...how they even *found* numbers in the Antarctic. It's not like you can set up a phone line down there, and I can't imagine many people would have occasion to call the Antarctic.

Well crap, man. It reminds me about the absolute key catch that all those food companies intentionally keep quiet about where they will keep you fed as long as you pay them money by buying their food and eating it.

When you are caught in it, it's the perfect extortion trap: Stop giving us money, and you DIE!

Yeah, it's like every single other industry or vaccine—you pay them for it, and they feed you or keep you from getting a certain disease. That's just how these things work.

There isn't unlimited supply, though, due to a fairly high barrier for entry. Your average indie game developer doesn't have the several million dollars it takes to make the next CoD4, nor does the indie record company have the multi-million-dollar recording studio, hundreds over and highly-paid audio engineers that help crank out the next big musical hit. And neither of them can afford a multi-million-dollar ad campaign to make it popular. It's all economies of scale—not everyone can just go out and make something that will sell millions of copies.

If you root the VM, you should just be able to get through to the host, though.
If it's set up well that won't happen, but I don't see how someone with root on the VM would be unable to touch the host.