Many of us in the Autism community (I'm Dx as Aspergers not too long ago) have been saying since the beginning that it was fraudulent as I've read time and time again that it was a false claim. I've always used a line: "it was a doctor that worked for a lawyer that sued pharmaceutical companies that started it" to explain the whole immunization / Autism fallacy.

Of course the majority of the public still believes that you can catch "a human virus" from a computer virus. And some even believe that rainbows in sprinkler water is proof of pollution.

This is a common attitude towards PWDs (People With Disabilities - like me). Complaints should be about a government that won't provide assistance to businesses (beyond the petty amounts that DO exist like wage reduction assistance I qualify for, etc.) and the public that thinks that no tax money should go to assist businesses and others regarding disability access issues.

If people got what they wanted, all PWDs would be unemployed (instead of the 80% unemployment rate for deaf / hard of hearing, 60% average for all PWDs), homeless, jailed, locked up somewhere else, or just killed off.

Progressive society is about fighting such prejudice and give all people nearly equal opportunities to pursue what is generically call "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) instead of limiting who can to a precious few.

As noted in the article linked by beetle496 there is plenty of closed captioning like devices out there and the primary one used is rear window captioning: a device that reflects a text display that is in the back of the theater.

Open captioning is rare and usually for showings mainly targeted for the Deaf community.

So don't worry, no one is going to shove open captioning down anyone's throat! ;-)

You know your old when you remember "Where's the Beef?".

Anyway, I differ from LWATCDR in that I think that violence on TV & movies is actually far worse and more influential of a person. What's on TV & movies is so realistic plus it involves actual people doing the stunts rather than a bunch of pixels running around a screen. Computer games are just so fake it's very difficult to find any connection to real world violence as easily. All I see when I play is a bunch of colored pixels resembling things and people and until we reach a reality threshold point (I think that's decades away for the average computer & video game, but that's my guess).

But I had a thought earlier today (remembering what I'm sure I heard somewhere) that violent games are a piece of the puzzle of telling when someone is going to go "Columbine" on society (no offense intended Colorado et al). An obsession with playing violent video games AND, and I cannot emphasis the 'and' enough, other things like using guns in a non safe fashion (like shooting BB guns at animals) plus loads of other psychological indicators adding up to violent tendencies that then indicate a serious need for counseling and other help or treatment prevention of trouble with the person.

The problem is that most people focus on a single item as the blame for a given problem and miss out on all the pieces necessary to tell what is really going on.

But instead of using a violent video game obsession as a small piece of the evaluation of the person they miss out on determining whether a person is going to commit a serious act of violence they obsess with it, and other "blame of the moment" things, and don't see who is really going to be violent and who is just playing a computer game.

It's like a variation of the crude example I use that the person like a parent of a child that is obsessed with using violent video games, and not much else in this example, says that their game obsessed child is going to be violent whereas their other child that almost never plays a violent game but does have other indicative obsessions of violence goes out and commits serious acts of violence with the parent saying "he did that? He was never violent...".

They just don't get it. Get rid of the tool to evaluate the person and place false blame. The tax is dumb. I think it should be used to educate the politicians on how to NOT place false blame and do the right thing.

Um, BTW, it's "ludicrous speed"...

Anyway, in defense of a little bit about the freebee's outrage:

1. the government some decades ago gave land away for free to homesteaders, after having registered as an owner the property the owners would start to have rights though they (except a registration fee?) got the land for free from the government.

2. most of the free hosting sites post (obnoxious) advertising on the 'free' hosted web page(s) so the site is generating an income as a sort of payment of "rent", per the metaphor, so there is a sort of "right" involved, but it's still Caveat Emptore.

But I'm not whining at all but grinning. I've never trusted those free sites and keep a backup of all of them (yea, more than one!) locally. So it's no big whoop to me.

I do think that as a consumer there should be a right (and especially for businesses) for PAID hosting to have a mandatory 60 day period for "evictions" allowing a person to change hosts and maybe an additional 90 days for a forwarding link or service (paid by the host).

Yea! I finally found comments with someone talking about the railroad side of the equation. It was good reading about the SUV opinions but not what was asked / suggested.

Detroit building RR equipment? Not likely to happen (EMD* was the exception). Bad management doesn't build railway equipment well. Since the customer is the railroads who are (snigger) more intelligent and pickier buyers than us citizens who will take crap there would be no buyer for GM/Chrysler/Ford railway equipment NOT done by EMD or GE. Yea, I'm driving a falling apart '86 Chrysler Clunker. ;-)

*GM BTW used to own EMD (Electro Motive Division), a loco builder. I had missed out on it or forgot but I just looked it up and found out that the dumb*** GM sold of that division in 2005!

But that doesn't mean Detroit can get into railway equipment manufacturing. The assembly of locomotives and railcars is radically different and would require an insane amount of money to rebuild the buildings or build new ones to do railway equipment that most likely wouldn't sell well due to the anti-rail climate in the U.S. A Chrysler equivalent of an AC4400 engine? Who'd buy it? ;-)

And starting from scratch building complex and radically different equipment from the automobile (rolling stock or loco) would be nightmarishly impossible as well and can fail easily. Just look at Colorado Railcar.

Right now the railroads are parking a massive amount of locomotives not because they are being replaced but more likely because of slowing need. And there is a horrendous amount of anti-rail opinion out there. As an example right now there is a lot of anger about talk of opening back up to normal use ("hundreds of trains a day", yea right was more like a dozen at most and a long way down the road after fixing up the track) of a rail line near where I live! The line was never abandoned but everyone was stupid enough to think it was or believe the real estate agents so their angry. And there was a big legal fight in a nearby county to stop the rail line there from being rebuilt and put back into operation for a commute line.

I just don't think it will happen in many, many decades. A lot of people are making excuses about how the rail lines would fail (passenger or otherwise) or other reasons to keep it from happening. I was very surprised the high speed rail initiative here in California passed! And barely the BART extension to San Jose.

And worse for the most part the government doesn't subsidize the tracks like they do with freeways. The rail lines own the tracks and you'd hear a horrible complaining noise from the public about using tax dollars to build or buy rail lines. Let alone equipment.

The fight and complaints about Amtrak is a good example of the problems of passenger service. Mass transit is a bad word in the United States.

Almost makes me want to move to Switzerland.

Oh come on! MOST companies are like this with most customers. Even those with 'good' service have this happen occasionally too. And get away with it.

"All" MBA's are 'taught' that customer support is a low priority. So is my field: QA (software).

Yea, I'm no fan of Palm either. Their handling of the lawsuit replacement of the ridiculous defect of my antique M125 didn't help my feelings towards them.

I wish PDA's weren't "dying" as I hate cell phones and have no use for them with my hearing problems and lack of TDD/TTY support.

Um, not the computer TTY, it's the name now used commonly for the text telephone. And I hate thumb keyboards and the resulting thumb injuries on the Blackberrys. ;-)