I live in Wisconsin too, and my house is worth more than double that and my property tax is $6500 a year. My state income tax doesn't come anywhere near my federal income tax. Even the example property tax bill on the Wisconsin Department of Revenue FAQ site shows a $367,000 home/property paying $5741. http://www.revenue.wi.gov/faqs/index-pt.html State sales tax is 5%, and some counties tack on another .5%. Highest counties in the state tack on .6% for a maximum sales tax of 5.6%. http://www.revenue.wi.gov/faqs/pcs/taxrates.html#txrate2 So yeah, I'm guessing you are exaggerating a wee bit.

I guess it is too much to ask to just tap on the brake pedal to turn off the cruise control if the cruise control does something unexpected. Yes, it is a bug. Yes, Toyota needs to fix it. Not so sure cruise control is such a great idea at 80+ mph anyways if a driver is concerned about safety.

Ummm... You are implying that somebody actually does take him seriously. We are well beyond that now...

Great, so now my $3500 HDTV that I bought only two years ago won't be able to display HD DVD content in its full resolution. Glad I was an early adopter on this... It is bad enough that my set has Firewire jacks on it that nobody makes hardware for, now my component 1080i jacks are useless too.

I guess I'll just either watch movies for pennies on HBO-HD or Cinemax-HD, and wait until someone makes a nice capture card that'll allow capture off component video 1080i and build a nice HTPC box to store HD movies off cable.

There's always going to be a workaround, but it seems that the content creators don't want me to buy their content. Not only that, but the hardware folks don't want me to buy their hardware since it'll down-res on my display.

Where's the upside for the consumer in all this crap?

Luckily today's movies suck anyways, so by saving my money I'm better off without all this mess.