If you really want to pump up your protection against ads, install noscript to go along with your adblock. Sweet bliss! Plus I never get sudden, noisy, flash video when I go to a new website (ESPN I’m looking at you), but if I want to see it, all it takes is a simple click, and I can unblock sites I regularly visit that use flash video format.
I have some kind of adblocker from when the google ads were added and it’s apparently taking care of the banner ads. But I will chime in and say that if y’all are going to have banner ads for members, you ain’t getting more of my money. Fuck.
heh. To the admins. The mods are just as annoyed by this as everybody else.
Good grief, people! I turned that stuff off so long ago, I forget which software blocks 'em. Just because somebody throws ads at you, doesn’t mean you can’t dodge them. If you don’t have such software, I’d like to invite you to come to the 21st century.
Besides, did you think The Chicago Reader is a non-profit? Even with the Googoo ads and our paltry dues, I don’t think the Reader was making bushels of dollars from us. When you pay to get a magazine or newspaper, do you stomp and swear you’re never gonna buy another until they stop those tacky ads for fast food joints?
This is a business. The Chicago Reader owns our server, and they probably pay dear Jerry to massage it when it screws up.
I for one welcome the new ads, even though I haven’t seen any yet. The Straight Dope needs a way to grow its revenue base faster than the rate at which people subscribe. Otherwise, you won’t have enough money to run the business.
Ok, I wasn’t going to complain until my computer started talking to me while I was reading this thread. It scared me; then it made me angry.
Honestly. Talking ads? Where is the midi music or sparkling .gif images?
Adblock here I come.
You all realize that by listing off all the system configurations in which the ads aren’t visible you’re providing data that will help TPTB figure out how to make them display, right?
The new Focuses are ugly!
Take that!
Everybody’s got their limit. Apparently banner ads are mine. I almost stopped going to Television Without Pity when the ads started taking up almost half the page in their recaps. And TWoP is free.
Like others have said, the Google ads don’t bother me. Paying to post doesn’t bother me. Banner ads do. If they’re permanent, I’ll be off.*
*[sub]And no one will care. I am well aware of that fact. The doorknob shan’t hit me on the ass, etc. etc.[/sub]
You’ve got that right. If this is permanent, I’m going to be pretty pissed off. However, from the little we’ve heard, it’s not at all clear that this is intended to be a permanent change. I’m hoping Jerry will come back and clear things up, so we know whether to burn the place down or not. 
I’ve got it now and it’s blocking the ad, but there’s a big white empty space where it was now. And the Straight Dope logo at the top of the page still resizes every time a new page loads.
I’ve never complained about anything here, but fuck this, fuck this, fuck this.
These banner ads are seriously annoying.
Based on this thread, I just added “Adblock Plus” to my Firefox browser (that I’m running on my 7-year old Mac).
Poof! No more banner ads.
Now a question for you power users–how do I block the ads at work? I’m running a Windows box there with IE7 as my browser.
Hey, I just got a good idea that would rake in the money without the annoyment factor of banner and animated ads. We could see the right to put a watermark background image into all the pages. The watermarks would be static so they won’t distract you but they take up loads of space, which will command a premium from the advertisers.
Try restarting your browser. Mine did the same thing for a couple of minutes, but when I quit and restarted, the white space no longer appears.
Yes.
I don’t want to play hide-and-fucking-go-seek. If TPTB intend to run this place in such a way that I cannot avoid their ads, then they should be allowed to do so. After all, the new ChiReader owners own this place, it’s their right to piss off their customers and run their business into the ground.
Oh, sure, I’ll be a little sad losing this place. I wouldn’t hang around if it wasn’t kinda fun. But the simple fact is that I cannot read with bouncy movey jiggley ad crap going on all the time in my peripheral vision. And if I can’t read, what the fuck reason do I have for staying? None at all. There’s a gazillion other message boards out there, this one ain’t that special.
Hmm, I haven’t seen what’s going on over at Fathom for some time. Maybe I should check it out.
Exactly. Even at its worst, I doubt reading a post on this board will be anywhere near as difficult as trying to find the contents page of Vanity Fair 
, not to mention the avalanche of ads that fall out whenever you open it.
You have got to be kidding. That is a terrible suggestion.
This would it be far, far, more intrusive. You can at least scroll past the banner ads.
Very good point.
And therein lies the problem.
When i fly, i realize that there’s the possibility of delays. I also realize that those delays are sometimes unavoidable (weather problems, etc.) and that the airlines often can’t do anything about them. What is unacceptable, however, is to be allowed to sit in the boarding area or on the plane for three hours without ever being told what the hell’s going on.
And it’s the same here. If they were going to do something with the server that changes the appearance of the boards as dramatically as these banner ads do, there should have been an announcement about it beforehand, along with an explanation of why it was happening, and how long it would last.
Hmm, I’ve not noticed this. Of course, a few months ago I decided to manually block the logo, because it annoyed me. So I have this stuff blocked:
in addition to the Filterset G stuff, which results in a page looking like this, which I like better.
