There must be some kind of lunar activity drawing all the freaks out. I have read some ridiculous FUD today. Let's recap shall we?
From slashdot
Apparently if you don't have your firewall turned on you're vulnerable to an attack. Alright, granted the exploit is an old method that hasn't been fixed, shame on you Microsoft, but come on people, is it really "news" that if you don't have your firewall up on your server that you're vulnerable? Not having a firewall on is the equivalent of keeping your house keys under your doormat.
Richard Who?
So here's a guy who no longer wants his job of posting .NET development news and walks out the door firing off some... interesting... criticisms of the .NET Framework. Let's review:
"I was initially overwhelmed by the size of the framework"
Really? That's interesting. There are a ton of classes in the .NET Framework and even after working with it for 3+ years I still haven't learned every nook and cranny. Yet if you master the few most common classes (like System.Data for example) you're well on your way to 95% of the code you'll write in an application. How is having a lot of framework classes considered a bad thing? Is this better in the java world where there are a cubic ton of libraries and add-ins that you have to pour over to find what you're looking for?
Next, Richard attacks VB .NET, especially the incombatability between VB 6.0 and VB .NET. This is really a no-win situation for Microsoft. Back in the day VB was known as a kid's language because it didn't support multiple threads, true inheritance, etc etc etc. So Microsoft goes and upgrades VB .NET, keeping the majority of the syntax that VBers know and love while making it a true OO language just as powerful as C#. So naturally now people are bitching that VB .NET has too much of a learning curve, you may as well learn a new language. In my very humble opinion, old school VB was a great RAD tool that allowed a lot of mediocre coders to write some very bad code. Very bad code that can't be exposed to .NET through COM interop is going to need to be rewritten. If you're pissed about that maybe you should have hired better developers, not taken shortcuts, and written such crappy code to start with!
Sahil Malik
Sahil brings us another article from CNET who seems to be struggling getting ratings from good content and has decided instead to scare uninformed windows users. Don't install sp2? There's been a lot of FUD going around about sp2 breaking machines and interferring with existing applications. Between work, home, and being the tech support guy for friends, neighbors, and family I have applied SP2 to well over 50 machines and never had one failure. Not one.
You don't want sp2? Fine, just walk over to your pc and unplug it from the internet. Problem solved, you're secure. Instead of spreading all this fud they should be drilling 4 things into people's heads:
- Don't run attachments unless it is an attachment you are were notified someone is sending and they're from someone you know.
- Invest in a router with a firewall to put between your machine and the internet
- Keep your software up to date.
- Run antivirus, firewall, and spyware cleanup (only thing that costs money is antivirus)
Follow those 4 steps and your chances of getting infected are minimal.