Or, alternatively, switch away from environments where that sort of pestering behavior is common!
I haven't used Linux in a while, but from what I remember it was rare to have a program itself tell me there were updates necessary, but the package manager globally managed those things for me on its own schedule.
The Mac application community has the fantastic Sparkle framework that lets individual applications poll for updates. This isn't nearly as bad as it sounds: generally speaking, applications have preferences to opt-out of automatic updates, and the updates include complete changelogs. It's gotten to the point where if an application doesn't include Sparkle, I get annoyed.
In short, the posters issues aren't with Automatic Updates, they're with an environment that doesn't respect users.
I haven't used Linux in a while, but from what I remember it was rare to have a program itself tell me there were updates necessary, but the package manager globally managed those things for me on its own schedule.
The Mac application community has the fantastic Sparkle framework that lets individual applications poll for updates. This isn't nearly as bad as it sounds: generally speaking, applications have preferences to opt-out of automatic updates, and the updates include complete changelogs. It's gotten to the point where if an application doesn't include Sparkle, I get annoyed.
In short, the posters issues aren't with Automatic Updates, they're with an environment that doesn't respect users.