As reported by www.Slashdot.com and www.neowin.net below:

            PC slowed down recently?
            Posted on 09 Jan 2004 - 02:25


      This was bugging my parents all day! Excel + Word and NAV have been
slow to load etc, and this is apparently the problem.

      "We had to do a little sleuthing today. Many readers wrote in with
problems that turned out to be related. A certificate which Verisign used
for signing SSL certificates has expired. When applications which depend on
that certificate try to make an SSL connection, they fail and try to access
crl.verisign.com, the certificate revocation list server. This has
effectively DOS'ed that site, and Verisign has now updated the DNS record
for that address to include several non-routable addresses, reducing the
load on their servers. Some applications affected include older Internet
Explorer browsers, Java, and Norton Antivirus (which may manifest itself as
Microsoft Word being very slow to start). Hope this helps a few people, and
if you have other apps with problems, please post about them below."

      Good 'ol verisign eh. Nice to know the webs in safe hands.

      Howard Rubin
      The Computer Doctor
      Fortaleza, Brazil

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