I doubt that. From what I know Chrome has no skinning support. The only thing extensions can do is to add button/icon next to/into address bar. So unless Google decides otherwise something like this won't be possible.
A great video with a lot of exciting ideas (even if they're articulated somewhat stormily at times). This is definitely a viable advertising platform--one that makes good use of the attractive qualities of capitalism, by inspiring competition and desire for collection within consumers, trading exposure--and (hopefully) real human currency--for fabricated (yet, if implemented correctly, completely desirable) points.
nickpp's point is off the mark. Human currency carries with it an unfortunate (but absolutely and obviously necessary) burden of seriousness. If you spend it foolishly, there's a chance you'll "Game Over"--and (as my mom always used to tell me) there's no reset button in real life, sorry. Implementing a system where individuals apply a certain (limited) extent of value to a new, less dire, capitalistic system, is a win-win for everyone involved.
Blow all of your points on a retinal-based bar-code scanner that barely works? Oh well, at least you can still make rent.
Actually, the current efforts with Universal Health Care and general Social Security in developed countries are trying to make sure there is no "Game Over".
And as for boring - I guess it depends on the player. Personally I find video games incredibly unfulfilling. Lots of fun while playing but leaving an empty feeling afterward, of time completely wasted. While real life is AWESOME! Everything I do and create improves my life and that of the people around me.
I personally enjoyed the articles bombastic formatting and snarky tone, but I'm not sure the author says much of anything. The fact is, Dave's second assertion (that e-commerce/subscriptions is the new default startup business model) isn't based on more than speculation. He makes this second assertion with great conviction ("Get Dem Bitches to PAY You, G.") and I almost want to believe him--until I remember that most of both the media and content industries are still fumbling with whether or not selling subscriptions /digital content is a worthwhile business endeavor.
Also, the idea that a service's success hinges on a user's ability to remember a password is preposterous. Seems as if it could be somewhat of an obstacle when a service is first launched (Dave's early Paypal), but come on. Passwords have become commonplace, and for the most part--especially when money's involved--people don't seem to forget them. They may have when e-commerce was in its absolute infancy, but with the rise of ebay, Paypal, online banking services the password has garnered undeniable legitimacy among the majority of people. I have no data to back this up, but this isn't too outrageous a claim. Right?
>> Paypal, online banking services the password has garnered undeniable legitimacy among the majority of people.
>>I have no data to back this up, but this isn't too outrageous a claim. Right?
nope, sorry you're wrong & yes you have no data to back this up. even with "100's of millions of account", it's likely PayPal has never been used by a large % of internet users -- perhaps even a majority -- and it's certainly not used frequently (ie, >1x / month) by more than tens of millions of users. even without me being there for 5 years i'm pretty sure any recent eBay quarterly stmt will back me up on that (note: accts != users != frequent users).
trust me: "the forgotten password problem" is STILL a huge issue for PayPal today, as it is with almost every large site... even one as frequent as PayPal (or Amazon).
if you think i'm mistaken, i suggest you talk to any major tech blog site that has switched to using Facebook Connect or Twitter oAuth for comment authentication, and the subsequent increase in comment activity.
it's not too much of an extrapolation to draw a similar conclusion around 3rd-party auth integrated with payments (which is what PayPal has been doing for 10 years).
Socialism has killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century.
I disagree completely. Implementing socialism in disenfranchised states is by far a more streamlined process than implementing any brand of capitalism. What killed "hundreds of millions of people" was the coupling of fragile citizenries with malicious and self-serving leaders, not the establishment of socialism. I see correlation, but no causation, and I find hasty dismissal of socialism as the "disproved and damned" counterpart of capitalism as completely flawed--especially in a society where the two have been working together (I'd say successfully) for quite some time.
This is the crux. Socialism/communism as implemented bears little resemblance to the utopian vision, instead of utopia the result is human tragedy on a grand scale. This has happened so many times that it's unlikely to be mere accidental correlation (Stalinist USSR, communist Eastern Europe, China under Mao, North Korea, Cuba under Castro, Myanmar under the Junta, etc.)
And yet, because the vision and practice differ so much this provides a ready excuse for every new generation of socialist utopians to put forward the theory that those historical examples were not really, truly faithful implementations of socialism/communism. Rather than the more realistic theory that utopian socialism is impractical and unstable, and when attempted to be implemented it inherently degrades into the totalitarian examples we've seen so many times from history.
My contention is only that this line of reasoning is dangerous and harmful, and that socialist ideas deserve far more skepticism in public debate than they typically receive.
The reigning tag-team champions of Democracy and Capitalism take human nature into account. They are both designed around the idea that people are self-interested. They do not function in spite of selfishness and greed. They function with it.
Unfortunately, no system is perfect, and any system can be gamed. Today, we see that this is true for Democracy and Capitalism as well.
Capitalism also bears little resemblance to its utopian vision. Perhaps the problem is following these as ideology instead of simply seeing these "models" as tools. National Parks and vast stores of natural resource leverage a communist model, Health insurance (really any insurance) leverage a social model, Growth, speculative enterprise leverage capital models. I see no reason why we cannot choose the right tools for each job.
It's far more illustrative to debunk (or in this case, merely explain) a single case--which Nate points out is what "the conservatives are mainly zeroing in on"--than to address all "hundreds or thousands of e-mails and documents." I'm sure Nate COULD have done so, and probably to the same effect, but what explanatory purpose would that serve?
