I am hoping that HDTV and its realism will have a calming effect on our air brushed, perfectionist, image-perfect culture. I think women have a much more difficult time with body image due to our media than men
I was recently working on a video shoot, and during lunch break, the subject of HDTV came up. Both the actor (an attractive, though aging 50ish gentleman) and the make-up artist expressed considerable concern over the negative side of HDTV. The ability to see right down to the pores of the actors skin scares the bejeesus out of some people. Though I could see the other side, that it makes the make-up artist, especially really good ones, even more important. My take is the same as yours, that by exposing so much that it will become clear that the actors really aren't perfect--and that will maybe cure a lot of society's problems. Then again, never understimate the vanity of Hollywood--maybe it just means plastic surgeries, more make-up and optical and digital effects will become even more widespread and required.
Call me cynical but this seems like another one of the things that differentiates Google & contributes to their success--yet I seriously question whether most of it won't go away once they're a publicly owned & traded company. At any given time, a large portion of stockholders are short-term, looking for a quick profits. I mean what percentage of Google shareholders will look at this and think, "20% of their salary expense is going to things not directly contributing to the bottom line, we gotta get rid of that waste." Just like they'll say, "If Google just puts a few ads on their front page, revenues will double!" Now I'm not saying capitalism in the US isn't the best real world solution. But what makes it work--herd mentality--also makes it less effective in certain things. It just seems like a number of great companies, in particular technology oriented ones, lose their competitive advantage, if not their soul when they effectively turn over the reigns to a herd of short-term thinking owners.
There are two reasons to IPO--to generate capital to expand or to cash out. Certainly I can't image Google needs the former, and while I don't begrudge anyone the right to cash out on their creation, I hope they realize that by definition, they're giving up ownership. Maybe they're strong enough leaders, and will start off with enough shares to be ok--I certainly hope so becaue the list of technology visionaries who were ousted from their own company is already too long.
OK that's just silly and wrong. Comparing a free service to an auto manufacturing company is more than a little cooky. The parent didn't say "voting anything concerning Google" it said Gmail--which is a free service that doesn't even exist except to beta testers. Cars that cost money are not really comparable on any level at all, to a free, intangible service. The fact that legislators in California are wasting their time on something like this goes a long way to explaining why the state has such enormous budget problems (among others).
Google is planning on providing a service that is free (in terms of money) but in order to pay for their expenses and ultimately make a profit they require the user pay in ways other than money. As long as they are upfront about what users will be giving up in exchange for the free service (and Google has a track record of being way better than most about being upfront with privacy issues) then the government indeed has no business getting involved.
Re:Data from Startrek TNG played poker
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Geeks and Poker?
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Umm, no. The most popular character in TNG has to be Troi. For a couple of obvious reasons. With a distant second to Wesley for the jsut slightly less obvious reason of his hanging out here from time to time.
One field the grandparent didn't note was health care - that's a booming industry with huge demand for a variety of high- and low-skill positions, from elder care workers to nurses.
One think that might scare me away from the healthcare industry however, is the sence of a pending explosion. In some ways, I can see healthcare as the next bubble to burst--costs have escaladed way out of proportion to inflation and people are getting more and more angry about it. The huge costs of boomers getting old & sick is only going to stress the system more. I realize there are tons of reasons why the healthcare industry is different, but it sure feels like the system itself, as well as the people who pay for it are being stressed to the limits and something has to give at some point. Throw in the fact that so much of it is in the politicians hands to fix, and they politicians either don't want to touch it because it's a hard, or are motivated by extreme politics (either totally socialized or totally privatized with no middle ground) rather than seeing a problem to solve.
and then Pixar will go with somebody who gives them more than 10% of the takings. Pixar weren't looking to "screw" Disney, just be paid a fair price for what they are now worth in the market.
I don't know about that--you can't tell me Jobs hasn't gotten a fair amount of pleasure over having Michael Eisner over a barrel. I mean honesty, who on this planet wouldn't enjoy the chance to really put the screws to that guy. Who knows what motivates Steve Jobs these days, but he's clearly in an extremely powerful position right now--with a company full of insanely talented people who are creating movies millions of people just can't seem to find their wallet quick enough to see.
It will be very interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years.
I can't help but feel like the Thunderbirds is some inside joke that I just don't get. I mean could some one please explain it to me? At best it's campy garbage that might be funny for it's awfulness once, but I just can't understand why anyone would watch it unless they were high or something.
Re:Not a surprise that Big Thinkers got the axe...
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G4TechTV Announced
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I have to admit early on I thought the show was promising--I think it started with Stewart Brand, an interesting guy who's had a dramatic impact on the world and worth finding out what he's currently thinking about. But I think it bottomed out with David Gelernter--seriously I think I could smell the guy through my television--take a shower man. An hour show on him and I still have no idea what the hell he has contributed - I mean he kind reminded me of the to old dudes from the muppets who just sat and bitched - well at least they were funny.
What has always floored me most about the whole Martha Stewart thing was what a relatively insignificant amout of money she ultimately has thrown so much of her life away for. I don't know whether she's going to end up in jail or not or what the total cost of will be--safe to say it's millions and millions of dollars, major embarassment and the emotional stress (not feeling sorry for her just stating a fact) plus maybe jail all to have saved $50,000 that amounts to pocket change to her at the time. And they could have sat ready to dump it the next morning once the announcement came out and probably cut that loss in half.
Of course I guess this is all probably the wrong way to look at it--it's not about risking so much for so little for these people--it's the whole mindset that the rules are for other people, it's not really wrong unless you get caught, and "hey it's me, what are they gonna do about it?"
Bill gates is now known for investing in non-tech companies such as John Deere
This diversification along with his philanthropy through his foundation (though sometimes self-serving) is a relatively new thing. For many many years, what always shocked me was his decidedly undiversified portfolio. He kept an extremely high percentage of his total wealth in Microsoft stock for a very long time. While it could certainly have backfired and any financial advisor would say it was foolish and overly risky, it is the single biggest reason he is the richest man in the world and not 2 or 3. Paul Allen diversified very early on and had a much more balanced portfolio but also got blown away by Gates and his MSFT only holdings.
Exactly--if there aren't enough people to support a channel, it will go away. That's life. It's not any different than the choices any given network makes regarding whether to keep or cancel a specific show. While we all get annoyed when one of our favorite shows gets cancelled, bottom line is that letting the market decide based on ratings is the most fair general system of doing it.
A method to allow how much fans care about a program or channel to determine programming would be a good thing as well. Some of the grass roots campaigns to save shows would have a more legitimate way to help support a channel and by extention, a program they want to see. I guess this might be slighly beyond the reach of ala carte, but clearly possible soon if not now the idea that by choosing to pay more a "quality" show, a lesser number of viewers can keep their show/channel on the air.
Another interesting possibility is that with an ala carte type system, the pressure would be on the content providers to hook new subscribers--ie new channels or programming means that they would have to give the content away for awhile for people to try out to see if they want to pay for it. Not that that's an original concept, premium channels have been doing it for years but on a wider scale, it would mean they're competing harder to get viewers which is a good thing.
Unless of course you accidentally put a 4x disc in the drive--in which case it will permanently ruin the drive. Got bit by that with both our Pioneer set top recorder and one of our G4 Macs. Pioneer should burn in hell for that one--I completely understand not supporting higher speed discs than were available when the thing shipped or even when it was designed. But for a 4 speed disk to permanently ruin a 2 speed drive--well anyone involved in the drive & firmware development should be instantly fired.
Do you really believe that? I'd like to believe it, but I just can't say that I do. This is still an issue that probably 70% of the people on the planet don't even know about and maybe 5% (at best) of the people actually intellectually understand and/or care about. Intellectual Property is an abstract concept, and it's extremely difficult to explain to some one who doesn't get it, that a person can't own an idea. I don't see any way of educating enough of a critical mass to care enough to force a change from a grass roots level. And at least here in the US, where the Supreme Court has ruled money is speech and real campaign finance reform is unconstitutional, the content owners and distrubuters will continue to get the laws they pay for. So while it's nice to envision a return of some sort of balance to the copyright laws that benefit all of society like the framers hoped for, I just don't see it happening. I'd be grateful to anyone who could convince me otherwise.
It's not that there aren't other animated graphic formats, but can you really tell me one that can do what swf can do nearly as well? When consider that the development envrionment is pretty animator friendly (timeline metaphor, auto tweening, programmable masking, and animation along paths just to name a few) along with the extremely small filesize for the animations, I can't think of another alternative that even comes close. Flash may have quite a few negatives, but there's also a lot of advantages that nothing else even comes close to if you consider both animation and filesize. And all that really doesn't even touch on the programming aspects--the fact is Flash isn't just a graphic format, ActionScripting adds a ton of power through activity and even object oriented programming that I can't think of any remotely close alternatives.
I'm a huge supporter of tough drunk driving laws--I get absolutely furious when I see fatal drunk driving accidents where the driver had been arrested 5, 10 sometimes even 15 times for drunk driving. Personally if some one close to me were injured or killed by a repeat offender drunk driver, I will try everything I can to sue the judge and state legislators for gross negligence. Education, fines, blah blah blah with these repeat offenders, they're not going to stop doing it until they kill themselves or somebody else or they're locked up in prison.
That being said, I'm also a pretty big stickler for the Constitution--I can't imagine this wouldn't be thrown out by the courts in a second. This seems like a clear cut case of a violation of illegal search & seizure laws in the fourth amendment. But the much simpler, and more effective solution is to put the ignition interlock in the cars of the people actually conviced. If you're convicte of a crime, you voluntarily surrender rights, so I see no Constitutional problem there.
The other thing I'd like to see is a different license plate for convicted drunk drivers. That way the rest of us have a little advanced warning and a little public humiliation and stigma ain't such a bad thing for people who willingly violate serious laws.
Or along the same vein but much more likely, they'll call doing a survey. Something along the lines of "Do you like our product?" "Would you like to buy some?"
Because telemarketers don't care that the people they call don't buy anything during the call or even that the people are terribly pissed off and possibly won't ever buy anything from the seller again. Most telemarkers don't sell anything--they're service companies who get paid for making the calls. It's pretty similar to spam in that regard--the ones that actually are contacting the prospect (and I'll use that term lightly) are generally paid for the bulk of contacts, not the actual response rate of the ads. They're in the information business--their databases are what companies pay for and even if the people don't buy anything on any given campaign, telemarketers make their money off simply having live ones on the other end.
Lynch, Raman and many others at HP put their considerable imaging expertise to work, collaborating with officials and technical teams from various public- and private-sector organizations. (The names of these organizations must remain confidential).
OK so I get and totally agree that some of the techniques for making money more secure & harder to counterfeit should be confidential. No problem. But could some one please explain to me exactly why the names of the organizations must remain confidential? What a crock. Anyone who pays taxes has every right to see how those tax dollars are spent. It seems to me that this falls squarely on the jurisdiction of the government agency set up specifically for that purpose...the Treasury Department. Why do others need to be involved at all, let alone secretly. Or is it just a matter of more private-sector companies getting paid boatloads of cash to "consult" for the government.
"...Basically, this is legal extortion by the patent holder and a make-work program for attourneys. And guess what! Attourneys are one of the most powerful and well funded political organizations in the United States!..."
Not that there aren't other concerns with the various other candidates, but if this is an important enough issue to you, you might be interested in knowing that there is one 2004 Presidential candidate who gets the overwhelming majority (over half) of his funding from lawyers & their lobbyist groups. As of Monday here's what the following presidential candidates had received from the lawyers & lobbyist sector:
Candidate Lawyers Total Percentage John Edwards $7,487,740 $13,991,880 53.51% Dick Gephardt $2,089,010 $10,840,983 19.27% John Kerry $3,318,149 $17,225,964 19.26% Joe Lieberman $1,597,146 $11,585,316 13.79% George W. Bush $6,331,079 $84,596,875 7.48% Howard Dean $ 983,981 $25,385,265 3.88%
Historically, if you wanted to get your music to a lot of people your only option was to sign with an RIAA company. Sure there are some exeptions but they're just that, rare exceptions. And radio? Not a chance. Certainly this is changing for the better due to the internet as an alternative distribution channel, the dramatic decrease in digital recording equipment as well as relatively cheap CD duplication. But this is all a relatively new phenomena and wasn't a great option 5 years ago and wasn't even an option at all 10 years ago.
Maybe it's greed that drives them but I would argue that musicians should have the opportunity to expand their audience if they're good enough (admittingly "good enough" is pretty vague and subjective).
As more and more artists find some level of success routing around the major record labels, I will have less and less sympathy for the artists who sign with the labels. But for some musicians who are at the end of their 5-8 album contract signed years ago, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt becuase there weren't really any other options at the time.
I think you should have actually read the rest of my post before going off on a rant about my idealism--here's link just to make it easier.
I said it was a rule of thumb they should follow, not one they do follow. Clearly I was implying they don't and should. I'm not quite sure where you drew the conclusion that I was in the least bit disillusioned about the the sad reality. I did say that in theory elected officials who act counter to public opinion won't be re-elected. Assuming you missed the "in theory" part, maybe I could see how you jumped to the conclusion my glasses are rose tinted. But had you read the next paragraph intead of going off on a rant about the Patriot Act (which however true, is still way offtopic) you might have noticed that I was critical of public apathy and corrupt politicians taking money instead of doing the right thing. Seems to me those were the same points you made, minus the name calling and offtopic rant.
When the vast majority of a society is violating a certain law, it is a sign that the law, not the society needs to change.
This is certainly an excellent rule of thumb and our legislators should follow popular opinion to laws or at least in theory, they won't be re-elected. Just keep in mind that this is concept should never be taken as an absolute. The Founding Fathers were concerned with what the potential for what they called "tyranny of the majority," South Africa being the typical example.
Regarding legislation to change copyright laws to make them more reasonable, it's just not going to happen for two major reasons. First, I really don't think there will ever be enough critical mass of informed, upset people. Probably 90% of the population either doesn't care or just assumes that copyright is a natural phenomena rather than an artificial constraint created as a means to an end--creation of works and the betterment of society. And second, the entertainment industries have too much money and are unified on this issue. Compare this to the do-not-call legislation. That is an example of what it takes for a grass roots movement to defeat an industry lobbyist on a big issue. The entertainment industries have tons more money than the DMA and telemarketing phone calls were in people's faces, constantly annoying them into complaining to their legislator. For the vast majority of the people they don't ever see any impact of unbalanced copyright laws on their lives.
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I was recently working on a video shoot, and during lunch break, the subject of HDTV came up. Both the actor (an attractive, though aging 50ish gentleman) and the make-up artist expressed considerable concern over the negative side of HDTV. The ability to see right down to the pores of the actors skin scares the bejeesus out of some people. Though I could see the other side, that it makes the make-up artist, especially really good ones, even more important. My take is the same as yours, that by exposing so much that it will become clear that the actors really aren't perfect--and that will maybe cure a lot of society's problems. Then again, never understimate the vanity of Hollywood--maybe it just means plastic surgeries, more make-up and optical and digital effects will become even more widespread and required.
There are two reasons to IPO--to generate capital to expand or to cash out. Certainly I can't image Google needs the former, and while I don't begrudge anyone the right to cash out on their creation, I hope they realize that by definition, they're giving up ownership. Maybe they're strong enough leaders, and will start off with enough shares to be ok--I certainly hope so becaue the list of technology visionaries who were ousted from their own company is already too long.
I guess I am cynical today.
Google is planning on providing a service that is free (in terms of money) but in order to pay for their expenses and ultimately make a profit they require the user pay in ways other than money. As long as they are upfront about what users will be giving up in exchange for the free service (and Google has a track record of being way better than most about being upfront with privacy issues) then the government indeed has no business getting involved.
Umm, no. The most popular character in TNG has to be Troi. For a couple of obvious reasons. With a distant second to Wesley for the jsut slightly less obvious reason of his hanging out here from time to time.
The problem is that VCs have been sitting on their hands, afraid to actually invest and in some cases even giving investors back their money because they're so gunshy. Cringly wrote two pretty interesting columns on this Making Waves: How to Turn Around the U.S. Tech Economy in One Week With No New Laws, Regulations, or Tax Breaks Required and Without Moving to India and The Curse of the Hundred Bagger: Why Venture Capitalists Are Paralyzed and Our Economy is Stagnant
One think that might scare me away from the healthcare industry however, is the sence of a pending explosion. In some ways, I can see healthcare as the next bubble to burst--costs have escaladed way out of proportion to inflation and people are getting more and more angry about it. The huge costs of boomers getting old & sick is only going to stress the system more. I realize there are tons of reasons why the healthcare industry is different, but it sure feels like the system itself, as well as the people who pay for it are being stressed to the limits and something has to give at some point. Throw in the fact that so much of it is in the politicians hands to fix, and they politicians either don't want to touch it because it's a hard, or are motivated by extreme politics (either totally socialized or totally privatized with no middle ground) rather than seeing a problem to solve.
I don't know about that--you can't tell me Jobs hasn't gotten a fair amount of pleasure over having Michael Eisner over a barrel. I mean honesty, who on this planet wouldn't enjoy the chance to really put the screws to that guy. Who knows what motivates Steve Jobs these days, but he's clearly in an extremely powerful position right now--with a company full of insanely talented people who are creating movies millions of people just can't seem to find their wallet quick enough to see.
It will be very interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years.
I can't help but feel like the Thunderbirds is some inside joke that I just don't get. I mean could some one please explain it to me? At best it's campy garbage that might be funny for it's awfulness once, but I just can't understand why anyone would watch it unless they were high or something.
I have to admit early on I thought the show was promising--I think it started with Stewart Brand, an interesting guy who's had a dramatic impact on the world and worth finding out what he's currently thinking about. But I think it bottomed out with David Gelernter--seriously I think I could smell the guy through my television--take a shower man. An hour show on him and I still have no idea what the hell he has contributed - I mean he kind reminded me of the to old dudes from the muppets who just sat and bitched - well at least they were funny.
Of course I guess this is all probably the wrong way to look at it--it's not about risking so much for so little for these people--it's the whole mindset that the rules are for other people, it's not really wrong unless you get caught, and "hey it's me, what are they gonna do about it?"
This diversification along with his philanthropy through his foundation (though sometimes self-serving) is a relatively new thing. For many many years, what always shocked me was his decidedly undiversified portfolio. He kept an extremely high percentage of his total wealth in Microsoft stock for a very long time. While it could certainly have backfired and any financial advisor would say it was foolish and overly risky, it is the single biggest reason he is the richest man in the world and not 2 or 3. Paul Allen diversified very early on and had a much more balanced portfolio but also got blown away by Gates and his MSFT only holdings.
A method to allow how much fans care about a program or channel to determine programming would be a good thing as well. Some of the grass roots campaigns to save shows would have a more legitimate way to help support a channel and by extention, a program they want to see. I guess this might be slighly beyond the reach of ala carte, but clearly possible soon if not now the idea that by choosing to pay more a "quality" show, a lesser number of viewers can keep their show/channel on the air.
Another interesting possibility is that with an ala carte type system, the pressure would be on the content providers to hook new subscribers--ie new channels or programming means that they would have to give the content away for awhile for people to try out to see if they want to pay for it. Not that that's an original concept, premium channels have been doing it for years but on a wider scale, it would mean they're competing harder to get viewers which is a good thing.
Unless of course you accidentally put a 4x disc in the drive--in which case it will permanently ruin the drive. Got bit by that with both our Pioneer set top recorder and one of our G4 Macs. Pioneer should burn in hell for that one--I completely understand not supporting higher speed discs than were available when the thing shipped or even when it was designed. But for a 4 speed disk to permanently ruin a 2 speed drive--well anyone involved in the drive & firmware development should be instantly fired.
Do you really believe that? I'd like to believe it, but I just can't say that I do. This is still an issue that probably 70% of the people on the planet don't even know about and maybe 5% (at best) of the people actually intellectually understand and/or care about. Intellectual Property is an abstract concept, and it's extremely difficult to explain to some one who doesn't get it, that a person can't own an idea. I don't see any way of educating enough of a critical mass to care enough to force a change from a grass roots level. And at least here in the US, where the Supreme Court has ruled money is speech and real campaign finance reform is unconstitutional, the content owners and distrubuters will continue to get the laws they pay for. So while it's nice to envision a return of some sort of balance to the copyright laws that benefit all of society like the framers hoped for, I just don't see it happening. I'd be grateful to anyone who could convince me otherwise.
It's not that there aren't other animated graphic formats, but can you really tell me one that can do what swf can do nearly as well? When consider that the development envrionment is pretty animator friendly (timeline metaphor, auto tweening, programmable masking, and animation along paths just to name a few) along with the extremely small filesize for the animations, I can't think of another alternative that even comes close. Flash may have quite a few negatives, but there's also a lot of advantages that nothing else even comes close to if you consider both animation and filesize. And all that really doesn't even touch on the programming aspects--the fact is Flash isn't just a graphic format, ActionScripting adds a ton of power through activity and even object oriented programming that I can't think of any remotely close alternatives.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991130& mode=classic
That being said, I'm also a pretty big stickler for the Constitution--I can't imagine this wouldn't be thrown out by the courts in a second. This seems like a clear cut case of a violation of illegal search & seizure laws in the fourth amendment. But the much simpler, and more effective solution is to put the ignition interlock in the cars of the people actually conviced. If you're convicte of a crime, you voluntarily surrender rights, so I see no Constitutional problem there.
The other thing I'd like to see is a different license plate for convicted drunk drivers. That way the rest of us have a little advanced warning and a little public humiliation and stigma ain't such a bad thing for people who willingly violate serious laws.
Or along the same vein but much more likely, they'll call doing a survey. Something along the lines of "Do you like our product?" "Would you like to buy some?"
Because telemarketers don't care that the people they call don't buy anything during the call or even that the people are terribly pissed off and possibly won't ever buy anything from the seller again. Most telemarkers don't sell anything--they're service companies who get paid for making the calls. It's pretty similar to spam in that regard--the ones that actually are contacting the prospect (and I'll use that term lightly) are generally paid for the bulk of contacts, not the actual response rate of the ads. They're in the information business--their databases are what companies pay for and even if the people don't buy anything on any given campaign, telemarketers make their money off simply having live ones on the other end.
Isn't that where Apple is headquartered?
"...Basically, this is legal extortion by the patent holder and a make-work program for attourneys. And guess what! Attourneys are one of the most powerful and well funded political organizations in the United States!..."
Not that there aren't other concerns with the various other candidates, but if this is an important enough issue to you, you might be interested in knowing that there is one 2004 Presidential candidate who gets the overwhelming majority (over half) of his funding from lawyers & their lobbyist groups. As of Monday here's what the following presidential candidates had received from the lawyers & lobbyist sector:
Candidate Lawyers Total Percentage
John Edwards $7,487,740 $13,991,880 53.51%
Dick Gephardt $2,089,010 $10,840,983 19.27%
John Kerry $3,318,149 $17,225,964 19.26%
Joe Lieberman $1,597,146 $11,585,316 13.79%
George W. Bush $6,331,079 $84,596,875 7.48%
Howard Dean $ 983,981 $25,385,265 3.88%
Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/
Maybe it's greed that drives them but I would argue that musicians should have the opportunity to expand their audience if they're good enough (admittingly "good enough" is pretty vague and subjective).
As more and more artists find some level of success routing around the major record labels, I will have less and less sympathy for the artists who sign with the labels. But for some musicians who are at the end of their 5-8 album contract signed years ago, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt becuase there weren't really any other options at the time.
I said it was a rule of thumb they should follow, not one they do follow. Clearly I was implying they don't and should. I'm not quite sure where you drew the conclusion that I was in the least bit disillusioned about the the sad reality. I did say that in theory elected officials who act counter to public opinion won't be re-elected. Assuming you missed the "in theory" part, maybe I could see how you jumped to the conclusion my glasses are rose tinted. But had you read the next paragraph intead of going off on a rant about the Patriot Act (which however true, is still way offtopic) you might have noticed that I was critical of public apathy and corrupt politicians taking money instead of doing the right thing. Seems to me those were the same points you made, minus the name calling and offtopic rant.
This is certainly an excellent rule of thumb and our legislators should follow popular opinion to laws or at least in theory, they won't be re-elected. Just keep in mind that this is concept should never be taken as an absolute. The Founding Fathers were concerned with what the potential for what they called "tyranny of the majority," South Africa being the typical example.
Regarding legislation to change copyright laws to make them more reasonable, it's just not going to happen for two major reasons. First, I really don't think there will ever be enough critical mass of informed, upset people. Probably 90% of the population either doesn't care or just assumes that copyright is a natural phenomena rather than an artificial constraint created as a means to an end--creation of works and the betterment of society. And second, the entertainment industries have too much money and are unified on this issue. Compare this to the do-not-call legislation. That is an example of what it takes for a grass roots movement to defeat an industry lobbyist on a big issue. The entertainment industries have tons more money than the DMA and telemarketing phone calls were in people's faces, constantly annoying them into complaining to their legislator. For the vast majority of the people they don't ever see any impact of unbalanced copyright laws on their lives.