>http://slashdot.org/articles/07/07/14/043200.shtml
>
>This, from a company that once championed protecting users from this sort of garbage.

I'm definitely not turning automatic updates on, nor moving to Vista. I'll run XP SP1 until it rots.

Among all the sneaky, or outright dirty tactics they have used over the decades, this ranks as probably the lowest. If I got this right, M$ is trying to sell MY bandwidth, MY diskspace, MY real estate (i.e. screen space), MY processor time, and MY real time to the highest bidder? And all of that for the purpose of annoying me in an attempt to get more cash out of me?

The main reason I'm practically off TV and listen only to NPR is to avoid ads (and even NPR isn't good anymore - they only don't shout, but are equally boring and heavy). And I use Mozilla only because it has AdBlock, and I use Skype, GoogleTalk and Trillian for instant messages because they are ad-free; I don't go to movies because it takes 15 minutes of bombardment by ads before the movie begins (and then there's product placement in them)... etc etc.

Any company which tries to push an ad onto my machine will have to buy a machine for me, give the OS for free, and pay me to sit by that machine, or I swear I'll buy from anyone else but them, if I can help it.