Yes, as long as they fit in the box (so you're likely limited to 1 kitten), and as long as they're not water cooled kittens.

From what I hear, death threats are quite normal in the video games industry. Certainly the vitriol flies on gaming forums (can't imagine how busy the moderators for official game forums must be). This article seems to boil down to "but women get rape threats too". OK, sure, men don't often get those, fair point. But in an industry thick with death threats, how many developers or commentators have actually been lynched by angry fans since the beginning of time? Roughly zero? It's not rational to actually be creeped out or worried about this stuff.

For goodness sake, Jack Thompson is still alive and well. If any of these threats of violence could be taken seriously, he'd be the first casualty. Think you're more hated than that guy?

I have 100 discs in my Netflix queue that aren't available on streaming. Go through about 6 a week, and have for years (I don't have cable). Only about 10% or what I watch can be streamed. And sadly the count of "very long wait" is up to 20 now, and climbing.

For the most part, it's only recent (but not too recent) content that's streamable. Heck, you can't even stream The Wire, and that's not that old. You can't stream any of the pre-reboot Dr Who episodes, and I could add another 100 discs to my queue just for Dr Who (does the BBC have these streaming yet?)

"Ownership of the means of production" is just a high-falutin' Marxist way of saying property rights. If I'm some peasant in a feudal society, the "means of production" boils down to my hoe and the patch of dirt where I grow vegetables.

Property "rights" in feudal societies generally boils down me keeping what little I have mainly because its of so little value nobody has bothered expending any effort to take it from me, not because I manage to maintain physical possession of it. It stays in my possession not because of any rights I have, only because entropy has a tendency to keep objects at rest where they are.

The fact that my liege can take anything away from my anytime he wants to creates an uncertainty of possession and is a major disincentive to productivity -- why work beyond a subsistence level if you have no idea (or every idea) when it will be taken away from me.

If there were an alternative to Netflix for disc shipment, I'd switch today. I might pay double, certainly 50% more, for the breadth of selection Netflix once had, if catalog growth continued, stuff got upgraded to BluRay, and so on.

But there's no such animal. Kids these days are all about streaming. Netflix's model of "delayed gratification" for TV watching was a miracle in the first place. I'm amazed it's lasted as long as it has.

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Netflix streaming is nearly-worthless - there's just no content.

Hulu streaming is totally worthless garbage. Fuck commercials.

Amazon has the wrong model. PPV isn't where it's at.

There's no question Netflix is gradually ending their disc service (selection is falling rapidly), and that really sucks. The ~$1.50 price to watch a disc was right for me, and it's sad to see it die. There's so very much great stuff from the 20th century that seems doomed to vanish with the death of physical media (and the complete and utter failure of government and the legal system when it comes to streaming and licensing).

At this point, I can only hope good rips of everything are around somewhere and being archived by hobbyists, awaiting some fix to copyright law. (Torrents may be plentiful for new stuff, but new stuff is easily available in legal ways for those who aren't broke anyhow. Torrents for last-century works are a different story).

I'm honestly surprised we don't hear a few managers getting offed now and then.

My trust in the 2nd was premature, it seems...

Dear Sir/Madam,

We found out that from your IP address someone downloaded our stuff. You may now either admit guilt and pay $inconvenient_sum or spend the next 10ish years in court in a legal battle against a company with more funds than dear God himself over $ridiculous_sum. You'll probably win the suit, but for sure it will cost you more than $inconvenient_sum, and you can bet your ass that if you dared to try getting it back from us, we'll drag it out 'til the red guy from the basement complains about heating problems or you're finally totally broke.

It is of course entirely your choice.

Of course you can! It's even easy.

For-sale content of course cannot compete on price with free stuff. That's a given. But there are two areas where you can very easily compete with it: Convenience and quality.

Of course, if you're like the content industry and artificially lower both for the sake of "fighting piracy", you only shoot your own foot.

That's just the tip of the ice cube.

Imagine you're living in a country where movies are dubbed. Dubbed BADLY, I should probably add. I would PAY to get movies that run on public TV if I could only watch them without the atrocious dubbing!

And don't think that buying the DVD would solve that problem. Because of course you can ONLY get the dubbed version, while importing any media is of course outlawed. I tried to ask some politicians around here why it's ok for companies to manufacture abroad and import them for zilch while it's not ok for me to buy DVDs abroad. So far no sensible answer...

Personally, I'd consider a token ring much cooler.

We teach our kids in preschool that they should share, and then we punish them for it.

Talk 'bout mixed messages...