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But addressing the point... Whether it's the funnies available on many newspaper sites or indie stuff like pennyarcade.com, I believe that a comic is defined by the narrative format, both in terms of length, and in terms of having "shots" enclosed in panels. The long ones you can call "graphic novels" if you want, but they're still comics in my mind. And whether they're delivered digitally or in print, they're comics.

Where the border blurs, IMO, is when the panels are animated: still being laid out as a comic, but each panel having more action/content than a printed panel could (possibly with sound as well). I think that's the way digital media is breaking down many old formats and (uggghhh, about to use corporate-speak) creating a new paradigm. It's allowing older mediums to evolve and incorporate new elements that, if not breaking them out of old boxes, allow them to push the envelope of what the status-quo would consider their format to be.

Greg

I'm going to rephrase the parent a little less insultingly.

Yours is definitely not a bad comic...like those stupid sprite comics with no plotline. But yours isn't a great comic. And at this early stage, of course you shouldn't expect it to be a great comic, but you haven't set a path yet for making it great. Let me give a few examples.

Penny Arcade has a very creative sense of humor and excellent skill in satire of the computer industry.

User Friendly has a very in-depth plot line and pokes fun at the computer industry and other topics in science very often. (Back when the EA galley-slave scandal broke, it was UF that drew the comic strips of the EA employees on the slave ship.)

WoT Now? is a sprite comic, but the creativity and dialogue more than makes up for the lack of hand-drawn graphics. Moreover, the sprites are custom-made for the comic. WoT Now? is mainly for readers of the Wheel of Time series, which limits its potential readership but also gives a very clear focus.

One One Se7en is a similar example of parody within a series. Note that the drawing quality is very low, yet the comics themselves are amusing.

megatokyo has an unusual setup (American gamer somewhat lost in Japan) that provides enough opportunities for a long plot.

Basically, I think what I'm saying is that unless you want to go for one-shot gags like 117 does -- and you can do it well -- you need some sort of plotline. At the least you need short story arcs. And you'll need a consistent set of characters and a focus of some sort, e.g., the computer industry? A fiction series? A particular setup that would make for a nice short story?

And unless you're going for a special effect near the end of an arc, try to put a good joke in each strip. Your jellyfish joke was either too silly or too complex to work well, for example. It's hard to come up with original and genuinely humorous jokes, but such is the challenge of a cartoonist.

As the guys over at PA noted, you can't play HL2 without Valve authentication. So buying the CD won't let you play single player until Valve decides to let you. Which won't happen until the official release date.

I guess you do get to see all the pretty graphics on the box, though. In the meantime, back to CS:Source.

I really really really want the word "blog" to die very soon. All that it has done is let people express their opinion, and, by capturing 0.000000002% to 0.0000004% of the world's attention (that is 15 to 3000 people), they think they're some sort of vanguard. No, I'm not interested in your "regional bands" or the fact that your condo is falling apart. I could care less what the "blogosphere" thinks. All this is doing is increasing the signal:noise ratio.

That being said, I do not have, nor ever want, a blog. The closest I can come to accepting a blog is the occasional Penny Arcade post, but that's not really similar to a blog at all.

I also break out in hives whenever anyone uses the word "blogosphere" -- as if all the world's idiocy could be contained in an area of (4/3 pi r^3).

Now, for those of you who just love blogs, and have a fair number of /. Friends should check out: My Amigos which is just a list of all the recent journal entries on any of your /. Friends.

Sigh.

exactly one year ago.

How is that for coincidence.

So is infinium:

1: Venture capital con
2: Venture capital con - turned mediocre idea
3: ex Venture capital con - playing straight and realising he has shafted himself
4: A normal company trying to make a living in this crazy old world, but they suck ass
5: all of the above
6: Mixing Bestiality and gaming

I say, this should be a pay per view IT soap opera. SOAP and Opera... gee those are already used widely in the IT industry.... so I guess it works! :-)

Gabe of Penny Arcade said it best on June 11th. He talks more about how much the device sucks, but specifically about the trash talk he says this, "Your second mistake was in allowing Mr. Raiskinen to ever open his fucking mouth in public. His statement is so absurd that it borders on the humorous. In fact if I were not quite certain that he was serious I would think it was a joke. Not a good idea to take out a game boy in a public place? Does this man even live on this planet? Did he make these comments from inside some kind of protective bubble orbiting the earth, insulated from the day to day happenings of itâ(TM)s inhabitants? If I am out with my buddies on a Friday night and we are waiting in line for a movie or some other event I can guarantee that Game Boys will come out. Not one of my friends is without a GBA. They are practically a necessity at this point. Like bread or water. It is the poor young man still playing snake on his cell phone in the airport that gets the pitting look from our group.

We even strung our link cables across the seats in the airplane on our way to E3 in order to partake in some four player Puyo Pop. Whereas airline regulations will not even allow me to turn on your masterfully designed game system while anywhere near a fucking airplane much less play a game to pass the time. Oh and speaking of great design, having to remove the battery in order to change gamesâ¦brilliant. "

This fits my own sentiments dead on. Almost all of my friends have SPs and you better bet we will pull them out when we are sitting waiting for a table or a movie to start. That is the beauty of my SP, I can play high quality games where ever I happen to be. So I can have a social life without having to sacrifice my gaming completely. I was interested in checking out the N-Gage, but now I feel that out of principle of not contributing to its success I won't. I am your target demo graphic, young geek male with loads of disposable income. Way to go Nokia.

Quoting Penny Arcade much? Three cheers for plagiarism! You could have at least gave them credit... Here is original text (at bottom).

Well, the reason I posted this was to see some constructive critism. About 80% of the posts I've read didn't bother to read the article. I agree, the article itself proposes a un-doable solution. However, I feel it could be expanded upon.

A lot of people here say they want the web to remain free, etc. etc. Bring it back to the way it was, and so on. The bottom line is, tons of sites that would form a niche part of the web and be beneficial to the community are knocked off the radar because they cannot afford the hosting. Sites like MSN, CNN, and yes, Slashdot, stay up because they are members of a few elite that can afford quality hosting.

A small, trivial, compensation for sites from many hands would make a HUGE difference. Not enough to make a profit, just enough to keep the site running. As such, it would have to be proportional to the number of visitors. Ask any webmaster who has tried to make a decent sized community site/hobby site/etc and they'll probably tell you that they were doing it at a loss. Hell even the ones that are up are only up because their webmasters have been dropping unnecessarily large amounts of cash and/or they've sold out.

Now of course, the Slashdot population will yell in response "We didn't ask them to do it! It's their problem if they can't afford it!" Well, of course this is true. But the question becomes, wouldn't an extra 5 or 10 bucks from your wallet each to pay for the hosting of sites you find on the web be worth them not dying in a few weeks? Wouldn't you rather Malda, Lowtax, or whoever spend more time writing/coding the site than stressing out and sucking dick for money so they can provide you with something for free? I've been fortunate enough with my hosting, being entirely donated, but just the experiences I had with half-empty make me realize how much it sucks that someone can't come up with a good idea for the web and not be able to deploy it without reaching into their wallet (I'll give you my time, but I won't give you my money! :)), begging for scraps, or plastering dicks and tits all over the place.

Of course I wouldn't expect people to pay an extra $100 a month for this. It wouldn't be necessary. Come up with ideas. For example, a client side program that logs the hits and sends information about domains to the ISP and the ISP forwards the money.

The idea is not to worry about how people will circumvent it (they will) and how people in "non-rich" countries will afford it (they won't be involved.) Over the long haul though, the extra dollar here or there thrown to sites by non-circumventing users would make a HELL of a difference. A penny might be too high. A page might be a bad measurement. Get past the damn details and try to see the point! :)

I agree that there are flaws in the design of this model. You're right, the web can be free, but I am of the opinion that with the amount of bandwidth and people using it the untapped potential if left completely free is enormous. If individuals with ideas could just execute them without worrying about hosting, the results would be amazing, IMHO. Chew on that, and instead of bitching about why this won't work, acknowledge why we do or don't need to help web admins show us their work, and propose a means of doing so!