Some members here are probably wondering how I could sprout such rubbish and be believable, I'll tell you a story and make up your own minds.
This mate of mine bought a computer in 1987 and with it came DOS 5 and if you know anything about d5 you'll know that it doesnt do much except run your computer. So he had to buy software to do anything with it, now not being of the overly funded type he asked around and people "loaned" their software to him and since that day till 2004 he found ways to never pay for software, he even learnt how to crack games and such, in all this time he upgraded his own computer to run about a year behind the current "best" and had 4 computer game net setup at home in 1997 all on loaned software and connected by gateway to intenet. In time he learnt that some people dont like ppl who do this and had to fortify and so the story goes.
Along comes XP uses that for about 3 mths and thinks one day this needs updating, so update he does and lo and behold he starts having unexpected shutdowns when online, only online so he reformats, reloads no good. this has all been behind a firewall on same computer so he setup a dedidcated firewall and runs through that to internet still the same. Gives up and buys xp on harddrive for half hardlynormal at the disc shop, a sad day for him as it marks the end of a golden era.
Oh and the firewall thread i posted was utter rubbish it "may" have worked in the early days but with the strong encryptions of today it cant happen, just thought I'd see where it led.