Hywel Jenkins wrote:
The Windows Firewall *does* block outgoing traffic. It frequently asks
if an application should be permitted access to the internet.
In fact, depending on the security settings you choose, you do
sometimes get a warning message when online if the site you go to tries
to get some information sent to it or elsewhere. I also have this
happen to me when I am on the web using IE6. However, my Windows
firewall is completely disabled by another, in my opinion better, 2 way
firewall I use, and a check of Windows settings confirms that the
Windows XP firewall is indeed disabled. Thus this has nothing to do
with the Windows firewall and everything to do with the security
selection features that were greatly improved with sp2. What my 2 way
firewall does is display every application you have on your computer.
Each application may be completely blocked from the web, allow
outgoing, or be unblocked. If you change the security settings, when on
IE6, to the lowest possible (not recommended), you seldom get any kind
of message. If you set for maximum security you can not get into many
safe sites such as my bank, etc. Security settings are somewhat
different for various browsers. I keep Opera set at very high security
for the most doubtful sites and Firefox a little less secure for
trusted sites. On broadband, it is no problem having several browsers
in use at once, and I often have the SBC/Yahoo DSL(IE6 relative),
Firefox, and Opera all connected to the web when I am testing pages on
different browsers. Thus you often notice differences in security
warning response for different browsers when you are viewing the same
page with 3 browsers.
In the last 15 minutes, over 20 attempts to get into many different
ports have been rejected and recorded in my firewall log. Tonight many
can be traced to China. Many of these likely are attempting to find an
open port, get in, and take advantage of a worm or virus that they hope
has been planted on the computer. I take part in a program that reports
all of these attempts to a data base that is used to help improve web
security. Some ISPs likely are targeted much more than others. The
large broadband ISPs in the US seem to be favorite targets. A computer
that always is connected to broadband is likely much more useful to
many hackers than one that is online only now and then and connected on
dialup.
But back to javascript, I would love to see a page using a script for
which you are most proud, since you seem to have very strong opinions
about how to best write scripts.
By the way, I do not really care about subjective adjectives, good or
bad, that anyone may use on the web. Such usually are not allowed in a
proper technical journal owned by an important scientific or
engineering society where papers are properly peer reviewed and
objective statements are required. I can not get very excited in an
emotional way, pro or con, about anything I read in an open NG. You
seldom know anything about the qualifications of the person expressing
an opinion.You could have the Queen of England(unlikel y, but there is a
royal site), you could have a technician at a famous university who
knows little about computing and perhaps dissects frogs for a
researcher, or you may have someone who knows nearly nothing about
computing at all. And I doubt if skills in html, javascript, or C++ are
likely to be considered profound enough to win a Nobel prize.
So farewell to this much too long, off topic thread. Was there a full
moon this weekend? It has been too cloudy here for me to notice.
