Exactly what I'm saying. And no, I don't find it wrong at all to think this way. I'm sorry if you were angered or offended in some way by my previous comment.

That's true and if Microsoft decrees "Windows is included at no charge with a Microsoft 365 license", I would think that's many times more palatable.

You're right that Microsoft's main source of income is enterprise customers. But at the same time, I strongly believe that IT departments worldwide would start to seriously consider what tasks they really need Windows or Microsoft Office for and start considering giving as many employees as possible Macs or Chromebooks or even Linux systems. An additional $5 a month multiplied by a thousand systems is $60,000 p.a. I do see IT directors trying to minimise the number of Windows licenses wherever possible in that case. Does the receptionist really need Windows when the scheduling software is cloud-based? Can we replace it with a Chromebook? Is it finally worth it to give the designers the Macs they've been clamouring for? And the big one—do we really need Active Directory specifically now that everyone's got a Mac or a Chromebook? These are questions that have to be answered by IT departments worldwide and every time they're answered in the affirmative, it costs Microsoft another customer. Not everyone will switch, but the impact will still be non-negligible, and people will also think twice before getting Microsoft systems in the future.

I think you're right. Microsoft isn't stupid enough to try this.

I will cut to the chase here and say that the only reason for calling it "Taiwan Province" is if you are (1) a Chinese nationalist, (2) a Chinese propagandist, or (3) a person who got absorbed by (2). Nobody else in ordinary English discourse will refer to it as such. The typical usage is to call the Republic of China "Taiwan". Its government calls itself the "Republic of China (Taiwan)". Normal people call it "Taiwan". Taiwanese people call it "Taiwan". Don't forget; the "free area" of the Republic of China has two nominal provinces—Taiwan and Fuchien.

ISO standards are dry and mechanical, and most importantly, not designed to supplant everyday usage by humans. That is unless you also tend to write the date as 2023-10-03 and not the far more common "3 October 2023" or "October 3, 2023". The ISO standard refers to Taiwan Province, which is a province of the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China, however, neither province has a government and neither makes decisions on its own.

The common name for the area controlled by the Republic of China is "Taiwan". "Taiwan Province" is a Chinese nationalist dog whistle and there is nothing you can say to get around this fact.

I would like to remind you that there does not exist any political entity called "Taiwan Province". The Republic of China abolished its provincial governments and the People's Republic of China doesn't even bother to maintain a shadow government.

I wasn't aware that rsync also copied system files. I'm curious to know why my method is unsafe. The only potential problem I see with what I did is mixing up if and of in dd.

Yes, it is enough. Generally, the default handling of connections on Linux is enough but having ufw can't hurt. Certain developer or server software may not work unless you add UFW exceptions for them. They don't know how to do this on their own.

By default, without a firewall, any program can communicate through any port it wants as long as it can bind that port. Ports that are special or low-numbered (e.g. TCP port 21 is reserved for FTP) require root to be bound. Otherwise, a program can bind any port that isn't already in use by something else. All incoming connections to a port that isn't bound will be refused and the information discarded.

Edit: Your router also usually has a firewall that is strong enough for most everyday purposes.

I have a lot of Amazon gift cards that I want to use up

I think that's because of Chinese people's travelling habits. Popular domestic travel destinations include Hainan for a tropical experience, Sichuan for pandas, Beijing for landmarks, Hong Kong for fake Britain, Macau for gambling, and Taiwan because it seems foreign enough without being actually too foreign (to Chinese people).

Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan require travel permits to enter, despite the Chinese government considering them "domestic". They kinda straddle the line between actual domestic and international. Regardless, it's not common for Chinese people to have phone plans that work in Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan, so they'll buy the disposable SIM cards I talked about earlier. That's why phones typically have two SIM slots.

Getting visas to travel internationally is a pain for Chinese people because they have to visit a consulate or embassy, apply, and then be subject to high scrutiny. After all, it seems everyone's scared of Chinese spies nowadays. It's also very expensive by Chinese standards compared to applying for a cheap HK/MO/TW travel permit. The People's Republic of China passport is pretty weak compared to European or American passports. Chinese people can get visa-on-arrival or visa-free access in South Asian countries, Central Asia, or Africa, but these destinations are not popular with Chinese tourists.

That's the reason why the people who switch from the default operating system are a small minority.

Apple could fix this by making the phone a few millimetres thicker but I think we both know why they don't

I used Thunderbird for a year but I don't recommend it. Don't get me wrong, it's a competent email client, but I've found that the lack of tray notifications is unbelievably annoying. That means you can't really have it running headless in the background checking for emails. Birdtray is kind of a janky solution that I don't recommend either.

Mailspring I've found has most of the features I'd need from a mail client. It also does have a real background process that can check for mail and notify you when you receive some.

The application with the best integration to your (GNOME) desktop is going to be GNOME Geary. It looks like a native GNOME app (because it is) and it fits in perfectly with your system. But it's very light on features. If you only need a client to read and write simple messages, Geary will work wonderfully.