Yeah, they are filled with bonus material. Yes, the movies tend to be really cool or funny…

But is Universal Studios and Universal Home Videos able to CLOSED CAPTION a single DVD? Noooooooooo.

Instead, what Universal does is SUBTITLE films, thinking this will cover the hearing impaired just fine and dandy. In some cases — things are indeed fine. But white text on a bright or white background (any given movie image) makes Subtitles a pain in the ass and impossible to read. It’s quite possible to entirely miss out on certain scenes from films because the text subtitles blend in to well.

The above is an example image of a CLOSE CAPTIONED broadcast… See how the text is laid against a black screen?

This is an example of a Universal DVD with subtitles. Notice the location of the titles? On the picture with absolutely nothing to contrast the text with. It’s easy for the text to become illegible depending on the scene.

Of course, most computer DVD playing programs let you change the subtitles around a bit — make them different colors, different fonts and so forth… You don’t have that option on stand-alone DVD players…

Universal prefers subtitles to keep things on teh cheap. It doesn’t matter if hearing-impaired fans have a hard time (or can’t access the bonus materials — a common problem from all Home Video companies). It just comes down to their financial bottom line. Cheap bastards.

The title of Northwest Leftists post is “The Most important book for Progressives”… He’s talking about Crashing the Gate and I must stress how true those words are.

If you read political books to be outraged instead of informed — trash like Michael Moore or Al Franken and their self-obsorbed writings — this book can and should replace that type of reading in your bookcase. While Crashing shows you reasons to be outraged at both the left and the right, it keys you in how things must change and how you must be part of the political process too.

It’s the Red versus the Blue.
The Old versus the New.

It shows you what’s wrong with the Democrats and how we can go about fixing it.

Please, if you’re a Democrat — this is required reading material.

Even with their bad reputation for software, for being monopolistic and for countless other things, their entire Oragami thing has been played well and has kept people curious.

You know, I heard about Flock a few weeks ago when I was browsing around the Tampa Blab and came across Sarah In Tampa’s post about the browser. It was – in essence – a browser that was built for blogging from what I was reading… I wanted to see exactly what the hub-bub was about the minute there was a released version of the browser.

Well, the developer release version of Flock is out and I did go ahead and download it… And wasn’t really able to accomplish jack with the thing. I tried simply integrating one of my blogs onto Flock and followed the directions and was met with errors every time I tried to log in.

Not totally dismissing Flock just yet but I do think I better just forget about it for another couple of months…

No, not for putting me in the Perspective section this week (last letter)…

But bringing back Calvin And Hobbes in repeats in the Floridian!

What decade do we live in? The 1950′s or the 2000′s?

I’ve got a laptop computer I basically can’t use not because it’s not in working order but because it doesn’t have the capablity to do what I need it to do and thus it makes the machine expendable. I’ve been looking for a way to move the laptop without losing a ton of money on the deal.

I looked on the Tampa Tribune‘s website and through their classified ads in an effort to look through the Laptop market and see if anyone was trying to purchase laptop computers in Tampa. I found www.tampanotebooks.com which is operated by Performance Computer Group. They’ve got a shop on Dale Maybry and they say that they buy used laptops – working or not.

I figured to call them up and see how much I could get for my machine… A phone call isn’t such a painful thing after all. Even if it is Voice Carry Over through the Florida Telecommunications Relay Service.

So I called up Performance Computer Group of Tampa — three ring slater a man picks up and the text that comes across my TDD phone reads thus:

“Uh, we don’t do any Relay calls. OK, thank you.”

*Click*

Some people don’t get what a Relay call is… It’s when someone deaf is calling you through a carry over service. It is not an excuse for you to treat a caller like a complete piece of shit. I’ve dealt with that from Bright House Customer Service and Capital One customer service as well. Usually I call back and get a representative that isn’t such a moron.

But in this case? The company just lost my business and came off like he was against the Relay system to begin with. “Why bother? Just some deaf clown trying to hassel me.”

Hand it to Matt over at Defective Yeti… He takes the time to break down the entire Karl Rove / Valarie Plame scandal and show why it’s a scandal.

Usually a comedy blogger, Matt shows his chops on something much more meatier.

Anyone else a little sick of the media hype of Tom Cruise (and others) romance? Yeah, I figured the other 290+ Million Americans (and how many around the world?) just might be.

Matt Baldwin over at Defective Yeti flashes some humor over the latest People Magazine cover.

The Deanmeister Rides again!

For all of the willy-nilly Democrats who see Dean being vocal as a bad thing – just how many times have you thought along the same lines as what Dean is saying? He’s saying NOTHING that the base of the Democratic party hasn’t thought or believed – and if you think that politicians distancing themselves from Dean is because what he is saying is bad, it’s more along the lines that Dean is saying things that are Liberal beliefs that aren’t embraced at all by Democrats elected to congress or elsewhere.

Published in the St. Pete Times on June 11th — written by moi.

Listening to the right-leaning talking heads who were part of the Watergate scandal, speaking about how W. Mark Felt is a “traitor” and a “toady” and a villain and not a hero for what he did reminds me of the story of Frank Serpico.

Serpico was a New York plain clothes officer who outed vast corruption in the New York City Police Department through the press, after having previous attempts to out corruption swept under the rug by the powers that be. The reaction by the force was death threats and then ultimately a gunshot wound to the face.

Why do I compare W. Mark Felt with Frank Serpico? Because they both aired dirty laundry of certain institutions and both were vilified unjustly for their actions. Would someone claim that Serpico was a traitor to the police department for spilling the beans on wrongdoing on the police force?

Corruption is corruption, and those who out it aren’t the villains.