Ah, interesting, thanks for the feedback. 8.04 is definitely solid - I'm
still running it at work, and won't upgrade until I have a chance to
verify that 10.04 will work well on this particular machine.

With regard to your issue, it's not out of the question that there could
be bugs in 9.10. I'd like to try that problematic URL on my machines, if
you wouldn't mind sharing it.