Nmap Hackers: Microsoft Tightens the Noose on Raw Sockets

Nmap Hackers: Microsoft Tightens the Noose on Raw Sockets:

"Many of us were annoyed last year when Microsoft intentionally broke raw sockets on Windows XP, while leaving the feature enabled in Windows 2003. MS is well known for maintaining the upgrade treadmill by dubious means such gratuitous file format incompatibilities, but
this is a new low. People pay $299.99 for WinXP Pro with working raw
sockets, then MS cripples their systems and demands $1019 (WS2003
retail price) to return the functionality. Of course Microsoft claims
this change is necessary for security. That is funny, since all of
the other major platforms Nmap supports (e.g. Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD)
offer raw sockets and yet they haven't become the wasp nest of
spambots, worms, and spyware that infest so many Windows boxes."

This is why I dont like auto-update. Its that paranoia thing. Who knows what changes are being downloaded on my system. I'd rather have manual update.