Well, do ISPs suddenly allow 137-139,445 nowadays or is this still considered to be a hole wide enough for a truck to drive through? If those are still blocked

Well, do ISPs suddenly allow 137-139,445 nowadays or is this still considered to be a hole wide enough for a truck to drive through? If those are still blocked, then the major OS in this world still proves that there are bad defaults and good defaults, one which leads to compromise and one that leaves you secure until you screw up in some other way. If other OSes have "caught up" with not starting and exposing lots of random* daemons just because they exist on disk on a default install, then that is for the better of the world. That doesn't take away the idea that some OSs did it long before others, and hence have given their users a safer experience for a longer time. *) random in the sense that "running a pop2 daemon when your box wasn't even intended to be a mail server" is beyond silly. Same for httpd, ftpd, ntpd-claiming-to-be-stratum-1-on-motherboard-clock (happened) and all other services a full default installation might provide.