Cause some of us like to use better firewalls.
Better? I haven't found the firewall in ESS to be bad, the opposite actually.
The way I use it is that I make sure all programs I want to be able to connect have rules created for them, then put the firewall in policy based-mode, that way it won't bother you and it doesn't allow any connections in/out unless there is a rule for it.
So what's not good about it do you think?
It's not bad, I didn't say that but there are much better alternatives. Free and paid. I'm pretty sure you already know that.
I'm not going to derail this thread now.