OSNews

well, ive heard alot of bad stuff about sp2. from what i can see, your best bet is to either slipstream it or install it right after a fresh install, or run the risk of having it fsck up your computer. ive had four friends tell me horror stories so far, im none too anxious to be number five.

as for the teenager thing, let me tell you about my little sister. she's fifteen, what she does on her computer is use msn, post messages on several teeny-bopper forums, read email, play the occasional flash game and take quizzes. her browser of choice is msn explorer of all things. i would consider her the "typical" teenage computer user. you my friend, are a geek. theres nothing wrong with that, i was a geek too, but dont think that just because you are eager to teach yourself about computers that everyone else in the age bracket most associated with stupidity and not thinking ahead will have an interest in something like security.

and last but not least, out of linux/windows/mac, most would agree that mac is the most secure out of the box. the reason is that there is a massive amount of people running unpatched linux servers out there, who think that just because its linux means its safe, and procede to blithly ignore hardening their boxes. then theres windows, which has hosts of services enabled again by default, mostly to make things easier for users who dont want to know how to use a computer. finally we have mac, which has everything shut off by default, and only turns stuff on when its needed. (this isnt to say mac has flawless security, far from it. but its security record is quite laudable for a desktop os)

everyone, including microsoft acknowledges huge security problems in windows. sp2 on xp has alot of good stuff in it, but i agree with the author. why not go all the way and just remove these targets too?