The Register reports that as a result of a previous article describing the default insecurity of a Windows XP Pro box with SP2 installed, their readers have been dutifully going through the list of questionable features and services, disabling everything in sight, and innocently sabotaging their Windows boxes:
We recently ran a detailed article describing the default insecurity of a Windows XP Pro box with SP2 installed, and produced a long list of Windows features, components, and services that we believe should be disabled by default.
Note that there is a crucial difference between saying that Windows should ship with X features off, and saying that, if you find X feature running, you should immediately panic and turn it off yourself. Some things need to be enabled for other things to work, and your system's dependencies will vary widely according to how you connect to the Internet, which applications you run, what you actually do with your machine, and so on.
[...]
Nevertheless, Reg readers have, in rather large numbers, been dutifully going through our list of questionable features and services, disabling everything in sight, and innocently sabotaging their Windows boxes.
We beg you to stop.
Via Gadgetopia