Robert Scoble and I traded comments late last night on his blog about the upcoming service pack for XP, and the expected changes to ICF. I went to bed a bit stunned after reading his initial reply (bold emphasis is mine):
“Beau, I hear you, but there are other nasties coming and we decided to fix a few more than just the firewall, since we know many people will simply turn off the firewall (I saw this happening over and over at the PDC). Beta starts in mid-November.“
I tossed and turned all night, trying to understand the logic of this decision, given the past history of code coming out of Microsoft, and also the demonstrated ability of the current ICF to fend off attacks like Blaster and Slammer.
I had a big rant here that I posted, and then 10 seconds later regretted it and pulled it down. There is a point where you have to realize that no amount of screaming is going to get Microsoft to do anything it doesn't believe it should do. Right now, Microsoft feels strongly that ICF deserves an upgrade, even though they admit it will result in the package being turned off. They have a lot of faith in the new Longhorn technologies fending off attacks even without the benefit of a firewall, apparently.
I can only sit back and watch, and hope to hell they are right. I have said my piece.