You can take your protests to the manufacturer, Mars. They also make a bunch of other products, including M&Ms, Skittles and Snickers (complete list here: http://www.mars.com/global/Mars+Directory/United+States/Company+Search+Results.htm), so be sure you're not rewarding them by buying other products they manufacture. I don't ordinarily resort to this, but I finally sent them an email pointing out how their commercials are having the exact opposite of the desired effect, and asking them to cease and desist. Whether they even respond to the email or not, we'll see. I'll keep y'all posted if they do. Here is a link that might be useful: Give them a piece of your mind

These south beach diet things have driven me to distraction for months too, along w/the obnoxious talking/singing wheat thins advert. And often closing them out either doesn't work or locks up my system. I'm on dial-up and NetZero doesn't support Firefox, so I'm stuck. On the upside, I'm learning to be more patient since I do want to read GWC.

Check the tomato forum. There was a discussion over there and someone listed how to get rid of the ads. I can't remember the exact post but I'll try to find it. It worked for me!! Found it- Try this: I don't know if there's some additional mozilla thing that will get rid of the ads you're still getting, but this will block them: (copied from another thread here) "The Universal Solution: (if you have a PC) This will work on Windows systems for all browsers; IE, FireFox and Netscape. The Windows operating system provides a system-level method to block specific IP addresses before they even get to the browser. To effect this solution you need to edit a Windows system file called "HOSTS". This file is located in the directory: Windows XP: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC Windows 2K: C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC Windows 98: C:\WINDOWS Open the file in Notepad. Cut the following from this post and paste it to the end of the file. 127.0.0.1 amch.questionmarket.com 127.0.0.1 a820.g.akamai.net 127.0.0.1 iv.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 i.ivillage.com 127.0.0.1 m.2mdn.net 127.0.0.1 tste.ivillage.com 127.0.0.1 img-cdn.mediaplex.com 127.0.0.1 ads.vmirror.com 127.0.0.1 cmhtml.ivillage.overture.com 127.0.0.1 ads.pointroll.com 127.0.0.1 xml.ivillage.overture.com 127.0.0.1 cmls.overture.com 127.0.0.1 cm.ivillage.overture.com Close and re-open your browser and all the ads will be gone. Unfortunately, iVillage may in the future buy ads from a new source. In this event the new ad source will have to be added to the list. " o

I'm running Firefox on a Mac, and agree that turning Java on and off would be a pain. For AdBlockPlus, I think the major relevant filters for GardenWeb are: http://iv/doubleclick.net/* intellitxt.com^ There are a few others that go after specific ads like the Angie's List popup, and some Google ad things. The * is a wild card where any URL that starts with that string gets blocked. That may be what they mean by a pattern. There isn't one source of ads that blocks them all, but at least 95% are coming from a small number of sources. Once you get those, the onesies and twosies are easy.