As someone who practically grew up in Powell's Books, I buy all my books online. They're way cheaper. Especially with Amazon Prime two day shipping. However, Powell's Books is the way to have a competitive niche (plus, they also have an online distribution presence . . . except for the whole still being more expensive part).
When books are no longer the niche, perhaps provide an enjoyable social experience, where you can sit among others and enjoy a book and a coffee and a muffin for a few hours. The Powell's experience (negating the actual book purchasing part itself) is worth a few bucks for sitting and reading.
Incredibly irrelevant comparison. Cable companies have poor sales of porn content, because they have horrible offerings of boring soft-core tripe. Why would people pay a lot of money for crap via their television when they can get a whole month subscription to some website with far better or more interesting content online?
Yeah, right. Without bookstores, nobody will buy any more books. Just like nobody buys music now that there aren't any record stores.
I'm tired of hearing the old dinosaurs moan as their grip on the business fails. I can try and get an agent and try and get published and then make $1.50 on every $30 book sold in a bookstore or I can put a book online somewhere and make $1.50 on every $2 book sold online. The only difference is that in the second case, the author makes as much or more than before and the reader can afford to buy fifteen books for the price of one.
Jerry Pournell retains the digital rights to his works and has been selling them on Amazon for two or three bucks each. A trivial amount for such great writing - and he's making a nice bit of side cash just from that. The only person who is losing out is the old dinosaur retailers, agents, publishers, distributors, and other middlemen (and if you're an old fashioned mom and pop bookstore, your competition isn't Amazon, but the big mega-bookstore down the street that moved in on you twenty years ago).
And the PS3 is half a decade old. The iPhone has as much ram as the vita.
Sorry, but I'm willing to pay more for better hardware. I wish console makers would get that through their fucking skulls. Your games are $60 and you expect your consoles to run for at least half a dozen years. For the thousands of dollars I'm going to spend on your games in the life of that console, I think I can swing a little more than $299 for the actual system itself, if you can give it a bit more juice.
Games cost tens of millions of dollars and often reach as much as a hundred million dollars. They make money by selling the game. Movies make money by being shown in theaters. And on television. And merchandizing. And being licensed to Netflix and other services. And being sold directly to viewers. And far more of the population watch any given movie than will ever play any given game.
I've played games. Lost track of them. Put them back in a year or two later and started all over again and finished them. I don't see what the huge deal is. I definitely don't want my gaming options to be limited by the lifestyles of people who really only have the capacity (either mentally or time-wise or other) to play short iPhone games.
Twenty hours? What decade are you living in? Most games these days are closer to 6-12 hours for $60+. Sometimes they're even shorter. The excuse is consistently that people don't want long games, because they only have so much free time to play them. I call BS. It's not the time, it's the effort. They give up rather than finishing it. Time is meaningless. If you can play two hours a day , then a longer game just means it'll be more days before you're done. Hell, that's a great deal -- you're getting more entertainment for your life for the same price.
It seems that people currently accept that a game should give you around an hour of entertainment per five to eight dollars. If they're now saying that games will be even shorter in the future, that means we'll probably be seeing $15/hr for gaming entertainment. Of course, this is weird, because on top of it, they then sell you MORE GAME in the form of DLC. So . . . go figure.
This is just the gaming industry excusing shorter games (because they're spending fifty to one hundred million bucks to make a game) by choosing to build their plan around those lazy users who give up on a game long before it's over. It's like the book publishing industry saying "people don't have time to read all these long books with their long stupid pages with their big stupid words" and then stating that all future novels must be less than eighty pages, so everyone can finish reading them.
Anyway, back to game length. Most games are a lot closer to six and twelve hours than dozens or hundreds of hours. The games that are twenty hours long are the open world GTA, Saints Row, and Skyrim style games. That's only a small subset of overall gaming titles -- which I would say on average are ten hours. And of course, about 20% of the average game is actually just a bunch of bullshit padding to increase game time claims on the box. Sorry, but collecting 800 flags or 600 "discs" or "orbs" in your game in all sorts of crevices and hidden spots is not "game".
The thing is, it's also a good way to just stop the casual conversationalist. Sometimes you just want to be left alone, even if you're in the middle of a sea of people. Just an extra fifteen or so minutes of mental solitude before you walk into the office and have to really start the day off. Faking this preoccupation and unawareness gives you that, without having to fend off people repeatedly or having to seem like a jerk to someone who just wants to ask you what time it is or have some jovial morning banter.
Yeah, I don't agree with the submitters statement that when I think of product placement, I think of the 1950s examples. When I think of it, I think of how everything in '24' is Dell branded. Or how Nokia logos happen to appear in every shot of a cell phone on some shows. Or how every car in a certain show happens to be the same brand and have its hood ornament precisely filmed. Or how Castaway was basically a two hour Tom Hanks FEDEX commercial.
I was actually surprised when I was watching the Dick Van Dyke Show which includes some of the product placements with it, on Netflix. They were nowhere near as subtle as they often are today (though I would call what is done in 2011 only subtle to complete mouth-breathing ignorant morons). They'd come back from a break at the end of the show to a scene of the kid running through the house and into the kitchen, saying to Dad (who had just come home) that "mommy is in the kitchen taking a bath". He'd go in there and see his wife soaking her hands in Joy in the sink while washing dishes and they'd comment on how Joy is a delight for her hands while doing dishes and then they'd hold her hands and the bottle of Joy up to the camera.
It sort of made me hate product placement a little less, when I realized just how blatant it was back then. It kind of makes me wish it were that blatant, today. I could respect that. What I can't respect is when every product on the coffee table in a dorm room on a show just happens to be label-facing the camera perfectly and be 100% Frito-Lay brand. As if the audience is just too stupid to grasp what is going on.
An alternative to faking cell calls is to fake listening to your iPod. I know plenty of people (myself included) who will have our headphones on, even if they're not actually listening to anything. Hell, I know people who don't even carry their ipod with them. They just have their headphones on and the other end goes into their pocket. It's especially useful when on Tri-Met or any other public transportation or public situation. If you just want to be left alone and not hassled or bothered, it's a fantastic way to achieve it and you don't have to go through the motions of pretending to talk to anyone on a phone.
If they really cared about dangerous behavior on the road, they wouldn't give these assholes such light sentences. It's just like with driving drunk. Why should you ever *EVER* get your license back after you've been driving drunk? At the most lenient, you should get one chance. Drive drunk and you lose your license for five years. Drive while suspended during that time and lose it forever. Drive drunk a second time and lose it forever. Drive very dangerously (putting on makeup, getting dressed, having sex, talking on two cell phones while going 70mph, texting, using a computer, etc) and lose your license for a couple years. Second time, lose it forever.
Why we give lazy, careless, dangerous people continued access to dangerous hunks of speeding metal that can repeatedly put the rest of the public in significant danger is fucking beyond me.
But, of course, that's not what will be done in this case any more than it is in others. They'll use it to springboard some bullshit authoritarian narrow-minded pandering garbage.
Why lead the world in exploring the universe on behalf of all mankind when you can make shitty electronics for lazy fucking walmart shoppers. Brilliant.
The problem is that other than "go land on this thing", we don't have any real goals. Goals are important. And not just quiet "inside the organization" goals. But goals we can all dream about and get behind (especially if you want funding). So let's set realistic goals. Like "land on the moon again and establish a base by XYZ". We've been to the moon. That's doable. building shit on it. That's doable. Instead, we get "we'll go to the moon again in 2020". And then a decade later, we're told "uh... well go to the moon again by 2030... yeah, that's it... 30".
The more time which passes, the greater our technological capacity. However, at some point, we have to stop and say "let's start doing things". So when is that point? It's like cryptography. A computer today could crack in a day what a computer in 1980 would take 40 years to crack. So you could spend 40 years (starting back in 1980) to crack it or you could wait 30 years, buy a new computer, then crack it.
So at what point do we say "okay, enough has advanced -- now let's start doing something"?
I obviously don't know the answer, either. It's just the obvious question we have to ask right now. And we also have to acknowledge how much of what we've advanced so far has come from setting the goal for space exploration in the first place. Without the space exploration to drive a lot of this advanced knowledge acquisition, will we still maintain the growth of our technical abilities to in-turn advance space exploration? Sort of doing it in reverse?
You mean the lack of progress made so far, don't you? We're supposed go feel energized and positive about losing an entire decade of progress and having to push the goal to reach the moon (again) back another decade? It's not exciting. It's depressing and sad. Where in the article does it suggest that it's the same goal? It says that Obama has set a goal. Not that he has changed the date on the existing goal (which was set by Bush eight years ago).
Of course it requires a lot of time and planning (and technical advancement), but we at least have to establish a plan and incentivize an effort. or we'll never get around to it (I'm a big fan of commercial-based exploration supplementing more "humanity based" exploration, but as much as that's the big talk right now, there really is no realistic financial incentive for businesses to do this just yet).
However, we went from riding horses to landing on the moon in less than 70 years and we've gone from landing on the moon to . . . landing on nothing (including the moon, again) in another 45 years. We have a low orbit space station, which is cool but nearing the end of its life and we've stuck an RC car on Mars (which is nearing the end of its surprisingly far out-performing life).
It seems that we peaked early and have coasted from there and the best we've received are some half-assed promises and goals that we all forget about a few months later and that are re-set a couple years later as if the first goals were never set to begin with. There's no sense of "oh boy, we're working toward this ultimate goal". There's just a general world-wide sense of "I don't know what's going on, but hopefully "someday" there will be "some awesome space stuff" that happens and hopefully we'll be around to witness it.
And of course I don't want people to die in the process, but it's fucking space exploration - of course it's going to happen and we need to stop being giant pussies about it and freaking out every time something goes wrong. We're completely fine with thousands of people going overseas and dying in military actions, but one brave soul bites it furthering the scientific exploration of all man-kind and we start pissing ourselves over it.
Weren't we given a goal of hitting the moon and mars again by 2020, like, a decade ago? Whatever happened to that?
I think our best hope is that maybe the Chinese will catch up and surpass and really start pushing space exploration and we'll all be able to watch in awe from the sidelines. I think something like that is going to happen long before we wait for commercial enterprises to build themselves up, get us into space, and then find a financially viable reason to explore the far reaches (none of that will happen in my life time - they're still trying to have successful, reliable, affordable trips to the ISS).
From the moon to a rock in only around 60 years. Hopefully I'll have the same excitement and thrill when I'm in my 50s and we're doing something amazing in the late 30s as my mom felt when she was like 12 and we landed on the moon. And hopefully I'll still be alive when we hit Mars. Though ... probably not. I was always excited that I was born in the generation after the moon landing, because it meant that I'd be alive to see way much more awesome space stuff happened that stirred everything about exploration and ambition of man in us as a species. Instead, I'm just hoping that something -- fucking anything -- happens in my life time.
Misleading. You'll note that the man was arrested on minor charges; not failure to present identification. You are not required to carry or provide identification in America unless you are driving a vehicle or flying a commercial airline. A few municipalities have enacted very controversial and constitutionally grey laws that require you to identify yourself if an officer believes you are engaging in a criminal activity and you are of course always required to provide identification if you have been *arrested*.
Now, can an overzealous cop say "you were sitting on this park bench reading a book and you refused to provide me with your papers when I asked you for them" and decide to arrest you on that alone? Sure. A cop can also decide that you being a bit mouthy is justification to hit you in the head with a baton or taze you. That doesn't make it a legal action on the cop's part. That's what the legal system is for (never *ever* fight or debate with an officer, even if your rights are being violated. Just shot the fuck up and deal with that when you speak with a lawyer so you don't make things worse for yourself).
But, what they can do and what is legal and right is not the same thing.
Uh. A driver's license only makes life more convenient if you're going to be driving. If I'm not driving, I have absolutely no goddamn use for the thing. I might have occasional use for a State ID card, but I am absolutely not ever under any obligation (unless I've been arrested, I believe) to produce that identification to anyone at any time. And you aren't obligated to present your license to someone, just because they have a shiny badge on their chest, either -- unless you are engaged in driving a vehicle at the time.
No, everyone gets an ID and you must carry it with you at all times. I don't see why that would be a big deal, it's basically just a plastic card with a summary of the information the government has on you anyway.
Uh. It would be a big deal, because America is a free(-ish) country and citizens don't need to "show zee papers" at the whim of whatever "authority" feels like hassling you. Even requiring on IDs on airplanes is a new and controversial issue for just this reason.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who practically grew up in Powell's Books, I buy all my books online. They're way cheaper. Especially with Amazon Prime two day shipping. However, Powell's Books is the way to have a competitive niche (plus, they also have an online distribution presence . . . except for the whole still being more expensive part).
When books are no longer the niche, perhaps provide an enjoyable social experience, where you can sit among others and enjoy a book and a coffee and a muffin for a few hours. The Powell's experience (negating the actual book purchasing part itself) is worth a few bucks for sitting and reading.
Incredibly irrelevant comparison. Cable companies have poor sales of porn content, because they have horrible offerings of boring soft-core tripe. Why would people pay a lot of money for crap via their television when they can get a whole month subscription to some website with far better or more interesting content online?
SKY IS FALLING OH NOES!
Brick and mortar dinosaurs can choke on it.
Yeah, right. Without bookstores, nobody will buy any more books. Just like nobody buys music now that there aren't any record stores.
I'm tired of hearing the old dinosaurs moan as their grip on the business fails. I can try and get an agent and try and get published and then make $1.50 on every $30 book sold in a bookstore or I can put a book online somewhere and make $1.50 on every $2 book sold online. The only difference is that in the second case, the author makes as much or more than before and the reader can afford to buy fifteen books for the price of one.
Jerry Pournell retains the digital rights to his works and has been selling them on Amazon for two or three bucks each. A trivial amount for such great writing - and he's making a nice bit of side cash just from that. The only person who is losing out is the old dinosaur retailers, agents, publishers, distributors, and other middlemen (and if you're an old fashioned mom and pop bookstore, your competition isn't Amazon, but the big mega-bookstore down the street that moved in on you twenty years ago).
Sorry, Monsanto has you beat to the whole destroying the food system thing.
And the PS3 is half a decade old. The iPhone has as much ram as the vita.
Sorry, but I'm willing to pay more for better hardware. I wish console makers would get that through their fucking skulls. Your games are $60 and you expect your consoles to run for at least half a dozen years. For the thousands of dollars I'm going to spend on your games in the life of that console, I think I can swing a little more than $299 for the actual system itself, if you can give it a bit more juice.
Games cost tens of millions of dollars and often reach as much as a hundred million dollars. They make money by selling the game. Movies make money by being shown in theaters. And on television. And merchandizing. And being licensed to Netflix and other services. And being sold directly to viewers. And far more of the population watch any given movie than will ever play any given game.
I've played games. Lost track of them. Put them back in a year or two later and started all over again and finished them. I don't see what the huge deal is. I definitely don't want my gaming options to be limited by the lifestyles of people who really only have the capacity (either mentally or time-wise or other) to play short iPhone games.
Two hours for $10 of entertainment (ie, $5/hr) is about the going rate in videogames, today.
Twenty hours? What decade are you living in? Most games these days are closer to 6-12 hours for $60+. Sometimes they're even shorter. The excuse is consistently that people don't want long games, because they only have so much free time to play them. I call BS. It's not the time, it's the effort. They give up rather than finishing it. Time is meaningless. If you can play two hours a day , then a longer game just means it'll be more days before you're done. Hell, that's a great deal -- you're getting more entertainment for your life for the same price.
It seems that people currently accept that a game should give you around an hour of entertainment per five to eight dollars. If they're now saying that games will be even shorter in the future, that means we'll probably be seeing $15/hr for gaming entertainment. Of course, this is weird, because on top of it, they then sell you MORE GAME in the form of DLC. So . . . go figure.
This is just the gaming industry excusing shorter games (because they're spending fifty to one hundred million bucks to make a game) by choosing to build their plan around those lazy users who give up on a game long before it's over. It's like the book publishing industry saying "people don't have time to read all these long books with their long stupid pages with their big stupid words" and then stating that all future novels must be less than eighty pages, so everyone can finish reading them.
Anyway, back to game length. Most games are a lot closer to six and twelve hours than dozens or hundreds of hours. The games that are twenty hours long are the open world GTA, Saints Row, and Skyrim style games. That's only a small subset of overall gaming titles -- which I would say on average are ten hours. And of course, about 20% of the average game is actually just a bunch of bullshit padding to increase game time claims on the box. Sorry, but collecting 800 flags or 600 "discs" or "orbs" in your game in all sorts of crevices and hidden spots is not "game".
The thing is, it's also a good way to just stop the casual conversationalist. Sometimes you just want to be left alone, even if you're in the middle of a sea of people. Just an extra fifteen or so minutes of mental solitude before you walk into the office and have to really start the day off. Faking this preoccupation and unawareness gives you that, without having to fend off people repeatedly or having to seem like a jerk to someone who just wants to ask you what time it is or have some jovial morning banter.
Oh, yEAh?
Yeah, I don't agree with the submitters statement that when I think of product placement, I think of the 1950s examples. When I think of it, I think of how everything in '24' is Dell branded. Or how Nokia logos happen to appear in every shot of a cell phone on some shows. Or how every car in a certain show happens to be the same brand and have its hood ornament precisely filmed. Or how Castaway was basically a two hour Tom Hanks FEDEX commercial.
I was actually surprised when I was watching the Dick Van Dyke Show which includes some of the product placements with it, on Netflix. They were nowhere near as subtle as they often are today (though I would call what is done in 2011 only subtle to complete mouth-breathing ignorant morons). They'd come back from a break at the end of the show to a scene of the kid running through the house and into the kitchen, saying to Dad (who had just come home) that "mommy is in the kitchen taking a bath". He'd go in there and see his wife soaking her hands in Joy in the sink while washing dishes and they'd comment on how Joy is a delight for her hands while doing dishes and then they'd hold her hands and the bottle of Joy up to the camera.
It sort of made me hate product placement a little less, when I realized just how blatant it was back then. It kind of makes me wish it were that blatant, today. I could respect that. What I can't respect is when every product on the coffee table in a dorm room on a show just happens to be label-facing the camera perfectly and be 100% Frito-Lay brand. As if the audience is just too stupid to grasp what is going on.
An alternative to faking cell calls is to fake listening to your iPod. I know plenty of people (myself included) who will have our headphones on, even if they're not actually listening to anything. Hell, I know people who don't even carry their ipod with them. They just have their headphones on and the other end goes into their pocket. It's especially useful when on Tri-Met or any other public transportation or public situation. If you just want to be left alone and not hassled or bothered, it's a fantastic way to achieve it and you don't have to go through the motions of pretending to talk to anyone on a phone.
If they really cared about dangerous behavior on the road, they wouldn't give these assholes such light sentences. It's just like with driving drunk. Why should you ever *EVER* get your license back after you've been driving drunk? At the most lenient, you should get one chance. Drive drunk and you lose your license for five years. Drive while suspended during that time and lose it forever. Drive drunk a second time and lose it forever. Drive very dangerously (putting on makeup, getting dressed, having sex, talking on two cell phones while going 70mph, texting, using a computer, etc) and lose your license for a couple years. Second time, lose it forever.
Why we give lazy, careless, dangerous people continued access to dangerous hunks of speeding metal that can repeatedly put the rest of the public in significant danger is fucking beyond me.
But, of course, that's not what will be done in this case any more than it is in others. They'll use it to springboard some bullshit authoritarian narrow-minded pandering garbage.
And what a surprise, his favorite movies and TV shows are: Sons of Anarchy, The Sopranos, The Wire, Dirty Harry
Detecting a theme?
Why lead the world in exploring the universe on behalf of all mankind when you can make shitty electronics for lazy fucking walmart shoppers. Brilliant.
The problem is that other than "go land on this thing", we don't have any real goals. Goals are important. And not just quiet "inside the organization" goals. But goals we can all dream about and get behind (especially if you want funding). So let's set realistic goals. Like "land on the moon again and establish a base by XYZ". We've been to the moon. That's doable. building shit on it. That's doable. Instead, we get "we'll go to the moon again in 2020". And then a decade later, we're told "uh... well go to the moon again by 2030... yeah, that's it... 30".
The more time which passes, the greater our technological capacity. However, at some point, we have to stop and say "let's start doing things". So when is that point? It's like cryptography. A computer today could crack in a day what a computer in 1980 would take 40 years to crack. So you could spend 40 years (starting back in 1980) to crack it or you could wait 30 years, buy a new computer, then crack it.
So at what point do we say "okay, enough has advanced -- now let's start doing something"?
I obviously don't know the answer, either. It's just the obvious question we have to ask right now. And we also have to acknowledge how much of what we've advanced so far has come from setting the goal for space exploration in the first place. Without the space exploration to drive a lot of this advanced knowledge acquisition, will we still maintain the growth of our technical abilities to in-turn advance space exploration? Sort of doing it in reverse?
You mean the lack of progress made so far, don't you? We're supposed go feel energized and positive about losing an entire decade of progress and having to push the goal to reach the moon (again) back another decade? It's not exciting. It's depressing and sad. Where in the article does it suggest that it's the same goal? It says that Obama has set a goal. Not that he has changed the date on the existing goal (which was set by Bush eight years ago).
http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/39144/bush_calls_for_return_to_moon_by_2020/
Of course it requires a lot of time and planning (and technical advancement), but we at least have to establish a plan and incentivize an effort. or we'll never get around to it (I'm a big fan of commercial-based exploration supplementing more "humanity based" exploration, but as much as that's the big talk right now, there really is no realistic financial incentive for businesses to do this just yet).
However, we went from riding horses to landing on the moon in less than 70 years and we've gone from landing on the moon to . . . landing on nothing (including the moon, again) in another 45 years. We have a low orbit space station, which is cool but nearing the end of its life and we've stuck an RC car on Mars (which is nearing the end of its surprisingly far out-performing life).
It seems that we peaked early and have coasted from there and the best we've received are some half-assed promises and goals that we all forget about a few months later and that are re-set a couple years later as if the first goals were never set to begin with. There's no sense of "oh boy, we're working toward this ultimate goal". There's just a general world-wide sense of "I don't know what's going on, but hopefully "someday" there will be "some awesome space stuff" that happens and hopefully we'll be around to witness it.
And of course I don't want people to die in the process, but it's fucking space exploration - of course it's going to happen and we need to stop being giant pussies about it and freaking out every time something goes wrong. We're completely fine with thousands of people going overseas and dying in military actions, but one brave soul bites it furthering the scientific exploration of all man-kind and we start pissing ourselves over it.
Weren't we given a goal of hitting the moon and mars again by 2020, like, a decade ago? Whatever happened to that?
I think our best hope is that maybe the Chinese will catch up and surpass and really start pushing space exploration and we'll all be able to watch in awe from the sidelines. I think something like that is going to happen long before we wait for commercial enterprises to build themselves up, get us into space, and then find a financially viable reason to explore the far reaches (none of that will happen in my life time - they're still trying to have successful, reliable, affordable trips to the ISS).
From the moon to a rock in only around 60 years. Hopefully I'll have the same excitement and thrill when I'm in my 50s and we're doing something amazing in the late 30s as my mom felt when she was like 12 and we landed on the moon. And hopefully I'll still be alive when we hit Mars. Though . .. probably not. I was always excited that I was born in the generation after the moon landing, because it meant that I'd be alive to see way much more awesome space stuff happened that stirred everything about exploration and ambition of man in us as a species. Instead, I'm just hoping that something -- fucking anything -- happens in my life time.
Misleading. You'll note that the man was arrested on minor charges; not failure to present identification. You are not required to carry or provide identification in America unless you are driving a vehicle or flying a commercial airline. A few municipalities have enacted very controversial and constitutionally grey laws that require you to identify yourself if an officer believes you are engaging in a criminal activity and you are of course always required to provide identification if you have been *arrested*.
Now, can an overzealous cop say "you were sitting on this park bench reading a book and you refused to provide me with your papers when I asked you for them" and decide to arrest you on that alone? Sure. A cop can also decide that you being a bit mouthy is justification to hit you in the head with a baton or taze you. That doesn't make it a legal action on the cop's part. That's what the legal system is for (never *ever* fight or debate with an officer, even if your rights are being violated. Just shot the fuck up and deal with that when you speak with a lawyer so you don't make things worse for yourself).
But, what they can do and what is legal and right is not the same thing.
http://flexyourrights.org/faq/When_do_I_have_to_show_ID
Uh. A driver's license only makes life more convenient if you're going to be driving. If I'm not driving, I have absolutely no goddamn use for the thing. I might have occasional use for a State ID card, but I am absolutely not ever under any obligation (unless I've been arrested, I believe) to produce that identification to anyone at any time. And you aren't obligated to present your license to someone, just because they have a shiny badge on their chest, either -- unless you are engaged in driving a vehicle at the time.
No, everyone gets an ID and you must carry it with you at all times. I don't see why that would be a big deal, it's basically just a plastic card with a summary of the information the government has on you anyway.
Uh. It would be a big deal, because America is a free(-ish) country and citizens don't need to "show zee papers" at the whim of whatever "authority" feels like hassling you. Even requiring on IDs on airplanes is a new and controversial issue for just this reason.
I'd say there's also a line between protesting/rioting/looting and shooting a citizen.