In case you didn't know, in Windows XP, Microsoft has a new feature that will optionally send an "error report" to Microsoft whenever a program crashes.
Does Microsoft actually do anything with them? Particularly if it's a non-Microsoft program? If a program crashed too often, could Microsoft use its might to get the developer to clean up their code or else risk whatever nefarious tricks they might have up their sleeve? (Actually, for Eudora 6.0, I really DO wish that Microsoft would give Qualcomm some "influence", because that program is a piece of crap when it comes to stability!)
On the other hand, I can imagine Microsoft getting inundated with error reports from the crashing programs of CS106 students just learning about pointers, for instance. =) [In all fairness, the VS.net debugger traps them first.] If they got too many crashes from a certain student's computer, might that negatively bias a student's future chances of employment with Microsoft?
Ahh, conspiracy theories... gotta love 'em. Not that I seriously believe it, but still, I wonder... with millions of XP users, and probably millions of crashes here and there, how does MS process and mine all that data?