AMD ads

Enough, guys...

we already had several long and controversial discussions about those annoying and dilettantly badly done IBM flash ads which rendered our browsers totally unresponsive, and even made our CPU fans spin fast due to the waste of CPU cycles those ads provoked...

I hope that it didn't pass unnoticed that some (valuable) members have refrained from visiting the CG forums during that time - some of them have come back in the meantime, some have not (there are other interesting developer forums out there, ya know?)

The situation has been slightly alleviated over time, and the worst bugs in those flash ads seem to have been fixed (although it took a long time, and left an interesting impression of IBM's skills in the IT field in general, and in their interest in customers in particular... :rolleyes: ) In short, those ads have been just counter-productive, safely putting any user of this site in a position against IBM. But that's their problem.

But now, shortly after the IBM nightmare has stopped, here we are again with a new campaign, this time from AMD, and it is even worse! The browser (okay, I'm using the IE7 beta) stops responding altogether for half a minute or so while one of those AMD ads is dsplayed (I can't even browse in other tabs - the entire app is just dead! Amazing - how are they doing that? Perhaps they should seriously get into the business of writing malware, and stop producing CPUs altogether?) To add to that, that annoying banner in top of the page also inadvertently pops up a larger window - right when you're about to click a link in the page, covering the link you want to click! Sorry, guys, but is this supposed to be an April fools joke (we're in August), a virus, or what? In any case, it seems to be a very well thought out strategy to make anyone stop using this site (and build up a healthy aversion against any AMD product). Great going, guys... :thumb: (Or wait... Is it perhaps Intel who is behind this anti-AMD campaign, and pays JupiterMedia for it? Very cunning...)

I don't know for others - but while I already lost interest in replying to CG threads during the IBM campaign, the current AMD impertinence makes it almost impossible to use this site - so I'll just refrain, plain and simple. (And as a side-effect, I'm certain to opt for Intel CPUs in the future, if I have the choice).

Another hint for you advertising guys: Contrary to the IBM and the AMD ads, those flash movies from Microsoft (VS 2005) behave very well, and have no negative impact whatever on the usability of the CG site (and they're just as colorful and animated as your's, only better). So you see, it can be done. It's probably just a question of the right know-how. Perhaps you should ask MS who does their ads, and learn from those guys.

// Please excse any typos in this post - but one side-effect of those AMD ads is that while compsing a post, some chracters are just missed out - the brwser seems to be busy with more impotant things than accepting user input... :rolleyes:

Well, Firefox has crashed a few times over the last week. It's got to be associated with one of the ads, but it hasn't been enough of a problem for me to look into figuring out which one it most likely may be.

Firefox is an exception. Open any Flash content on FF and your CPU usage will reach the top instantly.

Just disable the flash active x component and you'll have the nice GIF ads back.

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Originally Posted by Andrex

Firefox is an exception. Open any Flash content on FF and your CPU usage will reach the top instantly.

Just disable the flash active x component and you'll have the nice GIF ads back.

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Yeah, and when I need flash for other sites, then what?

I'll bring up the AMD ads internally today. They haven't crashed my system, but it sounds like many of you are pointing at them for other crashes.

Brad!

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

I'll bring up the AMD ads internally today.

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Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

They haven't crashed my system, but it sounds like many of you are pointing at them for other crashes.

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Actually, for me (with IE7 beta) it's not crashes, but frequent halts - the entire browser app with all tabs becomes unresponsive for 30-60 seconds as soon as a CG page with an AMD ad is loaded into one of the tabs. Client-side scripts (like used in the post editor) become awfully slow. CPU load goes up to 50% or so for IE - similar symptoms as with the IBM Flash ads earlier (which are still not 100% resolved, btw).

I have seen the same thing as Guido (even the pauses while typing, which sometimes leads to missing characters).

I carefully avoid a mouse-over on the AMD ads, since the pop-up is causing additional problems.

I use IE 6.0

See this other thread: http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=397908

Mike

Same here! Especially when scrolling. It seems as if my IE 6 gets stuck, some times when I hover over a link, it doesn't respond (meaning the mouse icon doesn't turn into a hand - and I cannot click that link)

I still see CPU jump to >80% with the IBM man-rolling-between-gears ad

And the annoying "expand on mouse-over" AMD ads are back.

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Originally Posted by gstercken

Actually, for me (with IE7 beta) it's not crashes, but frequent halts - the entire browser app with all tabs becomes unresponsive for 30-60 seconds as soon as a CG page with an AMD ad is loaded into one of the tabs. Client-side scripts (like used in the post editor) become awfully slow. CPU load goes up to 50% or so for IE - similar symptoms as with the IBM Flash ads earlier (which are still not 100% resolved, btw).

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

Same here! Especially when scrolling. It seems as if my IE 6 gets stuck, some times when I hover over a link, it doesn't respond (meaning the mouse icon doesn't turn into a hand - and I cannot click that link)

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I doubt its the AMD ads. Try scanning for spyware (I used spybot search and destroy). As I mentioned in the other thread, I found the culprit to be an atdmt cookie. From the moment I removed it I had no more crashes 'so far'.

Does high CPU usage continue after a few seconds? Some ads stll use high CPU cycles initially, but after a few seconds drop down to something more reasonable.

There is a new culprit, which I haven't bothered to go looking for, but after having a few crashes over the past few days, as well as THREE in a row just now, I may have to. I'll post back which one I find.


EDIT: 2 more crashes. Found AMDCH.QUESTIONAIRE or something like that.

EDIT2: More crashes. ads.pointroll.com suspected

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Originally Posted by dglienna

EDIT: 2 more crashes. Found AMDCH.QUESTIONAIRE or something like that.

EDIT2: More crashes. ads.pointroll.com suspected

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I second that second one!

There is something seriously ill going on with those ads....

Well, that cut down the crashes, but didn't eliminate them. Just had one.

EDIT: After two more, I found it. http://amch.questionmarket.com/*

I find Flash to be intensely annoying. I uninstalled it years ago and I barely miss it. Fortunately, I have a dual-boot system so if I really need Flash I just re-boot into the other OS where it's still enabled. I'm always surprised at how rarely I need to do this.

One really irritating thing about Flash is that if you uninstall it, it just re-installs itself, next time you log onto a Flash enabled web page. You can get around this by placing the following line in your Hosts file:-

0.0.0.0 download.macromedia.com activex.microsoft.com active.macromedia.com

Presto! No more Flash...! I can still see the adverts - but they aren't animated.

The plot thickens. Just had ANOTHER crash!

An update...

Today I've been using my "alternate boot partition". That's the one I mentioned above which I rarely use because it has animations & Flash etc enabled. My PC has persistently crashed and/or reset itself whilst visiting CodeGuru. This particular partition runs Windows 2000, IE6 and Zone Alarm Pro firewall.

After 2 of the resets I ran AVG anti-virus but no viruses or trojans were detected.

I've just reverted back to my main partition (with animations & Flash disabled) and everything's okay, so far.

Clean for 30+ hours. Maybe someone is listening? :)

The IBM ads are annoying that they can't run in the background. Waiting 30 seconds for a page to BEGIN loading is a drag...

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

Does high CPU usage continue after a few seconds? Some ads stll use high CPU cycles initially, but after a few seconds drop down to something more reasonable.

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No. Not with this man-dangling-between-gears ad, Brad. I've been waiting for more than 2 minutes now and the man keeps getting tossed, crushed, twisted, poked and so does my CPU. It's shooting all the way to 94%. There seems to be no end to it.

It is ridiculous that these stupid CPU-intensive ads are being shown on a developer website where people are consistently advising against exactly such practises. And it is a shame that the ads represent such esteemed company like IBM which , again is ridiculous, considering that IBM is big time into server side software and again, CPU loads are the ones that are all the more critical.

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

Does high CPU usage continue after a few seconds? Some ads stll use high CPU cycles initially, but after a few seconds drop down to something more reasonable.

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I see this behavior: initial CPU usage very high and after a few seconds it drops to 10% or so.

But why should anyone tolerate this, particularly in the name of advertising? The 10% CPU usage is accompanied by near-constant disk access. I have better things for my computer to do, and I dislike the intrusion.

Mike

Getting kind of tired of waiting for the GIL ad to complete. It's like 20 seconds wasted every time that IBM ad shows.

Those IBM ads are particularly irritating and probably not very self-serving. I'd be more inclined to buy somebody else's products just because of IBM's annoying adverts!!

If you own a dual-boot system, take my tip (above) and uninstall Flash from one of the boot OS's. On my PC, the time taken for a CodeGuru page to load is currently around 2-3 seconds without Flash or 15-20 seconds if Flash is installed.

I haven't suffered any crashes for a day or so - even though I'm using the "Flash enabled" boot OS. Has something changed in the last day or two?

I was just going to comment that I haven't had a crash in a day or so, but as soon as I clicked on this thread's link, *POOF*!

I thought traffic was down, so that minimized the time each ad was shown. Not sure if I'm right about the traffic, or the ads, but it seems likely.