Context should have made it clear that "everyone" was only meant to include those who make commercial movie theatres, and other brick and mortar businesses that are dedicated to selling access to media, a viable business. Simultaneously, context also should have made it clear "everyone" was not intended to mean "every person on Earth including people whose last recent release movie watched was Breakfast at Tiffanys, those who are both deaf and blind, the Amish, domesticated animals, visiting aliens and the newly risen Undead will want to buy a home theater".


As home theatre quality and ease of use increases, prices drop and the population becomes more technologically savvy; avoiding the annoyances and expense of movie theatres will become more and more attractive to those who currently utilize movie theatres until eventually, enough of those theater-goers will opt for the home alternative that the commercial movie theatre will no longer be a large scale viable business.

I apologize for forgetting there are some people incapable of recognizing context and need everything spelled out for them.

Few people go to the theatre because they like $8 popcorn, teenagers throwing crap all over the over the place and listening to what ridiculous ring tones people have.
Eventually everyone is going to have a quality home theatre and movies will be released on Bluray without any delay for theatrical release and theatres will quickly go the way of video arcades, video rental stores, software stores, music stores and book stores.

The days are numbered for any business that is dedicated to selling media that can be digitized.

The "get off my lawn" part of me It's a bit sad about that. But that doesn't make it any less inevitable.

These shows meet the criteria for exemption as contests on several of those points.

But you are completely correct as to the reason for why those rules exist. Many of them were drafted specifically to counter schemes enacted by the old "Publisher's Clearing House" to get people to buy magazines and the numerous scams that cloned PCH's methods.

Which don't apply to shows like this as the person calling in isn't eligible to win anything and the show doesn't charge people anything to take part.
The only laws governing shows like this (that matter to viewers) are ones originally directed at game shows that prevent them from misrepresenting the vote results. Those same laws also require they take reasonable steps to ensure the voting is fair which, as someone mentioned, is why you see the fine print at the end of such shows that actually reads something similar to: "The producers, in consultation with an independent vote management company, reserve the right to remove votes identified as having been cast in such a significant block, either by technical enhancements or otherwise, that could unfairly influence the outcome of the voting." which just discloses they have to discard voting done by bots and such.

When someone is eliminated or revealed as the winner it's a safe bet it's because it's what was in the vote tallies.
Manipulating the votes is a bad way to get what they want as if that came out, there'd be no way to defend it and it'd cost them a hell of a lot more than having to put Taylor Hicks on a few posters. Plus, Telescope handles voting for lots of things beyond reality shows, some being legitimate contests. Allowing votes they collect to be manipulated or misrepresented would likely end up with them being sued into the ground if it was ever discovered.
Why risk it when it's much easier to manipulate the viewers into voting the way they want them to? It's trivial to have the sound guys work less at making a certain contestant sound good, have the lighting or camera guys make them look bad, edit their little promo packages so they come off offensive or idiotic, tell a contestant the song they thought they were going to sing didn't clear at the last minute so they have to do something else without rehearsal, have the judges say someone who is good sucks over and over and over again or any of dozens of things that can sway viewers towards the results they want that would be very hard to prove was intentional.

Also, depending on what the issue was, it may have affected American Idol as well since Telescope handles their voting as well.

As to the merit of such shows, they aren't in the same class as The Real World or Honey Boo Boo. They're at least marginally about people with actual talents and skills beyond simply being trainwrecks of human existence. I like music so I watch them. But these days I only watch them on the DVR so I can skip all the sob stories and judges' egomaniacal ramblings so they're tolerable, which means I don't vote.

Worse, I've now started getting flooded with the "Have you or a loved one used Fixilfakeadine and suffered spontaneous anal ejaculation, moderate club foot or sudden gender change? If so, call our hotline now! You may be entitled to financial compensation." messages.
At least the politicians never had their robot call me more than once or twice a day. One of those ambulance chasers called with the same message 7 times in an hour before I got around to blocking the number.

"Indian" Court.
You must have thought it was a US Court where "Oh, you changed the marking on it from an M to a W?" is usually enough.

Dammit. Screwed up when I edited for formatting and deleted the part about the idiocy of pot prohibition. Here's the short version:

Criminalization of pot is bad. The powers that be criminalize it and vehemently try to keep it out of society. But it's so prolific that nearly everyone knows numerous people who have tried it with no ill effects, completely contradicting the TV Commercials, which makes it's hard for many people (especially kids) to believe that the other things they say are bad for them really are.

You aren't a drug dealer, you're a pot seller.
To you, pot seems like what everyone is doing because you are accepting of pot users. But, do you think someone you know is going to tell you they do something like go home every night and shoot heroin when you use names like "Junk Box" to refer to those people?

I had the same experience. I sold pot to zero out my pot budget. Everyone I associated with had a cavalier attitude towards pot use but looked down upon those who did "hard" drugs. Those who used pot weren't shy about admitting it so it seemed like that's all anyone was doing to me too.
But then we got the opportunity to get extra credit in HS for community service. I chose one that was just setting out doughnuts and making coffee for a couple hours on Tuesday nights. It turned out to be meetings for The Fifth Chapter Motorcycle Club (and being it was a small town, they also hosted Narcanon members). It was a great experience with great people so I kept doing it for about 5 years before I moved from the area.

In there I saw hundreds of people who were doing coke, crack and meth daily for years. Many were people I knew (small town) and would never have suspected was a junkie. And I know for every person I saw in there getting treatment, there was likely 10 more in the community doing it who weren't.

Just because you like to think of yourself as an expert, you aren't one. Neither am I. But I spent a lot of time around people who were and know I wouldn't ever want to be an expert on that world. But through them, I got a glimpse of the real world and it's not pretty.
Which is why I have such a huge problem with the criminalization of drugs. It's designed to stop people from using them but it fails miserably at that. In return for nothing, it creates a black market exploited by violent criminals, it glamorizes them to youth (just about everyone who was in treatment started when they were young and did it because they were told NOT to) and the worst thing to me is that it adds a stigma that prevents those in the real world who have seen the bad side from sharing their experiences.

I've never done any drug besides pot and the reason is that I was exposed to the realities of other drugs. No one believes someone brought in by the school or cops to make speeches or people on TV Commercials. But when you see a 350 lb wall of muscle, who is someone you know from your community, sitting on his Harley laughing as he shows you the places he's been stabbed and then is in tears 20 minutes later telling the group how Heroin made him it's bitch, you figure out that it's not a question of being strong enough to handle it; It's being smart enough never to start.

While I'm behind the idea of (some) decriminalization, this particular case isn't nonsense or even a problem. Anaya, even after he discovered and knew the customer was using the compartment for smuggling contraband (no reasonable person would think $800k in cash crammed into a secret compartment was legal), agreed to fix their secret compartment and install another for them. That's why he was convicted.

While I don't like the drug prohibition laws themselves, a law that makes it illegal to knowingly assist criminals in the commission of a crime is perfectly reasonable and it's enforcement in this case was completely justifiable.

If the lossless file was the same size, price and obtained with the same convenience then sure, I'd take the lossless file. But lossless files tend to cost more, are usually slightly harder to obtain, always take up far more space per file and I can't tell the difference between them and the 256k files I can very conveniently get for $0.99-1.29 on Amazon or iTunes and don't have to spend time to convert it for for the iPod or the car.

Considering all that, why would I choose lossless? The only benefit it gives is that it would sate my ego knowing I had "the best" while having several quantifiable disadvantages.

Nurses, secretaries, hairdressers, fashion designers, make-up artists, etc.
A straight guy in those professions will get plenty of ridicule and torment.

It was two guys having a slightly of color conversation. That doesn't just happen at conventions. And anyone who thinks off color talk is limited to guys is delusional. Women engage in it at least as much as men do. And they often do it more freely because there's far less chance of there being any repercussions as those with the power to handle it are often are middle class white males concerned that attempting to take any action against a woman will end up causing them to be labeled as sexist in retribution (yes, I've seen it happen).

These guys just happened to get overheard by an oversensitive sexist who decided to use what she overheard to defame 2 people for some Twitter attention. She simply found out that the internet isn't burdened by the white or male guilt that allows people to get away with such over dramatic behavior in the real world.

There's several sites (Ex. MP3 or Not and Noise Addicts) that have tests where you can find out if you can hear the difference between two different quality sound files on your equipment.

Generally, Lossless audio is like expensive wine or water. Ego drives people to find a difference much more than them actually being able to tell a difference.
If you take boxed wine or tap water and put it in a fancy, expensive looking bottle then have people compare them; there's a few experts and connoisseurs who can reliably tell they're the same but most people will say the liquid from the expensive bottle is superior.
Lossless audio has the same placebo effect. Tell people it's lossless and put it in a 100MB file and they'll be certain it sounds better than a 12MB compressed file. But there's really only a relative few people who can actually hear any difference.

All of the "Richard Castle" novels released thus far have made the Top 10 of the NYT Best Seller list. There's even a movie adaptation of one of the books in the works.

Plus, remember Game of Thrones is licensed IP. What rights HBO gets to sell, and how much of the money they get to keep if they do, depends on their licensing agreement with George R. R. Martin.

Refusing to violate the terms of service of another company by using deceptive marketing is quite different than refusing to endorse his company's products at all.

I wish I could have been horrified. But I was too busy being one of the 53% who were working so we could pay taxes and use the remainder to pay for food, housing and health care.