Microsoft plans to buy Massive Inc. for $300 million +/- $100 million. They do ad placements in video games. More in the Wall Street Journal. In-game ads are expected to triple from $56 million last year to $160 million this year and be $700 million by 2010.

I'm still waiting for someone, anyone to get the idea that ads are stealing your life. You've got just so many thoughts, just so many feelings to experience, a finite number of ideas to create in this world. Then piff!

Yet the vast majority of people have no objection to having their attention forcibly directed from what they could be thinking of to what someone else wants them to think, because it might save them some money or they're thoughts are so utterly mundane and facile that even someone selling soap flakes or toilet paper is considered a welcome diversion. I can only assume that such people are suffering from delusions of immortality.

Which is why I shutter when I think of the notion of videogame ads and the kids who will not have the sense of their own worth as thinkers to object to them.

K, you are already shuttering instead of shuddering. Life is a camera. Do you trust the directors to give you a better experience sans advertising?

I was wondering why that comment just didn't seem to click...