Windows Vista's Firewall offers false sense of security

Tried as we did, we could not make sense of what the Windows Firewall Exceptions tab is trying to tell us. We were looking for something (anything!) that said "If you're looking for information on outbound block, you've arrived!" But the following text didn't tell us much:

Exceptions control how programs communicate through Windows Firewall. Add a program or port exception to allow communications through the firewall..

In our attempt to read between the lines, we assumed that since the list includes programs that are already on the computer and the text says "allow communications through the firewall," that this meant "programs on the computer trying to communicate through the firewall" (in other words, like cars going through a tollbooth, outbound communications). But, as you will see, we were quite mistaken. We clicked on the "Properties" button in hopes that we might get some more detail, but....(see the next image)...

For David Berlind's write-up on Vista's inadequate personal firewall, see his blog post in ZDNet's TestBed blog.