Couple years back I got a pit-spanking for often rating Pit Threads on a 10 point scale. Just poking a little fun at myself.
Man, how retro.
Next up, you should post a rant about Frontpage.
And then maybe we can get Jerry to change the board’s background color to black in support of online free speech.
I’m sure you realize those ads pay for your ability to (pretty much) surf the net for free. And for some of those websites you visit, it’s the only reason the company is able to exist at all.
Rollover ads and noisy ads make me go away from the website and never come back.
Do you have a rant about billboards too?
(Although I do agree with popover/unders, and sound in ads.)
Yes, but I’m saving it for the next time I determine The Pit needs a completely over the top rant filled with colorful invective.
You’re too kind. Really. Much too kind. You are kindness itself.
Puppies on puppy cam. . . . snuggling 
people do click on them though, and go on to buy things as a result. Not a big percentage of the time, but it happens.
I agree that visually intrusive ones are annoying and despicable, though.
You don’t have to - there are plenty of options available that don’t require you to seek out software. You could put on some stout boots and take a bracing walk in the beautiful countryside, for example.
You sought out software to deal with your emails, to entertain you and to administer your digital life, and some of that software probably required a bit of configuration. Installing an ad blocker isn’t all that exceptional.
Yup, I did seek out email and gaming software, because I chose to include those things in my digital life. I did not choose to have internet advertising inflicted upon me. I think the burden should be on the advertiser to avoid annoying me, rather than on me to block the advertisers. An opt-in system rather than an opt-out system, if it was up to me.
But isn’t that true of pretty much all advertising? Almost by definition?
I don’t like having TV programs interrupted every few minutes by ads. I don’t like having to skip over ads to read articles in magazines. I don’t like seeing ads on the stadium walls, on the players uniforms, or even on the playing field itself (especially when they are digitally created, and not actually there).
But that’s what advertising is.
What’s wrong with cunt lapping?
In all seriousness, I rather agree with the rant. What bugs me is that I’m using a popup blocker, but there are some it just fails to block. I just close the stupid windows and move on, but … yeah I hate them. I hate billboards, too, Fucking eyesores.
As noted, Flashblock will save the day, for Chrome anyway. Not only does it block annoying intrusive ads (popups excepted), but it allows you to open quite a few tabs without your computer getting bogged down by trying to run the shoot-the-monkey game on each page. And if you do want to see something you can just click on it to make it appear.
I presently tend to use Chrome, and as a substitute go into the chrome task manager (ctrl-esc) and shut down the flash process when it gets overbearing. There’s a command line option to prevent all flash which I forget - maybe “-disable-plugins” - but using that disallows you from using any flash (ie youtube) so perhaps is undesirable.
Blocking Flash also has the side effect of leaving relatively innocuous ads like Adwords or static and basic animated images intact, so you can still pull your weight in supporting the Internet.
Yeah, this is where I sit. It’s sorta like how everyone in San Francisco bitched when they changed the name of the ballpark from Pacific Bell to SBC to AT&T. They helped build us a free ballpark. You wanna put your name on it, peachy.
The only ads that bother me are ones that autoplay audio, expand on rollover, or move the page. Though usually I just stop going to those sites.
You opt in to see ads when you go to view a website for free. If you wanted an ad-free experience, you’d limit your surfing to only those sites you’ve already paid the money to support before you went to view them.
Well, at least that phone company (whatever it’s current name) did kick in some of the money to build the stadium (almost 20%).
Here in Minneapolis, they are building a new stadium at the University, and it’s going to be named TCF Bank Stadium. But TCF Bank is providing less than 12% of the cost, the taxpayers are giving 3-4 times as much. Yet the bank gets to put it’s name on it. They also get naming & advertising rights that are estimated to bring in 2-3 times their cost, so that bank is actually likely to make a profit off this! To say nothing about the fact that they will count this as a donation to the University, so they will just write it off their taxes, anyway.
It seems to me that you should only get to put your name on the stadium if you pay more than half the cost. Or at least a bigger share of the cost than anyone else (including the taxpayers).