I am now well into middle age and have worn glasses all my life. I can tell when my eyes are not as good as they used to be. What used to be single distance lens for distance, have been replaced by trifocals, with one distance for driving or seeing the end of a room and another distance for working on the computer. I'm lucky not to need glasses for reading for hand sewing-- yet.
However-- there is a clueless trend in web design recently inwhich they are forcing me to see a website in the font size THEY select. Resizing the font is not an option or it causes the type to run off the box and be unreadable. When you politely contact a vendor and their response is: That's the way we designed it. We can't (read won't) change it.
Here's my reply: Okay look you clueless website designer-- if I can't resize your site's fonts to be able to use them, I will not buy from you or visit your site. And... I will tell my friends. I have a lot of friends.
After a couple of the kids at the local coffee shop asked me, "Why is the goverment turning off our internet radio?" I started searching the net tonight. I'll be damned. A number of college stations are turning off their streams with messages like this:
"The U.S. Congress is currently working on a bill that would impact webcasts, and until that legislation has been resolved, we have opted to take our Webcast off the air. We apologize for this inconvenience. You can work to get us back on the 'net by contacting your State's Congressmen and asking them to allow low power FM stations to broadcast." http://www.elon.edu/wsoe/iWSOE/webcast.htm
Do you know of any college radio stations who have turned off their webcasting? Please Post a comment here with their Call Letters and URL.
"From where I sit it's long overdue for these Hollywood executives to get an education or stop playing dumb. They can't have it both ways."
We know how much fun they have playing dumb.
"For years Hollywood has been courting the computer industry in an effort to make the work and costs of productions better and cheaper. The courting and wooing of Silicon Valley and the technical centers of this country by Hollywood was a past time that has gone on for the past 15 or more years. I know because I was there. I have been a designer, witness and a participant to the process...
...The funny thing is: every DMCA crazed Hollywood executive knows we do it. So how do you propose we put the genie back into the bottle?"
Oh yeah, now we know. They want to kill it outright.
"There isn't a beancounter in LA who will tell an executive straightfaced that we remote-working folks aren't saving Hollywood money. Between us and the Vancouver productions, we are the reasons why Hollywood has been laying off the large in-house staff people who once ran up their payroll. The exec's like Eisner love that we use this technology to give him better profit lines.
So who's he kidding? Oh yeah-- it's a matter of control."
I should have corrected that last line to read: "Oh yeah-- it's all a matter of control and money, as long as Eisner has got control of all of the money."
"Because if the Ruling is unsatisfactory to any of the parties, even after the Librarian of Congress issues it in June 2002, the new CARP rates could end up in the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals for a hearing."
Bingo. That is exactly where it's headed. Can I Get an Amen now?
I see Doc's had a conversation with Howard Greenstein. Howard's a very wise man. Like those of us who have dealt with celebrity and the entertainment business, we see these businesses for what they are. Despite the glitz and the glamour-- it is all about money. In the end the emperor has no clothes.
One correction to Doc's observation,
Doc: "And since celebrity is perishable, the machinery keeps doing it over and over and over again."
Mary Lu: "And since the Hollywood celebrity machinery is self-consuming, the machinery must keep inventing new talent over and over and over again."
Now I hope people might understand why I prefer being far from the flames of celebrity and closer to the real talent here and in the post house.
