Microsoft To Add A Black Box To Windows 514
An anonymous reader writes "According to ZDNet, Microsoft plans to add the software equivalent of a 'black box' flight recorder to Windows. According to the article, 'The tool will build on the existing Watson error-reporting tool in Windows but will provide Microsoft with much deeper information, including what programs were running at the time of the error and even the contents of documents that were being created.'" Commentary available via C|Net as well.
What's In Your Box? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the blackbox on a jet won't (unless I'm woefully uninformed more than usual) tell what you were doing in your own seat when the plane went down.
"occupant of 17A was eating peanuts, doing inflight magazine crossword and had dirty underwear"
"Our stance on this is that the user is in control," Sullivan [Windows lead product manager] said. "In the consumer environment, you will be presented with a dialog that clearly gives you the choice whether to share the information and then also provides exactly what the detail is so you can parse character by character what's being sent."
Sounds reasonable, so long as it doesn't hide anything from view. Of course, if you have Visual Studio you can hit Debug and lookie yourself, which is usually more helpful than anything I've ever got back from Microsoft.
The probablem was likely caused by a faulty driver
And consumers could have a tough time knowing just what information they were sending. Though they'll be able to see the contents of a document, they may not recognize the significance of the technical data--such as register settings--that's being sent.
Consumers stick with what works. If hitting Don't Send works, they stick with it. If the problem persists then they'll probably send.
It said, "what we have here is failure to communicate." What's that mean?
Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest of these instances occurred when I fired up Half Life 2 last night. "Logging on to Steam as
Every time I browse a web page, I'm telling everyone I use Firefox/1.0.3 on x64 Linux. Sure, I could hack my user agent string, but really. Most people don't, right? So now the slashdot editors know what I run, what my IP address is,
I only boot to Windows to play games like Half-Life, and it bothers me that Microsoft would know about everything I'm running on that Windows box, but how else are they to fix issues if they don't know what I'm running and what I was doing when it crashed? When do we draw the line between normal computer use and invasion of privacy?
Privacy on the job (Score:5, Insightful)
With businesses, however, IT managers typically set the policy. If they wanted total information, they could configure systems so that they'd know not only that a user was running Internet Explorer, for example, but also that he or she was watching a video from ESPN.com. Or, they might find out not only that a worker was running Instant Messenger but also that he or she was talking to a co-worker about getting a new job.
This is a major invasion of privacy if you ask me. Of course, while at work you are using company resources so they really do get to say how and when they are used but I feel there is an important difference between monitoring your employee's resource usage and actually reading their emails and instant messages. You don't have to totally invade everyone's privacy to enforce your company policy of internet usage.
But Sullivan pointed out that businesses can already install third-party software to monitor workers' computer usage and some do.
While the above is most certainly true, having something like this built into Windows by default just makes it that much easier and thus inviting for a company to implement this sort of monitoring. I just can't wait for the day when all employees have a tracking system attached to them at all times and are reprimanded if they spend too much time going to the bathroom or chatting to a coworker. What great fun that is going to be!
Another issue with this that is mentioned in the article is the fact that while you will be able to look through all the data being reported, most people will not have the knowledge to determine how much of it is sensitive.
And consumers could have a tough time knowing just what information they were sending. Though they'll be able to see the contents of a document, they may not recognize the significance of the technical data--such as register settings--that's being sent.
Not everything is totally obvious, such as personal emails or credit card numbers. Not to mention the fact that it will very likely be buried among a lot of other unintelligable data. Also, given the habit of most Windows users of just clicking 'OK' or 'YES' to anything and everything that pops up on their screen, I doubt many people will actually review the information being sent in the report.
I don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your realize what this means? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice.
Everything falls into place now... (Score:2, Insightful)
Spybox? (Score:2, Insightful)
So everytime my windows crashes, the stuff I worked on gets sent to MS. Everytime IE crashes, MS gets to know where I browse. How does this motivate them to make crashes less frequent? I don't like the idea at all. Another reason to leave MS products completely (already switched at home, still have to use them at work).
They key point here really is (Score:5, Insightful)
For consumers, the choice of whether to send the data, and how much information to share, will be up to the individual. Though the details are being finalized, Windows lead product manager Greg Sullivan said users will be prompted with a message indicating the information to be sent and giving them an option to alter it, such as removing the contents of the e-mail they were writing when the machine crashed. Also, such reporting will also be anonymous.
The only concern, one might suppose, is for people who don't want this information accumulated should their computer later be searched by others (the law? An employer? A relative?). This is perhaps a legitimate concern, but hard to argue for, as a reason to cripple error reporting.
Re:What's In Your Box? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's In Your Box? (Score:5, Insightful)
It does, however, record exactly what the users (the flight crew) was doing at the time of the crash.
Strange press... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it's important that you actually have to acknowledge this - so, for example, the default button (the one that has the focus) should be "No" rather than "Yes", so users actually have to make a conscious decision instead of just saying hitting return because that's what they always do when an error pops up.
In other words, consent is required, but it also has to be informed consent. Someone who just says "Yes, do this" because they don't understand what's going on and what the implications are does not consent IMO.
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, there are some of us who run a load lot more than that, and no, not willing to let anyone trustworthy get their hands on anything. And no, I don't consider some MS developer browsing through crash data trustworthy.
Anyways, I don't care what their boxes' color will be
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:2, Insightful)
So they have to invade your privacy because they did not write a robust OS in the first place ? What an argument!
--
Go Debian!
Re:Privacy on the job (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure this new "black box" will be controllable via Group Policy. The management and IT can decide if they want to use it and if not turn it off for everyone with a fewer than maybe 15-20 mouse clicks.
I think this is probably a good step forward in trying to diagnose and prevent crashes for home users, as long as they don't start digging too deep. I don't really mind them knowing what processes were running, but sending them more than just a mini memory dump is too much. I'd also want to make sure they don't grab anything from memory that's supposed to be protected like passwords. Really, that's the only place I see issues, for example if I'm running some financing software which crashes. They grab a memory dump of the program which just happens to contain my SSN, birthday, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc. There is the possibility this information could be misused by an employee at Microsoft.
Microsoft's Online Crash Analysis, the current version of this type of thing, has helped me a time or two. I've had Windows shoot a BSOD at me and after submitting the dump to MS, they readily told me which driver was the culprit and saved me perhaps an hour of troubleshooting.
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:5, Insightful)
When information is reported without your consent.
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:4, Insightful)
When the vendor leverages the market information to make the decision for you that you should upgrade, I daresay you may feel invaded, while falling short of concluding whether or not Daddy Knows Best.
Time will Tell.
Re:What's In Your Box? (Score:3, Insightful)
What security on the box? (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, Qui custodet ipsos custodies? Microsoft just created a new target for hackers, both writing to (for hiding their own tracks) and reading from (for extracting information when searching for personal user information.) Not insurmountable problems, but will M$ think to solve them before being bit on the backside?
One step forward, two steps back...
Re:Privacy on the job (Score:5, Insightful)
There is to be *NO* expectation of privacy while using computers at work. Don't think for a minute that your company won't pull out those records if necessary.
In the mean time protect yourself. Run everything over encrypted tunnels, don't use your company's DNS servers, use a browser that allows you to save your cache to a safe location (USB hard drive,
Unethical? Yeah. Legal? Definitely. Get over it and protect yourself as best you can. That means don't use your Internet connection at work for anything that would get you fired or could be used against you later.
/var/log/messages (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Privacy on the job (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:1, Insightful)
"Another revolutionary new concept. You can TURN IT OFF!"
Yes, but in a typical office situation (remember not all businesses have an IT department or "guy") how many users (minimum wage secretaries) will choose not to send the company's private data back to Microsoft? This is one situation where the choice NOT to send the data should be the default.
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:3, Insightful)
But what I don't think is even neccessary is the contents of the document I'm working on: that has no place whatsoever being sent to MS. But, hell, let MS do that: it means instantly that governments and corporations will not adopt that version of windows for reasons of due dilligence and privacy. Hell, as someone posted before, hospitals etc will be legally bound not to use any OS which could potentially send confidential client information in this way.
Re:What's In Your Box? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maing this data available for non-MS software producers, including OSS, would make debugging the applications easier. You have to remember that no matter how good the OS is, buggy software (including 3rd party and OSS products) will affect the performance of the system.
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Strawman. This isn't about giving my address to someone, this is about potentially telling them every detail of what I sent through the mail, including credit card information, private letters to loved ones, potentially sensitive business documents, etc.
The concern isn't that a stack trace might be sent to MS -- it's that they want to have a copy of any document open on one's computer at the time. For now, we can turn it off. But, it pays to keep an eye on things to make sure we can always turn it off. After all, how would you like it if it came out that you had a confidential illness because a medical transcriptionist hit 'Send' after Word crashed while mail-merging your test results?
Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, this is little more than pure paranoia now, but then again, just look at how badly some folks want to collect such data. If the demand for collection is this high, just how high is the demand for access? How soon before this information becomes a commodity?
That is but a short-term solution. (Score:3, Insightful)
Staying one step ahead of Big Brother is a poor substitute for privacy rights. What would stop a "black box" recorder from noting the fact that you were circumventing monitoring by the aforementioned methods? You can still get slammed for "unauthorized use of Company equipment" by this even if the content of the website, email, IM, or whatever, is encrypted; you are obviously hiding something from the monitoring systems, so it obviously is not work-related...
Your suggestions are sensible (I use them), but will only work in unsophisticated environments, and for a limited period of time.
Re:I don't care... (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to think so too, until I met a girl who had imported her entire collection copyprotected. re-ripping cd's is not fun.
You probably can switch it off (or use something less braindamaged to rip cd:s), but average users will never go to the advanced tab to switch copyprotecting off.. And a huge annoyance to notice after getting an iPod.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I better not hear any whining about privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, your unix/linux box can be configured to automatically send dump information to a server. This is a useful feature -- but needs to be explicitly enabled.
If dump information from the Windows box can be sent to a central server that is controllable (eg. not an outside agency), then I am all for this feature -- plus I want to be able to disable this feature.
Same as being able to forward logging information (again, under installation control on those Unix boxes).
So, having this feature available is a "good thing" (tm) but I would like to see it configurable to use an internal server. Glad to see Microsoft is offering this as a problem resolution mechanism!
Ratboy.
Re:What's In Your Box? (Score:3, Insightful)
Knowing these is kind of handy when you are dealing with XP users and you don't know whether they are running in classic or standard mode (or you are running several W2K boxes with a non-active KVM switch and it loses your mouse constantly).
WindowsKey+R brings up the run dialog, from there you can run anything. Useful ones are: Control.msc (control panel), services.msc(services menu), compmgnt.msc (computer management which is what you wanted).
Though it doesn't have a keyboard shortcut built in for computer management, what you can do is create your own. Create a shortcut on the desktop to compmgnt.msc, and then assign it a hotkey in the area it says "Shotcut key" press control-alt and another key and it will set that key as your keyboard shortcut. This only works for desktop items as far as I know. I have ones set for Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, and a few other monitor applications I run frequently. Just right click & go to properties on any shortcut on the desktop and add you own on the shortcut-key line. Saves a few clicks once you have it setup.
There are a few other hotkeys that are handy though: WindowsKey+M minimizes everything, WindowsKey+Shift+M restores that, WindowsKey+D takes you to the desktop (but doesn't seem to reverse itself with the shift key), WindowsKey+F brings up the find files screen. WindowsKey+E brings up Windows Explorer.
Re:What's In Your Box? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, because if Microsoft actually fixed the problems, they wouldn't have to send back intrusive, personal and possibly illegal information to Redmond, would they?