Problems with Adobe CS2 software activation

I am reconfiguring my computer and need to run my old Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium software.  After spending time installing it, I received an error that it could not be activated.  A brief search turned up the fact that Adobe recently shut off their activation server for this old version. 

They provided a page with links to download a version of CS2 that bypasses the need for the activation server, but it appears to not provide all the software in CS2 Premium.  I'm not the first to have this issue: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1114930?tstart=0

I started a separate discussion for Mac CS2 Premium at http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1129934?tstart=30

Solving erratic mouse behavior in Ubuntu 12.10 inside VirtualBox

My Ubuntu installation within a VirtualBox VM has been nearly unusable due to random, erratic behavior of the mouse cursor. Problems have included:

•  a click near the middle of the screen activates a button in the launcher on the left side
•  occasional hits on the exit button of a window, though the cursor was far from it
•  inability to drag to select text; the selection would jump upward while I was trying to drag down
•  other dragging operations would create unpredictable and unwanted results

I did research and found these two references:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/202789/cursor-jumps-when-moving-and-some-other-times
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51727&start=45

Based on these, I typed the following into the terminal.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:a7x/bug1041063
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-core

My initial tests show this to be a successful fix for the problems listed above.

Dell Optiplex 780 noise after upgrading to Windows 7

I just finished upgrading my Dell Optiplex 780 to Windows 7 64-bit.  The tower was producing a very irritating high-pitched noise after this upgrade.  After a bit of searching, I found this discussion that seemed to match my problem:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19292677/19546282.aspx

I tested the BIOS setting change for C State Control suggested by carl.hobbs and petewitt.  It solved the problem instantly.

Raspberry Pi

This looks interesting: http://www.raspberrypi.org