In non-xkcd news...
I didn't like last week's SMBC Theater, The Mustache, but yesterday's Equation was pretty good. It is certainly getting better since the first few. That's nice to see. Zach still looks like a massive, massive stoner though.
And I'm still keeping up with Homestuck over at MSPaint Adventures. It's starting to grow on me. I don't think it's that funny, but the story is starting to get interesting, and the lengths he goes to flesh out his universe (see, for example, the prints he is selling that explain the shirts his characters wear.) is astounding.. I think a big advantage this story has over Problem Sleuth is that the characters talk. It makes them much more interesting, particuarly since (so far) we've only seen them talk one on one, never 3 or all 4 together. And I'll be honest: The first few times I played the newest minigame, I thought the joke was that it was impossible to get any points. Then I randomly got a few points, and was like "oh...there is more to this, I see..." Now my high score is 306,984! BITCHES.
In xkcd news...
when is that fucking book going to come out?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
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I'm really surprised how many people are defending Internet advertisements and saying that it's morally wrong to block them.
ReplyDeleteIDK, it's not like avoiding advertisements is immoral in any other form, so whatever.
I can't figure out that game...I can only get about 2k by mashing buttons. :(
ReplyDeletewhen you get all moralistic about it you become a dick. it is a matter of practicality. if you make it so nobody ever sees internet advertising, ad-supported websites will no longer make any money, and some content will stop being free. a lot of websites have some income, supplemental or otherwise, from ads--it has long been the way a lot of services maintain their free nature.
ReplyDeleteindeed, it's how a lot of services even off the internet keep their costs down. public transit features ads prominently. sports teams get corporate sponsors who put up their ads. roads have billboards. and so on. they remain profitable because everyone sees them. web ads are easy to turn off, and so ad companies have been forced to become even more eye-catching and annoying in order to increase the number of hits they get from the few users who don't have an ad blocker turned on. essentially, ad block software as it stands encourages badvertising, which, in turn, encourages people to keep using ad block software. it is quite the dilemma.
Man, I totally just spent seven hours or something yesterday and the day before that reading the entirety of Problem Sleuth. Awesome.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, I really like Homestuck, as well -- I just read through the pages that are already up on it. I really like the way the chracters talk, too. It's kind of nifty how their personalities are sort of reflected in their writing styles.
The "twelve layers of irony" stuff is pretty great, too.
I think all of Zach's shorts should be about the same length as the Equation one. (i.e., relatively short) They just work better that way. [also, i thought the cutaway before the punch was well done]
ReplyDeleteMy God, if all people changed the channel whenever commercials came on, all TV would become pay-per-view!
ReplyDeleteAh sod mon, when did this become "advertisingsucks"? Answer: never.
ReplyDeleteI liked equation too. The black censor bar was a bit jarring, though; personally I would just have put "screwed" or "did" so it wasn't needed. As it is it's a bit fourth-wall-breaky.
mal: you are aware that precisely because online advertising is no longer profitable, the NYT is almost definitely moving to a paid subscription model, right?
ReplyDeletehow long have you been a complete dumbass?
Is there a reason this whole adblock debate had to move over to this thread? Is it REALLY of such critical importance that it couldn't stay in the relevant comic thread? Don't get me wrong, you guys are cute and all when you start whipping it out to see whose is largest, but I'm just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteMy God, if all people changed the channel whenever commercials came on, all TV would become pay-per-view!
ReplyDeleteThis used to be too inconvenient to do, but what with DVR's, this is dead-simple. Like using ad-block. Guess what! Ads only got more intrusive and pay-per-view is on the rise.
But hey, keep blocking those mildly annoying ads.
I think the comparison with TV is apt, and I'm guilty of being inconsistent. With DVR's I feel fine fast forwarding through commercials, but I don't with downloading torrents of the same show. But really I think internet advertising is inevitably doomed - there's just too much supply.
ReplyDeleteWhoah guys, people are COMPLICATED.
ooh ooh ooh guiz i remembered something
ReplyDeleteall the news international online ones are going pay-per-view like the london times the london sun and stuff
i feel so clever now
i liked both. They are indeed gradually getting better. I really liked the part where he shoved off the TV. And in the moustache, I liked how the one guy said "That's kind of offensive"
ReplyDeleteGetting there. And if you keep up with the news on smbc itself, you will see that zach agrees that they are getting better and that the first ones weren't that good
Rob: I will give you $100 when NYT goes pay-for-content if you give me $10 for every month in between now and then.
ReplyDeleteI got 222,000ish points on my 3rd try. I could never replicate this.
ReplyDeleteThe SMBC things have lots of potential, and I like how they're turning out good so far.
every single time I got any points at all was just by hitting left and right back and forth very fast. Up and down have yet to help me acquire points. I can't tell if you want to go as fast as possible with L and R or if a very fast but regular rhythm is better. it feels a little random.
ReplyDeletethis game is pissing me off i can't make it go wtf
ReplyDeletexkcd drinking game: Go through comics. Take a sip whenever Randy mentions DRM. Double if it's negative.
ReplyDeletetry pressing left, up, and down in cycles
ReplyDeletecaptcha: pregals. Randall Munroe's prey.
lol who even cares about the NYT
ReplyDeleteNew XKCD: at first I assumed he was talking about paper books. Then he mentioned DRM, so I guess he bought them for Kindle or something. But then in the alt-text he's talking about shelf-space. THANKS FOR CONFUSING ME RANDALL!
ReplyDeletePositive news: the girl said "eh" instead of the annoyingly overused "meh".
I, too, find "meh" to be overused.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't noticed that, Fred: at first I was kind of puzzled by the mentioning of DRM on a conversation about books, but then I noticed she explicitly refers to "Kindle collections". But the incoherence of mentioning "shelf space", yeah, I hadn't spotted that. But that's a very minor quibble, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteThe comic was... well, it wasn't offensive. It wasn't bad. But then, it wasn't *anything*. I think the mix up between "existential" talk and "technical" talk is a sort of clever idea, but there's no real commentary on that. The "universe that cares" line just left me "... huh?". That "joke" seems to be as pointless as building Kindle collections...
Perhaps, on surface, it's kind of funny; something to chuckle at. But not anything more than that, no.
the joke was really tired. Like in a sitcom
ReplyDeleteright guys?
I will not shut up about this until somebody agrees with me
But he reads Pratchett, and therefore we can forgive him everything.
ReplyDeleteYes?
TRiG.
(I still think that Jesus & Mo is the best comic on the internet.)
The weird this was that I hadn't even seen the explicit mention of "Kindle" in that first panel. When I first read it, I thought she said "single collection", which struck me as odd but I expected it to be explained in the rest of the comic. But then I got so confused by the DRM/shelf space thing that I forgot about it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yeah, it's minor, but it threw me off. It would've helped if some effort was put into the art to at least make it look -somewhat- like a kindle and not a generic white rectangle that could be a kindle, a book, a lunch box, a piece of paper or whatever.
And while it's minor, the reason I mentioned it is because it was still the strongest emotion this comic gave me.
When comics leave me feeling as bland as this, I went to the forums for some "I read Pratchett too! GOOMH!", but there was surprisingly little of that, either. There was this one person who had only just started reading his/her first Discworld book, and was practically apologizing for not having read any yet. As if it's a requirement for some geek cred, or something. Poor thing.
By the way: http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=44034&start=40#p1740574
ReplyDeleteMost pretentious commenter this week? Also using the word 'grok' in a non-ironic manner warrants a beating, in my opinion.
Oh my god, that post is priceless! The hammy self-important rhetoric, the spaces in the ellipsis, worst of all the comparison of Randy to *Caesar*! Shakespeare I can get, but Caesar? Since when is Randall building empires? Dear lord.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the comic, urgh. It didn't make sense, it didn't attempt to make sense, I don't think it even carried any pretense of making sense. There's usually a sort of double standard for fiction in that it has to be more interesting than ordinary real life to be interesting, but this is more boring than most of my boring days. And hell, my life is quite dull to begin with.
But hey, I still smiled. While thinking about Discworld.
I thought the DRM reference was going to be another awkwardly inserted name drop, but then he turned it into the lynchpin for the crappy punchline.
ReplyDeletehe's evolving.
"(I still think that Jesus & Mo is the best comic on the internet.)"
ReplyDelete...
WHAT.
No it isn't.
Not even close.
ReplyDeleteIt is infact, one of the worst.
What do you think of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? I'm considering getting it, and since the ultimate arbiter of all opinion is evidently in today, it'd be good to know.
ReplyDeleteHaha, he doesn't even use grok correctly. I mean, it's a douchey word, sure, but you should at least use it correctly. (My roommate, sadly, is one of the douchey people who uses it all the time. He also uses 'orders of magnitude' all the time when describing things which are bigger than other things, or, bizarrely, anything which is different from other things due to a size difference. (Cue your mom jokes.))
ReplyDeleteOkay, I agree with you Person #1. For the love of gawd just shut up!
ReplyDelete"Big Bang Theory" is giving Randall a run for his money in the awkwardly-shoehorned-geek-stereotypes genre. Maybe that's where his talents truly belong?
ReplyDeleteYeah, the correct use is "grok it" ~ "understand it". "I grok at their accomplishments" makes no sense at all.
ReplyDelete(And Jesus and Mo, while not the best comic ever, often is quite insightful)
GUYS
ReplyDeleteSOMEDAY
PEOPLE WILL FORGET WHO RANDY WAS
this is bad
they will probably remember us, but they will no longer be able to tell what we are talking about!
Justin, you have to mean it!
ReplyDeleteI always thought that "grok" was more like "bellyfeel". "Grok at" is still rubbish.
ReplyDeleteI always thought "grok" was the noise a choking frog makes.
ReplyDeletepronunciation: GRAWK
"grok" is the noise a pseudointellectual douchebag makes when he wants to earn geek-cred.
ReplyDeletehttp://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/lunch_break_32.html
ReplyDeleteI'm adblocking the washington post from now on.
Haha, some berk actually replied:
ReplyDelete"Key 19th century Oregon event not mentioned:
Oregon was nearly depopulated when the news of the Calif. gold discovery hit - ahead of the CA gold rush from the east. All the men and most of the women and kids all left to get the gold in CA. Newspapers and other businesses closed because they had no staff.
Parenthetically: You have to give those hardy folks lots of credit. First they crossed the Rockies and Cascades to get to Oregon, and then decamped again to cross the very mountainous south of OR/north of CA border. No roads, no railroads.
Of course, they had to reverse course again and return to OR when the gold rush wound down. Then they turned on the trees and created the lumber for the creation of the CA economy.
http://www.oregon150.org/
This is our 150th anniversary (and we don't look a day older than 145)."
"http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/lunch_break_32.html"
ReplyDeleteEVER WANTED AN INDOOR POOL?
http://twitter.com/WHM_IQ224 Our friend Monty is quite the fan of groking.
ReplyDeletere: washingtonpost bullshit
ReplyDeleteI did enjoy this reply:
What's the connection between this cartoon and the game the Oregon Trail (something by the way that my generation didn't play in school). Are all of your readers going to pick up the sarcasm? Is such a sequence actually a possibility in the game? Sorry if I am slow here but some people are going to take away from this that in real history Oregon was overrun by a half a million murderous hillbillies. I doubt that the people of either Oregon or Missouri would be amused here.
I am all for snark and sarcasm, if it has a god damn point. This doesn't seem to make the cut.
Posted by: BruceWebb | August 19, 2009 1:30 PM | Report abuse
perhaps we can ask Mr. Bruce to guest-post.
"I am all for snark and sarcasm, if it has a god damn point."
ReplyDeleteJesus, if he gets that riled up over one of the tamest xkcd's ever, he would really hate that 11th grade one.
Yay for bruce!
Alas, this is not the first time Ezra Klein has mentioned xkcd (see here) or even the first time he has reposted a comic (see here).
ReplyDeleteHaving seen Mr. Klein in person, I can attest that he is extremely bright but, and I bet he would admit this, a total asshole. So that makes me feel better.
God, he picks the worst ones, too. That sexism one isn't even a mediocre xkcd, it's terrible.
ReplyDeleteBoy, I'm glad today wasn't my day. I hadn't heard of Kindle, so I assumed she meant "kindling", as in "stuff you burn", which dramatically changes the meaning of the entire strip.
ReplyDeleteI sure would have looked dumb.
HAHAHAHAHA
ReplyDeletethat is amazing.
Yeah, and I just also spent the past five hours or so on mspaintadventures.com. This blog enriches my life so much.
ReplyDelete@Matt: I thought the same thing at first as well, lol
ReplyDeleteMatt - I actually would have really enjoyed that post.
ReplyDeleteThe alt text was a reference to Pratchett's Alzheimers, and how many more books he can write before his mind gives up, wasn't it? I thought it was pretty macabre and a bit disturbing myself.
ReplyDeleteI told my friend that the only way I would date a nerd again (I'm a white hat hacker by profession and recently single, so apparently I'm fair game) is if he didn't like xkcd. He seemed pretty nonplussed by this, which gives me the impression that xkcd worship isn't as prevalent as it used to be. If I had made that kind of statement in college I would have been stoned to death.
ReplyDeleteThe alt text was a reference to Pratchett's Alzheimers, and how many more books he can write before his mind gives up, wasn't it? I thought it was pretty macabre and a bit disturbing myself.
ReplyDeleteOn my first read, I thought he just meant "How much Pratchett is too much?"
That interpretation... jeeeeze.
Yeah, that interpretation makes Randall seem like a jerk. I hope that's not what he meant... :|
ReplyDeleteI think Randy changed the alt text from explicitly referencing that Pratchett is dying to something about existential crisis. Am I imagining it, does anyone remember the original alt text?
ReplyDeleteI think it was originally something like "a good way to pass the time is wondering how much shelf space to save etc etc"
ReplyDeleteSo yes, I think he changed it.
An important fact: Knowing how to make a webcomic does not mean you know how to make video skits. The lighting's okay, but the audio kinda sucks, and the comedic timing is a little bit lacking. Also, continuity errors and general amateurishness. That being said, it's better than about 99% of what's on YouTube which, unfortunately, isn't saying too much.
ReplyDeleteTitle Text: You know what really helps an existential crisis? Wondering how much shelf space to leave for a Terry Pratchett collection. <-- Pretty sure this is the original.
ReplyDeleteSee, I am 99% sure the original alt (read: title text if you are a snob) text included the exact wording "Pratchett is dying" and that really threw me off, now I can't find it anymore.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you're thinking of the pretentious xkcd forums commenter?
ReplyDelete"Pratchett is dying. Someday even the names Shakespeare, Caesar, and Khufu (. . . dare I say it? even "Munroe") will be spoken for the last time. The universe doesn't care.
But I do. I know those names. I grok in wonder at their accomplishments. I mourn the loss, even as I rejoice at having seen them. Sandcastles they may be, but such magnificent ones!"
Ahh thanks, that is probably it.
ReplyDelete"Another example of xkcd coincidentally reflecting the lives of its readers."
ReplyDelete"You are thinking inductive. Most people won't recall having existential crises before 15. That doesn't mean no one does. Specially in a geek forum.
I had my first when I was 4. Something I saw on TV about the Vietnam War. When I was 15 I was feeling vertigo near anywhere I might jump from... my survival instincts kicking in to prevent me. As they kept doing for the last 20 years."
man what the hell
ReplyDeleteHaha, much as I dislike laughing at stupid people, the original writers of the 1.41 one and the 1.47 are twats.
ReplyDelete(that is the people who originally wrote them on the forum, not here. no letters.)
Man I had the biggest existential crisis just the other day.
ReplyDeletehaha. I have to admire the kid for having read the Wikipedia article on Kierkegaard or whatever and then decided that that existentialism was basically just a fancy term for the fear of heights
ReplyDeleteno i think he's making it more like "being quasi-suicidal makes me an existentialist"
ReplyDeletehe is referencing this:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concept_of_Dread
and apparently not really understanding it at all
I could be wrong, but I'm 99% sure that last person thought "Wow, life is scary, I wonder what it's like to be dead" a couple of times, and then called that an existentialist crisis. Also the whole "survival instincts saved me from jumping to my death" thing is more likely than not a complete fabrication to come across as quirky and interesting.
ReplyDelete"Hey, I have a fear of heights, but everyone has a fear of heights, so that doesn't make me interesting. And I know I am interesting, so I bet it's not really a fear of heights but actually survival instincts preventing me from killing myself because I thought about death once and now I'm a closet-suicidal."
Note the cavalier attitude towards the whole thing, by the way. "Eh, I have deep psychological issues and I'm quasi-suicidal, but yu know, you live with it. Ain't I brave and interesting?"
ReplyDelete"Specially in a geek forum."
ReplyDeleteYes, those aspie brains are firing at lightning speed! When they're not laughing at epic failz they are totally blowing their own minds.
Here's a question:
Can a forumite have a thought so big even he cannot comprehend it?
Aside from some rather minor nitpicking about the dates (Newtwon did later claim to have invented calculus in 1666, but he didn't claim in 1666 to have invented it; he didn't actually publish the dang thing until the mid-90s, nearly a decade after Leibniz's first publication featuring calculus showed up), I thought this was a fairly harmless and marginally entertaining joke. Perhaps I have a certain weakness for Caruso-isms.
ReplyDeleteNewton was angry and never published anything lol. Also, I liked the pun, and he didn't explain it afterwards!
ReplyDeletewhat is with the fucking sunglasses
ReplyDeleteThe sunglasses and the Alt-text are a reference to CSI:Miami. At the beginning of every episode, David Caruso usually makes a bad pun about the case while putting on his sunglasses. Immediately afterward, the show's theme starts with the "YEEEEEAAAAHHHH!" (I believe the song is Won't Get Fooled Again for Miami, right? I don't watch the show. I just know the joke.)
ReplyDeleteCorrect
ReplyDeletevery funny
ReplyDeletecan all four of the robs ride off into battle together plz
ReplyDeleteNewton and Liebniz totally sounds like a comedy double act from the 1950s. Liebniz would be all "hey, Newton, I made us a cake!" and then Newton would go "you fool! you used gunpowder instead of flour!" and then Liebniz would make an "oops!" face to camera before it panned to an outside shot of the house blowing up.
ReplyDeleteWow, now Randall's stealing jokes from the posters that math department professors have at my Uni.
ReplyDelete"Wow, now Randall's stealing jokes from the posters that math department professors have at my Uni."
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure it's a ref to CSI: Miami, BUT that reference itself has become sort of a meme, so it could just be a reference to the reference.
In other words, the comic was okay. Not hilarious, but decent
How is it that someone with an IQ of 224 can't get the order of names in his name correct?
ReplyDeleteWilly Monty Hughes IQ 224 -> WMH_IQ224 not WHM_IQ224.
Great, just what we needed. Another internet meme. Haven't seen one of those in a while.
ReplyDeleteI thought today's was okay. I didn't know it was a CSI referene and I didn't know CSI references are a meme, so all I got out of it was a pun, and I'm kind of a sucker for bad puns. I didn't think it was great, primarily because I don't give a fuck about calculus, but it wasn't bad.
ReplyDeletethis one was actually pretty good, although i fully expect whoever does it to just stretch "INTERNET MEME RANDALL YOU HACK" over a couple of paragraphs anyway.
ReplyDeleteI got the CSI thing but what the hell does it have to do with anything
ReplyDelete"Willy Monty Hughes IQ 224 -> WMH_IQ224 not WHM_IQ224."
ReplyDelete"Today, a random moron "informed" me that I had made a typographical error during the creation of this particular twitter account. Part 1/2.
5:19 PM Jul 30th from web"
"This is not the case. "WHM" was never intended as an acronym of my true name. The true symbolism of these three assorted letters... Part 2/3
5:21 PM Jul 30th from web "
"...Should be obvious to anyone possessing a single semi-functioning neurone. Must I explain myself to you? Plebians! Part 3/3
5:22 PM Jul 30th from web "
lrn2read
I will clarify my previous statement: I am not opposed to the pun used in this comic. In fact, it is quite an enjoyable pun. A comic based around said pun would be a good thing, and this xkcd in fact almost pulls it off quite well.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am opposed to is that he took a good pun and decided to shoehorn in the CSI meme for absolutely no reason, thereby lowering the joke to one made by /b/tards everywhere.
so your problem is not that the joke or the execution is bad, but the fact that it contains a reference to culture you don't like and is therefore somehow arbitrarily of less value than it would be if it didn't.
ReplyDeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm not quite sure what you're referring to as 'culture' here.