"We've been amazed by the patterns revealed in the error reports that customers are sending us," Ballmer wrote. "About 20 percent of the bugs cause 80 percent of all errors, and -- this is stunning to me -- one percent of bugs cause half of all errors."
—"Microsoft says 1 pct of bugs cause half of all software errors"
Another news flash: Microsoft discovers people aren't interested in buying computers crippled to keep Hollywood happy.
Netscape introduces automatic reporting of errors over the Internet. Said automatic reporting makes it into Mozilla. The open source community encourages everyone to use a talkback enabled Mozilla build to report errors, and congratulates itself on building a rock solid web browser.
Microsoft introduces automatic reporting of errors over the Internet. Privacy alarms sound worldwide that the evil Empire of Redmond is spying on everyone.
I'm not a Microsoft fan, either, but watch the double standard.
"In the future we want to enable customers to look up the history of their error reports and our efforts to resolve them."
This is good news. Old idea, but good news.
Re:Prediction
vsergu on 2002-10-10T20:17:44
I'm not sure it's a double standard, because the open-source community and Microsoft are actually different. People are allowed to take into account past behavior when looking for ulterior motives for actions.
More important, Microsoft is in a much better position (because of Windows registration, Passport, and so forth) to connect reports with identifying information and bundle the data with all the other data they and all their partners have collected about you.
I'm not saying it's the end of the world, but I think you're being too dismissive of privacy concerns. Not everyone is equally blasé about contributing further to their corporate dossiers.
