I am of 2 mind about this. First off, let me say that the tone of Steve's article was more due to frustration than anything else. He didn't make his points as clearly as he should have and he attacked MS, which is a mistake. Let me clarify what his REAL problem was with MS's Raw socket support. Steve did not actualkly have a problem with MS implementing Raw Soccket support. His issue was that, unlike every other OS which has Raw Socket Support, they are not requiring Root Access. In the professional and Server versions of XP this really isn't an issue since network access is controlled via login. What causes a problem is including RSS in the "HOME" Version of XP. This version has no authentication control and assumes everyone is root. Windows 2000 has RSS as well, but since it was never very popular in the home market, it wasn't an issue. The only people who had it were servers with Network authentication. XP will probably be in everyone's living room and THAT is what Steve was perceiving as a threat.
