The very first thing I do on a Windows computer is turn off their stinking "updates". The next is to go into the hosts file and block off all the mickeysoft and adobe and google addresses I can find.
On Apple, there is a program called Little Snitch that makes it really easy to block all their phone-home behavior, which is equally disgusting. It's also a shock to see just how much spying is going on. No wonder the internet is slow, these assholes are checking on the color of our socks every five minutes.
On many Unixes you can just use a blank password, so all you have to do is hit "enter" and away ya go.
Or you could use OS/2. It's still alive, it's still single-user, and there's current versions of the common browsers available. It doesn't have any of this behavior. If'n I wuz stuck on x86 that's what I'd do. It's a nice system.
It's not the ivory tower, it's that they make money off you. Not as an individual but as part of the 300 million people they monitor.
Worse yet, it's bad enough that they make money off you by selling your info : the point is to manipulate your life by the use of Big Data. What you see on teevee, what you can buy in the stores, what news goes into your brain, everything is decided by numbers now.
And they get those numbers by putting little spies in your underwear drawer. We live in a brave new world ...
