That being said, it's unfortunate that we have to work in such an environment of paranoia where even a beneficial crash reporting tool could be perceived as having an evil ulterior motive.

Replace iteration with recursion. Infinite loops cause StackOverflowExceptions. Win.

(In all honesty don't do that.)

That being said, it's unfortunate that we have to work in such an environment of paranoia where even a beneficial crash reporting tool could be perceived as having an evil ulterior motive.

No, iterations do not cause a stack overflow per se.
In Python, recursions cause a "RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded" but Python does not have a StackOverflowException, .NET does.
In fact, you cannot cause a stack overflow in Python unless you access the language using its C API.

Like Solo, I prefer to know what information is being collected from my computer before approving it.

Some people aren't comfortable with information leaving their computer and going to somebody else when it has information about said computer. Privacy issues and all.

You do realize that your computer already sends an endless stream of data to CCP that you are not pre-approving. That is the command stream. And if CCP was out to hijack your disk content, they could easily slip/mix that data into the command stream.
Granted it would take forever at low rates that did not raise your suspicion but then again you are logged on forever.

If your entire system freezes it won't be possible for the bug reporting mechanism to fire, so, no.

Though in general a complete system lock like this is rarely ever the fault of an application, but an indication of a lower-level issue with your system (faulty drivers, bad power, flakey RAM, RF interference, etc).

Indeed.

You left our solar flares.

The old adage of if you have nothing to hide with the eve client why worry.

Don't worry ccp aren't worried about your goat pron and the fact you play hello kitty online at the same time as eve. The old adage of if you have nothing to hide with the eve client why worry. Plus if there is no personal infp they won't know about your bots and python injections :-p

Why does everybody always go to the "if you have nothing to hide..." argument. I use my computer for more things than EVE and I take an NDA a lot more seriously than Darius III does. Let's say that CCP's data collection does actively collect a list of running applications (and I want to state that I have no objections to this, in fact it can be useful debugging if you want out that 80% of your crashes have occurred with a particular AV running or driver applet, etc) and I am running an application along side EVE that I am beta testing under NDA (be it game relation or otherwise) and EVE crashes, snapshots this list and sends it to CCP. I may now have violated an NDA as it relates to not revealing to anybody that I am in the beta, or that a beta even exists.


Had I had the chance to review crash logs ahead of time I would have seen that this application appears in the list and would have not sent the debug information to CCP, not because I don't want to, but because I would be breaking a contract with another entity. If the crash happened and I was not running this particular beta application I would have no issues sending a list of my other running applications to CCP. This has happened with other crash reporting software, things crash while I may be doing something under NDA or protected by other regulations or certifications (HIPAA, SOX, PCI, SAS70 take your pick, I deal with systems covered under some or all of these things) and I have to refuse to send a crash report.

I'm not worried about playing EVE and CCP transmitting the contents of my hard drive to them because I am not attributing malice to CCP's actions. We have an agreement (partially implied, partially explicitly laid out in the EULA) that CCP will send data back and forth between their servers and I'm reasonably certain that it's just data related to playing EVE Online. The addition of the crash reporting system is a very good step forward and my objections to it (which are past tense, CCP has responded that they are making it optional) were not based on my assumption that CCP was doing anything untoward, but by a need to protect myself from leaking data that I shouldn't, that under normal circumstances I would be perfectly fine with sending in a normal crash report.

So yes, I do have things to hide, but they aren't related to EVE online, and what I'm hiding is, quite frankly, should be of no concern to you, CCP or any other entity that does crash reporting.

Dude seriously if you are dealing with software under such severe NDA restrictions what on earth are you doing installing MMO games on the same hardware ? Not downplaying your argument here because it is valid, but if the business you're in is so sensitive against this kind of violations then you should be looking for hyper-secure dedicated hardware to put the NDA stuff on - not your gaming rig wth :-)

I don't necessarily believe that CCP has an ulterior motive or that they are going to be malicious with the tool. I simply like to review what data is being presented from my computer, especially when it has the possibility of leaking information, not unintentionally, due to a missed flag.

Dude seriously if you are dealing with software under such severe NDA restrictions what on earth are you doing installing MMO games on the same hardware ? Not downplaying your argument here because it is valid, but if the business you're in is so sensitive against this kind of violations then you should be looking for hyper-secure dedicated hardware to put the NDA stuff on - not your gaming rig wth :-)

Because the NDAs are fairly standard and there is no need to separate them onto different machines because I am aware of what applications report what and so long as applications are upfront with what they are doing and allow opt-in/out then there is no issue. I honestly would have no issues with EVE doing mandatory crash reporting so long as they were upfront with that happening and what data was being collected and more importantly, had a history of open communication on changes. It's the last one that concerns me for which is why I like the compromise of opt-in with the ability to review the data. Once CCP builds back up a level of trust, I'll be more willing to accept what they state at face value.

I'm also the kind of person that browses the web with plugins designed to turn everything off (no cookies, noScript, etc) and grant access as I trust sites, rather than just blindly jumping onto websites with a browser fully open and loading everything, getting hit by 0-day Flash and PDF exploits and ending up with more trojans and tracking than I can shake a stick at. Partially to protect myself, partially because I believe that I should be asked if a website can open up 15 flash programs, rather than forcing it open me.