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Perhaps you trust people who make you laugh. You think to yourself "Ah... they are funny... they can't be evil, they therefore have no reason to lie to me". Not that I'm saying that they are. I just trust Piro, Dom and Sarah more :) Possibly because they don't often push or slag off non-MT product that often. So possibly it's a case of less often is more weighted.

But we all know that Ping is a PS2 accessory, and isn't really real.

I thought RFID tags were supposed to protect us from evil... strange evil creatures that try to eat you... Oh, no, sorry.... think I've gone mad.

So hopefully I can get some headphones, turn up the volume loud enough not to hear people...

No, wait. There's a much better use for headphones on airplanes. Especially when surrounded by people you hate.

ADD, and Firefox loading Slashdot, The Register, and Megatokyo in tabs on startup.

We are very alike.

Good point. Kind of like Japanese Dating Simulations, eh?

Well, they're making it look like a child's drawing. Anime looks much cooler. And from how long it takes Piro to update MegaTokyo sometimes, I bet there are TONS of scenes in your typical romance/comedy which are much easier to film. Of course, they'd look different, and it'd probably be harder to go from CGI to that than from cell to CGI.

Basically, anything without supernatural elements, especially something blog-ish (like a lot of MegaTokyo) would be within reach of 3-5 hours with 2-3 people, instead of 3-5 weeks with 10-20 people. But IANAA either.

Still, I want it to look like anime, not crayon.

I bet the Open-Source clone will do anime before Microsoft does!

I believe Fred Gallagher still has a "day job" but it would not surprise me if someday MagaToyko pays his bills (e.g. books (of MegaToyko strips), conventions (e.g. Dallas, June 2004)).
Does UF take care of Illiad? (I hope so. How many video cards is YOUR kingdom worth?)
I think the future in a lot of "IT employment" will come from the knowledge/creativity of individuals and will use IT as a tool. If you live in a small city (say 500,000) and you would like to be an "artist", your opportunities would have been very limited ten years ago but are much better now; MegaToyko and UserFriendly are two examples of opportunities (i.e. content/entertainment offered without a middleman) which were not available 10-20 years ago .
I think the "future" (a future) lies in content rather than delivery. So you are a great "flash programmer"; who cares? Do you have something worth seeing or reading? Do you have specialized knowledge? Are you a leet mathematician or chemist with something interesting to say? (Mandatory link.) (If you want to hear my talk at ANU later, there is no charge.)
Anyway, I think outsourcing is bad (e.g. call a credit card company or airline and try to get good service) but it is reality. I think content (mostly from people in the US/Canada or Europe, although there are extremely smart people everywhere) is the real opportunity. Copy Illiad or create your own path. Your content might be humor or entertainment. It might be your specialized knowledge of the XYZ industry. "We" are all over-weight; who is using the Internet and making money by poking fun at us and offering us free "health advice" (and selling books with the "health strips" strips ala UF)?

PS If I had any really good ideas, I would be working on them rather than posting here. You "guys" are the smart ones; find a niche market so you can get rich and afford a "Doom 3 computer".

...now we can look forward to more Dead Piro Days...

http://www.megatokyo.com/

I WANT MOSH MOSH REVOLUTION!!!

Oblig Webcomic Reference!

MOSH

MOSH

REVOLUTION !!!

I WANT MOSH MOSH REVOLUTION!!!

Oblig Webcomic Reference!

MOSH

MOSH

REVOLUTION !!!

I WANT MOSH MOSH REVOLUTION!!!

Oblig Webcomic Reference!

MOSH

MOSH

REVOLUTION !!!

Video games should only be played by true professionals, there is just such a high level of danger involved.
Just look at this list of injuries:
dizziness, altered vision, muscle twitches, loss of awareness, disorientation, motion sickness, Eye Strain, Back Injury, Photosensitive Seizures, hand-arm vibration syndrome, blisters, friction burns, lacerations, carpal-tunnel, "Nintendo Thumb", bruises, electric shock, the many horrors of DDR, and now heart attacks.
In the wrong hands video game consoles, and computers running video games are death machines!

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it. (You can download the movie (~130mb) using BitTorrent, by clicking here.

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on irc.gnaa.us, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the ot

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it. (You can download the movie (~130mb) using BitTorrent, by clicking here.

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on irc.gnaa.us, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the ot

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it. (You can download the movie (~280mb) using BitTorrent, by clicking here.

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on irc.gnaa.us, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of th

I read MegaTokyo, but some people might not think that counts...

This is just like this issue of.

Weird.

Wow - media ready mammaries! Reminds me of a certain Playstation 2 Accessory. (Sorry - no link right to Ping...)

Heh. Reminded my of this strip. ;-)

You have some good points, but I feel you're not fully exploring the world you imagine. In this world, the pop star wouldn't be able to make millions singing someone's song without permission - their album would be freely copyable too.

Having said this, I'm not sure abolition of copyright is entirely the way forward - I think supporting people who do something genuinely creative enriches us all.

Side note. man people predict passive entry will replace key-less entry within 10 years. if this is the case and were all walking around with RFID keys to our cars, privacy concerns could go up quite a bit.

But i was laid off six months ago. Not only would i have to come up with about $300 bucks for the registration cost, in order to meet their requirements for entry i would also have to pretend to still be employed by my ex-company and hope they didn't check up on it.

So how did you like working for Ion Storm?

Providing any of these folks resurrect their accounts:

Kim Justice (wrote Megatokyo-inspired songs).

Rick Richards (audio available here).

Prototype (audio available here as well).

Today's MegaTokyo's got SCO, the RIAA, Gator/Claria, RFID and Microsoft, all in one image!
Beat that! :P

Don't forget the monsters! Rent-A-Zilla!

I think you're probably talking about one of the early Megatokyo strips:

Does anyone here speak l33t?

I too use firefox to load up six different pages. Just scroll through to visit all my standard pages every morning:
Pooch Cafe Get Fuzzy Sluggy Freelance Megatokyo User Friendly Slashdot BYU
Then I usually go to cnn, nytimes, bbc, and deseret morning news for the second set of tabs. I love firefox

Any questions?

For reference, this seems to be a quote from Rodney Caston, also known as "Largo" from Megatokyo, although he hasn't actually worked on the comic in ages. He said it in his rant for Episode 33.

Have you been reading Megatokyo lately?. In this rant Piro talks about Seraphim's iPod backlight failing and his frustrations with Apple Care.

Actually no. This came up on the Megatokyo forums as well, but then somebody pointed out the the drawings had spots for the artist's name as well. Both were done by one Dean Wootten. Here's a link to the thread.

Actually no. This came up on the Megatokyo forums as well, but then somebody pointed out the the drawings had spots for the artist's name as well. Both were done by one Dean Wootten. Here's a link to the thread.

That actually depresses me a bit, as I had bought some music off of mp3.com when it was around (believe it or not: the Megatokyo soundtrack. Yeah, I'm a geek.).

Woah.

Megatokyo soundtrack? Like, Megatokyo?

If so, can you still buy that anywhere?

I guess the closest a lot of Americans have come to seeing a real Japanese apartment would be Piro's Japanese friend (can't recall the name offhand) in the early days of MegaTokyo, where it was covered all over with magazines and the floor doubled as a table and a bed.

I should learn more Japanese than "Dozo, ichi biru! Hai! Domo arigato" and the names of assorted foodstuffs. Even Largo knows more than that, wakarimasu ka?

Next thing you know they'll make the robots female. and hot. and program them to be interactive dating simulations... ph34r the cute ones...

This is what happens when you put l33t gamers in front of a dating sim.

In case of slashdoting here is a still of the John Romero interview.

My other post here says why I think Gamespy's assessment of dating sims is [censored], so here are some links for anyone who wants to find out about them from people who don't think they're only for the terminally weird:

The ren'ai games mailing list.

You already read Megatokyo, right? Check the forums: the "dating sims" forum there includes plenty of information, as well as a FAQ which covers the subject in some depth.

My other post here says why I think Gamespy's assessment of dating sims is [censored], so here are some links for anyone who wants to find out about them from people who don't think they're only for the terminally weird:

The ren'ai games mailing list.

You already read Megatokyo, right? Check the forums: the "dating sims" forum there includes plenty of information, as well as a FAQ which covers the subject in some depth.

I used to think User Friendly was pretty good, but then either it's quality deteriorated, or i found other, better comics to put it in perspective.

Here's a list of (some of) the comics that in my opinion are better than User Friendly. As usual, your opinion may differ and your mileage may vary.

Adventurers! the best of the CRPG comics.
Dragon Tails comic about strange geeky dragons and a squirrel or two. (Has jokes that cover all kinds of geekery, not just the tech variety) The Wings of ChangeFantasy comic about a dragon, a girl with wings, and a group of pixie children
The Devil's Panties "Real Life" type comic about a female protagonist and a couple of her friends. Frequently touches on goth and comic geekdom, and there's a side comic about LARPs.
Sparkling Generation Valkyrie YuukiA manga style take-off on the "pretty-girl" anime genre. Has some Ranma-esque gender-bending themes if that disturbs you.
Freefall Science fiction comic, primarily focused on an kleptomaniac alien scavenger, a friendly but somewhat dim robot, and a genetically engineered anthropomorphic female wolf.
Ozy and Millie One of those comics with a world (mostly) like ours but filled with anthropomorphic animals. Frequently philisophical or political.
Something Positive "Real life" type comic with a very twisted and sometimes sick sense of humor.
Venus Envy A comic about highschool aged MtF transgendered person dealing with all the issues you'd expect such a person to be dealing with. Obviously lots of gender-bending issues.
8-bit Theater tied for second best CRPG comic.
RPG World the other tied for second best CRPG comic.
Anti-here for Hire by the author of Adventurers! Same style mostly, but with a comic-book superhero theme.
Megatokyo some people love the comic, some people can't stand it. The art is certainly pretty though in either case.
Penny Arcade people talk about it enough on Slashdot (including several mentions in this thread) that i'm not going to even bother describing it.

Okay, I'm tired of making descriptions, so some other good comics that didn't make it into the top tier (but still better than User Friendly IMHO) if you feel like looking around, PvP, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Saturnalia. The Life of Riley, No Need for Bushido

And last (just because everyone here has probably heard of it already) Sluggy, which has had its unfunny moments, but unlike User Friendly has managed to pull out of those slumps and return to its former heights every time (so far)

There's also a large set of comics that i only check every couple of weeks because they don't updated more than once a week, but are still worth taking the time to check. However i'm going to just stick to my daily list at the moment.

I mean, maybe I'm just "debating benchmarks" here, but how do you pull the above statement out of the linked article?

How indeed? By copying the complete first paragraph of the linked article. The quote you criticise is right there in the article. The author promised to publish more test results in the near future. Kind of a sleazy tactic (and a guaranteed second /. frontpage). I don't disagree with your criticism of the article, but the submitter did not pull anything out of thin air and might not have a special agenda.

Best webcomic ever. Read it and love it.

You seem to have confused "best" with "worst". Maybe I should re-read your post considering this new information.

Steve 'Largo' Jobs: P0WNZ3D.

(ref)

Disregard the first post...
For the first year Piro of Megatokyo hasn't posted a TGS panel yet :(... lookie here.

Disregard the first post...
For the first year Piro of Megatokyo hasn't posted a TGS panel yet :(... lookie here.

The comic book store is another story. While for the average comic book reader, the comic book store is part of the experience, I think a lot of people are afraid of comic book stores.

True enough. That's because some comic book stores suck. There are also excellent comic book stores where the staff are professional and friendly, the "heroically proportioned" comics aren't shoved in your face, and the "weird" comics that will creep many people out are a bit out of the way. If you're in Madison, Wisconsin Capital City Comics is great. It's comfortable enough that my mom shops there (she's not a comic book geek, or really much of a geek at all, but she discovered that she enjoys the Star Wars comics).

If your local comic book store sucks, see what you can do to improve it. At the very least let the owner know that you think his antics are harming his reputation. If that doesn't work, look for another store within your shopping radius. In the worst case, move to strictly mail order (if you need unusual stuff, many local stores like Capital City Comics will ship just about anywhere). As long as you keep going you're saying that the behavior you're seeing is acceptable.

I think the web (as I posted below) is most suited to strip comics. Not graphic novels or comic books. But collecting, I agree, is a huge deal to many comic book collectors. There is no value in an "issue 1" of a website comic, if it's been blasted all over the web.

Comic book collectors? I think you mean "speculators," the idiots responsible for the comic industry bubble and crash in the 90s. The majority of the "value" that they created existed only from the price inflation, the original publisher saw little to nothing of it.

The core of the industry's customers remain people who just want to read good stuff. We buy it so we can re-read it later and share it with others. We re-purchase collections of comics we already have so we have an easier to store and share copy. I eagerly collect print versions of web comics I love. (This isn't a new idea, print collections of newspaper comics also sell very well, in many cases better than traditional comic books.) The lack of rareness will do minimal damage to the value.

As for not being suitable for comic books, that perception is changing. One of the most popular comics, Megatokyo is pushing the edges of a strip comic. At his current rate (about 10 pages a month), he's publishing the equivalent of a 20 page black and white comic every two months, a respectible rate for an independent comic. He's just chosen to release it page by page every few days instead of in comic sized chunks every two months.

He forgot someone else too. You just made Junpei mad. Angry Ninjas are not good for your health.

Megatokyo.com Machall.com

lest we forget how to use the <A> tag:

megatokyo.com
machall.com

and even /. sigs accept HTML:
www.ranttv.com - Educate yourself here. www.gp.org/platform.html - Read their platform here

As additions, I'd like to add Megatokyo, RPGworld Comic and 8-bit Theater. Also, I'd like to comment on Real Life Comics that it's cute, at times. Whenever the guy is completely obsessed with something painfully irrelevant to his readers and he continues to post shitty strips about it for weeks after, it's not cute. Really, I quit reading it after reading on and on for about three weeks about the guy whining about losing something irrelevant in a MMORPG and the fact he got a net girlfriend.