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This is ever relevant.

Do you even own a Gamecube? It's biggest problem was and is the length of time between decent releases, maybe 6 games worth buying a year(in a good year), not some demographic problem. Had Nintendo sold 100,000,000 Gamecubes, and Sony had only sold 20,000,000, you can damn well bet your ass most of the PS2's titles would've wound up on the system.

Penny Arcade said it best.

I think Penny Arcade summed up the "Dune" prequels pretty well.

You assume DRM is necessary, but in actuality, it isn't. These people somehow make a profit without DRM (otherwise they wouldn't bother releasing the e-books). As does these people as well as these people.

Perhaps multi-million dollar movies aren't capable without DRM or Britney Spears being profitable without DRM, but the truth is that the big media cartels aren't the only people in town no matter how much they want you to think they are. And DRM isn't necessary for artists to not only make a profit, but to make a living. Not all artists will be able to make a profit or a living, but then again not all artists deserve a profit or a living. DRM isn't a necessary evil, it's just an evil.

The writers of Penny Arcade (and others) will disagree with you on that (language not safe for work) http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/15

The article erroneously says it was Monday's strip. Gabe and Tycho made several strips in advanced, so they wouldn't have to work on comics while PAX was going on. Monday's strip was the last of those premades. The strip created at PAX will be up tomorrow. The link will be http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/08/30

Hilarious, yes. Sophisticated... um... not always.

It was one step beyond that... Gabe was watching Tycho watching his Sim watch TV.

As much as I love the work PA does... they're not always right. In fact, they've been pretty dead wrong many times in the past. They thought the PS2 was a flop, but were hyped about the Dreamcast. They think "insult to a once-proud franchise" after playing the demo, yet it's one of only a few games that has gotten a perfect score from Famitsu, and every actual report is highly positive. There are many other instances; just go back and read through the archives. They get it wrong a lot. But what's great about PA is that even if you're in disagreement, they can still be funny.

As much as I love the work PA does... they're not always right. In fact, they've been pretty dead wrong many times in the past. They thought the PS2 was a flop, but were hyped about the Dreamcast. They think "insult to a once-proud franchise" after playing the demo, yet it's one of only a few games that has gotten a perfect score from Famitsu, and every actual report is highly positive. There are many other instances; just go back and read through the archives. They get it wrong a lot. But what's great about PA is that even if you're in disagreement, they can still be funny.

As much as I love the work PA does... they're not always right. In fact, they've been pretty dead wrong many times in the past. They thought the PS2 was a flop, but were hyped about the Dreamcast. They think "insult to a once-proud franchise" after playing the demo, yet it's one of only a few games that has gotten a perfect score from Famitsu, and every actual report is highly positive. There are many other instances; just go back and read through the archives. They get it wrong a lot. But what's great about PA is that even if you're in disagreement, they can still be funny.

Joe Sixpack may not know Penny Arcade, but Sony of America sure as hell does.

Sony's response to PA's shit in donuts remark (way at the bottom of the page)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10 So no, I didn't RTA, and I don't know much about either WoW or Warhammer. But the comic fits!

or is this the one you are talking about...

Do you mean this one?

I hope it'll be Sepoohroth!

If you had bothered to actually read their website, you would know that they had decided to stop making them with any sort of regularity.

it seems like the boys forgot about Produce Panic -- they announced and released it over two years ago!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2004/05/26

http://www.garagegames.com/products/35

Not always ... after all, there was a stretch of comics where Gabe switched. In perhaps more ways than one.

But I agree with their general point, it's just always good clean fun to pick on Artie MacStrawman.

Don't they always abuse the mythical Mac gamers? I can see the ending of each episode...

"Congrats on beating the game! You still smell like patchouli!!"

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/08/11

I'll buy it but ONLY if this speech is in the intro http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10.

Can't wait to play Frank, the EB Games store clerk and his lovely assistant, Mabel. It's time to clean up the mall!

I want a level where you have to punch a baby.

Oh, you mean something like this?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/16

Over a year ago, Game and Tycho already predicted the outcome of an xbox camera.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10

Warcraft comes from Warhammer not the other way around. 50 Fucking Geek Cred minus. Lameo.

Regarding WoW and Warhammer Online:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10

Our fellow humans do not act civilized unless you can reach out and smack them... Then they act civilized. in a car, online, they act like assholes. Always have and always will.

Don't you mean

8) Spend venture capital on crack and hookers and dogs.

If you ignore him, the uninformed people of the world will continue to listen to him. If you argue with him, you bring him more into the public eye and more uninformed people will begin to listen to him.

I personally think the best thing to do is give Jack enough rope and he will eventually hang himself. At least one family advocate group has not only distanced itself from Jack, it flat out told him to never reference them again. Of course Jack's stance on that whole deal is that the National Institute on Media and the Family didn't really want to make a difference and that they were actually in bed with the games industry.

Jack has proven time and again that he isn't particularly intelligent and I'm sure he will prove it again. The primary reason the National Institute on Media and the Family distanced itself from Jack is the statement he made in the letter referenced in the above article:

Walsh's letter comes just days after Thompson issued an open letter to the videogames industry in which he outlined his idea for a game where the CEO of fictional company Take This, Paula Eibel, is murdered along with her husband and children. Should any developer agree to make the game, Thompson will donate $10,000 to the charity of choice of Paul Eibeler, the CEO of Take Two.

The interesting thing was when the gamer community made exactly what Jack asked for, he refused to pony up with the $10 large. So, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade for those living under a rock)donated the $10,000 that Jack wouldn't...in Jack Thomspon's name! You can see the the scans of the letter that Jack subsequently sent to Gabe and Tycho demanding they be arrested for harrassment here AND the check that Gabe and Tycho wrote to the ESA. Make special note of the memo on the check.

If you ignore him, the uninformed people of the world will continue to listen to him. If you argue with him, you bring him more into the public eye and more uninformed people will begin to listen to him.

I personally think the best thing to do is give Jack enough rope and he will eventually hang himself. At least one family advocate group has not only distanced itself from Jack, it flat out told him to never reference them again. Of course Jack's stance on that whole deal is that the National Institute on Media and the Family didn't really want to make a difference and that they were actually in bed with the games industry.

Jack has proven time and again that he isn't particularly intelligent and I'm sure he will prove it again. The primary reason the National Institute on Media and the Family distanced itself from Jack is the statement he made in the letter referenced in the above article:

Walsh's letter comes just days after Thompson issued an open letter to the videogames industry in which he outlined his idea for a game where the CEO of fictional company Take This, Paula Eibel, is murdered along with her husband and children. Should any developer agree to make the game, Thompson will donate $10,000 to the charity of choice of Paul Eibeler, the CEO of Take Two.

The interesting thing was when the gamer community made exactly what Jack asked for, he refused to pony up with the $10 large. So, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade for those living under a rock)donated the $10,000 that Jack wouldn't...in Jack Thomspon's name! You can see the the scans of the letter that Jack subsequently sent to Gabe and Tycho demanding they be arrested for harrassment here AND the check that Gabe and Tycho wrote to the ESA. Make special note of the memo on the check.

I know what Rockstar should do. Hired a purple-haired anime woman from the future to shoot Jack Thompson three times in the face.

Now all we need is a big warehouse full of empty boxes to lure him into our clever trap. MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I know what Rockstar should do. Hired a purple-haired anime woman from the future to shoot Jack Thompson three times in the face.

Now all we need is a big warehouse full of empty boxes to lure him into our clever trap. MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

So how do you fight Jack? Well first off all you don't fight him directly. He's like the [fsck]ing Candy Man. Mention his name and you give him power. Arguing with him is a waste of time. Jack or someone like him will always be there beating their chest and begging for air time. You'll never change his mind. What you can change is the validity of his arguments and we don't do that during a [...] debate. We do it through our actions as a community. [...]

Arguing [...] with someone like Jack Thompson seems kind of stupid now don't you think?

All we have to do, is not be who he says we are.

My response: "I've played on Live with all the 13 year olds cussing in my ear. I don't think I want to see them."

I believe the term you want is "Shitcock", also known as John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (G.I.F.T.).

the iPods are generating more revenue than their computers

and many people would still buy mac hardware- especially since anything in it would be inherently supported.

Their os userbase would expand greatly, their hardware userbase would probably stay very close in size, iPods would be unaffected or perhaps grow in sales...

They don't want to deal with all of the calls coming in that joe schmoe cant get it to work on his cyrix cpu or schmo joe can't get his el-cheapo scsi controller working or his $2 video card.

People currently understand that the machines and OS only works with authorized apple hardware (and from partners)

George Lucas taped over them.

Whoopsie Daisy!

"I'm not playing right now."
"Yes you are."
"I am? Dammit!"

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/16/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/05/08/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2005/20050826h. jpg

Hail Satan

Typically, the spectacle of the Electronic Entertainment Expo is such that each sequential event compresses the one before it, leaving me with three compacted days that begin inflating on the plane ride back and leave me a drooling wretch by Monday. This time is different; I have complete access to the entire week just as though I were lazily thumbing through a file drawer. For example, I knew the moment that I gripped the controller for Gears of War that I was in front of the game of the show. Nothing obscures that information. Gears is really at a "Halo" level of platform definition, and when your hands close around the gamepad on "emergence day," please remember I said so.

When we came out of the room where we had been playing it, a kind of illicit zone like an Opium Den, Kiko and I immediately began to discuss how profound the experience was. At the same time, Mike and Gabe (two separate people!) felt like it was pretty good, but bemoaned its rough framerate and constant tearing. It is our theory that perhaps some boxes were set to 1080i and some to 720p possibly creating performance disparities, because Keek and myself experienced no framerate abberations worth discussing. We did briefly experience a vision of a future where we spend every night playing Gears of War online, but I'm not sure that's connected to the vertical resolution.

If I had to say what defines it, I would say that "everything in the game world feels unrelentingly massive." This is a simulated environment that feels very confident, in that it is about huge armored men hiding behind sturdy cover while bursts of machinegun fire savage your solid fortifications. Everything you do is made to "feel" large, and when you throw yourself against a hunk of ruined automobile you are not left to wonder whether or not you are a bad ass. It is clear from the word "go." A kind of brutal platformer, Gears of War is about leaping from safety to safety, and everything reinforces it. It feels classic instantly. Indeed, you could call it Frogger Plus Firearms and not get it wrong.

Reminds me of this comic

intonations of how important "consensus" is... having to treat idiots and obviously malicious editors as if they were serious [...]

The reason people do this is that it often works. Most people are very reactive. If you treat them like a problem, they'll be a problem. If you treat them like a contributor, they'll act like a contributor. And for people who come looking for conflict, not giving it to them means they go elsewhere.

The only real alternative to being insistently nice is unending war with conflict-hungry fuckwads. For Wikipedia's size, traffic, and number of contributors, there are dumbfoundingly few problems.

And I couldn't be bothered anymore. I logged out, and I haven't been back since.

Is this a problem with Wikipedia, or a problem with your use of Wikipedia?

If you do a frustrating thing too much, you will get fed up with it. Early I ended up hating and quitting a few different jobs because I took them too seriously and burnt out on them. Now I carefully limit my frustration levels to what I can handle. It's the same way with Wikipedia: I do as much as I can where I still enjoy it.

Reminds me of another kind of cautious optimism.

I don't like that specific comic because it's very hard to see the details. For example, where are either of the "two clocks"?

But the real reason I'm writing this post is that, since you're linking to a recent PA comic, there's actually a better example from their newspost archives.

I'd like to be able to read the text in the BlockBuster image, but at least you can get the gist of the advertisement without those details.

Anyway, Gabe's post there is a must read, even though he's a cheeseball. :)

That's okay they're still bad:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/07/26