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Microsoft Bug Operating Systems Software Windows

Microsoft Lists SP2 Incompatibilities 539

Posted by michael from the what-us-worry dept.
thejuggler writes "ZDNET has a story about how the new XP SP2 causes conflicts with over 50 applications and causes problems with others including some of Microsoft's own products. The 'glitch' as they are calling it seems to be that the Windows firewall system is turned on by default and blocks unsolicited connections to your computer. You have to unblock certain ports as your applications require to make the apps work again. They are calling this a glitch, but I thought we wanted everything blocked by default so we would have to choose what was unblocked?" The BBC has a story as well.
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Microsoft Lists SP2 Incompatibilities More

Microsoft Lists SP2 Incompatibilities

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  • SP2 incompatible (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bunburyist ( 664958 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:53PM (#9987438)
    I've not seen it mentioned anywhere, so maybe it's just a drive incompatibility issue, but when I installed SP2 RC1, I could no longer play DVDs - I would receive an error telling me that the TV OUT on my card must be disabled first. I rolled back to SP1 and bingo, everything would play fine again.

  • News Flash: Firewall Blocks Inbound Traffic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hendridm ( 302246 ) * on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:53PM (#9987440) Homepage
    I snickered when I saw that list earlier today. Most of them are broken due to closed ports. Duh. Why not list every application that requires certain ports be open?

    Any firewall can break any piece of software if it requires a port that is blocked.

    • Re:News Flash: Firewall Blocks Inbound Traffic (Score:5, Interesting)

      by halowolf ( 692775 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:04PM (#9987540)
      Yes it was exactly my response. They had games listed that require internet access to play them online like Unreal Tournament.

      What I think is the "real" issue here is that customers that have installed SP2 simply don't have a clue about what a firewall is, what it does, and how to use it. The problem is also no doubt being exacerbated by programs that needlessly try to access the network.

      But I always take the time to say "shame on you" to programs that needlessly try to access the network when their primary function has absolutely nothing to do with networking, ESPECIALLY when their networking options are turned "off".

      • Re:News Flash: Firewall Blocks Inbound Traffic (Score:5, Interesting)

        by surprise_audit ( 575743 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:32AM (#9988061)
        On the other hand, the list of "programs that behave differently" includes Excel, Office 2003, Office XP, Outlook, Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Visual Studio. I can see various personal firewalls and p2p apps like Kazaa being broken by port issues, and maybe the Office suite because of email & calendaring, &c, but why on earth would VB & VC++ be affected??

      • You nailed it. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by stealth.c ( 724419 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @01:13AM (#9988250)
        What I think is the "real" issue here is that customers that have installed SP2 simply don't have a clue about what a firewall is, what it does, and how to use it.

        I still firmly believe that a person needs a bit of an education before using a personal computer of any sort, especially one with internet access. For their own safety, if not for the safety of others. This isn't the sort of thing that can be remedied by making UI's more intuitive or friendly. Some things you just need to know. For example, everyone should know: what the Internet is; that not everyone on it is trustworthy, and most importantly to READ BEFORE YOU CLICK.

        Ignorant (and often gullible) users are too easy to manipulate; 90% of the time it is they who succumb to the shenanigans of fraudsters and virus-writers. For their own sake they need an education, Lord knows the worst of them don't have any common sense.

        And indeed, every user should know how to operate a basic firewall. It's an easy thing to explain, especially at the level of allowing or disallowing programs access to the 'net. I've taught several people how to use ZoneAlarm or McAffee Firewall. Most people understand it pretty quickly.

        Perhaps if the education can be integrated into the UI somehow (error/warning/question dialog boxes with more pedestrian language and more explanation), we might make some headway against the exploitation of ignorant users.

        • Re:You nailed it. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by blane.bramble ( 133160 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @04:07AM (#9988809)

          For example, everyone should know: what the Internet is; that not everyone on it is trustworthy, and most importantly to READ BEFORE YOU CLICK.

          My 7 year old daughter knows to do this - I have taught her that if any box appears on the computer to read the message, and if she doesn't understand it or know why the message appears, to ask me. As an example, a while ago she was trying to play a game (probably from the BBC web-site). After a few minutes she came and told me the game wouldn't work - it turned out everytime she clicked on it, she got the standard IE "do you want to run this, blah blah, may cause damage to your computer", so she clicked Cancel (not wanting the computer to be damaged...). After 4 or 5 goes round this she decided it was time to ask for help.

          Why is this so difficult to get into other peoples heads?

    • Mac OSX manages this just fine (Score:5, Interesting)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:34PM (#9987747)
      On mac OSX the sharing-related services GUI and the Firewall GUI are coupled. Turn on Apache and it unblocks port 80 automatically. Turn on SSH and it unblocks 22 automatically. and so on for FTP, AFP. turn off he services and the ports get bliocked automatically.

      At present if you want other ports to open, other than these default services, you have to open the ports manually. however I would imagine this coupled action is handled by some .plist xml configuration file. So its probably possible for an application to add its own services to the sharing menu and have them coupled to the firewall if you turn the service on.

      On my mac I do manually block the incoming and outgoing license manager ports for MS Office. If you dont and want to share the app on your laptop and desktop then you will lose any open edited docuements if you inadvertently plug them into the same network. I wonder if this lic manager is the reason why MS gave the firewall the ability for apps to open ports in the firewall and to have outbound connections?

      • Trying to answer my own question above, I discovered that any admin user can, without a password, alter the firewall plist to open and close any ports on the fire wall under program control.

        This is the same security issue (not a security hole per se) that microsoft was being critisized for. That is a rogue program can open and close ports on the firewall.

        here, try it yourself. the following patch will add a port setting called x-windows to your fire wall and open up ports in the 6000 range.

        Dang, the l

      • Re:Mac OSX manages this just fine (Score:5, Insightful)

        by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <slashdot@NoSPAm.nexusuk.org> on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @03:31AM (#9988711) Homepage
        I'd love to know what the point is in a "personal firewall" - seriously.

        A computer does _not_ need a firewall - it is configured correctly, all those nasty services with security holes in aren't even listening to the internet-facing interface (because you've got it configured correctly). There's no advantage in having a firewall over having the services configured correctly.

        The *only* reason to have a firewall is that if you make a mistake and accidentally open a service you didn't intend to, the firewall is there as a failsafe. If you link the firewall and service controls together so you only have to press one button to enable a service you remove this advantage and there is again no reason to ahve a firewall.

        Rather than running hundreds of services you don't need and then blocking them, it would be far better to have a unified way of telling all services which interface to bind to - to the end user this would appear like a firewall configurator anyway.

        And if you must insist on prompting the user each time Doom 3 opens a listening network port then tie it in with the IP stack properly and prompt the user when it actually opens the port.

        To me, the concept of using a personal firewall as your primary method of security is a kludge - if you need one then your machine's configuration is fundamentally broken and that's where you should be applying security.

        • The *only* reason to have a firewall is that if you make a mistake and accidentally open a service you didn't intend to

          Wrong. Suppose there is an issue in the IP stack itself? The machine can still be knocked over - a la early NT 4.0 - by crafted packets even if no services are listening. Can you see where a firewall might help?

          the firewall is there as a failsafe

          Yes, it is. There is a concept called "multi-level security"; you should look into it. Essentially the machine is protected by mult
          • If there's an issue with the IP stack then the firewall won't help you because the firewall is part of the IP stack! However I do see that a firewall is useful to restrict applications that can't be configured not to listen on certain interfaces.

      • Which defeats the whole purpose (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @08:08AM (#9989596) Journal
        I'll tell you a story.

        I once had to install Windows 2000 on a box, and as Loki would have it, I had no Zone Alarm or Sygate Personal Firewall on a CD at hand. Just as Joe Average would.

        So I could go download it somewhere else, or I could do a scapegoat installation just to download a firewall. I chose to just sacrifice an install to the gods of Hacking. I _knew_ I'd get hacked, but that was OK, since I'd reformat immediately after anyway. (Takes less time than whining on /. about MS security, btw.) Joe Average wouldn't know, and wouldn't reformat.

        (And I'm not disappointed. It takes less than a minute to get my uplink bandwidth saturated with mysterious outbound packets.)

        Still, it will serve to illustrate what happens after you get your machine 0wn3d by some l337 skr1p7 kiddi3.

        So I decide to play with it a bit longer, and see what happens with a firewall and an 0wn3d machine.

        I start the newly downloaded and installed Sygate Personal Firewall, and immediately it pops up a window telling me the name of the application _and_ what's it trying to do. I block it, and that's that. No more outbound packets. I can tell struggles long and hard to send crap, but it can't. Both its inbound and outbound pipes have been sealed shut.

        I can now toy with that machine as long as I wish, trying to disinfect it. Again, which is what Joe Average would want. If it's _not_ a sacrificial install, but some machine where his resume and a few gigs of other important data is, Joe will not want it reformatted.

        I can even surf the net looking for information on the trojan, safe in the knowledge that it's blocked. No need to pull out the network cable.

        Whereas you tell me that Apple would have allowed it to open its own ports, as it damn pleases. Inbound or outbound, whatever. And not even told me about it.

        Well, gee. Sorry, that's not the kind of security I'm looking for. Dumbing down a firewall to the point where it doesn't actually block anything, in the name of "user-friendliness" is _not_ the way to go.

    • those apps were broken, and the assumptions wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swschrad ( 312009 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:14AM (#9987949) Homepage Journal
      it is NOT OKAY to open up a machine in root (as windows is) to the world for the sake of an application doing something the user may or may not know about in the background. it was NOT OKAY to maintain for lo these many years that the backdoors of ActiveX and DirectX to kernel functions to be open for all and sundry just because it made pretty things happen in demos.

      it was NOT OKAY for microsoft to assume blithly that users are all dunderheads who can't be educated, can't take responsibility, and can't be trusted to make choices.

      the only thing broken is not the 50-odd apps, but the corporate vision of M$. they need to deal with the facts: it is not "the Connected Internet with each user a Member Of The Community" any more; everything is interconnected and bad boys can roam the streets unseen and unbidden in Electron Town; and, finally, welcome to the 21st Century, M$, please read the rules this time.

      if you want a really good firewall, consider either tiny firewall or zone alarm, both much more friendly and complete, and free as well as licensed/supported versions of both availiable for download any time you want.
    • MS could easily err on the side of caution and just block its own file sharing, etc ports and other system ports that usually reside under 1025. Everything else would be open. Not everyone is a techie who can diagnose every app's port and do the forwarding.

      Inbound and outbound port management is really too much for technophobes. I usually set up a simple firewall and open up everything after 1025. They dont get hit by trojans and their apps work. If they do network printing, sharing, etc I just make e

  • Most notable incompatibility on the list (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:54PM (#9987446)
    Windows XP

  • More incompatibilities... (Score:5, Funny)

    by k_killmore ( 731490 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:57PM (#9987476)
    They're forgetting about all the worms, trojans, and viruses that are going to need to be rewritten to exploit new backdoors in the OS.

    Those poor hackers... :(

  • Guess who got FP on the broken apps list? (Score:4, Funny)

    by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:57PM (#9987482)
    "Star Trek StarFleet Command III"

    lol.

  • The sad thing is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Judg3 ( 88435 ) <jeremy@pa[ ]ck.com ['vle' in gap]> on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:58PM (#9987490) Homepage Journal
    even though Microsoft is doing the "Right Thing", a majority of average (Below average?) users will complain until MS is forced to set the firewall to disabled by default. It's sad, but true.

    • Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DreadSpoon ( 653424 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:09PM (#9987581) Journal
      These same (below) average users are the kinds of saps that are locked into Microsoft platforms merely because they are too lazy, naive, or both to use a different platform. If Microsoft says that the firewall will be enabled by default, the users will deal with it, because they don't have a choice.

      It would be more likely that application authors will start including tools in their installation wizards for opening ports the application needs.

      The sad thing is, any app could easily get passed the firewall with a bit of social engineering. I saw a popup on a Windows machine infected with some ad/spyware today. The window started an automatic download (and thus, on Windows, install) of some app. The page showed a picture of the security warning dialog and told the user to just click Yes. Which is actually what most users will do, because they don't know any better, because nobody has taught them.

      • Re:Not likely (Score:5, Informative)

        by dave420 ( 699308 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @05:52AM (#9989061)
        Don't assume Windows isn't the best OS for everyone. I'm being serious here.

        I'm a developer (open-source), and I use windows. I've had no (and I repeat: no) reason to leave. My windows installs are secure enough for me to not worry about anything. The software installs fine and works well. My multimedia works perfectly, and all my games run natively and with hardware acceleration. My machine runs apache, ssh, mysql, cvs, you name it. Multi-monitor support, hardware-accelerated GUI, everything.

        I know you can do all that stuff on other platforms, but that's not the point. I can do it on Windows, so why should I change?

        Not all Windows users are lazy or naive... some have found a very useable operating system that lets them do EXACTLY what they want, with no fussing.

        And your last point is mooted by SP2 - the only way you can run that program is if you download and run it yourself, which can be done on ANY OPERATING SYSTEM. The auto-installs on IE are now a thing of the past (they're not auto any more, and require lots of clicking to start, with lots of big, red "X"s everywhere.)

        I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I keep seeing this "windows users are all stupid, and windows is useless crap" rubbish everywhere, and it's starting to get slightly annoying :)

    • That shouldn't happen. Of course the system should allow unfettered connections to localhost, and the system's own public/LAN IP. Firewalls should wall off the outside.

      I'm sure a simple update to add "if (connection.ip != INADDR_LOOPBACK)" to the firewall code. Frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't already in there.

  • forgot to mention Intel Landesk (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:58PM (#9987492) Homepage
    Intel Landesk (an MS SMS competitor) also has issues when SP2 is installed. But why would MS care about that? According to them everyone should be using SMS.

  • Not a big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bill_Royle ( 639563 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:58PM (#9987498)
    I'm not entirely happy with the popup blocker they've included, as it doesn't seem to be that configurable. However, the idea of blocking unsolicited ports is by no means a bad thing.

    The vast majority of PC problems these days are rooted in the fact that most users are lazy, and don't want to be bothered with details. Perhaps they can read tax forms, but a simple Windows dialog? Forget it.

    If users can't muster up more than an ounce of effort to secure their PC, they shouldn't be using one. Just as a driver needs to make sure their car is roadworthy, PC users need to be sure that their systems have at least some rudimentary method of protection. It's just not that hard, and it's not too much to ask.

    If computer users can't manage to get their heads around simple dialogs (which SP2 questions pretty much are), they deserve the trouble they get... perhaps them being offline would reduce the spam & DDoS zombies.

    I suppose wishing those people offline is a fantasy, but it certainly would help reduce the idiot factor on the net.

  • Software Firewall? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wviperw ( 706068 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:59PM (#9987504) Homepage Journal
    Do any of you actually use Windows Firewall anyhow? I've got no compatibility issues whatsoever because I'm using a hardware firewall in the first place, meaning SP2's default firewall was turned off rather quickly.

    • One problem... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nu11.org ( 676686 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:01PM (#9987518)
      Until someone logs into your network behind your firewall with an infected machine... If you ever have LAN parties or have a wireless network, you're exposed. Null

    • One word for you. (Score:5, Funny)

      by devphil ( 51341 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:15AM (#9987955) Homepage


      Laptops.

      (Here are some more words: like you, I use a hardware firewall for my home/office, but when I'm at the coffeeshop with my laptop, it's kinda hard to lug all that routing gear around.)

      (And here are even more words for you: concrete, bouncy, superfluous, carrot, foobly, upwards. Not sure about foobly, though.)

  • As the Register article stated on this topic.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Osrin ( 599427 ) * on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:59PM (#9987507) Homepage
    ... people have spent years complaining about Microsoft security, Microsoft don't change anything because they claim it will break stuff.

    Microsoft folds and implements some security features which inevitably break things... then everybody gets upset.

    You can't have it both ways.

  • It's not THAT bad... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chrispyman ( 710460 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:02PM (#9987521)
    Seriously, this is an optional service pack. It hasn't really been out long enough to consider seriously deploying it on critical machines. Just give some time for the apps to catch up and sometime in the future this will be a non-issue. On the other hand, shame on the developers for not testing their apps with the release canidates to work out any bugs.

  • in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by laurent420 ( 711504 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:03PM (#9987527)
    microsoft corp of redmond,wa has filed an antitrust injunction against microsoft corp, also of redmond,wa for deploying 'service pack 2' - a cumulitive update for windows xp users, which has been shown to be incompatible with microsoft's visual studio and outlook.

  • Default Port Blocking is wrong when... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jack9 ( 11421 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:03PM (#9987535)
    Your just decide to implement a 100% turnaround in how your OS policy worked before (without making a big deal of it, of course...I'm sure it was documented somewhere). This is almost akin to "Oh yeah, and XP only reads DOS partitions now...er again...er yeah, just like you wanted!". This blunder is complicated by MS applications not always documenting what ports they are using because that's proprietary information and of course you can always buy the product and ask the licensed technical support.

  • SP2 firewall. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eeknay ( 766740 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:11PM (#9987595)
    You know what happens when SP2 blocks a connection via the firewall? It let's you know. It also let's you take the option of unblocking the program straight away. I had this problem with X-Wing Alliance and Unreal Tournament 2004. When no servers came up, I thought it was my connection, but a quick-alt tab reveals that Windows has a pop-up that actually informs you that it's blocked the game/application. So, don't be too quick to bash. Turning the firewall on by default is a good idea. I mean, why don't you go bash ZoneAlarm or a similar firewall app? It blocks all access by default, and "learns" as you use your computer more, and that's all the SP2 firewall is trying to do.

    • More Bad than Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @01:50AM (#9988413)
      Once again, it boils down to the user to be savy enough to not shoot themselves in the foot while handing something advance.

      Given this dialog:
      Ruin your computer?
      Yes No
      How many users are going to click "Yes"? You think it is stupid if a user clicks "Yes" but do you know how stupid is it to allow the user the option to click "Yes" and ruin their computer?? Now change "Ruin your computer?" to "An application has request traffic on port 139. Open it?"

      This is a simplified example yet this is whats happening. A firewall is supposed to stop network traffic inbound or outbound that isn't accounted. Allowing the user to sidestep this easily is as handy as asking if they want to ruin their computer: Yes or No. Even with the improved features I'm still going to get calls from Mom saying something complained it wanted access so she clicked "Yes" to get it to shut up. Expecting users to be savy enough to patrol their computers got MS into this mess with SP 2. Now people are suddenly going to be wise??? Something doesn't add up.

      I am not knocking SP2 since there are great things going on here but as the old saying goes: Security is a process. SP2 still "enables" users to screw up their computers with a few more hoops to jump through. I would rather have my parents have to jump through a few more hoops before they hang their computer with all of the wonderful "rope" MS gives them but I'm still very bothered its easy to hang themselves.

      Simply put, in my opinion Zone Alarm is right and SP2 is wrong. The firewall is there to stop unwarrented traffic not to conviently prompt you to disable it.

  • microsoft bashing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mwolff ( 594593 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:12PM (#9987602)
    yeah...this is kinda lame.
    Sounds like people are trying to find as much fault in Microsoft as possible. It looks like most of these aren't even problems but are something that Microsoft bashers can use to fuel their fires. As I'm sure many posts have already pointed out by the time I post this, a lot of these problems are just because of closed ports.

  • Designed for newbies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ktorn ( 586456 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:21PM (#9987668) Homepage
    Turning on the firewall by default is a design for newbies, and rightly so.

    My mother doesn't know what a firewall is, nevermind how to switch it on.
    Those who know what it is, and how to configure it, will be able to open the required ports or allow the required programs access to those ports.

    The clueless might not be able to use some programs, but if that means viruses and worms will not spread as much as before then it's something I think we all can live with.

  • not broken (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scubacuda ( 411898 ) <scubacuda@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:27PM (#9987707)
    They're not broken programs, they're programs that "may behave differently" [microsoft.com].

    (i.e. "broken"!)

  • Non story (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChimpyMonkey ( 748966 ) * <chimpymonkey@chimpymonkey.com> on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:28PM (#9987710)
    So, everyone is whinging that the firewall included with XP SP2 is WORKING?

    The 'glitches' listed on the KB articles would be affected by any end user firewall, or hardware firewall on the market. To bash MS for this is counter productive. They have done the right thing in enabling it by default. If you want to run a server, you ought to be smart enough to figure out how to configure your firewall. If not, then its better for the net as a whole, you are the type of person still spreading Code Red.

  • Are you feeling lucky, punk? (Score:5, Funny)

    by qw(name) ( 718245 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:35PM (#9987755) Journal
    The company I work for issued a statement telling the employees NOT to "upgrade" their computers because of the incompatibilities.

    I'm sure there's going to be at least a dozen knuckleheads out of 3000+ who do DL the update. Those are the same one's who call the Help Desk saying, "Hello, I think I just got a virus. (pause) Yeah, I received an email that had an attachment that I didn't recognize so I double-clicked it to find out what it was. (pause) Ok, I'll shut it down and wait for a tech. Thanks. (click)" Unfortunately, that is an actual conversation I heard over the cube wall...

    I'm so glad I work on the UNIX side of IT!

  • Think maybe they could do some dupe checking? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:37PM (#9987764) Homepage
    Backup Exec 9 Veritas

    Backup Exec 9.1.4691 Veritas
    Backup Exec 8.6.1 --- Veritas
    Backup Exec 9.1 --- Veritas
    BackupExec 9.1 Veritas
    BackupExec 8.6.1 Veritas
    Bakcup Exec 9.1 --- Veritas


    Lets see... just for this application, through putting the version in it's own field, in the same field as the application name, and misspelling it a couple different ways, (and varying the version unnecessarilly) they've managed to list two seperate versions of the application (8.6.1 and 9.1) and somehow come up with 6 seperate entries... I think the list is shorter than y'all think...

  • Even more interesting (Score:5, Informative)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:37PM (#9987766) Homepage
    Even more interesting, (but rejected by /. moderators) is this LONG LIST [microsoft.com] of everything that Microsoft fixed.

    See if you can find your favoirite bug on this list!

  • Scary quote (Score:4, Interesting)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:39PM (#9987780) Homepage
    From the support.microsoft.com link:
    The number of ports that the process uses may affect how this issue is resolved:


    * If the process uses more than 1024 ports, the number of ports probably will not change.
    * If the process uses less than 1024 ports, the program may be using a range of ports. Therefore, opening individual ports may not reliably resolve the issue.

    It just fills you with confidence in their network security qualifications, doesn't it? I'm sure their audience won't be too confused (even most online gamers know the difference between "port number" and "number of ports"), but that just makes it even stranger that they hired a technical writer who can't make that distinction clearly.

  • Oh, and one more thing. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eeknay ( 766740 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @11:44PM (#9987811)

    The whole Service Pack 2 thing here on Slashdot has gone way out of control. You have to stop bashing Microsoft for every single thing they do. This time they tried their best. Yes, it might not work 100%, yes some things will break, but this is the nature of a firewall, and it's definatly the nature of Microsoft. Would you rather Microsoft hadn't released SP2? I don't think so.
    Also, to those of you wise enough to know if you'll have compatability issues, don't install SP2. It's clearly not for you. This is aimed at the average Joe user who browses the Internet, and checks his e-mail. It's designed to stop low level attacks instead of causing the next Blaster. Just because you are a Geek or a Linux guru does not give you the right to bash this, because it is not for you. There's a reason you're using Linux, right? Better security, etc? Stick with it.
    And the final point, a lot of you are complaining about how the average user knows no better than Microsoft, and can't defend themselves against simple spyware. Then for God's sake, please go out and help these people! You wouldn't believe the number of people who come to me to fix their laptops about various problems (mostly spyware and viruses), and I always educate them on the matter. I don't just fix it for them, I make sure they understand exactly what they did wrong, and how never to repeat it. And to those of you who believe that they should be ditching Windows XP for Linux... forget it. It's not for them. They'll have no reason to switch over. You're preaching to the wrong choir. Talk to those who you know will be interested rather than the average user.

  • Firewall == stumbling block (Score:3, Informative)

    by puzzled ( 12525 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:06AM (#9987918) Journal
    I sat with a guy today who had the Start Button Virus on his PC. He had some whacky firewall utility that also controlled which programs could execute and a real live Microsoft DSL router between him and the outside world.

    After I overcame my initial nausea we spent a few minutes on the firewall device and determined that its outside port was dead. I offered him a free (as in beer) FreeBSD (free) system to do this job - a nice, easy kill, and it gets me the run of another BSD box with a static IP.

    The firewall thing on the PC was a bigger problem - not so good interface, user deeply confused by the idea that some addresses aren't globally routeable, further amazed that some devices can change these RFC1918 addresses to globally routeable numbers, and utterly boggled by the concept of being able to *see* what your computer is doing on the network.

    Bottom line? This guy has no business doing anything other than pulling cables and plugging stuff into a network that provides DHCP and he *knows* this is the case.

    I predict job growth in the 'digitician' field - the PC guru that comes around is going to become a real live job, instead of a friend or relative you impose upon for help. I, luckily, have avoided 98% of this work by becoming an inscrutable BSD prophet and would have avoided this one as well, were it not for the interior designer roaming around the office with her thong peeping out at regular intervals.

  • what I want to see is 3 lists... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:16AM (#9987960)
    A list of applications broken by windows Internet Connection Firewall (which I dont use)
    A list of applications broken by the NX features on X86-64 (which I am not affected by)
    and A list of applications broken by other things

  • Bah (Score:3, Insightful)

    by buzzcutbuddha ( 113929 ) <[maurice-slashdo ... uricereeves.com]> on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:29AM (#9988036) Homepage
    Humbug.

    I installed it as Beta on my work machine and haven't had any issues with it affecting my access to critical applications. Anytime something new attempts to access the net a dialog pops up and asks what it should do. This is the same behavior that Zone Alarm does, and that's what I would hope to see.

    I can still work, I'm able to use Remote Desktop and VPN into work from home.

    Either you want Microsoft to be security minded and patch holes, or you want it to be easier to use and less secure. Pick one, you can't have both.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @04:18AM (#9988845)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • My Problem with SP2 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kpogoda ( 580939 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @08:11AM (#9989621)
    I installed SP2 and then it made me re-activate both Windows and Office 2003. During the reactivation, my original Product keys were no longer valid. I had to call Micrsoft support, spoke to numerous tech support and activation department employees before they gave me a new product key which could be re-activated. I felt like I was getting interrogated as to why I was re-activating the software even though I had valid and legal copies. The other interesting part, every person I spoke to was from India, the the only person not from India was Canadian. It appears as if Microsoft has almost completely off-shored major portions of their company to India.

  • Did you expect anything different? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@earthsh ... .co.uk minus bsd> on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:02PM (#9992001)
    Windows has finally collapsed under the weight of all the patches that have been added to it. Patches to fix security holes, patches to fix the stuff that doesn't work because of the other patches, and patches for patches - all built on an infrastructure that was fundamentally rotten. The fact is, so much software depends at low levels on Windows's lack of security, it was bound to break good and hard when the real issues were addressed. And now it's impossible to maintain backward compatibility, because the legitimate software is using exactly the same security holes as the malware.

    Whether the closed source nature of Windows and Windows applications encourages this kind of slovenly programming is not the real issue here. The real issue dates right back to the early days, and the difference between mini- and microcomputers.

    Unix was conceived from the outset as a minicomputer OS. That meant it had to have at least some awareness of multiple users -- some of whom might be dangerous, whether due to malice or incompetence. Privilege separation was built in from the outset; with just one, special user account able to do absolutely anything, including bring the system down irretrievably. This purposely was never blocked.

    MS-DOS was conceived from the outset as a microcomputer OS -- it was once a CP/M clone. A computer running DOS would have a single user, and not be connected electrically to anything else -- except maybe a minicomputer, via an RS-232 serial link; and requiring a particular program to send data to and accept data from the port, and when that program is not running, nothing happening on the port can affect what the computer is doing. Therefore, there was no need for privilege separation; that one user could effectively be given root privileges. Or almost ..... because Microsoft decided that there are some things that the user does not need to know about or have any control over.

    Advance a few years and we have networks. Unix -- thanks to the ingenious concept of treating everything as a file -- gains the ability to treat storage devices and peripherals attached to other network nodes as its own. MS-DOS PCs are generally connected to communal file and printer servers -- effectively, using the network as an alternate hard disk / printer interface. This functionality has just been bodged in, a little at a time, as and when necessary.

    Now remember that Linux and Mac OS X are both based on Unix -- which was already a fully fledged, network-aware system -- while Windows is based on MS-DOS, which began as an "island" system without giving the user full manual override ability. In other words, someone could cause Windows to run a program without the user even being aware of it, much less able to do anything about it.

    Once you factor in a huge influx of clueless users -- and I'm talking tipp-ex on the screen, broken the coffee cup holder, adding up the spreadsheet with a calculator type cluelessness -- this becomes a recipe for disaster. For Windows to reach the point of total unusability was inevitable, and -- this sticks in my craw a bit -- it's a testament to Microsoft's hard work and determination that it's actually taken up to now for this to happen.

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