[ale] OT: Interesting TCP/IP windows MSG service and Comcast blasting.

[H. A. Story]

In light of the recent Comcast in the news screwing with bit torrnets, I 
can't help but wonder, and not sure where to stand on this with their 
port blocking and such. Sometimes I am against it and sometimes I think 
it is needed for the clueless.

I was just helping a friend with pop ups on a old Windows 2000 machine.  
Turns out they are on a WAN IP, which is the setup I have seen with 
cable companies so often.  After working on it and then deciding to turn 
off the service, I realized that the pop up message could have been 
across the WAN and not on the machine itself. So that leads me to think 
that the msg service port is not blocked.   I just think it is crazy to 
go out of your way to block or slowdown web hosting, ftp and Bit 
Torrents and not do the same to the windows services that shouldn't be 
running across the net.   So my friend is  off to find something that 
can act as a firewall.

Now if I am at home setting here and playing with commands and do a net 
send * "This is a message." I wonder if that gets routed out of my 
firewall/gateway and onto the Internet or if is only valid on a subnet? 
hum...

Adrin