Natalie Portman was great in "Closer" and "Black Swan", of the those you group her with, she's probably the best actress.

I don't think Scarlett is all that good, her initial success in "Lost in Translation" seems like a fluke. But she's mostly managed to turn herself into an action babe, so I'd guess she's realized that drama isn't her thing.

Mila Kunis, good or bad, is something of a curiosity. She was a sitcom bimbo but has had a turn of fairly decent acting with Portman in "Black Swan" but then took a turn for more mundane stuff.

Megan Fox is just a pretty face. Jennifer Lawrence is pretty good, but her naive response to the leaking of her nude photos was tedious.

Meryl Streep is good, but after a while she kind of plays Meryl Streep or at least its hard to not see her as Meryl Streep Playing Her Character.

Helen Mirren is great, but was she always great or did she become great after "Elizabeth I" late in her career? It's hard to think of anything memorable in her career prior to "Cook, the Thief.." and her turn on the cop drama "Prime Suspect".

I've found that you generally need massive amounts of power to paralyze a turkey.

At least a few hundred Watts.

More if you want the center at an edible 160F by dinnertime.

...blames his opponents, the officer corps, or some expatriate mullah hiding in America for this?

Or pays his cronies billions to "fix" the grid?

I enabled MSE in Firefox in the previous version, and the HTML5 YT videos seemed to work fine except 1080/60p videos, which stuttered a lot. As of v37, that seems to have also been fixed. YMMV, but it's A-OK for me.

It may not be on by default, and it may be 'incomplete', but I turned that on in Firefox some time ago and can view HTML5 YT videos in resolutions greater than 720p. It's certainly good enough for now (though I don't know why it's not on by default).

...then you're just going to be buttfucked by the ones who get up to mischief before they resign. You should have the ability built-in to recover from whatever they do, whenever they do it, because the worst damage is done by the insider you never suspect.

I'm generally in favor of the idea of that once someone submits a resignation, you might as well just tell them they don't need to come in. They can't get anything meaningful done in two weeks anyway and if you "need" them to explain what they do/project status/etc, then you're doing it wrong anyway and you won't find two weeks nearly enough time to get caught up.

Plus, what kind of leverage do you hold over someone who quit and has a job, anyway? Short of criminal behavior, you've got none. I've known a couple of managers at companies I worked at who were total assholes to employees who left, demanding extra work, tons of documentation, etc. It baffled me why the employees put up with it and knowing one manager in particular, I'm sure her employees hated her anyway and fucked up the work she made them do anyway. I know I heard rumors of shredded original billing materials and other documentation.

If you're desperate for a resignees information and talents, the best choice is to offer them a consultancy contract for real money. I think this gets people's respect, real quick. It shows you actually value their knowledge and skills (versus some bullshit words) and it buys you some leverage, since no work == no pay. But it has to be real money and guaranteed, "we might want you back for something later..." is no more believable than "let's have sex tomorrow instead." Tomorrow never comes.

The notion that there is some kind of Gentleman's Rules surrounding employment is over. Everyone knows they can be axed at the drop of a hat and most people feel no loyalty to their employer (or shouldn't, anyway) and could walk tomorrow. You have to be prepared now, not when they leave.

Clearly I don't understand capitalism.

Clearly. Geoblocking is at least partially about market segmentation. The EU is so large that it has extremely major disparities in wealth between its member nations. Consider the difference between Sweden and Romania. If you have a movie and charge a single price to stream it across the entire EU then:

a) Some people will find it incredibly cheap and others will find it still too expensive, just pushing them back towards piracy.

b) You end up having to deal with the tax systems of every single EU country anyway due to the retarded VAT changes they introduced this year, so it doesn't help simplify your business at all, and you theoretically aren't allowed to opt out of serving particular regions due to their horrible paperwork requirements, so being able to geoblock unprofitably complicated regions whilst claiming you have some other reason is quite attractive.

but why should a minority of us suffer due to a majority that aren't capable to make their own choices?

How is that not true of pretty much anything that has risk/danger associated with it which is ameliorated by prudence and caution?

Drugs: Many people are capable of using drugs sanely without risking themselves or other people, but because some minority shows absolutely no control we have massive controls on drugs.

Weapons: Many people are perfectly capable of safely owning even very destructive weapons without hurting themselves or others. But because some minority of people do batshit crazy things with weapons, we have a lot of controls on gun ownership and extreme controls on certain types of guns (automatic weapons, etc).

The list is endless. A minority of people are stupid, lack self control and any kind of prudence so we implement controls which address the lowest common denominator, occasionally allowing some people to jump through hoops to obtain slightly more access to something, but often with another set of draconian controls applied.