Dear You,

Please butt out of our domestic politics. It's none of your goddamn business, and yet foreign politicians know more about state-level politics in America than they do their own provinces.

Blanket approvals and template documents that you can cut and paste notifications into are the way to go, especially when it's on a schedule like MS, Adobe & Oracle. If they push back, suggest a documented process (this is ITIL, right? You can avoid the need for a CAB if it's an approved and documented procedure) where you push the patches to a few test systems on Tuesday (in the case of MS) then deploy to the rest later in the week - whatever they are happy with - if there are no issues. Depending on your timezone Tuesday PM or Wednesday AM are good slots for weekly CABs to pick up this; push to the test servers on the day, then the rest at the end of the week. For *nix, i've done updates this way for anything that didn't require a reboot so only stuff like Kernel updates and major low-level libraries needed to get approval via a CAB.

For everything else, it's your call. Either the patch waits for the next regular CAB or you play the game and keep calling emergency CABs when there are justifiably critical updates, such as Heartbleed, or for the inevitable critical updates from MS every second Tuesday that impact your systems. The best tactic is to embrace ITIL and make it work for you, not allow them to make you jump through hoops and spend your time crafting unique documents for every patch. It also serves as a useful procedure check to make sure you don't mess up and have a contingency plan for when you do, and ultimately, if you get it right, you still get to dictate the schedule and make them do things in ways that you are happy to work with.

You know, I tried opposing the government, but then people just like you shouted me down for being a racist. So, which is it, oppose or support? Have we always been at war with Eastasia?

These attitudes persist today. A man used an ATM outside a bank, and the machine made noise but no money came out. His receipt indicated money had been withdrawn from his account, so he used his mobile phone to call the bank and report the problem. He was told there was nothing they could do, could not send anyone to look, etc. He then hung up and called back, reporting that the ATM had spit out too much money. A bank executive and repairman were on the scene in less than five minutes.

Do people REALLY still cling to the myth that the New York Times is not a left-wing newspaper? Puh-leez. We're adults here, people. In this day and age, we're still denying basic facts like this? You don't believe me, do you?

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.
--Source: The New York Times.

What happens when the militia itself needs disposing of?
Nuff said.

Glad to see there's someone out there that cares about privacy and is looking to do something about it!

Unless this was irony, no: Bill Gates doesn't care about privacy. He cares about profits.

All I see here is one company - Google - bringing misery to people with their surveillance equipment in disguise, and an individual trying to profit from the coming backlash. All in all, both are out to profit from you, but none have your interests at heart.