Published at LXer:

ARM is now the third most popular architecture among Debian Linux users who run "popularity-contest," a Debian utility that anonymously collects user system data. ARM rose from seventh to third in nine months, largely thanks to Linksys's NSLU2, says NSLU2-Linux project lead Rod Whitby.

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I have never heard of the popularity contest package until now. As a developer, I would find such a package to be very useful, but as a citizen I have to confess that I am thoroughly appalled by it, and I am both astonished and discouraged that so many people will permit it to run on their machines.

Privacy is truly dead, if people willingly allow this kind of software to run. And anonymize me no anonymizations; if the information is not collected, then no one needs to worry about whether it is being properly anonymized or not.

But then I suppose I am easily appalled. Last week I tried to buy a bottle of wine at Walmart, and they were absolutely determined to not sell it to me until after they had scanned in my driver's license. Gotta tell you, I am more than an integer multiple above the legal age, and I look it. I didn't buy the wine because I wouldn't let them scan the driver's license.

Privacy truly is dead, but I continue to guard the corpse. And in an era of Patriot Acts, seems to me that more people would do well to lie to and avoid "the machine".

Popularity Contest has been discussed at length here. It is a good thing. Since you use Mandriva, why should it bother you? During the Debian installation, you are given the option to participate or not. The default is, "No."

I'm with you on the wine thing. I refuse to show id in order to buy alcohol. I'm 60 years old for Pete's sake. But in the case of Popularity Contest, you don't have a clue.