Consider how much money the record companies got for your--ahem--questionably procured tracks before this.

Compare that to some percentage of $25/year, possibly in perpetuity.

I would debate that. Of the basic functions of my iPhone, making phone calls is the one I use by far the least.

Of course, as anyone who's tries this tactic in real life will tell you, you'll always get to that point where you've had so many losses in a row that you don't have enough money to double down again. It's starting to look like Microsoft has hit that point.

(Metaphorically speaking, I mean. They've still got boatloads of non-metaphorical cash, as I recall)

So yeah. They "rebooted" the franchise in such a way that it means none of the TNG, DS9, or Voyager crew will ever be born, much less live the same lives they did. And they tried to make it more about campy fun than about Sci Fi. I can deal with those. Those aren't the things I had a problem with. What I had a problem with was the terrible plot itself.

Okay, it starts out with a contrivance to get all of the traditional Enterprise crew onto the Enterprise. They haven't even graduated yet. They're 3 years into their Academy studies. Implying that the only starfleet officer on or around Earth is Captain Pike. You can't tell me that there aren't four or five officers in the Sol system to help Pike run the flagship of the fleet on a mission to rescue one of the most important planets in the Federation. I could see 'em putting cadets on a beater ship with some faculty advisors to do a milk run to a well-defended colony world at this point in their training, but to entirely crew the Enterprise to rescue Vulcan? No.

So okay. I take a moment to suspend my disbelief. And then Pike promotes Kirk to first officer (under Spock as Acting Captain). Even though Kirk was under investigation for academic dishonesty and snuck onto the ship without permission.

Fine. Okay. Pike's got a hard-on for the Kirks. I guess I can cope with that.

Then Kirk instigates a mutiny against Spock and gets tossed out for the authorities on a nearby outpost to deal with... which just happens to be an outpost crewed by none other than Scotty, who hasn't gotten a supply run in a long time.

(Which, I suppose, backs up the "Starfleet consists of one officer, some teachers, and a shitload of cadets in red shirts" theory)

Then he sneaks back onto the ship and back onto the bridge and taunts Spock, who attacks him.

Then...he's captain?

What?

No. There is no universe in which it works that way. The prisoner doesn't become captain when the rightful captain recuses himself. There is no "Well, technically, the previous Captain promoted him to First Officer, so even though he's currently under arrest, I guess he's Captain now".

So fine. Choke back the bile. I guess they're cadets, so they have no idea what they're doing, so they might just accept that Jimmy's in charge because he's charismatic. I keep watching.

(Aside: What's that? Some sort of phlebotinum that turns whatever it touches into a singularity and for some reason Spock Prime was given a shitload of it instead of the tiny drop he apparently needed and for some reason it only works if you put it all the way in the core of a planet because I guess a black hole on the surface is just a minor annoyance that could be dealt with by putting some cones and a warning sign near it?

Oh, and it also lets you travel through time. But they couldn't use it to travel through time to get to Romulus early enough to save it. Goddamn, I hate poorly done time travel stories. End of aside.)

Anyway, heroism ensues, and they save the world and they get back to Earth and... They make Kirk a captain?

He... he hasn't graduated yet.

He's flown on one mission. Which he survived 90% through dumb luck.

Right to full-on Captain of the flagship, just like that? I mean, acting captain, I can sort of let go. Wartime and all that. Sometimes you need to sling around some field promotions to keep things running. But he gets home, a mutiny and a half under his belt, still not graduated, still technically on academic suspension for academic dishonesty, still technically under arrest and they make him captain of the fleet's brand-new flagship.

No. Fuck you. This isn't just me being a fanboy upset that someone's messing with his franchise. This was just bad writing.

My guess is that if the FCC declares that Skype has to be allowed to work over 3G too, AT&T will force Apple to drop it from the App Store so people won't be able to use Skype even on WiFi.

So...not really a win.

Get all of the "X Digit UID club" achievements on my primary account!

Wait, what?

Be careful presenting that WSJ "article" as fact. It's an op-ed piece in their Opinion section, which means there's no implication of journalistic impartiality there.