Sam Heywood said in part: >>Is my understanding on that matter right or wrong? >> >> The various info from Charles A., John T., Robert W, and Ben J. make it clear that if you have any version of a Micro$oft Windows OS on your hard drive then you need to pay attention to firewalls, anti-viruses, and keep up-date on the various Micro$oft component patches - most often whether you want to or not.
For the average home and business user the implementation of "automatic updating" is a positive move towards keeping problems away from their door. Even if Micro$oft makes an occasional error with their patches. Some of us have been involved in software application development and know what it means to start an upgrade and ship it in less than 18 days - which is what Micro$oft has been doing with most of their recent patches. I'm not sure there is a simple solution to these problems - real and potential - if Micro$oft continues to own 95% plus of the desktop operating systems and totally calls the shots for the application programming interface (API). I do't really think it would be much better if a free *NIX OS and API owned a really significant part of the dewsktop computing world. The virus and worm developers would shift their target focus and produce malicious coding to make those users life difficult. In the long run the additional cost of keeping up with all the badys is a fact of life if your going to have your computer connected to the Internet and take advantage of the knowledge and pleasure offer by being connected. Even in the days of BBSes we had problems with virus software and malicious individuals who got pleasure from making problems for others. My thanks to everyone who took the time to put forward their info and help clarify some of the puzzles going on behind the scenes of our computing desktops. John Oram To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
