These days, it seems that just about everyone feels that they have the right to update your computer automatically and for the least important applications. But the questions need to be asked; Exactly how critical is the update and what will happen if I don't do it? How much testing has been done on the impact of this update on the applications I like to run? What is the update doing to my startup? Who gets to decide the timing and what warning is given? What will the application do to my network? I'm not going to attempt to answer these questions in this post. I'm basically just going to whinge and then post updates as I get my policy in order. At the moment, I don't know what the best answers are. The Microsoft Whinge Microsoft used to provide only important security updates as "critical" but they are now putting out all sorts of unwarranted updates, like Internet Explorer 7, via the automatic distribution system. The really annoying thing about Microsoft