Even more proof news pushes senseless paranoia
Even more proof news pushes senseless paranoia
I think anybody with half a brain would agree that XP SP2 is possibly the best SP ever, more features added than you can shake a stick at. I have yet to talked to anybody that has used it and thinks SP2 is bad. In fact the ONLY place I hear the "SP2 sucks" mumbling coming from is the news/media which are mostly full of people who have very little technical understanding. They seem obsessed about the whole "SP2 breaks program X" when they ignore the fact that the SP2 Firewall simply requires you to unblock (with a user friendly pop-up) an application's networking ability. I hardly call this breaking anything, with the exception that non-admins don't get the popup.
And if SP2 really does break an application people should put the blame on the shoddy software that probably did not follow MS's recommended guides for softwate design principals. You could make this same statement against all the Hard Drive utilities of the past, which no longer work under Win2k/XP/NTFS. Changes were made to increase security so that programs can no longer access the file system at a low level to prevent viruses.
The proof is in the pudding here as it's been years since any virus did some real damage. Anybody from the DOS days will remember viruses that would corrupt the FAT table and destroy the whole HD. Now the worst thing a virus writer can do is open a TCP port or scan your email contacts and send them an email. Today's "viruses" which are harmless compared to what PC users suffered from just a decade ago. It's exaggeration to even call them viruses, they are worms, with the exception of the Blaster virus.
But back to the point, any news source spitting out SP2 paranoia are pushing mindless paranoia and I suggest you find more intellectually stimulating news articles. Go install SP2, feel all warm & fuzzy that you now have the most secure MS OS ever, and unblock your networking apps so they work.
PS: yes I know about the current drag & drop IE hole, but I use FireFox anyways. But the IE users out there will get a patch eventually :)