BS: Should I take it personally?

Subject: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Janie
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:08 PM

I'm worried Max has somehow rigged Mudcat so that a secret camera spies on us and feeds the information to Amazon or where ever else the ads at the top of threads are being generated.

For weeks now, I keep getting the same ad - about reducing belly size....how else would they knooowwwwwww..................

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:25 PM

Yeah...I saw that, but *I* have no such problem... *grin*...

(I DO wonder what triggers it.... I am sure that thread content and keywords are most of it.)

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:27 PM

Yes, I agree...there is far too much advertising on the mudcat. Max please eliminate all this advertising. I don't like it.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:31 PM

Gee, I'm seeing an ad at the top of this page for single serve espresso... It KNOWS I'm a member of the Coffee Party!!

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: ranger1
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:35 PM

Yeah, well I'm being asked if I know the secret to the perfect swing...

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:37 PM

Nobody has to see the ads if they don't want to.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:38 PM

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:40 PM

Oh, go on, Janie. I think you're being a little too subtle!

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Janie
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 11:06 PM

Look around the room carefully, Bill. See that great big, round wooden bowl you made, sitting on the table behind you? See how, when you stand on the other side of the table, the bowl is centered on your midriff? See how it all lines up with your computer monitor?

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 11:09 PM

Well, she says smugly, mine offers 'Soldier of Love' and 'Valleys of Neptune.'

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 11:12 PM

Bill:

By this time you should have learned never to take ANYTHING on the Mudcat personally even if it is directly aimed at or addressed to you by name.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 11:20 PM

It's a choice--the ads pay for Mudcat these days, I'm sure. And they're only in the BS section, that I've noticed.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 11:23 PM

That's nothing. I found one strapped to my cat who follows me to the "lady's room!" Now, I get ads for personal items for cats!

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: JennieG
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 12:34 AM

I'm getting sewing threads today - which is appropriate, as I sew a lot - baseball's greatest legends, and something called 'soldier of love'. What the ? is that?

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Janie
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 12:40 AM

Well, Kat, be grateful the direction of the lens is such that is takes in only the cat's habits.

Now, what has the camera spied at Ebbie's or at Tami's to warrant the ads they are seeing?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Janie
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 12:41 AM

Ebbie and Jennie apparently have more in common than we realize....

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 01:08 AM

Hi Jennie!

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 05:58 AM

Ads funding 'cat is good.

A reasonable inference that many folkies might be -er- rotund-ish, I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:11 AM

I'm being offered two CDs entitled "Queer as Folk".

Obviously I'm going to have to cut down my input to the various Gay discrimination threads.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:41 AM

I'm sitting with a mug of coffee beside the laptop and getting an ad for coffee makers. Maybe the machine can report the smell to Google?

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: SINSULL
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 08:08 AM

Mine is asking me to bid on computer laptops - a little creepy since I started a thread about buying a laptop last week.

I usually ignore the ads. Not a problem for me.
SINS

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 09:52 AM

JennieG.... 'soldier of love' is a CD by Sade. One of my fav siwngers (not folk).

As I sit here in my 20 year old Kodiac boots, green Dickies work pants and Bud T-shirt, there is an ad at the top of the page to win a $400 fashion voucher. I'd say that confirms it.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: ranger1
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 10:09 AM

OK, it's definitely spying on us...I've got the coffee ad and an empty cuppa sitting next to the computer. Might be reading our minds, too, because I was just thinking how another cup would be really nice right about now.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:15 PM

Mine isn't for 'soldier of love' - it's for 'solider of love' ...
Maybe it's an ad for viagra.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:27 PM

Carol, I just dwnlded that FF add on....I STILL have the bloody ads! It did NOT stop them!

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: JennieG
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:35 PM

Good grief, now I'm getting ads for computer games! The most I ever do is an online crossword. It provides a wee spot of levity to the morning. Still getting 'Soldier of love' too, and Jimi Hendrix this time. It obviously knows about the two guitars and one ukulele in the next room........just imagine a Hendrix-style uke thrash.......

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:38 PM

Sorcha, you have to re-start FF.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:44 PM

You have a green dickie, g!
Have you been to the doc?

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:48 PM

JERI...I DID! Still didn't take effect.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 06:55 PM

I had a problem getting mine to work at first. I re-started FF, but then, the program TOLD me I had to re-start it and it worked. Then it asked if I wanted to subscribe to a list of filters. which I did and THEN it worked. If you have a little red 'stop' sign saying 'ABP in the upper right corner, you can probably find where you get the filters.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 07:30 PM

Ha! Perfect ads for a caffeinated old hippie...CoffeeWiz and Jimi Hendrix CDs.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Janie
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 08:28 PM

Moon your monitor, LEJ. If an ad comes up for depilatories, my suspicions will be confirmed.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: ranger1
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 08:28 PM

CoffeeWiz, isn't that what happens after you drink your coffee?

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 10:33 PM

Mine seem to be related to one another and sound ominous, but no relation to what I've been thinking or doing, I swear:

Unman, Wittering and Zig + Electric Ladyland (CD/DVD)

gnu, SADE "swings?" **BG**

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 05:02 PM

My brain filters ads so comprehensively, I don't even notice them - and I am sure not going to start now that you mention it!

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 09:22 PM

You get feedback loops.

If I mention emu farming in this thread, you can bet Google is going to give somebody an ad offering emu chicks for sale, or emu egg hatchers, or emu-proof barbed wire, or emu caponizing pincers. Then somebody comments "hey, why am I getting adverts about emus?", and that triggers even more adverts about emus, emu marketing software, software for blocking ads about emus, and so on. In short order your whole screen is emus, with bits of message here and there, buried under piles of moulted emu feathers and emu droppings.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Rowan
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 09:38 PM

Jack, your prediction hasn't worked yet.

The Amazon ads I see above the message box are for modelling the Cutty Sark and for Green folk shirts (I confess to wearing a green Mens Shed shirt, but you wouldn't regard it as a folk shirt and I've never modelled ships) and the two ads below the message box are for Irish Country Music and "Make your own Karaoke CDs"; perish the thought.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: JennieG
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 11:40 PM

Oh geez Rowan....make your own Karoake CD......now there's a Mudcat thread title if ever I heard one. What would one put on it?

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Rowan
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 12:42 AM

If I didn't know you better, JennieG, I'd reckon you'd suggest a workshop on just such a subject at the Loaded Dog, or even the next National.


But Jack's prediction is starting to take effect; the two ads below the message box now are for green bean coffee roasters (and I've just finished such a coffee) and the "Emu Heaven Emu Oil Shop."

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Joe_F
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 09:03 PM

The *insinuation* that I would buy a Jimi Hendrix CD!

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 02:10 PM

Hmmm.... Busking for Cancer research (sang in a concert on Saturday raising money for CRUK), embroidery thread (been to a sewing shop today...) and 'Are you experienced', Jimi Hendrix... (I would have to say 'yes, but it's been a very long time since I was in that sort of shop'...). I am DEFINATELY being followed by an Amazon spy cam....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: gnu
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 02:14 PM

Personally, I would.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 02:15 PM

Lots of Jimi Hendrix now. I suppose he did look a bit like an emu. And polyester embroidery thread.

But where's my Dromaius novaehollandiae? GIVE US MORE EMUS! Even if it means embroidering an emu on a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: ranger1
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 06:20 PM

Definitely mind reading! I was thinking "Oh, gee, pizza sounds good for supper tonight" and lo! There is an ad at the top of the page for $10 off large pizzas at Papa John's. Not that I ever order pizza from Papa John's, I usually go for local places, because their pizza doesn't taste like cardboard with a little sauce and cheese spread on top.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: DougR
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 07:39 PM

Max: Right on with the advertising, max, it generates income for the Mudcat and I'm sure you can use it. That's free enterprise folks!

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: Rowan
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 07:55 PM

It occurs to me that something might be rooting around in my browser's cache or even its bookmarks.

The Amazon ads are still for modelling the Cutty Sark and folk shirts and now there are four Google ads below the message box; Irish Country Music (I'd thought that was what Seamus Ennis and Leo Rowsome were about but I got that wrong), VMusic, Nepali SOng and Music Notation Software. But right above the list of posters is an ad suggesting I bid for a Nikon Camera. Not long after Christmas I was researching Nikon digital cameras and their lenses for a friend and I suspect the advert might be a result of residual cached URLs or a bookmark I made.

Interesting. And, if it keeps the wolf from Max's Mudcat door, that's fine by me.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: JennieG
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 11:21 PM

"if it keeps the wolf from Max's Mudcat door, that's fine by me."

Me too, Rowan! Meanwhile it provides us with a small amount of amusement daily.

This visit, coffee and tea equipment (I drink coffee, Himself drinks tea), Twilight movie saga (erk), an ad for a movie with Sandra Bullock, Amazon Kindle (haven't succumbed to one yet - I like real books), and an ad for gold trading on my computer.

Remember when you were at school - it was a thousand years ago and I have put most of the memories thankfully behind me - the teacher would give out a list and you had to write a story using the objects on the list? Today's list could make for an interesting story but I am now going to sew, not write stories.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: GUEST,PeterC
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 04:38 PM

This reminds me of a recent thread on webmasterworld about ad blockers and means of locking their users out of sites until they switch them off.

Many sites are funded by ads so to professional webmasters people who use them are just freeloaders.

Subject: RE: BS: Should I take it personally?
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 10:35 PM

No ads - no Mudcat?????? Mudcat - ads?????? Seems like an easy choice to me!!!!!!!