awww, Janie..I'm sorry it's so intimidating.

All those 'accept' or 'deny' messages are is asking your permission to allow a program to communicate with the internet. The whole point is to control stuff by YOUR rules, not their rules. If you want a program like RealPlayer to download stuff for you, but don't want it to go out on it's own to tell Real what you are doing, or to nag you about buying more, you 'allow' incoming but 'deny' outgoing.

Obviously, you can operate without controlling this, but that means just different hassles....