"ensure that Windows Update will behave in dependable manner in the future"

Read : "ensure that we will retain access to your PC whatever you do".

Nothing new under the sun, folks. As has been exhaustively pointed out above, MS has a perfect (ahem) track record as far as respecting the consumer is concerned.

What is more insidious is that this "you are now mine" mentality has been taken up across the board.

Once upon a time, when you installed a new application, it would quietly go to its own little folder and sit there innocently, not bothering anything else. Nowadays, there is no longer any application from any street vendor that does that. No, these days they impose upon you to let them write whatever they want in the Windows directory (and they write, by God do they write !), they muck up that joke of a database called the Registry six ways from Sunday, and then they have to gall to make you click on a pseudo-legal agreement that they can change whenever they want without your consent, agreement by which you acknowledge that whatever they did to muck up your computer, you cannot hold them responsible.

A hundred years ago, if a vendor had tried to do that, the people would have taken him to the nearest tree with a length of rope and left him hanging.

Nowadays ? Well, we can't let the terrorists win, can we ? Bend over then, have some more. And don't forget to pay on your way out.