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I'm suddenly reminded of this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/01/28/

There's a statute of limitations.

The least you could do is give credit where credit is due for that quote.

~jaraxle

Indeed, there is a statute of limitations.

I hate when I'm forced to use those.
So stupid.
I usually just pq3985y4qp49tgw[4tefih2g them.

Also: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/7/12/a-wider-perspective-on-flavor/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/11/19/

A little over a year ago I moved from FL to MD and I had DirecTv. I moved for a job with short notice so my fiancee and I had to move in with her mother for a month until we found a place. The DirecTv followed us to MD for free, but when we moved to our condo there was a problem.

DirecTV doesn't state it online but when you move using their "Movers Connection" you've agreed to extend your service by 6 months, and you've agreed not to move again for those same 6 months. If you do move or cancel within those 6 months they charge you the full cost of your original move plus fees...and they charge your card automatically!

Like I said there was no notice online of such a stipulation, nor did the agent who set up my original move inform me of that criteria. My card was charged $600 4 days before my wedding putting me overdrawn and causing my rent to bounce...putting me down an additional $1500...and I had to pay for some things for the wedding. When I questioned DirecTV about the agreement they said there is no place to view it online, they dont have a document to send, but they assured me that I did, in fact, agree to some silly agreement by moving in the first place.

This story is relevant to the posting because of the automatic withdraw. If they billed me that is one thing, I could call them and work it out, but instead they automatically took money off of my default method of payment simply because it was there. How is this OK with people?! Eventually I got all of my money refunded and a full apology from DirecTV for the hassle...needless to say Im with Verizon FiOS now.

This whole thing burns me up. I think Penny Arcade summed up our collective frustration nicely here. I have been working on creating a wiki to translate user agreements to plain English so we can all get an easier glimpse at the crap we're agreeing to, and the "rights" we forfeit to our utilities etc. Furthermore the site will branch off into areas where those who are commonly disadvantaged can come together to take legal action against companies who blatantly violate their privacy (like Skype did in the post) or their right to know what they agreed to (like my DirecTV situation). Government is supposed to enforce what we the people deem morally just, yet it seems that whatever the government deems legal we all assume is moral...that doesn't make sense to me. Its about time we started revisiting how we're conducting ourselves in my opinion.

If you agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then this isn't really worse. I don't think Wal-Mart doing it is going to increase the overall trade in used games. If you don't agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then you don't care about this move anyway.

As such, I'm actually quite happy to hear the news simply because I hope they kick GameStop's ass. I don't buy games from them, but I've read enough of the Penny Arcade to completely loathe them .

If you agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then this isn't really worse. I don't think Wal-Mart doing it is going to increase the overall trade in used games. If you don't agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then you don't care about this move anyway.

As such, I'm actually quite happy to hear the news simply because I hope they kick GameStop's ass. I don't buy games from them, but I've read enough of the Penny Arcade to completely loathe them .

If you agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then this isn't really worse. I don't think Wal-Mart doing it is going to increase the overall trade in used games. If you don't agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then you don't care about this move anyway.

As such, I'm actually quite happy to hear the news simply because I hope they kick GameStop's ass. I don't buy games from them, but I've read enough of the Penny Arcade to completely loathe them .

If you agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then this isn't really worse. I don't think Wal-Mart doing it is going to increase the overall trade in used games. If you don't agree that GameStop is bad for gaming, then you don't care about this move anyway.

As such, I'm actually quite happy to hear the news simply because I hope they kick GameStop's ass. I don't buy games from them, but I've read enough of the Penny Arcade to completely loathe them .

I have only one thing to say about that: Shitcock!

Have you heard the tech terms thrown around in TV and movies? Penny Arcade exaggerated the point here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/7/16/brains-with-urgent-appointments/

And if you were unfortunate enough to have seen the movie "Hackers," well, now you know why a bunch of people think filesystems look like little towers and you can float around between them.

Penny Arcade already has this covered

It will move to some other online venue. Maybe slashdot (shudder). I can practically see the ads now...
"Male seeking... anything."

m4g?

You small-handed freak...

I can hold a full-size ATX board in each hand, without spilling over! I mean, honestly. What's the big deal?

It was no Quake, and that's for certain. I never did get the Duke Hype, it was outdated as soon as it was released.

The Duke phenomenon isn't hard to explain unless you try to make it that way.

Nice trolling.

For the sake of the grandparent post, 400THz is approximately the frequency of red/IR light (It's close, but lower frequency than the Xnm=XTHz green light band). The number is a little off (2-4 orders of magnitude), putting the upper limit of the frequency band known as radio around 400MHz (FM), unless you include Microwave radiation as a radio wave subset (I've seen some that do), which ups it to closer to 40GHz.

Here's a site for quick ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation/

And a pretty picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EM_spectrum.svg/

Never hurts to correct an error, but it can to stomp on someone who made it.
I recommend providing links to sources and avoiding grammer nazisms.
Also, we don't need additional proof that John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is true.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

In their often crass but insightful way, Penny Arcade already covered the issue.

This may explain things.

I know, I know. This is probably different, but when I read the description, I pictured MS Bob with bright, colorful rooms that someone far away thought would put me at ease when using a computer. Then when I start a task, the helpful animated dog pops up, but instead of the vanilla "looks like you're writing a letter," some random jerk from the low end of the internet gene pool pops up and says something in between "Nice letter, fag!" and
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/4/27/

I feel like there's too much desktop in my face most of the time. I want it to be a helpful tool, but most often being helpful means staying out of the way. But I am glad KDE is so configurable, so I can mold it into the desktop I want. That part is great.

For some reason, this comes to mind.

I just can't get over the irony of Mr Period, the Punctuation King, saying "I've been trying to get to the gym, more." Begone, superfluous comma!

Other than that, it seems to be a pretty common human reaction to try and forget past unpleasantries. Apparently a whole generation grew up in Japan knowing very little about their role in WW2, for instance.

Obviously the submitter is heavily biased and can't be bothered to think past his or (very unlikely her) own prejudices.

That final sentence is just "hey look at me, I'm a bigot but listen to me anyway."

For some reason, this comes to mind.

What kind of data center would I build with $500M? I don't know, but I imagine it might look something like this...

You might find Gabe's (of Penny-Arcade) interview of his grandpa about WWII and games based on it interesting. http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/12/07/

Not an MMO, but I think this reflects relevant concerns.

Kinda like the The Merch

I'll agree to some extent: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/5/23/

For me though, one of the biggest helpers in making sure I get a wide variety of genres is the mod community. I play Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods quite a bit, and I get everything from ultra-realism "one-shot-one-kill" in Insurgency and Resistance and Liberation to hilarious adventures in bayoneting with The Battlegrounds (seriously, this mod is fun), to unrealistic sci-fi (in that "limited by only the imagination of the developers" scene) brought by Dystopia.

I haven't found the need to buy any games in the past several years for the sake of entering a new genre; the third-party mod community has me taken care of.

LEGO Rockband...still Rockband.

I hope many Bothans died to bring us this information.

It gives off pilot killer rays.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13/

I absolutely agree. You're not alone in this feeling. Penny Arcade said it best.

Deep Crows

too hip and you're mocked, not hip enough and you're mocked

This is so true. Seattle kicks ass. It moderates people like a giant social immersion of the Golden Mean. I once compared Seattle to China, essentially a culture so relatively deep, compelling and intelligent that it remakes outsiders in its image even if they fight it.

sorry, penny arcade

Le Twittre

Finally, I got sick of wondering that World of Warcraft was all about. I downloaded the free trial. It actually ran in Linux under Wine. I was impressed.

That was about all I was impressed with.

The updates took about 10 hours to fully complete, with each new patch leading to yet another. When the game finally started, I was required to "roll" my character. Having absolutely no idea what I was doing, I selected a Bull, and made it a druid, to get in tune with nature.

The game began. My first mission was to fetch a few feathers "the tribe". A fairly standard tutorial. But it proved tedious. You needed 7 feathers which had to be harvested from these bird creatures which you "fought" by clicking on them and waiting for your characters continuous and slow attacks to finally bring them down(Did I mention that it plays like an RTS). The trouble was that when you killed one of these birds it wouldn't necessarily drop one of these feathers, and even when it did, it could have been a ruined feather. The whole process took around a quarter of a hour. Still I assumed, it was just a tutorial. Things must get better later on.

I was wrong.

Mission after mission ensued. Collect 8 hides. Kill five cats. Harvest 8 tooths. Eventually moved on to the second town where new mission could be had. Now I had to collect 9 hides and 8 claws. etc, etc. But I was a patient man. Surely, I thought, after this drudgery is over, I will do something exciting, something that will explain the allure of the title. In the meantime, I competed with other players for the privilege of slaying a few anti-climactic "bosses", again by clicking once on them and waiting, who respawned at lengthy intervals. There were also "skills" to learn, but each needed items to be of use. Items which were only dropped, on occasion, by slow spawing monsters other players were also trying to kill.

Finally after 6 boring hours of pointless mission after pointless mission, I was approaching my goal. I proceeded towards the "capital", ascending slowly up a large basket elevator to a city on a mountain. My expectation peaked. Finally I thought, finally I will get to see what WoW is all about.

I went into the city, and up to the quest giver. The outlook was good. "We need you to fight for the Horde", they said. Finally! But then he went on. "But first we need supplies. We need you to collect 6 of this and 7 of that and..."

But it was too late. I had logged off World of Warcraft, never to return, and the Horde would never get their supplies, at least until the next poor sap came along, willing to waste another 6 hours of their life on pointless and demeaning chores. I went back to other games, and had some fun. To the end of my days I will never understand how people can pay 15 euros a month for the privilege of playing a handyman sim.

On the plus side this comic makes so much sense to me now.

Le Twittre - pretty much says it all...

Q. What do you think about gamers playing video games based on World War II?
A. I haven't really paid enough attention to the games themselves to be able to tell you truthfully, but I would think, if it's just people shooting one another, I don't think it's a proper thing for young people to do. I think it sets a bad example for them, because they get into the mood of doing that, and that begins their lifestyle. And that's not the lifestyle you want.


Q. When groups of gamers are playing these games together it is common for some of them to play as the enemy. They might play as Germans defending the beach at Normandy for example. What's your opinion of that?
A. Well, it ties back in to what I already said. I don't think it's an appropriate game. I think they can make games that will interest kids, that don't have to include war. We don't need to be killing each other in games. There's other ways of strategizing and using the kind of skills that make those games popular.

At least Twitter is so obvious that you know when they are around. Does anybody else use M$ any more apart from Twitter's sock puppets?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020722h.gif

Some days, I don't even take a lunch.

Hey, don't knock it. Photoshop Hero is the best game ever.

In case anyone is wondering why this article is tagged "peeonuswillwright," its a quote from Penny Arcade.

E3 2K5

Posted anonymously to avoid karma whoring.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/27/

Oblig.

It would be nearly unfilmable, without major changes (other characters, stuff in the middle, etc).

There's always the Colossi themselves. Maybe Penny Arcade can do some writing for the script. This would make a good scene.

"Most newspapers would prefer a fraction of their current traffic in exchange for a core set of engaged, frequent, transacting users."

I've seen the "core set of engaged, frequent, transacting users" at one of my local newspaper Web sites. They embody solid evidence of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

[Edit: Accidently posted as AC...]

Actually, I thought the problem with Star Wars: Galaxies was that SOE hated their customers and when one guy discovered how to dupe credits (aka 'money') and paid people with the duped creds, the SOE admins permanently banned the people who (unwittingly) received the money- but not the guy who duped it all...

The playerbase rioted, but SOE admins teleported them into space. At least, that's what Penny Arcade told me...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/08/25/

Actually, I thought the problem with Star Wars: Galaxies was that SOE hated their customers and when one guy discovered how to dupe credits (aka 'money') and paid people with the duped creds, the SOE admins permanently banned the people who (unwittingly) received the money- but not the guy who duped it all...

The playerbase rioted, but SOE admins teleported them into space. At least, that's what Penny Arcade told me...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/08/25/

The xkcd comic the OP's referring to, or a similar reference, in six parts, no less, on Penny Arcade.

Now, obviously if falls under the category of "pulling numbers out of one's ass", but it does seem to make sense that whenever an author feels the need to make up too many words for his/her fantasy/sci-fi universe, it's probably because they lack a good plot to begin with..

I think the point of this story, though, is less about the coining of words or terms, but the fact that some concepts were actually envisioned (sometimes, pretty damn thoroughly) first in the realm of fiction and only later translated into science or actual technologies. I find it far more interesting that someone envisioned the role of a genetic engineer all those years before genetics really took off, than the fact that they managed to coin the term for it. I'm less impressed by the coining of "meme" or "memetics", than I am about the implications that the study of human-propagated "stories" have on anthropology.