So the other day I was complaining about movie ads spontaneously playing on my pc.
Well, I had an epiphany tonight -- I thought of a new google keyword to describe the problem: 'audio spam'.
This quickly led me to a long threaded forum discussion on exactly the problem I was having.
Turns out that AOL IM is forcing these stupid ads at me. There were several solutions:
Get rid of AOL IM
I would, except how would I keep in touch with all my cherished Arsdigita Alumni?
Switch to another IM Clien that supports AIM
Ugh. More gross software.
Run a patch from an .ru domain that promised to strip out the behavior
Have you seen the goatse man?
Delete some suspect files from the filesystem and ViewMedia from the applications
Further reading suggested the AOL would heal itself and replace these files
Block the servers feeding the spam
This was the tidiest idea i'd seen, and that's what I did, adding the following addresses to my HOSTS file
For good order's sake, I ran "ipconfig /flushdns" so that the blocking would start immedaitely.
For the record, I am running AOL IM Version 5.2.3292 on WinXP Professional.
Adding those four addresses to my HOSTS files completely cured the problem with AOL IM movie audio spam.