🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <40ha7s$fk5@thetics.europa.com> mbell@atheria.europa.com (Max Bell) writes:
>In article <40g80c$l0f@itsmail1.hamilton.edu>,
>Joseph T. Malloy <jmalloy@itsmail1.hamilton.edu> wrote:
>>If the average user couldn't care less whether Microsoft "sees" what
>>they're running, who are you to decide they're wrong?  Just because *you*
>>have an irrational fear of a pretty well accepted industry practice
>>doesn't mean it's a bad thing to be given the *choice* to register
>>electronically.  Come back and complain when you don't have any choice in
>>the matter. 
>
>I do not think there has been any actual polling to find out how the
>average user feels about Microsoft scanning their system and uploading
>the results.  

Unless the registration takes place without the consent of the customer,
there's no issue.  If in doubt, don't register.  Don't click that button!

>In any case, the point being made was that the end-user
>will not be the one answering the authorization question on the average
>preloaded system.  

Huh?   Then why all the hullabaloo?

>I fail to see how you can refer to such an upload as
>"a pretty well accepted industry practice" since this is the first operating
>system to do so.  

It may be the first of its *category* to do this, but it's not this first
piece of software.  Look at Procomm Plus for Windows, look at Delrina. As
I said, it's a pretty well accepted industry practice.

>Given Microsoft's obvious lack of respect for the
>intellectual property of others (Stac, Apple, etc.), fearing it is not
>irrational.  

That's not a given.  If you don't think that lawsuits are a way of life
for major (and minor!) corporations, you just aren't aware of the
litigious nature of the American Way (tm) (Apple lost, by the way).  It's
irrational because (let me say this clearly) YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT! 

>The reason the confirmation is there is because Microsoft
>had little choice once the uploading process became known.  You have a
>choice because someone complained during the beta versions.

Unfortunately for you, that choice had been there for about a year before
RTM of Windows 95.  And if it's true that they added it because "someone
complained", then so what?  It just demonstrates that Microsoft was making
the registration electronically (WHICH YOU DON'T HAVE TO COMPLETE AND
NEVER DID) more acceptable to the paranoid among us.