>>I've seen that. Microsoft has an opposite opinion, as you would expect. And, not being able to see their code, one can only run external tests to see if such problems would occur. If Gibson can create exploits, and he is not the brightest bulb in the box, you can rest assured other, more talented people are exploiting them to the max. I have often wondered if there was a relationship to the appearance of these bugs and the intrusion into Microsoft's intranet last summer. It would have taken about 6-10 months to scan code for weaknesses and test them out.
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>I think you're confusing holes in IIS with raw sockets support. Raw sockets support could be useful if you're writing your own low-layer protocols, but is most often used in syn/ack attacks to sent malformed packets. _ALL_ other OSs do this, and Windows can do it now too, it just doesn't do it natively. Whether or not raw sockets support in Windows is a giid or bad thing is _exactly_ an opinion, and it depends entirely on your philosophy. Sort of like gun control. What kills people, guns or people?

No confusion... just stating that with such easy access to raw tcp/ip sockets as XP appears to give, I think there will be a correlation between sales of XP and increases of all attacks of all kinds. You are right in asserting that 'all' OSs do this. Linux, for example, has always had raw tcp/ip socket exposure, but the tools and languages necessary to exploit them were generally above the abilities of VB coders and script kiddies. As KDevelop and Kylix are used more widely it will make such exploits easier in Linux, too. But, as long as folks don't run under root the damage such exploits can do are limited.

I fogot to include another thought I had in mind when were were discussing XP folding ZIP into itself. Because it is Open Source and there are close to 20,000 projects in all areas ongoing right now, many such utilities are, in effect, folded into a Linux distribution. For example, Konqueror transitions into a zip file as if it were a folder, and there is LnZip, a free utility that handles a variety of compression algorithms. So, folding into an OS, in a manner of speaking, isn't the exlusive property of Microsoft.