As it's somewhat pertinent, I'll note that recently even at mudcat I've encountered times when the page loads, but won't "turn loose" so that I can scroll down and read it, while at the bottom of my IE it says "loading ad ...".

The ads have to be retrieved from a separate site - remote from mudcat's own servers, and if the ad-server is getting a lot of traffic, or is just "bogged down" for some reason, the whole page is stalled until the ads finish loading.

I don't particularly object to the ads. On rare occasions I may even get a bit of a chuckle from some of them. But when they interfere with my "total browsing experience" it is annoying.

(Just now, when I opened this thread, it took less than 6 seconds to load the mudcat thread - a little slower than usual; but it then took about 25 seconds to finish loading the ads at the bottom before I could start reading.)

John