by PhanGarrett » Mon Apr 26, 2004 6:44 pm
<blockquote><i>Originally posted by Benoit</i><p>No, my teacher doesn't refer to that hype. He has gone through this stuff, and if you check your firewall, you'll see that it sends the info anyway if you choose not to.<br></blockquote><p>Your teacher is full of shit if he believes that. If your internet connection is absent or non-existent, it'd be trying to get online after every request to send crash data to Microsoft, regardless of whether or not you tell it "No," which is an extremely visible process, and having had to rely on my share of dial-up while running Windows XP, I can tell you that Windows XP makes no attempt to get online if you tell it not to send the information, but it does attempt to get online if you tell it to go ahead and send the information.<p>I emphasize that the ordeal with Microsoft supposedly "collecting personal information" is another bit of hype not unlike the Y2k "bug", sparked by someone who knows what he's talking about, trying to explain something to someone who doesn't understand it, and the message being relayed and exaggerated.<p>Honestly, freaking out because you found out Microsoft collects your crash data when you tell Windows XP to send it to them, is like freaking out because you found out that Cirrus relays your bank account and PIN numbers through its network every time you pull money out of an ATM machine. <p>And people, honestly-- Who cares whether you say, "1980's", "1980s", " '80's", " '80s", "80's", or "80s"? They all get the message across, and there really isn't a terribly established rule for it.<p>If you wanted to get technical, you could argue that "1980s" would be correct because that would be the plural form of a proper noun, whereas "1980's" would be posessive; though it could also be argued that the apostrophe is thrown in as a wildcard to indicate any number, and the "0" only included to remind you that it's supposed to be "1980", not "198".<p>In other words, it doesn't matter-- any of the above instances can be argued to be grammatically correct.