I'm finding myself more and more wishing I could get a total picture
of the platform of the box for any particular user.
For in house, close to home associates I have developed a small
"system" check stack with a little script
Small stack opens with lovely image... one button:
Click to Analyze System
on mouseup
Put "Platform: " & the platform & cr &\
"Machine: " & the machine & cr &\
"System: " & the systemVersion & cr & \
"Environment: " & the environment & cr & \
"Version: " & the version & cr & \
"Screen Bit Depth: " &the screenDepth & cr &\
"Colors: " &the screenColors & cr &\
"Screen Rect: " &the screenRect \
into fld "data"
## Run Revers: please feel free to extend the above
## as far as you possibly can in any direction
## I would like to know what is possible.
show fld "data" with wipe down
wait 2 seconds
put fld "data" into tBody
put empty into fld "data"
select after fld "data"
set the typingrate to 50
type "Preparing Email..."
hide fld "data" with visual effect dissolve very fast
put "System Check" into tSubject
revGoURL ("mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]" & tSubject & "&body="
& tBody)
End mouseup
It works just dandy..
This leads to two questions:
1) how much more information can we gather? In particular the user's
RAM and hard drive space, as well as the presence of certain
applications. If these came back home and you put them into a back
end data base, you could do some very useful analyses of your user base.
I believe I can search the archives for scripts that test for some
of these things, especially the latter (apps available on the box)
but if anyone has already developed a complete system check, please
do share it.
Particularly, total, hard drive space, used and available are
important variables in a scenario where you may be offering the user
options to download literally gigabytes of data over time.
<aside>There is some attitude floating that "why are you worried,
it's not your (provider's) problem, if I download stuff to my
computer, my space issues are my problem...its not the responsibility
of those offering the files" but I find this a bit callous and
elitist in the sense that it makes no concession for those who I
refer to as "super naive" users, who could (and do!) very easily fill
up and crash their hard drive and have no clue what or how it
happened. I'm working with enough of these types of late to have more
respect for the depth of "cluelessness" in a world where "cyber
machines" are becoming ubiquitous but training to use them is close
to virtual zero.... the "plug and play" marketing strategy has it's
downside...Given all the tools we have to help them not shoot
themselves in the foot, why not help them? A simple "you are running
out of room, what do you want me to do now?" seems the least we can
do... but... it assumes we can actually programatically get that
info.</aside>
2) the second question is broader and possibly should go into a
different thread: if one were to deploy an app that might be put to
use by the 1000's (of public users...people you don't even know) and
you wanted your app to send info back to "the mother ship" -- at what
point does the "system check" start to evolve from "innocent
hardware-environment profile" to "spy-ware."
Is there an existing legal definition of the line between these two
kinds of data gathering operations. I know that MS dOES something
like this but users had to check some "Help us improve our software"
thing before it became active. Adobe displays model dialogs and
quite openly informs you, without any request for permission first,
that data from your machine is being sent back to Amma. (I found, and
still find, this just a bit disconcerting, even for such a trusted
company) Of course we all know of Sony's DVD fiasco. But I never
actually saw what the Sony "spyware" was sending back home that was
so "bad." Was it the data was so sensitive? or just the mere fact
that a sniffer was there and no one knew about it?
One might think the criteria obvious and could develop a list of
"innocuous" nonpersonal info and a list of "sensitive" info, (as
Adobe obviously has already done) but I'm wondering if there is
already a formalized standard for this dividing line.
Sivakatirswami
Himalayan Academy Publications
at Kauai's Hindu Monastery
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.HimalayanAcademy.com,
www.HinduismToday.com
www.Gurudeva.org
www.Hindu.org
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