There’s no doubt in my mind that ad banner networks are the most evil things on the Internet. Not only are companies like DoubleClick and Imgis trying to track our surfing habits and sell them to the highest bidder, but the actual ads are a pox on the Web sites on which they appear. The ad banner companies don’t understand the level of scalability that they need. I can’t count the number of times that a page has failed to load not because the browser couldn’t download the content I wanted to see, but because the ad banner company’s server was bogged down and couldn’t spit out an ad I don’t care about. Pathetic.