The server issues we were having should be finished now. There was some difficult-to-trace bug floating around, but evidently it’s been exterminated.
Just to rehash about the blog, I am still tracking down bad ads as people complain. If you see something that goes against the mission of BA, or is a really irritating ad, let me know in the comments. Please tell me where you saw it (at the top of the site, or the sidebar) and what it was advertising. I have already eliminated most of the bad ones.
I think I have eliminated the spam filter error some people were getting. The only way to know is to see if anyone gets it again! So if you see it, post in the comments please!
Every upgrade has growing pains, and this one was rough. I think it’s mostly behind us now though.
July 29th, 2007 at 9:52 am
So we are not going to get an ad popping up to try an plant a virus on our machines like they did on Thursday 25 July?
I did a boot up scan yesterday, which almost took a whole nail biting hour before Avast 4.7 said my system was clean.
I am having problems as it is with out this happening.
What safeguard do we have that the ads are not planting stuff.
BTW I also use XP service pack 2 firewall and Windows defender
July 29th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I got a kick out of the ad for authentic bird’s nests a while back. It was intriguing and repulsive at the same time. I always assumed a “bird’s nest” in Asian cooking was actually made of thin rice noodles.
Things still look to me pretty much the way they did a few days ago, except two vertical ads, the archives, and the calendar are all in the right-hand column now.
July 29th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I’m technically challenged but under your picture introducing yourself on the right hand side, the text goes off the screen……..
July 29th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Regarding DCB’s comment: The text in the right side bar leaks off the screen for me as well using Safari 3.0.2 (beta) and Opera 9.22 but looks fine in Firefox 2.0.0.4.
July 29th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Today (after turning off my ad blocker
) I stumbled over a block of Google ads that had two links going to astrology/tarot-types of sites (in German) and one creationist link. Those were text ads and as such not as bad as flashing graphical ones, but I’d like to repeat my question from last week: What image of your site do you think the large amount of ads you put up now conveys? How can I point anyone to BA anymore while maintaining the impression of being rational and valuing high-quality sites when the new visitor’s first impression is a wall of ads?
July 29th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Sticks, I’m still having a hard time believing any ad on this site could have done that. Burst Media, who is the ad server, screens their ads very carefully.
Jurgen, I do try to block ads like that, but it’s hard to keep up with them all. They way I see it, the people who read my site are unlikely to click those ads, or unlikely to utilize any “products” sold that way, so it’s win-win for me.
Still, I do try to block them. If you see one, please try to get the name or the URL and I’ll filter it.
July 29th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
The ads all look fine to me. I hate any sort of animation on the page, but there are so many animated ads these days that it would be impossible to screen them all out.
I clicked on the “Full Moon Insomnia” Google Ad link to see where that led to and was amused to find it was a regular, non-woo-woo health site obviously trying to cash-in on the woo-woo crowd (and real werewolves, of course).
July 29th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Phil
I am not sure how it happened, all I know is that I was on this blog, and suddenly the browser closed and I got some kind of pop up box and things progressed from there.
I remember something like this happened at the Dilbert site as well.
I have the XP SP2 firewall on my desk top plus Windows defender and Avast 4.7 which updates on a daily basis. Something must have got hijacked somewhere.
Any chance of passing news of this to Burst Media so they can investigate?
July 29th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Sticks,
If you had previously (and unknowingly) been infected with a trojan or spyware then pop-ups can appear anytime, it isn’t necessarily triggered by the site you are currently looking at when the pop-ups appear. Scanning your computer will only find the trojans and spyware that your software knows about.
I too find in really hard to believe a virus can be installed by the ads on this blog.
July 29th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Sticks, and others who are interested. I’m sure someone already mentioned this, but if you’re using Firefox, you can download the Adblock (or adblock PLus) plugin and they all go away nicely.
Ads? What ads?
I agree that the flashing “you have won” style ads were particularly nauseating.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
July 30th, 2007 at 5:29 am
This has just happened again to my works PC
I was in this block
I clicked to go to this thread, and the same think happened.
This time I looked at the name before I went through the emergency kill procedures, and it is call Error Safe
From Symantec
From Yahoo Answers
As our works PC’s are on a civil service system we will have the top-notch security AFAIK
It happened on this blog to me
Twice
on two different machines.
The Symantec site has given me details of what to look for in terms of folders, which I plan to look at tonight when I get home.
Something is very wrong here
July 30th, 2007 at 5:36 am
“What safeguard do we have that the ads are not planting stuff.”
Don’t click on them. (shrug)
I got a wormblaster virus a coupl’a years back just by going on the msn website – no ads were even clicked. PC shut down & I **** myself.
Thankfully got rid of it pretty quickly. It was just unlucky that the particular msn server that my machine connected to at that time was infected.
July 30th, 2007 at 6:41 am
Don’t click on them. (shrug)
I did not click on any ad, I just tried to go to the comments page of a Blog entry, or the first time I may have just been going to one of the pages of the blog.
I hardly ever click on adverts.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:01 am
BA: As others have mentioned above, some content on the right of the screen is disappearing off screen. If it helps, under your picture, the phrase is ‘I am an astronomer, writer a (and half the letter n). Similarly, the site hit counter Displays Site M and half the letter e. Submit next to the e-mail entry box displays Sub and half an m and so on. This is with the browser window full screen on a 1680×1050 LCD so that the site is displayed as a central block with grey panes either side. This is on IE7, fully up to date and patched. This was for information in the hope it might help but also to see if the dreaded regex gods have lifted their curse on some of us posters
P.S. Now I have got used to it, minor errors as mentioned above excepted, I much prefer it to the old layout.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:03 am
And yay, the regex curse has been lifted as my post went through first time, well done sir.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:27 am
I have had the same problem as Sticks. It happened first time last week at the first day the new site layout was on. It was during the time when all this regex stuff happened too.
I do visit the blog from my works lap top. We do have all this security stuff set up with daily updates. Moreover I do only visit 2 inter net sites privately (Bad Astronomy and gmx my private e-mail account). And I can confirm it is not happening when clicking an add. It happened 2 times when I clicked on the next button on the bottom. You get immediately redirected to something that wants to make you load down something.
MAybe there was a back door open last week whenall that problems occured?
I do not think its random.
Andre
July 30th, 2007 at 10:57 am
[...] Someone else has had this problem on Phil’s blog BTW I have now checked using the instructions on the Symantec site and there is still no evidence [...]
July 30th, 2007 at 11:01 am
No full screen ads so far, that’s good.
I wonder if you can move ads to left and content in middle? For some reason, content on left is annoying me.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:02 am
[...] made sure I could see hidden folders and files, just to make sure. Meanwhile I am not alone as someone else on Phil’s blog has reported this nasty So take care when visiting Phil’s blog __________________ Van Rijn’s Invisible Elf has [...]
July 30th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I have been wondering why I was not seeing any of the ads being discussed here – either with Firefox or IE. I had assumed Google ads, which I normally do see. However, the BA mentioned, “Burst Media, who is the ad server, screens their ads very carefully.” The fact that is Burst combined with the fact that Burst is blocked in my HOSTS file explains the invisibility of the ads to me. Some years ago I got this HOSTS file in connection with some spyware prevention program. It blocks a surprisingly large number of sites known to dispense stuff the creators of the file found ‘evil’. Occasionally, I have to go into the file and reenable some site that actually offers something I want to see. Not sure I will do that for Burst – not even for the BA!