Android has a fantastic auth system. The problem is that it's somewhat complex and difficult to find documentation. Google should probably take this as a sign that they need to provide some new fantastic tutorials on how to do it.

Because the mergers make them lots of money in the short term.

No. That would kill Netflix. They should create a long term department that would focus on bug/security fixes for Windows 7 with no new improvements. They should wind down all .Net work and move over to providing the best tools for open source development. And they should begin work on a new OS with no backwards compatibility requirements.

I occasionally see this if a movie is only out on DVD when I add it to my queue and then a BluRay version comes out later. Otherwise, I pretty much always get the BluRay version.

I should say that this is in direct contrast to say - parks or roads - which neighborhoods put in all the time and then deed over to the city, thus getting what they want by paying for it directly.

I don't know that it is that hard. I know that a lot of property owner's feel frustrated that there is no way to get public transit to their areas. It's currently just dictated by need. There's no way to say. "Hey our neighborhood's cool. We'd like to attract more business and high end dense housing by putting in some transit via higher taxes." There's no way to empower people to actually make a decision to raise their taxes knowing it will raise their property values. It would be very interesting to see how property owners would stack up vs. business owners vis a vie a light rail line down the center of South Congress. I think the property owners might be much more in favor, than the business owners were (especially when you consider how they feel about parking on their streets).

"Hazy Shade of Winter". Either Bangles or Simon and Garfunkel editions. Which is technically a winter song, but it always makes me think of the end of fall when most of the beauty is gone.