[Xitami] Xitami on XP SP2

[Thomas J. Hruska]

At 12:11 PM 12/10/2004 -0600, Bennett, Craig writeth:
>> My suggestion is to remove XP SP2.  
>> It is for idiots that can't protect themselves. 
>
> While I would agree that SP2 does introduce a lot of fixes so that
>people will be safe from themselves, I would not recommend dumping it.
>In addition to the point and drool enhancements, there are a lot of
>security fixes included.  If you are gonna use XP, you need to make sure
>your security patches are up to date.  Much better to either turn off
>what you don't need (does not take that long) or make sure you apply all
>the individual patches that apply.

I use SP2 across the board and without problems and SP2 actually has
enhanced wireless support - my laptop runs much better with it than what it
did with SP1.

Not that I run a web server over wireless or anything :P

I, of course, have turned everything "security-wise" off (firewall, some
parts of automatic updates, auto-detection of anti-virus software, and the
tool that annoyingly decides how to secure my own PC that resides behind
two heavily guarded routers/firewalls).

Also, between the new built-in IE6 popup blocker AND the Google toolbar, I
don't see any more popups (Google's toy was starting to fail when the IE6
blocker came out).  What the IE6 blocker misses, the Google toolbar
catches.  The only thing left that unfortunately still works are the DHTML
ads that "pop-up" on some webpages to obstruct my view.  I understand why
they aren't caught since they are a part of the webpage and to stop those
would also mean stopping drop-down menus from showing up.

Also, as Craig mentioned, SP2 comes with a junkload of security fixes and
rollups.  The SP2 package was delayed forever because corporate users kept
finding problems.  The SP2 Beta was interesting because it included debug
trace builds of core OS components - each one contained developer contact
information (names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses).  I'm sure that during
that time, developers got a lot of calls from outsiders when bugs were
encountered.

So, SP2 is for everyone who wants to secure their PC.  Disable the Windows
firewall, put a real hardware firewall (e.g. a router) between you and the
Internet and everything should work great.


Thomas J. Hruska
Shining Light Productions
http://www.slproweb.com/