Getting worried about spyware
I'm getting worried about spyware, are the people making all that stuff sick or on vacation or something? Or getting really tricky with something else I don't know about? Every time I scan with SuperAnti-spyware I never find anything anymore :) I am running AVG, SuperAnti-spyware, and FireFox also Tiny personal firewall. NEVER is IE opened if I can help it, I think I have it shut down for good or at least for now. So am I really blocking all that spyware now?

AVG, a monthly scan with SuperAntiSpyware and Firefox is all I use. That and common sense. Most spyware infects you due to carelessness. Just using Firefox protects you from most of the stuff out there that uses DirectX to infect you. Don't click on links in unsolicited emails, don't open attachments, and use a sandbox VM if you plan on visiting dangerous websites. The advertising crap is easily detetced and removed by SuperAntiSpyware or Spyware Doctor (my two major spyware tools that I recommend now). HOWEVER the really scary stuff is professional grade trojans written by people working for organized crime. This stuff can be undetectable and very stable so it doesn't give itself away.

at the last forensics conference I was at that they said that the "pro" grade spyware is almost everywhere now. Mainly it's being packed in warez on the usual sites, pron sites, and the torrents. As FP said this stuff does it all, polymorphs, rootkits, etc. The people who write the code go to the 0 day exploit sites and tweak their apps on a daily basis. One guy (johnny long (ihackstuff.com) showed us a java script he wrote that can be put in a transparent overlay on a web site and instantly gives him ownershop of your IPhone.... One professional penetration -*test*-('")er said when he gets bored he simply goes out on the torrents and looks for songs that younger kids tend to like and can own their computers in about 2-3 minutes. As FP you really need to be running a virtual machine

Where can someone go to learn how to run a Virtual Machine on their PC??

A very simple sandbox is a program called Sandboxie: http://www.sandboxie.com/ This is not as good as running a VM, but it's way better than exposing yourself. Another option is to download the free VMWare player and download the VMWare "Safe Browsing" VM which is just a very locked down install of Ubuntu with Firefox. What I personally do is run VMWare Workstation and I have a VM that has Win2K Pro installed on it running Firefox. I have a snapshot saved of the VM and everytime I finish a session with it I have VMware restore the VM back to the snapshot so everything from that session is gone - including any viruses the VM may have been infected with.