at least he knows what's wrong with political discourse

I have to give Obama credit for having an amazingly keen understanding of what's wrong with political discourse in this country (and the role the media plays is amplifying it):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/29/transcript-of-president-o_n_442423.html

It was also nice to see support for a line-item veto, something that's been long overdue. I don't agree with either party on much of anything, but this was a pretty refreshing video to watch anyways.

steal this idea #2: pay to browse in silence?

So, this idea is for Google to steal as I don't think anyone else is positioned to do this. This came to me in a dream, which means it's either brilliant or completely stupid. The basic question here is:

Would you pay money to browse the web in silence (i.e. no ads, whether they be static text, animated, popping up or under, changing the size of your window, blinking, or worst of all, making sound)?

First off, I want to acknowledge that I know there is ad blocking software, but it's not 100% effective as there is always an arms race between ad blockers and advertisers. Plus, it can falsely block content you care about (this is especially true with popup ad blocking). And finally, some great sites are ad supported and it would be a shame to take their livelihoods away from them.

So, given there are enough people that answer YES to my question, here's what Google could do. Come up with some sort of monthly or yearly fee for "browsing in silence". When logged into your Google account, this would get you Google search results without the noise for starters, but the biggest part would be silent web browsing to every website you visit. So, how could that possibly work?

Well, Google could offer a program to pay websites (using some of the fee you are paying them) to deliver a silent version of their website. It would basically work exactly like AdWords (getting paid per "click thru") but you'd be getting paid for delivering a silent version of the website to one of Google's customers, who would get to the sites either by clicking on a Google search result or just visiting any site at all (this would require some sort of Google proxy server).

I think sites would be interested, because they have to know that people that go to the trouble of installing and maintaining ad-blocking software, with all the problems it can have, are really unlikely to ever click on ads, so here's a way to make money on people that would never click on your ads in the first place.

Would it work? Well, the biggest problem is the chicken and egg problem. The first user to sign up would basically only get ad blocking on Google's site itself and would have to wait for sites to start signing up. Google could potentially subsidize the service for starters, making it free to all Google account holders, while making "NoAdWords" payments to websites to get the ball rolling. I suspect the biggest and most important sites would jump on board the quickest, so potentially it wouldn't be long before a good percentage of the web were available in a silent version.

Google could also investigate ad blocking through their proxy server as a stopgap, but that would probably piss off their advertisers immensely! It would almost be a form of blackmail.

In any event, could it work?

wealth now, philanthropy later

Seeing this latest monument to Bill Gates' ego reminded me of one of the best sentences I've read that describes why I dislike everything he stands for:

"Wealth now, philanthropy later" is an inappropriate response to the challenges of the 21st century.

It has long bothered me that born-again philanthropists are lauded for their contributions for society, while ignoring all the suffering they caused and their complete ignorance of their effect on the planet until they got old enough to start being concerned about their legacy.

headline of the year

I know it's only January 5th, but this headline should win some sort of award:

New scanners break child porn laws

In just one headline, it summarizes how utterly fucked up both the UK and the US are.