Writers are essentially artists. And guess what - people who write books don't have a union and they don't have job security. Neither do other "starving artists".
The moral of the story? If you want job security and respect and money, get a real job. If you instead opt to be a street-performer, painter, sidewalk-chalk-artist, poet, novelist, playwright or television writer -- then don't whine when you get paid like shit and have very little power. The reason you have very little power is that EVERYONE wants to write or paint or draw or act or make videogames for a living. If it was a harder, less enjoyable job, NOBODY would want to do it and there would be less competition and your services would be in greater demand. You'd make more money and have more power.
But since that isn't the case, you band together with other suckie starving artist whiners and create an artificial limitation that falsely increases your power and demands.
Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying I don't support or respect people who write or do anything else for a living. A lot of my friends are DJs, musicians, painters, aspiring authors and filmmakers. I just don't want to hear anyone whining about their fun job when they knew it was difficult to make a living going into it to begin with.
I would disagree. Having a union seems to be a lot like having a teacher's union. The crappiest people are kept around and the best people are kept down to some degree by obligations to the crappier ones. Why should television writing be different than any other venture in the world? The people who are best at it should be rewarded the most. Those who suck should be forced to find a new line of work. And -- just like with the tech industry -- if there is a flood of interest from people wanting to work in your market, then you are going to suffer lower wages and less individual negotiation power. You shouldn't be able to band together with other lame people to forge some sort of falsely powerful Voltron of suck.
Well, I hail from the home of the largest bookstore on the planet, including massive quantities of used books . . . But I would still appreciate having a very readable digital format (e-paper style) reader for a lot of content. Especially as I'm one of those people who would otherwise be carrying half a dozen heavy tech books, a coupel fiction books and a couple reference books. And a few newspapers and magazines.
I would trade inability to resell the item in return for no DRM and very low cost of the book itself. If they force DRM on me, then they should provide some sort of a system that allows for backups and transferral of license to the materials without any major hurdles to deter me from bothering.
As for price -- there are a lot of great books to be read, but $30 to $60 for a hard cover and $8 to $30 for a paperback (we won't even get into text books and technical reading) is practically robbery. If I'm not getting a physical book and all you're doing is just shooting a couple megabytes of ascii text at me with about a hundredth of a penny's worth of expense on your part, then you better not be charging me $10 for a Stephen King book or $15 for a videogame guide or $25 for the latest "... In a Nuthshell" book.
Of course, the problem will remain that for an author to make a real living at what he does, he would need to sell a LOT of books. You can be on the NYT Best Seller list and remain pretty poor. But the reduction in price should be compensated by the reduction in expense. No more printing press. No more shipping and distribution costs. You need a server, a contract with some websites and some bandwidth. There you go. So the author's cut shouldn't be negatively impacted. Perhaps even increased.
That's what Amazon does on some books. Of course, they charge $2 to $4 for a (DRM'd?) PDF file of it. If the book is only $12, why would I spend $2 to $4 just to get a digital copy of what I already bought? Meh.
I don't need lots of books cluttering up my life, so I'd be just fine with digital only, given cheap prices and great freedom to backup/use/etc how I see fit. If I have to re-buy it in ten years when media formats change or they stop supporting some special format, then I'm screwed. A physical book can still be readable in a couple centuries.
But giving me an INCLUDED digital version for no additional expense would be nice.
+ Reader has to be under $100. + Books have to be half the price of print books or lower. + No bullshit DRM. I better be able to back the content up, copy it to my ipod, save it on my hard drive. Whatever. + I better be able to resell it, just like I can resell a used book. Otherwise, all of this is just a run-around way for the publishing industry to attacked the used book trade, which they hate more than almost anything else on earth (including their loathing of public libraries).
The reason I have no sympathy for striking writers (aside from the fact that I don't think BOOK authors have unions and I don't want to hear a bunch of starving artists cry about being starving artists while the rest of us have REAL jobs for a living) is that there are very few writers who deserve to have their jobs. Much less negotiate stronger contracts.
Line them all up Pink Floyd style and let's have all of them shot.
I guess I have been away too long. Who in the hell is kdawson? Is he that "Knuckles Dawson" kid who plays XBOX 360 20 hours a day and has a 100k gamerscore on xbox or something? I mean, I thought "first post" guys had the most pointless endeavor on earth . . .
Word of mouth. Flyers. Other fans. Not every great band or musician is on MTV and sponored by some craptastic mafioso label. There is a wealth of greater talent out there doing their own marketing and letting their fans spread the world. Some, like Anders Manga, even start their own label to produce their own stuff instead of going out to a traditional record label. And because of their self-garnered fanbase and popularity, they get other marketing allotted to them -- such as magazine articles and interviews on television and website features.
And all of this, without Epic Records, Wal-Mart or Sam Goody being involved. More fervent fanbases, more control of one's own destiny and 500% more profit off of every record than if they went with a major label.
The artist can afford to sell their content cheaper (especially the digital versions), which means they benefit and so do their fans. The only thing the big labels provide is a larger revenue growth FOR THEMSELVES on the artist's back. So what if the label gets them out ot every twelve year old on TRL? If you're a successful band and then you get major backing so that your audience suddenly grows by a thousand percent, but then you only get one point on every $20 CD -- you are doing no better than you were when you had a tenth of the audience and were able to sell the content directly to them for a tenth of the price. Except now you're paying more of your own expenses (wiping out most of any supposed profit) and probably losing most of the control of your own marketing, branding and copyrights.
It is a misnomer that the major record labels do anything but secure revenue for themselves. That is their only goal in life. They *might* get your name out there and get your CDs in more stores, but at what cost to you and your fans? And if you can be your own distribution and marketing system and make five times more for your efforts, why would you waste your time with Arista?
I didn't say that the occasional text message wasn't useful. I've had a time or two where I've been in a meeting and used text messaging to let someone know what time I would be ready to meet them after work. But even if those exceptions are fairly frequent, you're talking about MAYBE a couple dozen messages a month.
The majority of texting seems to be actual full blown conversations or pointless "HEy WUT U UP 2?!" and crap that banters back and forth for 800 inane volleys. The problem I have with text messaging is not that it doesn't have any useful purposes, but that it allows for an explosion of constant inanity regardless of where you are and when.
I don't have a text messaging plan, because I don't want to spend $20 per month JUST for text messages. And even though 15 cents every message is a lot (and a second 15 cents if I reply), I've managed to keep people limited in the amount they text message me, because they know I will almost NEVER respond to them. But even so, the few messages a month they do send me (maybe four or six), they are always pointless.
Seriously, is it worth 15 cents for you to send me a text message with only the word "hugs" or "miss you" or "see you tonight"? I mean, if I see you every night, do I need you to text me to state the fucking obvious?!
So, why do I care if people let text messaging reduce their conversational skills to crisco and carry on endless inane conversations over text messages? Why is it my business? Well, I don't and it isn't. EXCEPT, that they keep the industry afloat when it comes to text messages and their willingness to pay any price and accept any absurd plan formalities and requisites makes it more difficult for everyone else to expect better plan negotiations in somewhat the same way your local multiplex is going to stuff Fred Clause on every movie screen, instead of a good movie, because Fred Clause is what will bring the drones to fill the seats. And as long as they're willing to fork over cash for crap, the market will just be flooded with crap.
Now, I'm not in the UK so perhaps your services and plans and options are far better. But in the states, they largely suck.
Also, in the states, text messaging seems to be the domain of teenagers (and as time goes on, edging into college aged set). As I understand it, everyone uses text messaging in the UK of all ages. I don't really know any adults who text message and I'm surrounded by people in the tech industry on a daily basis.
Although you do now have DVRs that allow you to do away with commercials (even if Comcast's version of a DVR sucks balls, records the same show 400 times in a day even though they're all the same episode and has no out-of-box 30-second-skip). But then you're still paying extra money for a service that allows you to shirk the commercials of a service you already pay for that shouldn't have commercials to begin with.
I don't think I've bought a magazine since I was about twelve years old and had a subscription to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. And no, I don't recall it having any advertising in it (but I could be wrong). I read my grandfather's subscription to Popular Mechanics, Discovery, Popular Science and National Geographic, but the advertising was a small portion of the content and I was free to turn the page, ignoring the ads completely.
You can buy news papers for about 25 cents these days and I know it costs far more than that to produce a giant stack of printed paper and distribute it like they do. So advertising must cover almost the entire expense. And even then, I just shake the paper free of all the ads and read the actual content. (Okay, I don't actually do that, because I haven't held a physical version of a news paper since the turn of the century).
But cramming advertising that I'm forced to watch into a product I'm already paying for without an actual discount (again, you and I both know it won't be a discount -- they'll just raise the price of non-ad-sponsored discs) is a different thing entirely. Now, if you're going to let me "rent" a DVD from blockbuster **FOR FREE** as long as I'm forced to watch two minutes of advertising along with it . . . that might not be so bad. Or if I can have free unlimited netflix accounts in exchange for being sent DVDs that have forced-commercials on them.
But why would I go to the store and buy a movie for my collection in which I'm going to be obligated to sit through a bunch of crap?!
What I purchased was boxed and hadn't seemed to be opened (so I'd be skeptical of any in-store switcharoo where someone might have returned the product with the wrong disc for a refund). And $20 was reasonable at the time, because this was within a couple years of release and just prior to the sequel coming out. As I recall, the game came out in 2000 and the sequel came out around 2003.
Shareware and demos (why people would PAY for a demo, I don't know) tend to be kept in a separate section of most places, so it's easy to tell that you're getting a demo simply by the shelf it's on.
And of course, once opened, you can't return software . . .
I don't care if it sucks. I bought what was purported to be Deus Ex (the original) at the store awhile back. It was cheap, but it had been out for a long time so I thought nothing of it. Nothing about it suggested that it was anything but the full legitimate game.
I got home. Inserted the disk. Played for about five minutes . . . and then it told me that this was a demo and if I'd like to play the entire game, I should order the full $50 version on top of the $20 I already paid for it.
Since then, I have never touched Deus Ex. It could get an 11 out of 10 on every game review on earth and be endorsed by Xenu himself. Not gonna give them a dollar.
Anyone stupid enough to give a pre-teen (or a teen for that matter) a cell phone deserves to be charged through the nose for their idiocy, anyway. You might as well just hand over your Visa card to your third grader.
Unlimited texting plans in America seem to be around $20/mo and individual messages are about 15 cents (so one message plus the recipient replying to you will cost each of you 30 cents for a total of 60 cents). How fucking much do you have to be texting in a month to make this worthwhile? If you're a kid, go home and get on the computer and use IM if you absolutely need to chat. Or if you have a cell phone, PICK UP THE DAMN THING AND DIAL.
I know people who run through hundreds or thousands of messages every month. What in the hell do you need to say so badly that you can't call someone or IM them from a computer? I mean, YOU HAVE A CELL IN YOUR HAND. Why would you opt to text instead? And don't tell me "because most situations require that you be discreet in your communication". Really? Where in the hell are you wasting the majority of your waking hours that you can or need to send thousands of text messages?!
I can see some situations where it might be potentially useful to send a couple text messages here and there (but sure as fuck not hundreds or thousands) -- but not for the absurd prices carriers charge.
Setting aside the fact that what this will really wind up with is not a discounted ad-supported DVD, but a $30 ad-supported DVD and an *INCREASED* $35 or $40 commercial-free DVD -- why would I want to pay for something that has ANY ads?
If you're going to cram it full of advertising, why aren't you giving it to me for FREE? Making me PAY for it to come with advertising is a good way to convince me to go get it sans-advertising entirely free online.
The connotation of tasers with the phrase "non-lethal" needs to be done away with, as well. Calling tasers non-lethal is like calling being hit to the skull with an aluminum baseball bat "non-lethal". Sure, you *might* not die from it -- but there is also a significant chance that you *might*.
Unfortunately the problem is also larger than the utility in use. The problem is that the police can not be trusted and they are all too ready to abuse their power. I remember seeing a documentary on the news (60 Minutes or something like that) about five years ago where they were showing horrible abuses of pepper spray by police.
In the videotaped incident shown, some students were protesting something by locking their arms together and sitting in a circle. Non-violent. Peaceful. They weren't even blocking traffic. Or a sidewalk. Or a doorway. They might have been singing, but I don't recall that for sure. At any rate, they were absolutely not a threat.
So what did the police do? They sprayed pepper spray directly into a foam coffee cup and then took swaps to sop up huge quantities of the pepper spray from the cup. They then forced the eyelids of the protestors open and rubbed the pepper spray DIRECTLY ON THEIR EYES. All experts agreed that such an action is absolutely torture and the pain would be far exceeding any possible pain from just spraying it at someone (where you will have some contact with the eyes, but most of it will be dissipated by the air and distance between you and the target, instead of concentrated in one spot on their eyeball).
The problem is that a lot of cops are too fucking lazy to be bothered exerting any actual physical energy, so they resort to the taser in cases where a few cops could easily subdue someone and restrain them or where having the patience to talk with someone would solve the situation.
Cops use the tasers for more than just "crazy homeless meth guy charging at them with a knife". They've used them on 80 year old blind women. They've used them on annoying unarmed, non-violent students. They've used them on frustrated air travelers. They've used them on guys who were legally filming police arrests on public property from their driveway. They've used them on grade school students. People are dying, because the police can't be bothered to exert themselves. While it's probably better than using a gun, at least the use of a gun requires justification and significant pre-meditated thought. The readiness of tasers and the mistaken belief that they are non-lethal and not dangerous causes it to be used all to swiftly.
Also, for a guy charging a cop with a knife? They're probably going to use a gun ANYWAY. It's fucking difficult and almost impossible to hit a quickly moving target with a taser. And unless someone is armed and clearly a dangerous threat, there is NO EXCUSE for tasering them.
Doesn't take longer for me. I get overnight shipping for $2 and two day shipping for free. And it's always right on time. Of course, I don't agree that someone should be given a lower priority, just because they may only buy from you once or twice. Imagine if you were treated poorly in a restaurant, just because you might never be driving back through that part of the world and eating there again?
Now, that said -- if you are a REGULAR some place, you are probably going to get better and more efficient treatment than if you are a one time drop-in. That is not the same thing as intentionally treating non-regulars/non-cash-cows poorly, however.
Suing school children for $100k is a rather good idea as far as I'm concerned. Would it be that I controlled things, all children would be forced into a life of servitude. Grubby little parasitic bastards.
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Writers are essentially artists. And guess what - people who write books don't have a union and they don't have job security. Neither do other "starving artists".
The moral of the story? If you want job security and respect and money, get a real job. If you instead opt to be a street-performer, painter, sidewalk-chalk-artist, poet, novelist, playwright or television writer -- then don't whine when you get paid like shit and have very little power. The reason you have very little power is that EVERYONE wants to write or paint or draw or act or make videogames for a living. If it was a harder, less enjoyable job, NOBODY would want to do it and there would be less competition and your services would be in greater demand. You'd make more money and have more power.
But since that isn't the case, you band together with other suckie starving artist whiners and create an artificial limitation that falsely increases your power and demands.
Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying I don't support or respect people who write or do anything else for a living. A lot of my friends are DJs, musicians, painters, aspiring authors and filmmakers. I just don't want to hear anyone whining about their fun job when they knew it was difficult to make a living going into it to begin with.
Top right, in the links section for this page.
"Compare prices for Mozilla".
Uh . . . .
I would disagree. Having a union seems to be a lot like having a teacher's union. The crappiest people are kept around and the best people are kept down to some degree by obligations to the crappier ones. Why should television writing be different than any other venture in the world? The people who are best at it should be rewarded the most. Those who suck should be forced to find a new line of work. And -- just like with the tech industry -- if there is a flood of interest from people wanting to work in your market, then you are going to suffer lower wages and less individual negotiation power. You shouldn't be able to band together with other lame people to forge some sort of falsely powerful Voltron of suck.
Well, I hail from the home of the largest bookstore on the planet, including massive quantities of used books . . . But I would still appreciate having a very readable digital format (e-paper style) reader for a lot of content. Especially as I'm one of those people who would otherwise be carrying half a dozen heavy tech books, a coupel fiction books and a couple reference books. And a few newspapers and magazines.
I would trade inability to resell the item in return for no DRM and very low cost of the book itself. If they force DRM on me, then they should provide some sort of a system that allows for backups and transferral of license to the materials without any major hurdles to deter me from bothering.
As for price -- there are a lot of great books to be read, but $30 to $60 for a hard cover and $8 to $30 for a paperback (we won't even get into text books and technical reading) is practically robbery. If I'm not getting a physical book and all you're doing is just shooting a couple megabytes of ascii text at me with about a hundredth of a penny's worth of expense on your part, then you better not be charging me $10 for a Stephen King book or $15 for a videogame guide or $25 for the latest "... In a Nuthshell" book.
Of course, the problem will remain that for an author to make a real living at what he does, he would need to sell a LOT of books. You can be on the NYT Best Seller list and remain pretty poor. But the reduction in price should be compensated by the reduction in expense. No more printing press. No more shipping and distribution costs. You need a server, a contract with some websites and some bandwidth. There you go. So the author's cut shouldn't be negatively impacted. Perhaps even increased.
That's what Amazon does on some books. Of course, they charge $2 to $4 for a (DRM'd?) PDF file of it. If the book is only $12, why would I spend $2 to $4 just to get a digital copy of what I already bought? Meh.
I don't need lots of books cluttering up my life, so I'd be just fine with digital only, given cheap prices and great freedom to backup/use/etc how I see fit. If I have to re-buy it in ten years when media formats change or they stop supporting some special format, then I'm screwed. A physical book can still be readable in a couple centuries.
But giving me an INCLUDED digital version for no additional expense would be nice.
Here's what it'll take for me:
+ Reader has to be under $100.
+ Books have to be half the price of print books or lower.
+ No bullshit DRM. I better be able to back the content up, copy it to my ipod, save it on my hard drive. Whatever.
+ I better be able to resell it, just like I can resell a used book. Otherwise, all of this is just a run-around way for the publishing industry to attacked the used book trade, which they hate more than almost anything else on earth (including their loathing of public libraries).
The reason I have no sympathy for striking writers (aside from the fact that I don't think BOOK authors have unions and I don't want to hear a bunch of starving artists cry about being starving artists while the rest of us have REAL jobs for a living) is that there are very few writers who deserve to have their jobs. Much less negotiate stronger contracts.
Line them all up Pink Floyd style and let's have all of them shot.
I guess I have been away too long. Who in the hell is kdawson? Is he that "Knuckles Dawson" kid who plays XBOX 360 20 hours a day and has a 100k gamerscore on xbox or something? I mean, I thought "first post" guys had the most pointless endeavor on earth . . .
That is useless unless they're also going to open source Lore so we can make use of the emotion chip.
Word of mouth. Flyers. Other fans. Not every great band or musician is on MTV and sponored by some craptastic mafioso label. There is a wealth of greater talent out there doing their own marketing and letting their fans spread the world. Some, like Anders Manga, even start their own label to produce their own stuff instead of going out to a traditional record label. And because of their self-garnered fanbase and popularity, they get other marketing allotted to them -- such as magazine articles and interviews on television and website features.
And all of this, without Epic Records, Wal-Mart or Sam Goody being involved. More fervent fanbases, more control of one's own destiny and 500% more profit off of every record than if they went with a major label.
The artist can afford to sell their content cheaper (especially the digital versions), which means they benefit and so do their fans. The only thing the big labels provide is a larger revenue growth FOR THEMSELVES on the artist's back. So what if the label gets them out ot every twelve year old on TRL? If you're a successful band and then you get major backing so that your audience suddenly grows by a thousand percent, but then you only get one point on every $20 CD -- you are doing no better than you were when you had a tenth of the audience and were able to sell the content directly to them for a tenth of the price. Except now you're paying more of your own expenses (wiping out most of any supposed profit) and probably losing most of the control of your own marketing, branding and copyrights.
It is a misnomer that the major record labels do anything but secure revenue for themselves. That is their only goal in life. They *might* get your name out there and get your CDs in more stores, but at what cost to you and your fans? And if you can be your own distribution and marketing system and make five times more for your efforts, why would you waste your time with Arista?
I didn't say that the occasional text message wasn't useful. I've had a time or two where I've been in a meeting and used text messaging to let someone know what time I would be ready to meet them after work. But even if those exceptions are fairly frequent, you're talking about MAYBE a couple dozen messages a month.
The majority of texting seems to be actual full blown conversations or pointless "HEy WUT U UP 2?!" and crap that banters back and forth for 800 inane volleys. The problem I have with text messaging is not that it doesn't have any useful purposes, but that it allows for an explosion of constant inanity regardless of where you are and when.
I don't have a text messaging plan, because I don't want to spend $20 per month JUST for text messages. And even though 15 cents every message is a lot (and a second 15 cents if I reply), I've managed to keep people limited in the amount they text message me, because they know I will almost NEVER respond to them. But even so, the few messages a month they do send me (maybe four or six), they are always pointless.
Seriously, is it worth 15 cents for you to send me a text message with only the word "hugs" or "miss you" or "see you tonight"? I mean, if I see you every night, do I need you to text me to state the fucking obvious?!
So, why do I care if people let text messaging reduce their conversational skills to crisco and carry on endless inane conversations over text messages? Why is it my business? Well, I don't and it isn't. EXCEPT, that they keep the industry afloat when it comes to text messages and their willingness to pay any price and accept any absurd plan formalities and requisites makes it more difficult for everyone else to expect better plan negotiations in somewhat the same way your local multiplex is going to stuff Fred Clause on every movie screen, instead of a good movie, because Fred Clause is what will bring the drones to fill the seats. And as long as they're willing to fork over cash for crap, the market will just be flooded with crap.
Now, I'm not in the UK so perhaps your services and plans and options are far better. But in the states, they largely suck.
Also, in the states, text messaging seems to be the domain of teenagers (and as time goes on, edging into college aged set). As I understand it, everyone uses text messaging in the UK of all ages. I don't really know any adults who text message and I'm surrounded by people in the tech industry on a daily basis.
Although you do now have DVRs that allow you to do away with commercials (even if Comcast's version of a DVR sucks balls, records the same show 400 times in a day even though they're all the same episode and has no out-of-box 30-second-skip). But then you're still paying extra money for a service that allows you to shirk the commercials of a service you already pay for that shouldn't have commercials to begin with.
I don't think I've bought a magazine since I was about twelve years old and had a subscription to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. And no, I don't recall it having any advertising in it (but I could be wrong). I read my grandfather's subscription to Popular Mechanics, Discovery, Popular Science and National Geographic, but the advertising was a small portion of the content and I was free to turn the page, ignoring the ads completely.
You can buy news papers for about 25 cents these days and I know it costs far more than that to produce a giant stack of printed paper and distribute it like they do. So advertising must cover almost the entire expense. And even then, I just shake the paper free of all the ads and read the actual content. (Okay, I don't actually do that, because I haven't held a physical version of a news paper since the turn of the century).
But cramming advertising that I'm forced to watch into a product I'm already paying for without an actual discount (again, you and I both know it won't be a discount -- they'll just raise the price of non-ad-sponsored discs) is a different thing entirely. Now, if you're going to let me "rent" a DVD from blockbuster **FOR FREE** as long as I'm forced to watch two minutes of advertising along with it . . . that might not be so bad. Or if I can have free unlimited netflix accounts in exchange for being sent DVDs that have forced-commercials on them.
But why would I go to the store and buy a movie for my collection in which I'm going to be obligated to sit through a bunch of crap?!
What I purchased was boxed and hadn't seemed to be opened (so I'd be skeptical of any in-store switcharoo where someone might have returned the product with the wrong disc for a refund). And $20 was reasonable at the time, because this was within a couple years of release and just prior to the sequel coming out. As I recall, the game came out in 2000 and the sequel came out around 2003.
Shareware and demos (why people would PAY for a demo, I don't know) tend to be kept in a separate section of most places, so it's easy to tell that you're getting a demo simply by the shelf it's on.
And of course, once opened, you can't return software . . .
I don't care if it sucks. I bought what was purported to be Deus Ex (the original) at the store awhile back. It was cheap, but it had been out for a long time so I thought nothing of it. Nothing about it suggested that it was anything but the full legitimate game.
I got home. Inserted the disk. Played for about five minutes . . . and then it told me that this was a demo and if I'd like to play the entire game, I should order the full $50 version on top of the $20 I already paid for it.
Since then, I have never touched Deus Ex. It could get an 11 out of 10 on every game review on earth and be endorsed by Xenu himself. Not gonna give them a dollar.
Anyone stupid enough to give a pre-teen (or a teen for that matter) a cell phone deserves to be charged through the nose for their idiocy, anyway. You might as well just hand over your Visa card to your third grader.
Not only isn't it a job, but it's an oxymoron.
Unlimited texting plans in America seem to be around $20/mo and individual messages are about 15 cents (so one message plus the recipient replying to you will cost each of you 30 cents for a total of 60 cents). How fucking much do you have to be texting in a month to make this worthwhile? If you're a kid, go home and get on the computer and use IM if you absolutely need to chat. Or if you have a cell phone, PICK UP THE DAMN THING AND DIAL.
I know people who run through hundreds or thousands of messages every month. What in the hell do you need to say so badly that you can't call someone or IM them from a computer? I mean, YOU HAVE A CELL IN YOUR HAND. Why would you opt to text instead? And don't tell me "because most situations require that you be discreet in your communication". Really? Where in the hell are you wasting the majority of your waking hours that you can or need to send thousands of text messages?!
I can see some situations where it might be potentially useful to send a couple text messages here and there (but sure as fuck not hundreds or thousands) -- but not for the absurd prices carriers charge.
Setting aside the fact that what this will really wind up with is not a discounted ad-supported DVD, but a $30 ad-supported DVD and an *INCREASED* $35 or $40 commercial-free DVD -- why would I want to pay for something that has ANY ads?
If you're going to cram it full of advertising, why aren't you giving it to me for FREE? Making me PAY for it to come with advertising is a good way to convince me to go get it sans-advertising entirely free online.
No, don't you understand?! Just like it's okay to kill for baby jesus, it's okay to infringe copyright for him, too!
The connotation of tasers with the phrase "non-lethal" needs to be done away with, as well. Calling tasers non-lethal is like calling being hit to the skull with an aluminum baseball bat "non-lethal". Sure, you *might* not die from it -- but there is also a significant chance that you *might*.
Unfortunately the problem is also larger than the utility in use. The problem is that the police can not be trusted and they are all too ready to abuse their power. I remember seeing a documentary on the news (60 Minutes or something like that) about five years ago where they were showing horrible abuses of pepper spray by police.
In the videotaped incident shown, some students were protesting something by locking their arms together and sitting in a circle. Non-violent. Peaceful. They weren't even blocking traffic. Or a sidewalk. Or a doorway. They might have been singing, but I don't recall that for sure. At any rate, they were absolutely not a threat.
So what did the police do? They sprayed pepper spray directly into a foam coffee cup and then took swaps to sop up huge quantities of the pepper spray from the cup. They then forced the eyelids of the protestors open and rubbed the pepper spray DIRECTLY ON THEIR EYES. All experts agreed that such an action is absolutely torture and the pain would be far exceeding any possible pain from just spraying it at someone (where you will have some contact with the eyes, but most of it will be dissipated by the air and distance between you and the target, instead of concentrated in one spot on their eyeball).
The problem is that a lot of cops are too fucking lazy to be bothered exerting any actual physical energy, so they resort to the taser in cases where a few cops could easily subdue someone and restrain them or where having the patience to talk with someone would solve the situation.
Cops use the tasers for more than just "crazy homeless meth guy charging at them with a knife". They've used them on 80 year old blind women. They've used them on annoying unarmed, non-violent students. They've used them on frustrated air travelers. They've used them on guys who were legally filming police arrests on public property from their driveway. They've used them on grade school students. People are dying, because the police can't be bothered to exert themselves. While it's probably better than using a gun, at least the use of a gun requires justification and significant pre-meditated thought. The readiness of tasers and the mistaken belief that they are non-lethal and not dangerous causes it to be used all to swiftly.
Also, for a guy charging a cop with a knife? They're probably going to use a gun ANYWAY. It's fucking difficult and almost impossible to hit a quickly moving target with a taser. And unless someone is armed and clearly a dangerous threat, there is NO EXCUSE for tasering them.
Doesn't take longer for me. I get overnight shipping for $2 and two day shipping for free. And it's always right on time. Of course, I don't agree that someone should be given a lower priority, just because they may only buy from you once or twice. Imagine if you were treated poorly in a restaurant, just because you might never be driving back through that part of the world and eating there again?
Now, that said -- if you are a REGULAR some place, you are probably going to get better and more efficient treatment than if you are a one time drop-in. That is not the same thing as intentionally treating non-regulars/non-cash-cows poorly, however.
Suing school children for $100k is a rather good idea as far as I'm concerned. Would it be that I controlled things, all children would be forced into a life of servitude. Grubby little parasitic bastards.