[rwallace]

So security is the highest priority, the overriding concern that justifies taking away your right to control the equipment you bought?

Okay. Then stop messing with the operating system. Stop changing anything except as needed for security patches. If nothing changes except security improvements, the rate of updates and the probability of update breaking something will both dramatically decrease - which would be good not only for usability and reliability, but also security, because it would tilt the incentive much more in the direction of immediately accepting all updates.

No?

Okay. Now we've established that security is not in fact the highest priority after all. That, in short, the argument based on security being the highest priority was bullshit. So let's stop repeating it. If Microsoft behaves as though the highest priority were job security for individual Microsoft employees, then let's acknowledge that.