***Niles - "*Anyone tired of all the updates for XP? Seems every week, there is more new updates... Why the hell did they release it to the public with so many bugs and holes... You would have thought as big of Company as MicroSoft they would have beta tested all the bugs out of it. What is software coming to ..... :)"

Tired of it? Hell no, I am happy to have them. The updates to XP are crucial for closing obscure vulnerabilities and potential security problems, as well as updating device drivers and so on.

No one who ignores updates has any right to complain when they get hacked or some other security problem.

Every operating system of any size has security issues, and WindowsXP is the #1 target out there for every would be "l33t hax0r" out there with too much time on his hands. On top of all that, XP has to run the widest range of software, both modern and legacy of any OS ever built.

If they WEREN'T updating it I'd be really pissed.

It is a fact of life that some people simply can't come to grips with, the Internet provides both the problem AND the solution to the situation:

• Never before have consumers encountered so much untrusted and untrustworthy data from unknown sources.
• Never before have users wanted to let so much of that data effect their experience.
• Never before have user machines been so open to attack from so many, for so long.
• Never before has the information on how to exploit a problem traveled so fast, with such a wide range of targets.

So with software both having to be more complex and more of a target than ever before, it is a damn good thing that companies can also use the Internet to distribute the counter measures. ME? I worry about any company who doesn't recognize this fact and provide me with updates.

There isn't an administrator I know worth his salary that doesn't check the updates and patches every few days, for Unix, Linux, MacOSX, the BSD's and all the Windows flavors. The only difference is that on Windows and Mac it is fairly easy to do it - on Unix/Linux it is a screaming nightmare.

If you think that an OS, or any reasonably complex piece of software, can be bug free at the time of shipping you are sadly confused. If you think an OS, any OS is or ever will be bug free to the point of invulnerability you are tragically mistaken.

The Internet has done something wonderful for all of us, but it has also presented us with an unprecedentedly hostile environment. Imagine the physical equivalent:

Imagine if any person on the planet could anonymously try to break into your house, knowing the details of every lock you own and having a copy of every method of picking those locks that ever existed. All this with almost no chance of being caught.

If it were me? I'd keep checking on my locks and changing/updating them as often as I can.