You're contradicting yourself there.

That's a huge problem right there. When you only use negative motivation (i.e., you do something wrong - you get something taken away from you), you reinforce the "if I don't do anything, I can't do anything wrong" behavior. Positive motivation is important to make kids actually try to succeed, instead of just trying to avoid failure.

New Acer DDD: the first laptop with 3 Ds!

Now that's a weird question to ask. Who needs entertainment anyway? You don't *need* it, you *want* it.

WoW (or generally a game designed to be addictive) makes you spend extra time to keep it entertaining. Other forms of entertainment aren't necessarily designed that way and hence don't require you to sink time into them to keep them entertaining.

Besides, I wasn't trying to justify him spending whatever time he's spending the way he likes to spend it. I was pointing out the difference between drugs and games. Some people see the world black and white and refuse to acknowledge everything in between.

What happens if the old machine died? You have to download all of your games all over again. With physical media you can easily install at your leisure.

If you prefer physical media, you can burn it yourself: Using the Steam Backup Feature

This is an incredible example.

Usually anonymity is associated with the lack of responsibility, but in this example, when people are voting, they know they'll be stuck with their choice for several years. What they experience is sort of collective responsibility: on one hand they're anonymous, on the other hand, they are collectively responsible for their actions (or inaction), even though they are individually anonymous.