And remind me again, that was based off of the insurance company's own motto of "delay, deny, dispose"? After all we're just a disposable product to them, right?

security firm McAfee

Now there's an oxymoron. Let me know when they can write a virus scanner that works.

Unfortunately that's not true. I've been running mail servers under my domain since around 2000, almost as long as Microsoft has been running Hotmail, and I was certainly following good standards like SPF and DKIM well before they considered such a thing... and yet Microsoft is the bane of my mail server's existence. Despite no compromises resulting in spam blasts, MS still regularly shuts me out with no reason given and no hits showing on their monitors. If I can find their email address to ask what the problem is, I get a generic "your domain has been cleared" sort of reply but never any reason why they blocked me in the first place.

To answer your first question, ALL of the mirrors are safe. The idea with mirrors is that you choose one that is geographically close to your location (same country, maybe the same region or state) to help reduce lag in downloading the files. Any selection is valid, all of the mirrors will have the same content, but for your location some mirrors may simply be faster or slower than others.

One other thing you might run in to is different types of installers. Some may be a very minimal install which only give you a command line, while others will provide a fully configured desktop. You might also see an option for a "Live" version -- that is something you put on a bootable memory stick and you can test out a working version of the operating system without actually changing anything on your computer, but all of your settings will go away when you reboot.

I haven't used Mint so I can't provide specific info, however some things that are common to ANY linux desktop -- You probably want to start with printer drivers (install CUPS) and some office software (install LibreOffice). For internet access, Firefox and Thunderbird are good choices. LicreOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird can all also be used on Windows if you want to check them out ahead of time. There are many lists online that can point you to equivalent software, so like if you use Lightroom on windows, you might try Darkroom on linux. basically you just need to make a list of what Windows software you use and then install a similar package in linux.

Yes you will need some time to learn the new operating system and all the new software, very little will be 100% exactly the same, but they are "close enough". You figured out how to use all these things once before, so you can do it again, and it will definitely be worth the effort.

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet... Yes a failing drive will significantly slow down a computer. Drives are built to be fault-tolerant, so if it reads a block of data and that doesn't match the block's checksum, the drive will attempt to re-read the same data until it gets what it believes is correct data, or until it gives up and sends a failure to the computer.

So now imagine your drive is in a state where nearly every block is having trouble being read, so it re-reads each block several times, adding a significant amount of time to every operation. A scan of the drive may indicate everything is working correctly if the drive does eventually return valid information, but the drive itself is having to work very hard to get this data.

One thing you might try to check for internal errors is running a read/write test of the drive, and recording the speed these operations were performed at. If that number is close to the parameters of the drive (you can check with the manufacturer or online reviews to find real-world drive speeds) then the drive is probably ok. However if the test is running a lot slower than the expected speeds, it's a good bet that your drive is failing and you will want to back up the data as soon as possible.

Screwing over a large number of people to benefit a small number of people. Religion and corporations immediately come to mind.

When you do this long enough, not having to work for a few days is all the reward you need to make Friday exciting.

Any judge who makes a ruling based on their personal beliefs rather than on factual evidence is not truly acting as a judge, but rather as a petulant child determined to force everyone else to do things their way. Allowing even a single ruling of law to be based on personal beliefs, whether religious or otherwise, reduces the entire court system to nothing more than a mockery of legal justice.

And we can totally trust them to never abuse this power or falsely accuse a legal site of infringement over materials they don't even own, right? riiiiiiiiiiiiight

(Looking at you, RIAA and MPAA... Can you see my sarcasm from there?)

Obviously Greg Abbott needs to be brought up on charges as an accessory to wrongful death under the color of law. And since he chose to propagate this act across state lines, the feds need to be brought in on the case.

In 2016 a lot of folks were saying we should let Trump win and burn it all to the ground. Everyone always underestimates the stupidity of the masses, and the cult mentality of following someone who is taking away everything you have so they can get richer, so now we have someone who was absolutely the worst candidate with no ability to represent anything but his own desires, and all these people think he's their new god.

Does anyone remember all the Republicans crying about how Obama was going to declare himself "dictator for life" so he didn't have to leave the Whitehouse? Isn't it interesting how every time they raise a ruckus about the other party doing something, it turns out to be just a cover for things their own party is already doing, or in this case was about to do?

Aww poor babies. Where was their outrage when Ukrainian civilians were killed by Russia's use of cluster bombs?