and what if you have a cap on your usage?

1GB transfered, now call me cheap, but I don't want to pay for updates to be distributed from my workstation.

for example, I just put a fresh copy of xp on a box at home, and had to down load a couple of hundred MB of updates...

if I had a 1GB cap I've already used well over a tenth of my monthly capped usage in a few hours just making my system secure (I can't believe I just said that... anyway on with the point)...

I don't want to waste more of my traffic allowance helping others update their systems.

that's why there is a windows update server, so people can download from it, not me.

on the business front,

if I want my windows updates to be mandatory I can set up my own WSUS machine, and force patches that I've tested to be installed at any given time on any given day... even force reboots afterwards if I want to.

this idea is bull crap,

it's useless for business, for the reasons outlined above, and it's unfair on the home user who have already paid for the crappy software once, without then further paying to help the world richest get richer by allowing them to leech the services that they are paying for.

besides which my connection speed is shit enough without distributing windows patches through it as well.

not that I'm completly against torrents...

a torrent of something like Linux is fair enough, you're getting something for free and contributing something back whilst others get bits from you over your connection. -but that's the kind of ideology you sign up for when you start to torrent stuff, not when you buy a product off the shelf.