[harigov]

I think the newer agile software development process requires companies to focus more on monitoring rather than testing, in order to understand how software is being used and also to figure out what needs to be improved/fixed. Microsoft is just implementing such processes in their products just like every other company. We would be hypocritical to say that we can make use of that processes but not Microsoft, just because we say so. It's important to realize that this monitoring based software development approach is going to stick around, and we have better chances of coming up with some strict guarantees around how that data is used, protected and anonymized rather than not collecting data at all.

[ocdtrekkie]

I would rather that while we realize we don't want Microsoft to do it to us, we shouldn't do it to others either. Golden Rule: If you don't want to be tracked, stop writing software to track others.

[username223]

I remember a time when so-called "beta testers" would be given your broken software for free, in exchange for providing bug reports. Now I guess everyone gets your broken software, gets data-mined in arbitrary ways, and maybe the next step on the version treadmill makes things less awful.