From: Seton Wingfield [mailto:SWingfield(a)atl.co.nz] Sent: Sunday, 1 February 2004 7:00 p.m.

I recently read the "Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2" and in it, it states that the Internet Connection Firewall will be turned on by default. Changes like this and Microsoft's long term commitment to security via their "Trustworthy Computing" initiative may make the problems that you are trying to solve a thing of the past.

Unfotunately it will be a long time until all net people shift from Windows 95 et al and move to WinXP etc. Also with the growth of linux variants can we expect the same default security options to be set there as well (remember all the sendmail exploits and the redhat vunerabilities)? Beyond that there are a lot of people that like to run programs such as p2p file sharing applications and irc and ftp and these unfortunately don't work too well with misconfigured firewalls. The typical answer to "how do I get p2p app working?" is "oh, you're running XP? Then disable the default firewall and it will all work". i.e. n00bs will always unwittingly impact the internet through miseducation and ignorance -- Regan