Mr. Carmack's comment that he recognizes that this is a 'slippery slope' is a fine analogy: as we begin our ride, iD gets some data, Blizzard gets some data. Big deal. The other, competing software publishers/developers perhaps lose a few dollars here or there b/c their marketing database is a few bytes short. Again, big deal.
What happens when we continue to descend this 'slippery slope'? Perhaps our Quake III config is uploaded to iD, in order to best serve the customer in the next patch of the software. What comes next? Why not email times/dates, in order to see what speed of response the customer might require after a tech support inquiry?
Please consider that I am not suggesting that iD (or Blizzard even) might engage in such heinous activity, and nor do I believe that anyone at iD had any 'malicious' motives for collecting the user info that they did. But to sum, the very reason that many/.'ers are concerned with privacy rights issues is because they can and have snowballed in the past.
A little consent now could save a lot of trouble down the road.
I'm a veteran user of Window$, but I've heard a lot of good things about Linux and have a spare 4.3 gig HD to use. I'm running on an o'ced PPGA Celery Stick 300a, w/64 mb of SDRAM, and great game performance w/Voodoo 2 on ADSL.
I use my machine mostly for games, 'net browsing, and word processing. Can someone help me with: 1)What are the advantages to using Linux as an alternate OS? 2)Assuming I *do* go Linux, which "distribution" would make for the most comfortable (and cheap) conversion? Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Unix at all.
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Mr. Carmack's comment that he recognizes that this is a 'slippery slope' is a fine analogy: as we begin our ride, iD gets some data, Blizzard gets some data. Big deal. The other, competing software publishers/developers perhaps lose a few dollars here or there b/c their marketing database is a few bytes short. Again, big deal.
/.'ers are concerned with privacy rights issues is because they can and have snowballed in the past.
What happens when we continue to descend this 'slippery slope'? Perhaps our Quake III config is uploaded to iD, in order to best serve the customer in the next patch of the software. What comes next? Why not email times/dates, in order to see what speed of response the customer might require after a tech support inquiry?
Please consider that I am not suggesting that iD (or Blizzard even) might engage in such heinous activity, and nor do I believe that anyone at iD had any 'malicious' motives for collecting the user info that they did. But to sum, the very reason that many
A little consent now could save a lot of trouble down the road.
I'm a veteran user of Window$, but I've heard a lot of good things about Linux and have a spare 4.3 gig HD to use. I'm running on an o'ced PPGA Celery Stick 300a, w/64 mb of SDRAM, and great game performance w/Voodoo 2 on ADSL.
:o)
I use my machine mostly for games, 'net browsing, and word processing. Can someone help me with: 1)What are the advantages to using Linux as an alternate OS? 2)Assuming I *do* go Linux, which "distribution" would make for the most comfortable (and cheap) conversion? Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Unix at all.
Thanks a million for helping out!