"Is Microsoft's Firewall Secure?"
More on the complete stupidity of SP2 for XP:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117380,00.asp
...and yeah, Stephen, it's this kind of crap what pays them bills, eh?
Interesting article, but then again, every article about M$ seems interesting in one way or another! I especially appreciated the humour regarding how this new firewall doesn't stop or manage outbound traffic.
We maintain a resource server here, so that all M$ downloads are stored locally, allowing us to install updates, service packs and complimentary applications without needing to access the Internet to get them. One of the few pieces of Microsoft software that actually works fairly well is their pre-installation kit. No surprise there!
But the most ironic thing is that Ad-Aware always finds 2 pieces of spyware pre-installed on every system, and this is prior to installing any service packs, or updates. Once those are done (again the updates are accessed locally and not from the Internet), more spyware is found, typically up to 7 pieces, including registry hacks.
Creating a firewall which blocks or alerts the user to outgoing traffic would effectively block spyware which Microsoft has obviously placed inside their operating systems themselves for their own purposes.
Also, if Microsoft built a firewall that actually did block outgoing traffic, how would they receive user data? Their own product would be blocking the data transmissions that they seem to desperately need.
It's a quick education to anyone who installs Windows, as to the type and nature of traffic generated by a completely fresh install, if they pre-install Zone Alarm before connecting the machine to the Internet!
It actually borders on infuriating when you consider the number of transmission attempts that Windows will try to make as soon as Zone Alarm is installed, and the number of times you have to click to allow or deny the transmission of that data.
Of course, Microsoft set their marketing hounds on ways to justify this type of firewall bahaviour, by blaming the remainder of the problem on ISV's and the fact that it's their responsibility and not Microsoft's.
Once again, Redmond has found another way to piss off a large number of people and customers all at the same time without breaking a sweat!
Fortunately, these are exactly the types of tactics that any dying creature starts to use, just before it realizes that it's been fatally wounded. Take heart fellow Linux enthusiasts! The end is near! Another 10 or 20 years of this crap and they'll be out of the game completely!
The next death scream you will hear should come right around the time that Microsoft releases the next evolution of Windows (codenamed Longhorn and rumored to be a 3-CD version!). By the time they get around to releasing it, Linux will have increased it's market-share and consumers will be even more reluctant to dish out the exorbitant license fees which Microsoft is sure to exact from the public.
Besides, none of this should come as a surprise to anyone on this list. After all, why are we here?
Lanman
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