You might want to read this article from a senior editor of Infoworld who systematically tested and confirmed this on a Windows 7 virtual machine with the default windows update settings. He even explicitly unchecked the Windows 10 update, only for it to be re-selected automatically and auto-installed overnight without his consent: http://www.infoworld.com/artic...

That is beside the point -- not every loss needs to be a net loss in order for it to matter on some level. At the very least, this sort of thing serves as a reminder of one's own mortality.

No, that degree of empathy would be super-human, not human -- not to mention counter-productive. But I do believe that there is more to be gained from a two-second pause for reflection than an "I really don't care" kind of reaction.

I think you may have missed the point of the quote. The idea is that it makes sense to feel a small loss when someone who has contributed something of value to the world leaves it -- "Any Man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind."

I disagree that people are incapable of feeling anything for those beyond one's immediate circle of family and friends. This is basic human empathy we're talking about here...

Well, there is this school of thought:

"No Man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a Promontory were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends, or of thine own were; Any Man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

--John Donne

similar to virtual dub: avidemux
similar to premiere (sort-of): cinelerra

Verizon ships their DSL modems/routers configured to refuse to make any outside connections. The Verizon install cd then flips a setting on the router to enable internet connectivity. To do this manually without the installation cd, one must visit the completely undocumented page http://192.168.1.1/verizon/redirect.asp and click "disable." This is not exactly the sort of thing one could expect a non-technical person to discover...