you know it.

people can use any adapter they want.

the point is that name brand quality power adapters (not just from
apple) have been tested for safety and won't electrocute people nor
will they fry the device to which it's connected.

cheap noname adapters, which are not tested for safety at all (and why
they're so cheap), might electrocute people and/or fry the device.

some people foolishly choose noname crap and might learn the hard way
why it was a bad choice.

it's not just apple either. connect an android phone to a noname usb
adapter and it might be fried or worse.

That's just preposterous.

which is why you're spewing it.