Perhaps the makers of OpenSSH should change the first-run behavior to require the user enter a new password in order to prevent this issue?

We don't fundamentally disagree, though I'm seemingly less worried about Mozilla than you. I don't see Mozilla sacrificing hard-earned market share for the sake of a feature its users loathe. Granted, they were naughty for implementing it without regard for user control, but now that the issue has - fortunately? - been thrust into the spotlight, I predict a quick and satisfactory resolution.

Or a code fork.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has a long and proven track record of abusing customers' rights and trust.

Forget about the names involved and examine the situation more closely. A company took it upon itself to introduce an unknown security risk into a competitor's product by way of a stealth install. Said company further complicated the matter by making it next to impossible for average users to uninstall - provided they even became aware of the issue - and compounded it even further by having subsequent updates reinstall the software by stealth again.

I think that given this situation Mozilla did the right thing. Until Microsoft learns to work above board where Firefox plugins are concerned, Mozilla can and should disable them. It would be nice in the future if Mozilla offered users the option - and I think they will - to retain use of a plugin after being told it poses a security risk, but the only action I see in need of correction at the moment is for Microsoft to ask users explicitly for permission to install an add-on to non-Microsoft software on a system.

What constitutes 'harm'? What constitutes 'intimidation'? Laws like this are so broad in their language that they inevitably lead to absurd abuses of individual rights.

A personal example that comes to mind are the idiotic 'zero-tolerance' policies in our public schools. My brother had to meet with the principle of my nephew's school because my nephew defended himself when three kids tried to jump him at school. My brother had to stand there and explain to the principal (who was rightly embarrassed by having to enforce this ridiculous policy) that the day he tells his son to stand there and take an ass whipping will be the day that hell freezes over.

In contrast to the aforementioned ridiculous and pathetic situation, before society lost its mind in search of a world of wall to wall safety bumpers, I offer a more personal example. One day in the 5th grade, a larger, older kid started picking on me on the way to the learning resource center. I told him to lay off. He persisted. I chased him down (he ran when I turned on him) and whipped his ass. After I explained to the principal what had happened, I got sent back to class and the little punk got three days suspension.

I learned that day that standing up for yourself in the face of unwarranted abuse is right and proper and the other kid learned that screwing with people has consequences - and that's as it should be.

My nephew was taught a very different lesson. He was taught that self-defense is a crime and that the authorities will punish you for defending yourself - even in the face of imminent bodily harm and/or death!.

"Evidently Mr. Ringo's an educated man. Now I really hate him." -- Doc Holiday

Yet another useless canard tossed around by the Linux community. Businesses are obviously going to continue to pay for support - be it from Microsoft or Red Hat or whomever.

The issue is whether or not Linux offers quality applications that meet the needs of business. The answer is obviously a resounding "No". Were it otherwise, we would see the proof in an uptick in Linux adoption.

As James Carville might say, "It's the applications, stupid!"

I really have no clue what you're on about. I tested the beta and RC for free and because I did so I was able to purchase the upgrade for my two windows vista machines for around $50 per licensed copy.

Not only did Microsoft NOT sell the beta (it was a free download, though they may have charged to ship it on DVD(?)), but they also gave the public who tested it a huge discount on the upgrade.

Get your facts straight.

These Microsoft death watches have become almost as cliche as the annual YOTLD penguasms. Yes, Vista sucked just like ME, but so what? In both cases users were able to stay with/fall back to the previous OS version and wait for MS to get it right. I'm betting Win7 will see a large and rapid uptake just like XP did.

Waiting around for the competition to fail is not a winning strategy. Linux had a chance with the Vista debacle and blew it - as evidenced by Linux's share of the OS pie still hovering at around 1%.

Until the Linux community realizes that it is the state of the apps holding back adoption of the OS and decides to do something about it, Linux will never gain a significant share of the pie.

Even with the Vista debacle, Microsoft's total share of the OS pie (win98, winME, winNT, win2000, winXP, and Vista) is still 92.71%. Hell, Linux barely beat out Windows 2000 for market share!

Same here. It's sitting unobtrusively in the system tray, using only 6MB of memory and I haven't seen the CPU usage move from '00' except when running an active scan and even then the System Idle Process averages about '75' which tells me, unless I am mistaken, that it's using about 25% of the CPU cycles during a scan - which to me doesn't seem overly much.

Of course the proof will be in how well it serves to protect users in the wild.

The malice isn't in the shoddy engineering of the OS. The malice is in knowingly deciding to use the resultant dangers of the shoddy engineering to generate profit by way of customers being made to pay a protection fee.

So much for Congress.

Don't think it hasn't been seriously considered.