Has the Web gone nuts? Every second time I try to click a link, I get "(site) not found" back from the DNS.

Gus ... I've had that at times in the past and it was always a problem with the ISP of the time but it got fixed reasonably quickly.

re bouncing spam: I have (somewhere) a small program called BounceSpam which worked pretty convincingly. Only problem is, rarely do spammers use a legitimate return email address, so it's a pointless exercise. :(

re return of Pop-ups: I'm just thankful that more advertisers/spammers haven't cottoned onto using flash for generating pop-ups. So far I've only come across it once and Opera's usually-reliable pop-up blocker, had no way to stop it b/c it wasn't using javascript.

Phone virus found in the wild.

This is going to sound like the silliest question in the world, but my copy of The Sims 2 runs horribly on my (newish) laptop. Would this have anything to do with me running the game off of a dvd instead of a cd?

The next thing I'm going to try to do is see if I can find newer drivers for my video card. Where on my computer can I find my video and sound cards listed? Is googling generally the best way to find new drivers?

Would this have anything to do with me running the game off of a dvd instead of a cd?

Possibly (although I've never used the Sims). Can you watch the CD activity light while the game is playing? if it's on a lot, then the CD is slowing you down.

eta: ignore this....

That's a possibility- I'll look at a cd-rom edition today and see if the info is any different. So far I've looked at the processor and memory, which should both be more than adequate, so I'm going back to the video card- the instructions say that if the most up to date driver isn't installed, it can interfere with game function, and that the video card must have more than 32 MB of memory and one of these T&L capable chipsets: ATI Radeon 7200 or greater, or NVIDIA GeForce2 or greater.

Oh, I misread your post, sorry. I was thinking you were running it from the CD instead of the HD.

I think DVD drives are slower when it comes to reading a CD, but I'm not positive. And this shouldn't have that big of an effect (I think).

What kind of laptop? If it's a budget laptop the graphics system might not be up to snuff.

I am running it off of a dvd, but there is a cd version available. I've got a Toshiba Satellite- I'll bet it's the video card. I'm getting a brand new driver right now for it, so we'll see.

Maybe it's time I soup this up. (Well, not me, obviously, for I am feeble and know not what I am doing.) I've already used more storage than I thought I'd have used, so I'll need more. My dad used to do all my souping for me, but since I got a laptop I'll have to bring it somewhere.

Tommyrot, have you found out this info, yet? I've got about 2 weeks to take advantage of the Qwest pricing.

Oh, sorry. It's a Flowpoint 2210.

I don't remember if I mentioned this, but my boss isn't sure if this would work for a home application, as it's SDSL, and most home connectons are ADSL. I don't know myself if that is something that's hardware-specific. (S=symmetrical, so upload and download are the same speed. A=asymmetrical, so download is faster than upload.)

edit to fix the wrongness....

It's symmetrical/asymmetrical, not synchronous/asynchronous.

It's symmetrical/asymmetrical, not synchronous/asynchronous.

Oh. Now that you mention it, that makes a lot more sense.

I blame lack of caffeine.