This is an important feature a failed read can genuinely occur if a temporary file has been removed or if you try backing up a sysetm file in /proc /sys (which you shouldn't really anyway).
The way to fix this is the following switch:
--ignore-failed-read
Example:
sudo tar --ignore-failed-read -czvf mycomputer-backup.tar.gz --exclude=/home/otheruser/* --exclude=/proc/* --e........
I can't tell if it's Flash or Javascript that they were using, but it basically caused my sysetm to lockup until I closed that one page. Is this proof enough that Wal-mart is evil?:)
I've never seen that before, it's weird how certain things mask themselves as high CPU usage with Xorg, unless it is some kind of weird Xorg problem but I believe it's more of a Flash/Javascript issue from Firefox in Wal-mart's evil scripting.........