Re:Once again, Slashdotters want to have it both w (Score 5, Interesting)

Microsoft makes the system able to download and install them itself. All the user has to do is set up auto-install of new updates.

But that's not good enough, because too many users/sysadmins are too stupid to turn this on or check it regularly.

On the contrary, sysadmins are advising that users disable automatic updates on XP because the tendency of the auto update facility to replace, for example, working drivers with faulty ones, as well as not providing information on which packages are being downloaded. (Read that in an article somewhere. Never used auto update myself.)

I do see this as a privacy concern, because it is only with XP that windows update does not say "this is done without sending any information to microsoft." All other versions of windows use the anonymous facility, so they already have a working production update system which they've replaced with this more invasive version. -Coinciding with the EULA changes.

Whether it is an intentional attack on privacy/piracy or simply that MS decided the old mechanism wasn't efficient enough over a slow connection (or some other technical reason) is speculation.