News Post Blaster, MS floats default auto updates for Windows

From the Register:

Never happier than when making things compulsory, Microsoft is floating the notion of making home versions of Windows download and install software updates automatically by default. You'll be able to switch it off, of course (for a while), but the joy of shipping things to home users is that most of them leave the system's default settings as is, either because they don't know any different or because (grief) they trust software vendors.

Seamless, auto-updating without user intervention is something that Microsoft has wanted for a long time, as The Reg has frequently pointed out, sometimes without even using words like "evil", "bunch of" and "control-freaks". But it's not something the company has been able to achieve in the past, and the last serious flotation of the notion, at the time of XP's rollout, engendered significant adverse reaction to the possibility of Microsoft 'controlling' your machine.

Full story here

If they couldn't float it back when XP was first introduced, do they seriously think anyone's going to swallow it this time? Ok - I have windows update switched on on my box - but it's by my choice, not theirs.

Besides - isn't this a little bit of an overreaction? After the Blaster 'event' hasn't it all turned out to be a bit of a damp squib?

 

I think it's just a publicity thing... to make some of the many many annoyed people think they are doing something to sort the problems.

If they actually do this ill wait and see.

 

I work for a large super market chain (no i dont stack shelves) and suffice to say the company they have got to deal with the IT systems are a bit lacking, All windows systems at the main IT center went down at 16.00 yesterday (monday) and when i left work at 14.00 today they were still down.


1 word "MSblaster"

Sufice to say for that IT firm "the future wont be bright and (if the powers that be have any brains) it wont be orange."

 

Hell yeah I know I've been patching/cleaning most the machines at work. I'll say about about 300 of the 700ish machines have so far been hit... and that's just in my deptartment!

How I wish the users wouldn't ignore the autoupdate warnings tho...

 

I think it's a good idea of windows, as long as they put a setting in there to switch it off!

If this would stop lots of worms to exploit exploits, I think it's a good thing! Home (newb) users never update their windows for exploits or something, and thus are the most vulnerable to these worms. They don't know what's happening and they use up lots of bandwidth because of those worms.

If everyone would close the holes in an OS when the patch came out, internet would be a safer place (not safe, but safer), so it's a good thing imo.

 

i've got mine set to tell me theres an update but not to download it atomatically. let's say for expample i switch it on and want to play an online game and it takes away half of my bandwith and my pings shoots up to 250. i won't be happy there for sure, i'll just update it when chatting to friends after the game.

and any way they only want to do that so that later on they can remove the off switch to stamp out piracy, even though by then we'll all be using linux because (hopefully) they'lll start making it software for it.