The point made by S Gibson and windows XP still remains correct, although Linux has these "Raw Sockets implementation" already.

I think the point should have actually mentioned more to the fact that now a lot more programs will be availible for anyone
to download from the net and go attacking other people.
with little or no knowledge about programming etc

Look at the amount of people no calling themselves hackers
that just download a bruteforce attack program, then download a combo wordlist, then download some proxies and wohoooo hammer the hell outta paysites to get User/pass

now we all know that ain´t hackers all the have done is push buttons, however winXP will be able to bring out more of these
type of programs, the internet if not all already " irc "
will become on big war zone

Just think you ban some " younger user " for being an Asshole
and he takes your server down with a 56k dail up :O(

Now hackerz are all "++**##''  I agree, but I cannot wait to C
some newer far more dangerous windows programz on some rather interesting sites like deny.de that anyone without any knowledge of security unix etc, will be able to download and press one button ARGH help run

Up to now the hacking generation has had to have at least some experiance of programing etc

Not only are some windows based sites banning Linux users,
I for a fact know that some interesting Linux forums are banning all windows users as, from the launch, off windows XP

Most hardcore Linux users have windows as a second O/S ( or a few pc´s :O) )
to help the gurl/wife/man  also get online and use, a lot of our geek forums used to,  have chat rooms setup, for these  gurls/men to chat in safety.

Many people I am sure are now using these type of "dead" Forums as apposed to the Live IRC to enjoy the internet.
MSN IRC was a warzone and I bet loads of people are glad it closed down, but winXP is the hackerz Joy now and it will not take long for programz to be on some Hackerz sitez that any XP user can download and start war.

I hope that I am not true on this and just over paraniod