Re: firewalling

[flash flash@xxxxxxxx]

I agree that, for most private/home LANs, most security solutions are
overkill. The reason is that professional hackers do not target private
persons in their home LANs. There is, however, a large and growing
community of organized internet criminals who target corporations and
government networks, for profit and havoc. I've done consulting for NATO
HQ in Heidelberg, for example, and they expect four attacks per day on
their border gateway router, mostly from Eastern European source
addresses (Bulgaria, Romania, etc.). In those countries, hacking into
NATO HQ is not a crime, but the national sport.

The manufacturers of professional security solutions make big bucks
selling their products and services to corporations and governments;
they make big _volume_ by selling down-sized versions to millions of
private persons. I agree that most private persons don't need it, but
it's their choice to buy the products or not. No one forces them to.

If the SERVICES file isn't being updated, then something else in the
registry must be. I made an assumption based on the LMHOSTS file in the
same directory, which also has some arbitrary date which is not updated,
although one can manually update the LMHOSTS file.