Extremely annoying adds

Is there something that can be done about those recent red and blue NetBeans 5.0 square advertisments? These things are extremely CPU intensive. They use 100% of my CPU. I know it's not a recent CPU (Atlhon thunderbird 1GHz), but nevertheless, advertisments should not consume that much CPU even on such an old system.

Of course, I could block advertisments to get rid of them or uninstall flash, but I don't want to block them because a site like codeguru needs the money from somewhere and I don't want to uninstall flash because some sites require it....

Advertisers should know that creating such ads will only push more people into using add-blockers.

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Originally Posted by Marc G

Of course, I could block advertisments to get rid of them or uninstall flash, but I don't want to block them because a site like codeguru needs the money from somewhere and I don't want to uninstall flash because some sites require it....

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It is best not to even mention the thought about blocking ads. Anything against the AUP should be refrained from.

EDIT: Of course, I didn't realize you were a moderator and so high up in the CodeGuru world. You know more about AUP and conduct in the forums than I do. Sorry.

I do agree, the flash ads have gotten way out of hand.

I know you best don't mention it, but those ads were just driving me crazy and like I said in my post I don't want to use a blocker because the money for running such a huge site as codeguru needs to come from somewhere. I know from personal experience how expensive hosting and especially bandwidth can be.
In fact, I have something against ad blockers. Because of them some sites that were free in the past aren't free anymore nowadays :(

Yes, I understand. I am sorry, as you can see in my edit. :cry:

It takes on my machine nearly 100% of CPU - this is rediculous.

This is UNACCEPTABLE!

Yeah... it seems I am facing the same issue as well... At my home.. I have a not a very fast internet connection and I thought the was the reason for slow page loads on CG. But when I used to see the mem usage in WTM.. I usually found that the Iexplore.exe with CG opened was taking way too much memory than others... it slows everything..

//Had CG been a ASP.NET application - user controls could have had been used for partial caching of those add portions.. that would have had helped the loading much faster I guess.. I am not sure what's the alternative with php.

Is 100% CPU consumption the fault of the advertisement itself or a bug in the Active X control (Macromedia Flash)... ? Typically those who make advertisements and work on images wouldn't know/think/test-for CPU consumption.

I am also curious to know if the web-page reduced performance of other applications? How long did it consume 100% CPU?

Currently the memory usage is quite low --- about 1350 K .. but the cpu usage for the CG windows is 95% plus :eek: (i dont know what may be the reason).. i think i need to close it and then reopen...

//i have 3 GHz CPU .. and 1 GB ram...

Ah, I'm glad it's not only on my PC :)

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Originally Posted by Siddhartha

Is 100% CPU consumption the fault of the advertisement itself or a bug in the Active X control (Macromedia Flash)... ? Typically those who make advertisements and work on images wouldn't know/think/test-for CPU consumption.

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It's the fault of the creator of the ad.

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Originally Posted by Siddhartha

I am also curious to know if the web-page reduced performance of other applications? How long did it consume 100% CPU?

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It slows down everything. It keeps using 100% of the CPU until you browse to another page without that ad.

Sometimes my search box doesn't even pop up, under these ads and when it eventually decide to pop up, it is very slow, and while typing into the box I have to like "pause" inbetween, because the characters I type, takes a while to display!
It should be stopped or made less CPU intensive!

Ok, I finally saw the ad. It took about 1/3rd of CPU cycles. What version of Flash player are each of you running? Thanks

Sorry JP but I don't think that should make any difference. There should not be any adds that takes 100% of CPU regardless of what's installed on user's machine. Lots of people all arround the world are still running Win95 as of original version...

I get 50% usage with a dual core 3 GHz Xeon processor from both Firefox 1.5.0.1 and IE 6 (same version as cilu, didn't feel like typing it out).
Both browsers have flash player 8,0,22,0 installed.

And that's if only one page has the ad. I like to open in new tabs and that makes it worse if the ad comes up more than once. Loss of usage with the mouse wheel and points where the browser is not responsive.

FYI -- This is being looked into.

Brad!

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

Ok, I finally saw the ad. It took about 1/3rd of CPU cycles. What version of Flash player are each of you running? Thanks

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I'm using Macromedia Flash Player 8. I'm also using IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 if that's going to help.

Hmm, I wonder if that has something to do with it. How many others experiencing this issue are using vers. 8? I'm using 7 and see considerably lesser CPU cycles.

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

Hmm, I wonder if that has something to do with it. How many others experiencing this issue are using vers. 8? I'm using 7 and see considerably lesser CPU cycles.

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Ok, it's possible to be the cause. But that shouldn't be a point here. The ad should be built in such a way that it behaves similar with different versions of Flash. It should be tested before being published.

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

Hmm, I wonder if that has something to do with it. How many others experiencing this issue are using vers. 8? I'm using 7 and see considerably lesser CPU cycles.

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I am also using Macromedia Flash Player 8 with IE 6.0 and experiencing the same problem.

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

Hmm, I wonder if that has something to do with it. How many others experiencing this issue are using vers. 8? I'm using 7 and see considerably lesser CPU cycles.

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I'm using Flash 8 (firefox or IE) and the same problem 100 % cpu usage (at a 1.3 GHz processor.)

Ok we think they may have corrected this. We took it up with the advertiser and they think it's corrected. Now we just have to find out if it is, and report back. Thanks for bringing it to our attention

I have noticed a significant difference. The ad now only uses up to 12% of my CPU at any given time when on screen (10% average), up to 10% off screen (8% average).

Much better than 50% usage.

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

Ok we think they may have corrected this. We took it up with the advertiser and they think it's corrected. Now we just have to find out if it is, and report back. Thanks for bringing it to our attention

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Yes, I think it's ok now. (I'm curious what was the problem. ;) )

We'll never know what it was. It was the advertiser's coding and they don't tell us what they changed.

It seems much better now :)

It actualy does run better on my system... Went from 100% all the time to +- 10 % Peeking at 35% occationaly..

Brad, I'm still getting these crap questionnaire popups: Marketing Research Spam

Aren't your web people competent to fix this, or are they supposed to pop up repeatedly?

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Originally Posted by dlorde

Brad, I'm still getting these crap questionnaire popups: Marketing Research Spam

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Well....are you sure it isn't for some reason being cached on your site? I haven't seen such a popup in months...

I have realised these ads are too annoying. I'm sick and tired of it.
And as so I have finally decided to leave codeguru.

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Originally Posted by Andreas Masur

Well....are you sure it isn't for some reason being cached on your site? I haven't seen such a popup in months...

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Possible, I suppose, but I don't see how - I regularly delete all cookies, I have four separate trojan/spyware/adware detectors that run a full scan nightly (and pick up plenty of junk!), and an anti-virus suite. The pop-up only appears when I navigate threads/forums on CodeGuru...

Perhaps you could suggest what else I should be looking for?

btw I just got another one as I entered CodeGuru tonight.

It is happening again - ~100% CPU usage.. with just one CG IE window running .. none other...

Are others facing this again too? Regards.

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Originally Posted by exterminator

It is happening again - ~100% CPU usage.. with just one CG IE window running .. none other...

Are others facing this again too? Regards.

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Was this the NetBeans ad again or a different one?

Brad!

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Originally Posted by Pinky98

I have realised these ads are too annoying. I'm sick and tired of it.
And as so I have finally decided to leave codeguru.

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Pinky -

I'm going to ask internally once again about the QuestionMarket surveys and see if I can get these eliminated or drastically reduced in number. I agree that they are coming up way too often.

(Advertising and these surveys occur outside my area, so I can't control them. I can, however, go to the people that do)

Brad

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

Was this the NetBeans ad again or a different one?

Brad!

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I am not sure Brad! It happened yesterday but seems to be fine now.. I guess sometimes.. when I am logged in for a long time ... I need to close the open CG windows and re-connect.. I am not sure what it is but seems like a local problem (with cookies or IE or anything else that I don't know of).

Apologies to have bothered you. But will let you know if this happens the next time.. Best regards.

After the problem was fixed, now it looks like there are new ads in the site, and the same problem happens with them.

Cheers

I faced the same too.. but not because of adds it seems. It happens intermittently. It reaches 100% CPU usage .. remains like that for some time 15 - 30 minutes and then goes away. It has happened twice for me since golanshahar's post.

Are others facing this too or is this problem local to my machine? I don't have any other IE windows open except for CG ones. Regards.

Recently, some new ads have been crashing Firefox. I think it's due to me having NoScript running. When I get notified that something wants to runs a JavaScript, a bar appears, and I generally allow them as they appear. One in particular doesn't show the bar, but it crashes Fx. I'm not even sure which one it is.

EDIT: Just happened again. It took a few seconds for the sidebar add to load, so I suspected the site. I sent it to Fx's automated reporting system, and am pasting it here.

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m.2mdn.net

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If possible, when you see these types of issues, let me know (1) what browser you are using, including version (2) what ad you think caused the issue. Even better, if you can capture the source code for the page and attach it, that can really help. That generally gives me everything needed for someone to look into the issue.

Thanks,

Brad!

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

If possible, when you see these types of issues, let me know (1) what browser you are using, including version (2) what ad you think caused the issue. Even better, if you can capture the source code for the page and attach it, that can really help. That generally gives me everything needed for someone to look into the issue.

Thanks,

Brad!

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I am using WinXP/IE6/Macromedia Flash Player 8.

Attached is a screen shot of one of the bad ads.

Cheers