[Jumbie @ Feb 6th 2007 6:30PM]

Couldn't agree with Jeremy more.

When a user installs something like a firewall, unless another person they trust tells them to install it (as I've done with some of my friends), they will usually (hopefully) have read about it so that they know what to expect.

But if this "new" feature is thrust upon the masses without any warning (and MS can try as hard as they like to educate consumers but they will fail cause most people seem to be brainless idiots) they will think that their computer is broken or has a virus or some such.

Like Jeremy, I know what this is like first hand. My father runs a very successful business. He's a smart individual but not very computer literate. I set up his computer at home and threw a firewall on it and made sure everything was working properly. Google Talk likes to stealthily update itself so one day he got a pop-up informing him that an application had changed and was trying to access the internet and if he wanted to allow it. That sounded bad to him so he clicked on no (doesn't help that English isn't his first language either). Of course, Google Talk didn't work after that and I had to try and figure that out by baby stepping him through everything that he'd done on the computer in the past while (over the phone cause I was in another country).

I've since taught him about firewalls but I can see where MS is unfortunately coming from on this one. I mean hell, look at wireless routers that broadcast the SSID by default cause people are morons. Even though they will be advised during setup to change it and/or put a password on, how many unencrypted, open networks do you see every day?