But here's the thing: Let's assume the Harley dealership has a staircase up to the front door. While it is indeed possible that someone in a wheelchair might wish to purchase, oh I dunno, a Harley jacket or something from the Harley dealership, would they not be reasonably able to do so if an employee stepped outside to sell it to them?
Given how many handicapped people actually would visit that Harley dealership, versus the cost the dealership would need to pay to add a ramp or what not, it's doubly stupid that the ADA would insist on the ramp being built AND give a fat payday to an ambulance chaser for pointing it out.
As for evacuating the handicapped in an emergency, no building in the country has a wheelchair accessible fire stairwell. The emergency posters on BART all say that wheelchairs should be left behind and their occupants carried. And yet these situations pass muster.
My suspicious little mind begins to wonder if the ADA was deliberately written to be lawsuit-friendly
In fact, it was. Its proponents claim that ADA issues are civil rights issues, and that therefore incenting lawyers to file ADA suits empowers helpless plaintiffs that would otherwise have no recourse.
In actual practice, the ADA further marginalizes the handicapped, because they effectively become walking (or rolling) lawsuit machines.
Yup. My brother is an attorney in San Diego who has opposed Pinnock on more that one occasion. Pinnock's MO is to travel the country in his RV looking for things that are not absolutely ADA compliant and then immediately file a lawsuit. Pinnock has taken his disability and converted it into a whole new avenue for ambulance chasing.
The problem with the ADA is that unlike just about every other tort, the ADA does not provide for an opportunity to cure the defect before a potential damage award. That is, if I accidentally drop a sledgehammer on your foot, I can apologize and pay your medical bills and that's the end of it - you have nothing to sue for if you have been recompensed for your damages. Not so with the ADA. I can apologize, immediately bring in a carpenter to fix whatever is wrong and the plaintiff can still sue for statutory damages.
Tell that to all the business owners in Alpine, CA. In particular, consider debating the necessity of making a Harley Davidson dealership fully wheelchair accessible, among other things.
Well, the wife does want to go see Avatar 3D. If you're right, and the state of the art has improved enough that the flickering is no worse than 2D, that would be fine by me (particularly because the ticket price is the same).
I don't go to many 3D movies, but those I have gone to have been like old nickelodeons by comparison. Perhaps the state of the art has improved, but I'm not going to hold my breath because I'm obviously not the target market.
..you’re whining because it can’t magically make you see something that you can’t see anyway?
No. Not at all. I'm whining because they wind up making things worse than a normal 2d picture. Most of the techniques used wind up introducing too much flicker because I wind up seeing only half the frames.
How else do you expect one screen to show each eye a different image than to put some sort of filter in front of one or both of them? And how else do you expect to achieve that without glasses?
Me? I hate 3D because I have only one eye, and no 3D technique yet devised has not sucked in some way for us monocular folks.
Every technology I've seen so far for 3D television/movie presentation has been teh suck. Why? Because I have one eye. Alas, I am not disabled enough to leverage the ADA, but I'm not the litigious sort anyway. But every technique so far devised to have each eye see something different when looking at one screen has screwed up the case where only one view gets used. I either see both views simultaneously, which is like double vision for "close" objects, or I see things the wrong color (for the old red/green style), or the image flickers badly. My wife wants to see Avatar in 3D. I'll take her, because I love her and want her to be happy, but I'm not looking forward to it.
Mod parent up! I'll second his story. When I was a teenager, I went to the dentist thinking I was just getting a cleaning, when he started extracting a wisdom tooth! Not only did I not know he was going to do it, but by the time he started and I figured out what was up, there was no turning back. I had them knock me out to get the other three. Never again!
I'm sure there's probably some valid medical reason for doing this
General anesthesia is generally more hazardous than local. I recently had surgery. It wasn't open heart surgery, but nevertheless, they wanted to do exactly what this doctor did. In the end, they decided that in my particular case (because I take blood thinners), the epidural carried more risk than general anesthesia, so they knocked me out. But were it not for that, I would have had this same experience.
When it was described to me, it was not that I would be "awake" for it, but that I'd be rousable - unlike general anesthesia, where you are totally paralyzed and they have to breathe for you and that the only way to wake you up would be to undo the anesthesia. I was told that I would feel nothing, and be groggy enough that I'd probably nap through it, but - and I'm sure this is the major difference - I would breathe on my own and not be intubated.
The device is $150. IF you sign up for an unlimited minutes plan, they will give you a $100 mail-in rebate. The plan's pricing depends on which test market you are in, and whether or not you have AT&T DSL or U-Verse service. But in any event, an unlimited minutes plan is optional. You can just buy the box for $150 and use your plans minutes as normal. The purpose the box serves under those circumstances is merely improving your coverage.
The problem is that if the tax only applies to goods that are imported from a neighboring state, that's taxing interstate commerce, which is not allowed at the state level.
California can't put a special state tax on cheese imported from Oregon. This is exactly the same concept.
It's pretty clear that it fails the duck test. Whether that's enough for the courts or not (and the mere suggestion that it wouldn't be) might boggle the imagination.
Except that they presumably are not applying those same taxes to their own state residents. In other words, they have constructed an elaborate system that results in a tax paid only by folks from out-of-state. That is clearly unconstitutional.
So, apart from improving network bandwidth and availability (which I will concede is needed), in what way would you improve call quality?
In other words, are you asking for more than simply insuring that enough data flows in and out of the phone so that the caller doesn't sound like Charlie Brown's teacher?
TFA mentions ATSC M/H because the actual ATSC specification performs relatively poorly in the face of doppler and dynamic multipath. ATSC works just fine if you put up a proper outdoor antenna, but if you just use the whip antenna built into a portable TV, it sucks.
P.s. I am one of the only/.ers who owns and operates his own ATSC transmitter. It should be installed and operational sometime this month (yes, it's a bit late).
Slashdot Mirror
But here's the thing: Let's assume the Harley dealership has a staircase up to the front door. While it is indeed possible that someone in a wheelchair might wish to purchase, oh I dunno, a Harley jacket or something from the Harley dealership, would they not be reasonably able to do so if an employee stepped outside to sell it to them?
Given how many handicapped people actually would visit that Harley dealership, versus the cost the dealership would need to pay to add a ramp or what not, it's doubly stupid that the ADA would insist on the ramp being built AND give a fat payday to an ambulance chaser for pointing it out.
As for evacuating the handicapped in an emergency, no building in the country has a wheelchair accessible fire stairwell. The emergency posters on BART all say that wheelchairs should be left behind and their occupants carried. And yet these situations pass muster.
My suspicious little mind begins to wonder if the ADA was deliberately written to be lawsuit-friendly
In fact, it was. Its proponents claim that ADA issues are civil rights issues, and that therefore incenting lawyers to file ADA suits empowers helpless plaintiffs that would otherwise have no recourse.
In actual practice, the ADA further marginalizes the handicapped, because they effectively become walking (or rolling) lawsuit machines.
Yup. My brother is an attorney in San Diego who has opposed Pinnock on more that one occasion. Pinnock's MO is to travel the country in his RV looking for things that are not absolutely ADA compliant and then immediately file a lawsuit. Pinnock has taken his disability and converted it into a whole new avenue for ambulance chasing.
The problem with the ADA is that unlike just about every other tort, the ADA does not provide for an opportunity to cure the defect before a potential damage award. That is, if I accidentally drop a sledgehammer on your foot, I can apologize and pay your medical bills and that's the end of it - you have nothing to sue for if you have been recompensed for your damages. Not so with the ADA. I can apologize, immediately bring in a carpenter to fix whatever is wrong and the plaintiff can still sue for statutory damages.
It was just tongue in cheek. I guess I didn't take your advice to use the "snarky" modifier. ~
Tell that to all the business owners in Alpine, CA. In particular, consider debating the necessity of making a Harley Davidson dealership fully wheelchair accessible, among other things.
Well, the wife does want to go see Avatar 3D. If you're right, and the state of the art has improved enough that the flickering is no worse than 2D, that would be fine by me (particularly because the ticket price is the same).
I don't go to many 3D movies, but those I have gone to have been like old nickelodeons by comparison. Perhaps the state of the art has improved, but I'm not going to hold my breath because I'm obviously not the target market.
..you’re whining because it can’t magically make you see something that you can’t see anyway?
No. Not at all. I'm whining because they wind up making things worse than a normal 2d picture. Most of the techniques used wind up introducing too much flicker because I wind up seeing only half the frames.
Because it causes too much flicker - I wind up seeing half the frames.
How else do you expect one screen to show each eye a different image than to put some sort of filter in front of one or both of them? And how else do you expect to achieve that without glasses?
Me? I hate 3D because I have only one eye, and no 3D technique yet devised has not sucked in some way for us monocular folks.
Every technology I've seen so far for 3D television/movie presentation has been teh suck. Why? Because I have one eye. Alas, I am not disabled enough to leverage the ADA, but I'm not the litigious sort anyway. But every technique so far devised to have each eye see something different when looking at one screen has screwed up the case where only one view gets used. I either see both views simultaneously, which is like double vision for "close" objects, or I see things the wrong color (for the old red/green style), or the image flickers badly. My wife wants to see Avatar in 3D. I'll take her, because I love her and want her to be happy, but I'm not looking forward to it.
Mod parent up! I'll second his story. When I was a teenager, I went to the dentist thinking I was just getting a cleaning, when he started extracting a wisdom tooth! Not only did I not know he was going to do it, but by the time he started and I figured out what was up, there was no turning back. I had them knock me out to get the other three. Never again!
I'm sure there's probably some valid medical reason for doing this
General anesthesia is generally more hazardous than local. I recently had surgery. It wasn't open heart surgery, but nevertheless, they wanted to do exactly what this doctor did. In the end, they decided that in my particular case (because I take blood thinners), the epidural carried more risk than general anesthesia, so they knocked me out. But were it not for that, I would have had this same experience.
When it was described to me, it was not that I would be "awake" for it, but that I'd be rousable - unlike general anesthesia, where you are totally paralyzed and they have to breathe for you and that the only way to wake you up would be to undo the anesthesia. I was told that I would feel nothing, and be groggy enough that I'd probably nap through it, but - and I'm sure this is the major difference - I would breathe on my own and not be intubated.
Not quite.
The device is $150. IF you sign up for an unlimited minutes plan, they will give you a $100 mail-in rebate. The plan's pricing depends on which test market you are in, and whether or not you have AT&T DSL or U-Verse service. But in any event, an unlimited minutes plan is optional. You can just buy the box for $150 and use your plans minutes as normal. The purpose the box serves under those circumstances is merely improving your coverage.
"When correctly viewed, everything is lewd! I could tell you things about Peter Pan or the Wizard of Oz - there's a dirty old man!"
"Smut," Tom Lehrer.... in 1968.
Note that the UK is not one of those developed countries with a proper separation of powers. The UK parliament has absolute sovereignty.
Whoosh.
I'm going to be really sad to see STS-133 land.
As opposed to something.... more spectacular? They've already done that a couple of times.
Doesn't matter. California can't put a special tax on the sale of cheese produced in Oregon, even if it applies only to Cheddar and not Monterey Jack.
The problem is that if the tax only applies to goods that are imported from a neighboring state, that's taxing interstate commerce, which is not allowed at the state level.
California can't put a special state tax on cheese imported from Oregon. This is exactly the same concept.
Oops. I had the story backwards. I had it that ND was imposing this tax on electricity leaving for MN, not the other way 'round.
It's still unconstitutional, though.
It's not nearly that clear in this case.
It's pretty clear that it fails the duck test. Whether that's enough for the courts or not (and the mere suggestion that it wouldn't be) might boggle the imagination.
Except that they presumably are not applying those same taxes to their own state residents. In other words, they have constructed an elaborate system that results in a tax paid only by folks from out-of-state. That is clearly unconstitutional.
So, apart from improving network bandwidth and availability (which I will concede is needed), in what way would you improve call quality?
In other words, are you asking for more than simply insuring that enough data flows in and out of the phone so that the caller doesn't sound like Charlie Brown's teacher?
TFA mentions ATSC M/H because the actual ATSC specification performs relatively poorly in the face of doppler and dynamic multipath. ATSC works just fine if you put up a proper outdoor antenna, but if you just use the whip antenna built into a portable TV, it sucks.
P.s. I am one of the only /.ers who owns and operates his own ATSC transmitter. It should be installed and operational sometime this month (yes, it's a bit late).