The cynical part of me keeps coming back to an after-hours conversation with someone who used to work in my former employer's HR department. They'd mention how much flak companies get by using outsourced employees and the backlash of "costing American jobs". Using H1-B visas to acquire employees, you can still say that you haven't sent jobs overseas and that you're keeping jobs "home, where they belong". Add mandatory Stars and Stripes lapel pins and you get something that people can advertise for you and bring in Made In America money. Even better, they don't have to pay as much for H-1B employees as they do for locally-hired staff and, when those staff start asking about becoming long-term employees, the employer can end their contract, bring someone newer to replace them, and show a nice drop in costs for their quarterly department meetings. It's one of the reasons why H-1B quotas fill so quickly in certain sectors. It was intended to fill short-term gaps or when a specific set of skills can't be filled normally. Realistically, it's clear they're not all being used as intended.

Reading The Friendly Article should not be summarily banned.

For those who don't know why: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/elektro.html

It's weird how Americans think that all governmental action must come only at the Federal level now.

Considering how the Federal level is rapidly overriding all other levels (please consult the overthrow of the Oregon law on medical marijuana, or perhaps we can go straight to Every, er, No Child Left Behind for that), why shouldn't people think that? If a state tries to do anything not blessed at the Federal level, the Feds can and will hammer it down.

> Here's my list: OpenOffice, e-Sword, Firefox, Google Desktop...

This comment deserves to be rated 5, Funny. :D

(Insert Standard Troll Feeding Disclaimer here.)

If you actually were blind, your screen reader software (assuming it's Windows, it would probably be JAWS) would be handling the sound, not the website. While there are some places that use sound clips (like authentication pages that require you to read a garbled series of letters and numbers to register on forums), many sites depend on the user using third-party applications to access their site. In any case, since the website you're commenting on is a personal web page, and not a web presense for a business, it isn't the sort of site the ADA is being used on.

Extra Credit: I used JAWS on the site, and I could get around it just fine with the monitor shut off.

Myth of Hypocricy of a person commenting on screen reader accessibility while his website lacks embedded sound clips: Busted.

2) A patent holder MUST either create a product or service that uses the patent OR license it to another organization or organizations to do the same within a short time, say a 6 months to a year. If they don't, they lose the patent. Furthermore, the patent would expire if the organization stopped producing the product or offering the service - with some allowances for times when the product of service is off the market while being redeveloped or licenses are being offered.

The problem is that while six months is a perfectly reasonable time to bring software to market (unless you're Vista, of course), it's far too short for industries that actually need a manufacturing process.

In base 13 arithmetic, 6 * 9 = 42. That's 4 13's and 2 1's. People usually count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers, so Adams may have intended for God to have 13.