Comment 295 for bug 332945

>The issue of trying to guess when is the best time to interrupt people is a tricky problem for notifications in general. >Unfortunately, "never" is not a viable choice for a mass-market OS on an Internet-connected computer. If you have >specific suggestions of heuristics we could use to choose more appropriate times, we'd be delighted to hear them.

MPT... "never" IS a perfectly valid answer to INTERRUPTING a user. Most everyone agrees that "never" is a bad thing when it comes to never NOTIFYING a user and that is the rub with this whole deal.

An icon on the desktop subtly notifies the user and is persistent. A window INTERRUPTS the user and takes choice away from the user. That is bad now and always will be. Even as important as a security update is, it is never important enough to open a window unsolicited.

Bad sectors on the hard drive, imminent crash, overheating, those types of things would warrant a true interruption. Updates, even security related, just simply do not warrant that immediate attention and force.

If people are too unaware to investigate a new icon on the tray or to ignore it for months after it shows up, they deserve a compromised machine. Do not punish 99% of the users out there with forced, aggravating, evil unsolicited windows because of the few who refuse to acknowledge updates.