Weird tastes? Just since the beginning of the year I have watched (by streaming) the following: Cheers, The Office, Breaking Bad, Psych, Burn Notice, Frasier, Archer, several not-very-obscure British series (Sherlock, etc...), and perhaps a dozen mainstream (made actual money when theatrically released) movies, Hunger Games and MI:4 included. I see nothing "weird" in that list. Perhaps you need to revisit Netflix.com.

The "savings on warehouse and postage" they "keep for themselves" is put towards the enormous bandwidth that this article is about, plus some profit that companies are supposed to make for their shareholders.

If you're getting internet from Comcast, you already get the OTA channels unencrypted for free - just plug in the coax to any tuner.

With streaming, you're paying for instant access. Yes, you can get any DVD from them for $8 a month, and you have to wait, at minimum, two days after you select your title, to arrive. Then you have to return it before they'll ship another. That's a big inconvenience compared to streaming. I also am on the DVD plan, but I consider it a nice addition to streaming, not the main draw. If you were just on the $8 DVD plan, you could, at most, watch about 40 hours a month (a four hour TV disc every three days). With streaming, you can watch a significant portion of their catalog 24/7 all month. The value there is enormous.

$8 is less than the cost of a matinee movie, and that's too much to pay monthly for potentially thousands of hours of video?

As the saying goes, "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." These individuals are not "taking the law into their own hands". They are taking their lives into their own hands.

And it is not the police's job to protect citizens. See Warren v. District of Columbia

Spurious: Not being what it purports to be; false or fake: "spurious claims".

There is nothing false about their claim that you overstayed the three hours. As I said above, 80 pounds is certainly an excessive charge for 15 minutes of parking, but it is in no way a spurious claim. If you had parked there for 2.5 hours and the company claimed you were there for 3.25, then that would be a spurious claim.

To relate it to the main topic, $7500 is too much of a fine for the offense, but if the person did download the movie illegally, then the fee/fine/penalty is unjust, not spurious.

The loss is revenue to the owner and/or operator. If the parking is "free" to you, then the cinema is likely subsidizing your parking, and that allows you to park for three hours for free (or perhaps the parking company just allows the first three hours for free hoping people will park longer so they can collect additional revenue). If you exceed this limit, then the cost of your parking is no longer covered, and someone should pay, whether or not you think it's fair. If you don't like those terms, park somewhere else or don't go. There is a cinema that I attend regularly with this exact policy: three hours free to me because the cinema pays the parking company for the first three hours. I exceed this limit sometimes (getting there early, 2.5+ hour movie, etc...) and I pay the overage of a few dollars when I leave. That's fair to me and should be to anyone who appreciates capitalism.

I don't think you know what "spurious" means. If you pay for three hours and stay 3:15, that's a legitimate overage. The amount "ticketed" may be excessive, but if you only are supposed to get three hours, pay more or leave before your time is up. Also, can private companies issue a ticket in the UK, or are you saying they just request that you pay more with a piece of paper?

1366x768 is not usable for any kind of serious work.

For me, the ads aren't really the problem on webpages any longer. It's the awful cluttered formatting. Every article I read lately has several breaks in the text for unrelated videos or headlines for other articles, and 1/4 to 1/3 of the right side of the page is just a mess of other crap I'm not interested in. Plus, multi-page articles that are only six or eight paragraphs to begin with, just to get more page impressions. That is a sure way to get me to never visit your site again. I'd really like a browser that just gives me the text that I want to read - I'll even take an old-school banner ad at the top if it gets rid of all of the other crap.

We all see what we want to see!

If we had the attitude of Mr. Cook in the U.S., it would save loads of tax dollars and businesses wouldn't have to move or cancel expansion plans nearly as often. It's like programs that help save lives. If one costs $10,000 per life saved, and another costs $500,000 per life saved, clearly we should forgo the latter and concentrate on the former. Unfortunately, people are too sympathetic for logic to take over.

I'm still trying to get "Donuts, Beer, and Hookers" made.

I actually made a website in the mid-90s based on this idea and dubbed it MovieGen - didn't expect to make money, just great fun. You could press a button, and it would reveal two random movies, like "Alien" meets "Liar Liar". I also added an option for a third, so you could have "Die Hard" meets "Gattaca" with a bit of "Tootsie". Great time-waster, and sadly some of the combinations have certainly been made into actual movies by now.

Every reasonable economist uses the "as a percentage of GDP" figure because it is by far the best indicator of government spending. For example, no one would compare FDR's actual numbers with Reagan's because the absolute dollar amounts are different due to inflation. In 1945 (I know there was a war to pay for, but that is irrelevant to this point), the GDP was $223 Billion and government spending was $118 Billion, which is well over 50%. 1984's numbers were $3,930 Trillion and $1,353 Trillion, which is about 33%. Now, who spent more in those individual years?

Reagan spent virtually the same percentage of GDP in his first year vs. Carter's last (33.72% vs. 34.73%) - I was slightly off in my original statement; the bar chart played tricks with my eyes, but 1.01% higher in eight years is pretty small. Ford's was higher if you count 1974, which may or may not be fair (3.77%). Carter's was less (0.28%). Bush 1 was higher (2.1% in four years). Clinton lowered it by 4.5%. Bush 2 increased it by 4.4% and Obama in two years has increased it by almost 4.7%

Your GP poster was indeed wrong and I stand by my statement.

Note that I would never be so naive as to give full credit or full blame to a President for spending. But it is interesting to note that the best combination of the last 30+ years was a Democrat in the White House and a Republican Congress.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1903_2010

"I'm done with this guy."

Why cut or "buck up a bit more cash"? Just keep spending at the current level.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/new-cbo-numbers-re-confirm-that-balancing-the-budget-is-simple-with-modest-fiscal-restraint/