I'm amazed that anyone would consider using a home computer
connected to the 'net *without* having firewall software
installed.
I don't know, I've never seen it as *that* necessary if you just connect
one computer directly to an ISP. On such a setup I wouldn't have any
services activated anyway, so nobody would be receiving the "bad"
network connections (and there is no need to block them.) But I'm
generally not using MS Windows...
If you your have your own network of computers that need to talk
together it's a completely different situation. Maybe it's been
mentioned already, but a firewall's job is not just to block network
traffic, but to block traffic from the wrong people/computers/programs
while still letting data from others through (or technically, it's the
other way around most of the time - you let through information to or
from specific machines or programs, and stop the rest.)
- T
