> Nobody has reported solid evidence that Mac OS 9 or X is spying on > customers and then dialing up Big Brother, nor even that > buggy Windows > code had the bugs deliberately inserted. If Windows 98 or NT > or 2000 or > XP was in fact providing a covert channel to BB and someone > found this > (by instrumenting the connections, by decompiling, etc.), > this would be > Very Big News. A career-creator bigger than what Wagner and Goldberg > did with the random number generator flaw. > > So far, nobody has found such a smoking gun.
It might be more ... subtle. WinXP has this nifty feature: when you're developping a program which crashes (that happens everyday when you code it), it asks you whether you want to send the core (I think that's roughly a core file) to MS. You can say no, of course. But probabilities say that someone in your team will at least once press yes (this is even easier when some dialog box steals your focus and your finger presses the key just this moment too late) and send the whole source code of your program (it's in debug, the debug info is in the exe for some programs (though I think in Windows it can be put in another file, but might be in RAM too anyway)). MS did not spy on you. It supplied a service to you. You're the moron. You're fired. MS has the source code to your new prototype. Guess what ? Your company was developping a consumer OS/missile guiding system/Magic Lantern/TicTacToe (delete as appropriate). The feature in Word that keeps a history of all changes in a file (along with your MAC address and other niceties). DirectX automatically "registering itself" when installed, without a prompt (next time I'll disconnect my machine from the LAN). Lots of programs calling home, trying to set a cookie while there at it. All that is to *help* you. Say thank you and be grateful. -- Vincent Penquerc'h
