Firewalls

October 29th, 2003 - 21:55 | 4 comments

“The next update, Windows XP Service Pack 2, is due in the first half of 2004. Microsoft also plans in Service Pack 2 to turn on the Internet Connection Firewall, a basic form of protection that’s built into Windows but is currently off by default.” More here.

Woohoo, here we go again. This sounds like a great idea to me, but how many firewall companies are going to sue? Microsoft can’t just go round improving their products willy-nilly…it’s unfair.

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4 Responses to “Firewalls”

1 Ed Oct 30th, 2003 at 12:30 pm

Quote:
Microsoft can’t just go round improving their products willy-nilly…it’s unfair.

I have to disagree. We spend huge amounts of money on the OS that we use (well over a hundred pounds), and what we get is something that has bugs which then get ironed out a few months later. If you’re one of the first to use the OS, then you’ll probably have driver problems too. Again, it isn’t exactly the best thing in the world. That doesn’t even cover the problems of using an OS. It is a complex thing, and turning the correct features on can be a difficult thing.
Now, imagine that you don’t know what you are doing. You need help doing this, as well as setting up your internet connection. So, you ask your techie mate. He sets it up for what you wanted then and there. 3 months later, you’ve forgotten to run Windows Update, and you got pissed off with that firewall that you had installed, or it broke, or one wasn’t installed.

That person is a threat to the net.

Microsoft taking some of the burden off the user is a good idea, and one that needs to be done. To be fair to Microsoft, their firewall is average at best, and therefore they aren’t really competing with say ZoneAlarm. If Apple did this, people would be happy.
2 Andrew West Oct 30th, 2003 at 2:51 pm

i know, I was being sarcastic turning on the firewall is an excellent idea, as it provides reasonable protection for the average user and would stop any vulnerabilites being quite such large problems. Zonealarm / Symantec will still complain though, I bet. Will be even funnier when Longhorn ships with a virus scanner…
3 Ed Oct 30th, 2003 at 5:41 pm

I read my post afterwards and realised that it made it sounds like I thought that you were wrong. I meant that they were wrong. Sorry, about that.

/bows head in shame
4 Nodster Oct 30th, 2003 at 11:11 pm

*thwacks eds bowed head*

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