In article , C J Campbell wrote:
Fine, if you have a huge corporation that can afford a bunch of well-paid
admins. Your argument is beginning to sound an awful lot like you don't
think most people should have computers and that you think that the general
public is a menace.

No, I think Windows as it currently stands is unsuitable for the general
public. Windows as it stands is fine in an environment where a corporate
admin can look after the network. It's not the users fault, it's the
fault of Microsoft because the configuration is insecure by default.

Windows as it stands should have at
least the software firewall on *by default* and almost all services
(most services which home users will never use) *off* by default.
Finally, MS has decided to listen and will have the firewall on by
default in Service Pack 2. Security researchers have been saying this
for *years*, and only now is it being done.

In this instance, Windows 98 is better than Windows XP. The real
problems didn't start happening until XP came out. Windows XP was a
retrograde step for home users on the internet - it just allowed them to
be 0wn3d because of all the additional potentially exploitable (and as
it happens, actually exploitable) services that were running.

It's not a problem with the users. It's entirely a problem with Windows.
The users are essentially decieved - it's a nice easy to set up system,
but they've been tricked into having a system that claims to be easy to
use and maintain, but really requires an expert system administrator to
make secure.

That isn't the fault of Windows.

But it IS the fault of Windows. Having a number of insecure services
turned on by default which the vast majority of home users will *never*
use on a network is purely the fault of Microsoft. The PC manufacturers
also have some responsibility to bear - they could have at least thought
about it and set up a reasonably secure disk image when they duplicated
the hard disk loads for their PCs.

In any case, the Macintosh has been easy to set up since the 1980s
(including setting up a Mac LAN) so ease-of-use is hardly a Microsoft
innovation. It's just a pity that the hardware platform wasn't open.

might start asking yourself what would happen if you really got your way.
Maybe you are a bigger threat than the public you despise.

Gosh, you're reading an awful lot into my post that I didn't write. I
don't think I've seen a non-sequitur like that since Lord Tebbit managed
to turn a radio interview on obesity into how the Government was
encouraging buggery!

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
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"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"