Tell Microsoft about it

Those dudes at Microsoft want us to tell them when anything unexpectedly goes wrong with their software. They have improved over the years. When they and I were younger, they used to put up a message box with a scary red cross in it and declare "An illegal operation has been performed and the program will shut down." When one clicked on OK, the program would indeed shut down. Initially I used to be bewildered since I had been doing nothing other than typing a chapter of my book in Word. I would also worry if they would somehow find out my location and send federal police to investigate the illegal operation. One day a techie explained it to me. "The illegal operation is performed by the software, not you" he said. I was relieved. I also wondered why they would not frankly admit they had goofed up. Perhaps they were afraid of litigation and of losing the case out of hand if they admitted their mistakes. Now they have changed. Now they invite us to tell them about it. It also gives the impression that they are keen to improve their software. I sometimes allow the computer to inform Microsoft about it, sometimes I don't. That day I clicked on OK to allow Microsoft to be informed. But I was working on a machine which was not connected to the web, both physically and through wireless connection. "You have to be connected to the net first" snapped Microsoft program. "Why did you ask me to inform Microsoft without first checking if I was connected or not?" I wanted to snap back. After all they wanted to be informed, I did not primarily want to inform them. They had not changed much. They had got just a little bit polished. I did not snap back, because I cannot have bad manners when someone else has bad manners, and also because I knew they would not hear me. From that day, whenever the computer urges me to tell Microsoft about it on that particular machine, I say "I am not connected to the net, you axxxxxe" and cancel the request. Can they not write software that checks for connectivity and then advice accordingly, like "Please connect to the net and tell Microsoft about this problem" if they detect one is not connected? Piece of cake, that bit of programming should be.