I'll agree it's more interesting in that the end-result was a box that required a hard boot, but still these two issues aren't that distantly related: it effect

I'll agree it's more interesting in that the end-result was a box that required a hard boot, but still these two issues aren't that distantly related: it effected routers and many, many OS platforms, so it's not as if it was related to some implementation detail that MS left out of Windows. Correct me if I'm wrong (no, seriously) -- aren't both "packets of death" just poor handling of said malformed packets? Violations of their respective protocols? (TCP/SIP)