My company will pay for broadband if it's expected as part of the job. However, this means that you are a SOHO worker. If you have a space to work in an office, we give you internet at your desk.
If there is an after-hours issue, we will pay milage to come in and take care of it. But that's pretty much it.
Once upon a time I also had an ISDN line in my home, but the company at the time stopped that when VPN services became available.
The argument you are making makes it sound like it's perfectly O.K. to steal a buggy, add an engine to sell a car.
The fundamentals are not changing here. The economics may be, but the fundamentals are not. The basics are still the same. Someone writes music, someone else (maybe the same person, but quite often not) records that music. Give it away, sell WPAs or AIFs, or sell it on CD, LP or Cassette - the basics have not changed.
If you follow me so far, that's good. There has been no displacement of the basic technology of "music". Distribution is another issue.
Now, neither of us (Caiwyn or myself), have ever said that anti P-to-P legislation is a good thing. However, this sub-thread popped up in which someone claimed that music no longer has any value. Since that time, I have been claiming that music does have value, and that value is why copyright laws exist to make your econmoic "easy infringement" illegal.
How those laws have been defined for the last 25 years is just fine with me, and I don't see the need to change those laws. Make a tape for a buddy - I don't care. Make 20 digital copies for your "actual friends and family", whatever. Drop a digital distribution point onto the open internet, that's where I have a problem.
Further, I'm far more interested in finding the people who are doing the sharing than the consumers of said copies.
Go ahead and bring up the old "drug" argument. Since there is no financial advantage to those who distribute music for free over the open internet, if there is any punishment to be had, the availability will decline rapidly. Thus the problem would quickly solve itself (it already has started).
When P-to-P first got popular, nobody really thought about it's legality. The fall of Napster changed that. Now everybody is pretty well aware. Those who have any fear at all have turned off their sharing side making much of the classic P-to-P hot apps useless realms of nothing but the current top 50.
Suing children is bad business, sure, but sharing MP3s is illegal for a reason. The idea that music is a commodity with no value does not make sense. if there is zero money, then there will be no music specialists. The only jobs available in music will be for bar-bands, lounge acts, and the "stars" will be commercial jingle writers. The world needs more Barry Manilow's... Sounds great.
Digital "free" distribution will not kill the music industry. Legal or not, the industry itself will survive. Go back to selling TVs or Liquor or AOL Internet Access. What will die is the ability of musicians to make a living.
So "The Artist/Slave/Prince" thing will become even more common-place, and laws will have even less of an ability to protect them. All artists remain poor, and republicans will bitch about why the bleeding heart democrats feel the government needs to hand out musical grants to the "starving musicians" -- but only if they don't sing about "shit", "fuck", "satan", "damn", "sex", "drugs" or "rape". Or "Haliburton" for that matter.
"Look what the CRTC has done here in Canada to promote stuggling up and comming Canadian artists."
O.K.. I'll bite, what has this government agency done. Are they the ones responsible for taxing all blank digital media with the automatic assumption that it will be used to "infringe"? Yes, that's much better treat everyone like they are a criminal, because it's easy to be one.
"The CRTC has never sold a single record."
I would not expect a government agency to be in the business of selling records, but helping people, yes, that I would expect.
Either way, in a story pretty much dedicated to laughing at the government trying to make a solution for something it doesn't understand, I'd be quite interested in why you think your government has done so much better solving a problem that is (in your own words) an economic problem. I'd be especially interested in how the CRTC specifically uses freely distributed and unregulated P-to-P to accomplish this.
A search on Google didn't do me any good, but I'm probably not searching for the right key words. Could you help me out here?
Right, but to distribute my music without my permission deprives me of the ability to try to make money from this craft. Or do you disagree with that.
If you buy my song from me and share it with your 10 friends, and immediate family, so be it. But once you put it on the open P-to-P networks, you are depriving me of the right to try to make money off of my craft. Yeah, maybe I suck. Maybe not.
Michelangelo and DiVinci had their salaries paid by royalty. They had good lives, and were specialists in art. Galileo suffered for his "art" because he disagreed with his employers. Court musicians were paid for their performances. Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi were all paid royal salaries to persue their art. Bethoven did so while going deaf.
Now music companies do not pay musicians salaries for free study. Instead, you are paid royalties for their work.
Maybe some rock bands wanted to give away their music because they were into that. Good for them. Maybe some others didn't, but damned it.. that's their choice to make, not yours.
Not all musicians play live. Not all good music is done for crowds, and not all musicians give away their music for free. I don't have to be (and am not) an RIAA member to get the protection of copyright law.
The taking away of P-to-P is stupid. 100% stupid, but I can't stand it when people say that it's O.K. to copy music just because technology makes it easy.
But you can't protect the individual artist without protecting the person whom buys copy rights from that artist - through contract or otherwise.
This has nothing to do with P2P. If an artist wants to sell or give away his own music on his own web site, then he doesn't have to resort to seeding his music onto P2P networks. He just posts it on his web-site, FTP site or otherwise.
I think P2P is not the enemy, but I do think that mass distribution of music as a digital medium is wrong. That same artist who has little popularity and is not centrist enough to get a record contract... is the one hurt the most by P2P. If that person makes their living selling music, then giving it away on a P2P site is directly affecting that artists lively hood.
Mirimax, Sony Music, BMG will survive. The individual artist might not.
True. Lawyers get paid quite well to learn how to speak in precise talk that is not appropriate for normal conversation. Many people who want to protect their interests also learn how to use this type of language.
What I'm saying is that if someone refers to copyright "infringement" as stealing, it's because that person sees a "loss of value".
I believe it to be a perception difference. If someone sees a digital commodity having no value, then they see infringement. If someone sees music as having value, then that person will likely see theft. Either way, I don't see any constructive value in trying to avoid the central issue by telling someone that they are symantically wrong, if you are trying to convince them that mass distribution is not equivilent to theft - explain why.
This is absolutely the case! By making available unlimited copies of a commodity, you do bring down it's value.
If music has no value, then there would be nobody making it. Sure, people would still sing to eachother, and some people would record music, but the quality would go down. I have more than 6000 worth of recording gear, full digital recording capabilities, etc. But I can't mix an album as well as a studio can. Still, I would have to have a song that can sell 7100 copies before I break even on my investment (this assumes I have zero cost in making and distributing my own copies). At my popularity level (uh, my Family), if a digital copy is distributed of my music I have zero chance of making any money.
If the economics are changing, as many say that they are, then they are changing within a service economy from a physical distribution model to a digital distribution model.
Music is a service, and people get paid for doing the work that they do. Engineers, electricians, producers, musicians, vocalists, and they guy that cleans the toilets get paid for doing thier jobs. However, at your description, no value should be assigned whatsoever. Hey, maybe CDs are overpriced. Maybe they should be cheaper. However, the well established copyright laws say that, currently, each song that's less than 5 mintues long deserves to get 85 pennies for each time a copy is made for distribution.
Like all econmoics, we are dealing with economies of scale. Apple will make 14 cents for each download. Yet, this is still unreasonable in a commodity economy, but not a service economy.
Music is not a commodity, it is a service. And value needs to be assigned to it as to any service. Most people pay for cable when broadcast is free. Some people pay for commercial free music services. Why do people send money to NPR or PBS? There's no value there, right?
If you don't think a song is worth anything, why would you share it with someone else. It's worthless... just delete it. If you feel that you want to share it, then it must have some sort of meaning to you. If it doesn't, then don't share it. If it does, play it for a friend, and tell them to buy it.
There are two extremes to this, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to share music, ever. I'm saying that distributing a service to absolutely everybody for free is wrong for a reason. If an artist decides they want something distributed for free, then they will do so on thier own. Believe me, you are not doing the artist any favors.
The sky is not yet black, yet the 'gnutella' spec has already been written for "Super Nodes" (translates loosely to [dynamically allocated] designated servers) to get around firewall issues.
UPNP can be a useful technology in the SOHO, however, because of the inherant security risks of being able to configure a firewall remotely (even if from a "trusted" interface), UPNP support on firewalls is "disabled" by default on most firewalls. The help item for UPNP is usually something like this - "ALLOWS DYNAMIC REMOTE CONFIGURATION OF THE FIREWALL - IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE SECURITY IMPLICATIONS, LEAVE THIS FEATURE OFF."
Again... you are expected to be a genious to use these technologies.
Finally, I predict that port blocking will soon go away... Port blocking is funny. Ports are arbitrary numbers that are standardized on "designated servers", yet there is absolutely no requirement for individual servers or computers to follow the port guidelines. P-to-P software has long been known to "port jump". Of course, this will likely be replaced by protocol aware proxy firewalls that simply won't let traffic through that it doesn't recognize.
Copyright infringement is still wrong. If you are sharing your music with people you actually know, fine - - so be it. It's sharing (though still not legal).
However, if you are putting your music on a public network (Gnutella, Kazaa, Website, FTP, it doesn't matter) this action is both morally and legally wrong.
When someone takes, copies or distributes something of value without permission, that action is generally referred to as stealing. Even if it doesn't fit the "legal" definition, that's the way people use the English language... get over it.
As mentioned in the Digital Imprimatur (recommended reading) all of the technologies that you mention are facilitated by a designated server in their common use.
There are Peer-to-Peer uses of IM, FTP and EMail, but these uses are being degredated by firewalls.
That is to say that every hacker that decides they want to try their hand at cracking, or play with some script kit is directly causing the further segmentation of the internet into discreet networks connected only by the proxy servers hardened for use on the "open" internet.
"...those who a "reasonable person" would believe "intentionally aids, abets, induces or procures" copyright violations."
Why stop at copyright violations then? Timmy's mom should have the right to sue gun makers for "inducing and procuring" gunshot wounds. That way if Timmy get's mad when someone makes him share his juiceboxes - his parents can sue the Gun makers. It obviously isn't Timmy's fault.
I could have sworn that it was already illegal to aid, abet or induce any crime. A completely useless law.
Having seen HP3-TPoA, I can assure you, you will not like it. First off, unlike the first two that followed along and told the story... this one simply skips all of the back-story details, because the main story took so long to tell.
Where creativity could have been used to tell a better story, instead it reminded me of StarWars Episode 1 - The Mo ie is M ssi g S ppo ting D t il.
Honestly, I have considered something like this. A packet filtering bridge (as opposed to a NAT-firewall).
Packet filtering bridges allow a much higher level of flexability in allowing mulitple boxes to offer internet services. However, until very recently, this option wasn't "stable".
However, history shows that I haven't needed it yet. So, this is something that's on my list to test.
The answer is no. It's not "a good thing", it's not necessarily a bad thing either. Slashdot's ability to give Anonymous Users the luxery to both view and post is rare, but since I'm directing traffic from here, I thought it appropriate to let everyone know that if they "want in" they'll have to register. It's a time saving measure for those who are interested in looking, but wouldn't be willing to register.
My comment serves the same purpose as the NYTimes links where "(soul sucking registration required)" warnings are common.
As others have posted, it once was a community. Now, yes, it's a little less so, but many people in MS administration have found it usefull enough to expense an account membership even after they closed the gates.
There's still a community there. Just because it's gated, doesn't mean that these users don't share common interests and communicate among one another. Or perhaps you need a dictionary?
One up me, give some other suggestions? What about tek-tips.com? That's free. There's lots of Windows user community there. It's not as "centered", but it is community.
If I gave you the public IP of a firewall or a server would make no difference. Someone would ultimately get in if they are determined to do so.
What you are asking is that I invite hackers. Maybe as an added carat, I should offer 1.5GB of uncirculated MP3 files, then dare everyone to try to get in. That's a lot like traversing hacker #channels on IRC... it's an open invitation to trouble.
Maybe I'm crazy. 5 years of running with very few troubles and less than 1 total day of down-time on the corporate web server/site says otherwise.
Computer access is just any one of 30 to 40 potentially unpatched Debian Woody packages away. That makes this bug even worse. Of course, if you installed Woody with default settings, you are running a very old 2.2 kernel, and this bug won't affect you anyway
From a security standpoint this is little different than the Email viruses that have been spreading around the internet in the last, say, 8 years. The patch management programs will adapt in a race condition just like AntiVirus has.
3. They can have a decent free personal software firewall such as ZoneAlarm.
Cool. If ZoneAlarm can be set to auto-install with all notifications turned off, I would have consider buying licenses corporate wide, but that capability must be found and turned off after the fact (last I looked). I piloted this with two users, both of whom managed to block their access to the 'home office' network by responding to false-alarm active notifications.
A bad bug that can crash the kernel after a user has access. There are more than one active issues that can cause Windows to crash, especially if you introduce a specially compiled program.
This one is a particularly nasty bug, in that it can be caused by a user account. Windows hasn't had an issue like that since, Blaster, almost a year ago.
They are multi-threaded computer operating systems, they do complex things, neither is perfect. Neither will ever be perfect (although, Win 98 was really close before reaching End-of-Life). And Microsoft is not always the most evil of the software makers. RedHat, SCO, HP, IBM and Novell have all had there turn being raked over the coals on the pages of Slashdot.
I have certainly noticed a positive feedback curve with Microsoft. I'd like to think it has a lot to do with the community getting pissed off when it makes a bone-headed choice. Less focus on Open Source, naturally, because there are so many different projects. However, individual projects have been trashed here as well.
I specifically avoided the name "Microsoft", thinking more in terms of 'closed UNIX' vs. 'Open BSD and Linux'. But most slashers are desktop users, and in the desktop it seems that only Apple, Linux and Microsoft (list alphabetical) currently apply.
If I take an otherwise unused computer, install Windows XP SP2 on it, and test the applications, then I'm in test environment. The second part of the test is to introduce it to the internet, and test some of my web applications (these are live, and on the internet anyway). By that time, putting the test box in my production environment (without allowing it to do production tasks) is the last phase of my testing (for any patch).
Perhaps the thing you are not seeing here is that 90% of my network physically walks out the door. Attaches to unknown and untrusted networks (regularly, and in these users executing thier jobs), only to come back inside later.
If the laptop is not 100% up-to-date, every single week, then it will come back carrying the next "SoBig" type worm. To date, the worst impact on my servers from this type of incident has been slower network response for at most a minute or two.
That's the window. If you never have a laptop walk out the door, then almost any security solution out there will work. If you don't have a work-force that may need to get emergency access from Saudi Arabia or Detroit, then you are lucky. All IT security solutions probably work out of the box.
Me, I have a lot of windows open, and Linux (even if it were feasable) won't help.
So, the next best thing is to find a good managed personal firewall that I can control remotely, will never bug the users. I'm open for suggestions.
Slashdot Mirror
If there is an after-hours issue, we will pay milage to come in and take care of it. But that's pretty much it.
Once upon a time I also had an ISDN line in my home, but the company at the time stopped that when VPN services became available.
In fact, I think my excellent karma may be lost on this story, buy the time the mods are finished. Oh well.
You are putting the cart before the horse, here.
The argument you are making makes it sound like it's perfectly O.K. to steal a buggy, add an engine to sell a car.
The fundamentals are not changing here. The economics may be, but the fundamentals are not. The basics are still the same. Someone writes music, someone else (maybe the same person, but quite often not) records that music. Give it away, sell WPAs or AIFs, or sell it on CD, LP or Cassette - the basics have not changed.
If you follow me so far, that's good. There has been no displacement of the basic technology of "music". Distribution is another issue.
Now, neither of us (Caiwyn or myself), have ever said that anti P-to-P legislation is a good thing. However, this sub-thread popped up in which someone claimed that music no longer has any value. Since that time, I have been claiming that music does have value, and that value is why copyright laws exist to make your econmoic "easy infringement" illegal.
How those laws have been defined for the last 25 years is just fine with me, and I don't see the need to change those laws. Make a tape for a buddy - I don't care. Make 20 digital copies for your "actual friends and family", whatever. Drop a digital distribution point onto the open internet, that's where I have a problem.
Further, I'm far more interested in finding the people who are doing the sharing than the consumers of said copies.
Go ahead and bring up the old "drug" argument. Since there is no financial advantage to those who distribute music for free over the open internet, if there is any punishment to be had, the availability will decline rapidly. Thus the problem would quickly solve itself (it already has started).
When P-to-P first got popular, nobody really thought about it's legality. The fall of Napster changed that. Now everybody is pretty well aware. Those who have any fear at all have turned off their sharing side making much of the classic P-to-P hot apps useless realms of nothing but the current top 50.
Suing children is bad business, sure, but sharing MP3s is illegal for a reason. The idea that music is a commodity with no value does not make sense. if there is zero money, then there will be no music specialists. The only jobs available in music will be for bar-bands, lounge acts, and the "stars" will be commercial jingle writers. The world needs more Barry Manilow's... Sounds great.
Digital "free" distribution will not kill the music industry. Legal or not, the industry itself will survive. Go back to selling TVs or Liquor or AOL Internet Access. What will die is the ability of musicians to make a living.
So "The Artist/Slave/Prince" thing will become even more common-place, and laws will have even less of an ability to protect them. All artists remain poor, and republicans will bitch about why the bleeding heart democrats feel the government needs to hand out musical grants to the "starving musicians" -- but only if they don't sing about "shit", "fuck", "satan", "damn", "sex", "drugs" or "rape". Or "Haliburton" for that matter.
O.K.. I'll bite, what has this government agency done. Are they the ones responsible for taxing all blank digital media with the automatic assumption that it will be used to "infringe"? Yes, that's much better treat everyone like they are a criminal, because it's easy to be one.
"The CRTC has never sold a single record."
I would not expect a government agency to be in the business of selling records, but helping people, yes, that I would expect.
Either way, in a story pretty much dedicated to laughing at the government trying to make a solution for something it doesn't understand, I'd be quite interested in why you think your government has done so much better solving a problem that is (in your own words) an economic problem. I'd be especially interested in how the CRTC specifically uses freely distributed and unregulated P-to-P to accomplish this.
A search on Google didn't do me any good, but I'm probably not searching for the right key words. Could you help me out here?
If you buy my song from me and share it with your 10 friends, and immediate family, so be it. But once you put it on the open P-to-P networks, you are depriving me of the right to try to make money off of my craft. Yeah, maybe I suck. Maybe not.
Michelangelo and DiVinci had their salaries paid by royalty. They had good lives, and were specialists in art. Galileo suffered for his "art" because he disagreed with his employers. Court musicians were paid for their performances. Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi were all paid royal salaries to persue their art. Bethoven did so while going deaf.
Now music companies do not pay musicians salaries for free study. Instead, you are paid royalties for their work.
Maybe some rock bands wanted to give away their music because they were into that. Good for them. Maybe some others didn't, but damned it .. that's their choice to make, not yours.
Not all musicians play live. Not all good music is done for crowds, and not all musicians give away their music for free. I don't have to be (and am not) an RIAA member to get the protection of copyright law.
The taking away of P-to-P is stupid. 100% stupid, but I can't stand it when people say that it's O.K. to copy music just because technology makes it easy.
For the republican gun interests, it's O.K. to make guns, but not weapons of copyright infringement.
They want to have it both ways.
This has nothing to do with P2P. If an artist wants to sell or give away his own music on his own web site, then he doesn't have to resort to seeding his music onto P2P networks. He just posts it on his web-site, FTP site or otherwise.
I think P2P is not the enemy, but I do think that mass distribution of music as a digital medium is wrong. That same artist who has little popularity and is not centrist enough to get a record contract... is the one hurt the most by P2P. If that person makes their living selling music, then giving it away on a P2P site is directly affecting that artists lively hood.
Mirimax, Sony Music, BMG will survive. The individual artist might not.
What I'm saying is that if someone refers to copyright "infringement" as stealing, it's because that person sees a "loss of value".
I believe it to be a perception difference. If someone sees a digital commodity having no value, then they see infringement. If someone sees music as having value, then that person will likely see theft. Either way, I don't see any constructive value in trying to avoid the central issue by telling someone that they are symantically wrong, if you are trying to convince them that mass distribution is not equivilent to theft - explain why.
If music has no value, then there would be nobody making it. Sure, people would still sing to eachother, and some people would record music, but the quality would go down. I have more than 6000 worth of recording gear, full digital recording capabilities, etc. But I can't mix an album as well as a studio can. Still, I would have to have a song that can sell 7100 copies before I break even on my investment (this assumes I have zero cost in making and distributing my own copies). At my popularity level (uh, my Family), if a digital copy is distributed of my music I have zero chance of making any money.
If the economics are changing, as many say that they are, then they are changing within a service economy from a physical distribution model to a digital distribution model.
Music is a service, and people get paid for doing the work that they do. Engineers, electricians, producers, musicians, vocalists, and they guy that cleans the toilets get paid for doing thier jobs. However, at your description, no value should be assigned whatsoever. Hey, maybe CDs are overpriced. Maybe they should be cheaper. However, the well established copyright laws say that, currently, each song that's less than 5 mintues long deserves to get 85 pennies for each time a copy is made for distribution.
Like all econmoics, we are dealing with economies of scale. Apple will make 14 cents for each download. Yet, this is still unreasonable in a commodity economy, but not a service economy.
Music is not a commodity, it is a service. And value needs to be assigned to it as to any service. Most people pay for cable when broadcast is free. Some people pay for commercial free music services. Why do people send money to NPR or PBS? There's no value there, right?
If you don't think a song is worth anything, why would you share it with someone else. It's worthless... just delete it. If you feel that you want to share it, then it must have some sort of meaning to you. If it doesn't, then don't share it. If it does, play it for a friend, and tell them to buy it.
There are two extremes to this, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to share music, ever. I'm saying that distributing a service to absolutely everybody for free is wrong for a reason. If an artist decides they want something distributed for free, then they will do so on thier own. Believe me, you are not doing the artist any favors.
UPNP can be a useful technology in the SOHO, however, because of the inherant security risks of being able to configure a firewall remotely (even if from a "trusted" interface), UPNP support on firewalls is "disabled" by default on most firewalls. The help item for UPNP is usually something like this - "ALLOWS DYNAMIC REMOTE CONFIGURATION OF THE FIREWALL - IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE SECURITY IMPLICATIONS, LEAVE THIS FEATURE OFF."
Again... you are expected to be a genious to use these technologies.
Finally, I predict that port blocking will soon go away... Port blocking is funny. Ports are arbitrary numbers that are standardized on "designated servers", yet there is absolutely no requirement for individual servers or computers to follow the port guidelines. P-to-P software has long been known to "port jump". Of course, this will likely be replaced by protocol aware proxy firewalls that simply won't let traffic through that it doesn't recognize.
However, if you are putting your music on a public network (Gnutella, Kazaa, Website, FTP, it doesn't matter) this action is both morally and legally wrong.
When someone takes, copies or distributes something of value without permission, that action is generally referred to as stealing. Even if it doesn't fit the "legal" definition, that's the way people use the English language... get over it.
There are Peer-to-Peer uses of IM, FTP and EMail, but these uses are being degredated by firewalls.
That is to say that every hacker that decides they want to try their hand at cracking, or play with some script kit is directly causing the further segmentation of the internet into discreet networks connected only by the proxy servers hardened for use on the "open" internet.
Why stop at copyright violations then? Timmy's mom should have the right to sue gun makers for "inducing and procuring" gunshot wounds. That way if Timmy get's mad when someone makes him share his juiceboxes - his parents can sue the Gun makers. It obviously isn't Timmy's fault.
I could have sworn that it was already illegal to aid, abet or induce any crime. A completely useless law.
Where creativity could have been used to tell a better story, instead it reminded me of StarWars Episode 1 - The Mo ie is M ssi g S ppo ting D t il.
Talking them into getting stoned is more than half way done by putting the two of them together.
Packet filtering bridges allow a much higher level of flexability in allowing mulitple boxes to offer internet services. However, until very recently, this option wasn't "stable".
However, history shows that I haven't needed it yet. So, this is something that's on my list to test.
The answer is no. It's not "a good thing", it's not necessarily a bad thing either. Slashdot's ability to give Anonymous Users the luxery to both view and post is rare, but since I'm directing traffic from here, I thought it appropriate to let everyone know that if they "want in" they'll have to register. It's a time saving measure for those who are interested in looking, but wouldn't be willing to register.
My comment serves the same purpose as the NYTimes links where "(soul sucking registration required)" warnings are common.
There's still a community there. Just because it's gated, doesn't mean that these users don't share common interests and communicate among one another. Or perhaps you need a dictionary?
One up me, give some other suggestions? What about tek-tips.com? That's free. There's lots of Windows user community there. It's not as "centered", but it is community.
What you are asking is that I invite hackers. Maybe as an added carat, I should offer 1.5GB of uncirculated MP3 files, then dare everyone to try to get in. That's a lot like traversing hacker #channels on IRC... it's an open invitation to trouble.
Maybe I'm crazy. 5 years of running with very few troubles and less than 1 total day of down-time on the corporate web server/site says otherwise.
From a security standpoint this is little different than the Email viruses that have been spreading around the internet in the last, say, 8 years. The patch management programs will adapt in a race condition just like AntiVirus has.
Cool. If ZoneAlarm can be set to auto-install with all notifications turned off, I would have consider buying licenses corporate wide, but that capability must be found and turned off after the fact (last I looked). I piloted this with two users, both of whom managed to block their access to the 'home office' network by responding to false-alarm active notifications.
This one is a particularly nasty bug, in that it can be caused by a user account. Windows hasn't had an issue like that since, Blaster, almost a year ago.
They are multi-threaded computer operating systems, they do complex things, neither is perfect. Neither will ever be perfect (although, Win 98 was really close before reaching End-of-Life). And Microsoft is not always the most evil of the software makers. RedHat, SCO, HP, IBM and Novell have all had there turn being raked over the coals on the pages of Slashdot.
I have certainly noticed a positive feedback curve with Microsoft. I'd like to think it has a lot to do with the community getting pissed off when it makes a bone-headed choice. Less focus on Open Source, naturally, because there are so many different projects. However, individual projects have been trashed here as well.
I specifically avoided the name "Microsoft", thinking more in terms of 'closed UNIX' vs. 'Open BSD and Linux'. But most slashers are desktop users, and in the desktop it seems that only Apple, Linux and Microsoft (list alphabetical) currently apply.
If I take an otherwise unused computer, install Windows XP SP2 on it, and test the applications, then I'm in test environment. The second part of the test is to introduce it to the internet, and test some of my web applications (these are live, and on the internet anyway). By that time, putting the test box in my production environment (without allowing it to do production tasks) is the last phase of my testing (for any patch).
If the laptop is not 100% up-to-date, every single week, then it will come back carrying the next "SoBig" type worm. To date, the worst impact on my servers from this type of incident has been slower network response for at most a minute or two.
That's the window. If you never have a laptop walk out the door, then almost any security solution out there will work. If you don't have a work-force that may need to get emergency access from Saudi Arabia or Detroit, then you are lucky. All IT security solutions probably work out of the box.
Me, I have a lot of windows open, and Linux (even if it were feasable) won't help.
So, the next best thing is to find a good managed personal firewall that I can control remotely, will never bug the users. I'm open for suggestions.