Originally posted by: Vortex22
*#&%ing Flash ads that are imbedded in websites, so there is NO WAY to stop them!!! :|
Yes, I
demand a separate option for Flash-animation banner ads.
Not all commercials are bad. Some of them are pretty funny. C'mon, how many times have you watched that Nintendo ripoff of the "wazzup" commercial? Or the ad for that Canadian fish company where the guy actually goes out and beats up the bear to get the fresh salmon? Classic stuff.
Snail mail spam is mildly annoying but is alleviated by the fact that it can be useful sometimes, like if it's an AOL CD and I need a frisbee, or if it's something else and I run out of toilet paper. And I must say that ColumbiaHouse adverts make
great joints.
Ads in movies aren't too bad since they're usually the best of the TV spots. And as much as some people complain about the stuff in front of the movies and the ads they claim they're paying for when they buy a movie ticket I don't care so much. I've barely made it in time to see a flick because of those ads, thank you very much.
Popus and page ads... I think they should be a separate category. (
And a separate vote option) Page ads aren't so bad as long as they aren't giant images that take forever to download. I can live with advertisements around the page so long as they aren't 8 feet tall and flashing neon pink and green, and even that isn't utterly horrible. Popups on the other hand are evil, pure evil from the anus of Santa himself. (
Wait a sec...) Not only will they interrupt what you're doing but they can actually crash your damn computer. Try leaving Kazaa (
not Lite) on for about 4 hours without any popup blocking stuff, then see how well your computer fares. (
Actually it probably will be okay, but it'll still be eating up resources)
E-mail spam is kinda like a cross between popup ads and page ads. It doesn't exactly leap out at you but it sure as hell clutters your mailbox. If you use a hotmail account or something it's not too bad since most of it you can delete without opening, but when you're downloading your e-mail and you have to receive 15 spam messages to get to the 1 message you actually care about that's annoying, at least for dial up users. On the plus side some of it is funny. (
I AM NIGERAN BUSINESSMEN AND AM LOOKING FOR HELP IMPORTING SEVERAL MILLIONS US MONIES)
The worst, and I mean the absolute worst is Telemarketers. With e-mail and the internet you can argue that you don't really have to deal with any of this since e-mail and internet access is mostly a luxury (
though more and more a requirement for some, but how many work pages have popups?) but it is damn near impossible to live without a telephone. It can be done, true, but it's a cosmic pain in the ass. You can't very well turn off your phone because you might need to receive a call, and unless you paid for Caller ID you can't screen the phone calls. (
Not to mention that Caller ID doesn't work for calls from 75% of the country) It's intrusive, annoying and there's absolutely no way you can effectively stop it from getting to you. Until the Federal "do not call" list goes through that is.
Finally let me mention Flash banner ads briefly. It's not the file size or anything more than the fact that Macromedia specifically went out of their way to include an option to disable the "mute" and "stop" features of the plugin. Animated ads are no problem for me, but when I get an incredibly loud advertisement piping through my speakers about hot interracial lesbian goat/donkey love it infuriates me to no end. You can't adjust the volume or mute it, so the only way to stop it is to mute your whole system, thereby cutting off any other sound you were interested in hearing. Fortunately I found a Mozilla/Firebird/Phoenix plugin that creates a placeholder where flash images would normally be shown. The file won't be loaded until you click on the placeholder. Makes life much more bearable. Do a search for "DIE" (
all caps) on the software forum and you'll find it.
So my rankings:
1. Telemarketers
2. Popups
3. Flash banners
4. E-mail
