As well as being on the side, there are also several search engine ads placed at the top of the main result list, forcing you to scan past them to read the first organic result. They're also coloured, which draws your eye to them.

But my main thrust was that even if they're out of the way, they're still ads with agendas to relieve you of your cash.

Search engines should provide "view all relevant ads" link that even those using ad-blockers can see. This would allow such people to see what's on offer when they are in a buying mode, without having to disable their blockers, refresh and page to see a good selection of ads, then re-enable their blockers.

Here's the alternative to advertising on which I've been working. Advantages: no cost to users, publishers earn money from their content rather than the stuff around it, and allows monetization of unbiased content (that unlike ads tries to tell the whole truth).

Yes, this is an ad. But because it's on-topic and in some way solicited, I think it's acceptable, and shouldn't be equated to something intrusive.

While such search engine ads are less of a problem because they're often relevant to both your current motivation (finding things) and your topic of interest, they're still presenting you with information that's biased both in presentation (pay for prominence) and content (spin), as well as being distracting when you're not in a buying or curious mode. Sure, organic results aren't perfect, with SEO manipulating rankings, and company websites that spin natively. But at least you've got a chance of seeing some independent sources of advice. So I can understand those who block search engine ads.

Thanks for posting those stats. An interesting dip in the 60s (and more no-opinions). Was this the result of the general cultural liberation, before increased crime hardened people's attitudes, then before decreased crime and a spate of wrong convictions started bringing it down again?

Massachusetts is more liberal than the US average, meaning that only one-in three support death sentences (one-in-four in Boston). Even fewer support it in this case.

And those who are opposed to the death penalty aren't allowed on capital crime juries. One reason to oppose the death penalty is that it's only decided by the dwindling number of people willing to impose it, who will increasingly fail to collectively represent the average citizen.

Yeah, no wonder US start-up culture seems to be restricted to the young. Government health insurance, or at least a system where the best protection from price gouging and illness isn't to be in the womb of large company, would make US entrepreneurship even more awesome than it already is.

That's surprising. You'd think that market forces would lead insurance companies to discriminate on every relevant factor that they're legally allowed to take into account, as long as the burden of obtaining that information didn't outweigh the advantages.

In Australia, motor property insurers base their premiums on just about anything, including the factors you mentioned. However health and motor 3rd-party injury insurance providers are forced to "community rate" many factors to avoid otherwise nasty discrimination.

Here in Australia, private health insurance premiums are allowed to increase according to the age at which the person joined the fund, penalising people who only join (to supplement the universal back-up) in old age when 90% of health spending occurs. It seems fair.

The difference with the US is that health insurance isn't associated with employers — you buy your own. This is why you get the age discrimination you mention.

The downside of this is that the publisher then needs to have direct contact with advertisers, which may influence their editorial unless they have old-school Chinese wall policies, not strong in new-media players.

Yes, I'd say what will happen is that ad blockers will end up making page scripts see an unaltered shadow DOM, but display the page with ads removed.

But this won't work with (closed) apps, which are increasingly squeezing out the (open) Web.

The dichotomy in Facebook posts I mentioned above has communist parallels — denunciations, painted-on smiles, and nothing in between. Do you see a similarity?

This need to be too nice is also true of non-anonymous forums like Facebook, where there's a split between anodyne comments and over-the-top complaints. The former comes about because no-one wants to be accused of being a hater or a whinger, and wants to maximize their "likes", so nearly all comments are content-free sunshine and roses. But once the target is a corporation or a prominent person who may have done something wrong, everyone smugly gangs up and lets loose. The middle path of polite and measured criticism is lost, which is where the meat is in any discussion.

Amazon probably won't (initially) force service suppliers to be exclusive to Amazon, though they could offer a fee reduction for those who do.

What Amazon are doing however is forcing any offer on Amazon to be no worse than any other offer, so providers can't charge Amazon customers more to cover the fees. Providers must yield some of their margin to Amazon but hope to make it up through greater volume.

Interesting. At least they dealt early with the "don't be evil" question.

Still it indicates Jobs' fondness of using price appearance as a marketing tool.

The $10,000 model? That's the first Apple price I've seen without a "9". Pricing of non-mass-market luxury products is usually more classy, which is why I think they're tainting their mainline products with such pricing.

Wall-to-wall "9" pricing is unusual in tech companies, though Apple are encouraging a trend. It's more common in discount retailers.

At least on me, such pricing doesn't have the intended effect of reducing the headline digit by one and making it seem like prices have been precisely cut to the bone. Instead they make prices seem more what-the-market-will-bear than cost-plus.