Hi Terry,

>I know why I am not installing SP 2 - I think it places a "Patriot Act" layer in the desktop to hide spyware from the prying eyes of the task manager as well any anti-spyware engines we use. I think MS agreed to implementing "back doors" for the government and NGOS as part of the "monopoly" suit settlement.

I think this is unlikely for two main reasons:

1) There are so many very, very smart people out there who would love to stick it to MS and make a name for themselves in the IT world. The risk of such people finding this out would be far to great to MS. And for sure those hackers are looking for this and other types of intrusive/backdoor systems. If it were true it would destroy the MS software market and MS would not do something so silly. Software which is installed on an end-user machine will be hacked, no question. Applies to Windows too.

2) The volume of information that a hidden backdoor spying program would create would be huge. Somehow this info would (a) need to get back to whoever is going to analyze it, and (b) those same very smart people will be analyzing all data into and out of Windows boxes looking for such traffic. The volume of info would be staggering if one assums millions and millions of PC's running the o/s. And the packets into/out of those PC's is open to inspection.

Although I love a good conspiracy I think this one is unlikely in the extreme.