I blogged yesterday about the affect of the WindowsXP service pack 2 on filesharing applications. Apparently, there is more fallout as reported by Dana Epp, Ian Griffiths, and Dominick Baier. I understand that the motivation for these changes was to make the WindowsXP platform less appealing to viruses and hacker tools, and I also understand that the reason there aren't easy overrides for the new limits is so that the aforementioned malware can't just flip the functionality back on. But, at the same time, the changes are detrimental to some legitimate applications. Microsoft could just cede those users to OSX or Linux, but why not bring them back into the fold? We have WindowsXP Home and Professional, perhaps its time to bring out WindowsXP Power User edition? Concerned corporations can constrain installations through policy, unconcerned end users won't pay for it, and interested parties will get their functionality back. Redmond, are you listening?
And now, for something completely off-topic -- a well documented tryst between John F. Kerry and Natasha Kinstridge (see commentary here).