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I'd like to point out that a considerable number of on-line graphic stories (and sometimes they are also very comical) have been published by their authors as dead-tree editions. Therefore those stories, at least, can be enjoyed either way. Some of them have been getting produced for enough years that multiple volumes are available, while the complete archive is usually also accessible on-line.
Since personal tastes differ, I'm not going to especially recommend particular comics. However, here are a few that I personally have enjoyed (in no particular order):
SchlockMercenary
Questionable Content
Sluggy Freelance (you might want to turn off Javascript for this archive)
A Girl And Her Fed
Girl Genius (has won multiple Hugo awards)
Freefall
Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
The Monster Under The Bed
Grrl Power
General Protection Fault
Be warned, some are not particularly safe for work, and some have archives large enough to keep you busy reading for months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

A rare type of Dwarfism.

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff...

Scene setting.

The scope of the problem and first proposed solution.

The second proposal.

We're gonna need a bigger universe.

I like "Freefall". It asks all sorts of interesting questions, like this recent sub-theme.

Scene setting.

The scope of the problem and first proposed solution.

The second proposal.

We're gonna need a bigger universe.

I like "Freefall". It asks all sorts of interesting questions, like this recent sub-theme.

Scene setting.

The scope of the problem and first proposed solution.

The second proposal.

We're gonna need a bigger universe.

I like "Freefall". It asks all sorts of interesting questions, like this recent sub-theme.

Scene setting.

The scope of the problem and first proposed solution.

The second proposal.

We're gonna need a bigger universe.

I like "Freefall". It asks all sorts of interesting questions, like this recent sub-theme.

Scene setting.

The scope of the problem and first proposed solution.

The second proposal.

We're gonna need a bigger universe.

I like "Freefall". It asks all sorts of interesting questions, like this recent sub-theme.

and got me reading the Freefall webcomic.

[EXIT STAGE LEFT, not having read Freefall for several weeks.] What are Flo and Co up to?

Wow... people like the original poster are the true problem. Everyone else, let's try to understand the actual facts about radiation. Obligatory xkcd:

I think there's a reading comprehension fail happening here. You've declared me to be an enemy of nuclear power, and then made the same point that I was alluding to. And since we're trading comics: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff... - intentional or unintentional, there has been plenty of propaganda to make people irrationally fear radiation.

I would note this Freefall comic.

Just the robot equivalent of organlegging

The ingenious webcomic Freefall is currently all about the problematics of robot and ai interactions, funny and wise, it gives an array of suggestions and ideas for which kinds of thinking can be useful or risky, it is worth reading from the beginning Link to current http://freefall.purrsia.com/de... Link to first http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff...

The ingenious webcomic Freefall is currently all about the problematics of robot and ai interactions, funny and wise, it gives an array of suggestions and ideas for which kinds of thinking can be useful or risky, it is worth reading from the beginning Link to current http://freefall.purrsia.com/de... Link to first http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff...

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are justly famous. But people shouldn't assume that they will ever actually be used. They wouldn't really work.

Asimov wrote that he invented the Three Laws because he was tired of reading stories about robots running amok. Before Asimov, robots were usually used as a problem the heroes needed to solve. Asimov reasoned that machines are made with safeguards, and he came up with a set of safeguards for his fictional robots.

His laws are far from perfect, and Asimov himself wrote a whole bunch of stories taking advantage of the grey areas that the laws didn't cover well.

Let's consider a big one, the biggest one: according to the First Law, a robot may not harm a human, nor through inaction allow a human to come to harm. Well, what's a human? How does the robot know? If you dress a human in a gorilla costume, would the robot still try to protect him?

In the excellent hard-SF comic Freefall, a human asked Florence (an uplifted wolf with an artificial Three Laws design brain; legally she is a biological robot, not a person) how she would tell who is human. "Clothes", she said.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01585.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01586.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01587.htm

In Asimov's novel The Naked Sun, someone pointed out that you could build a heavily-armed spaceship that was controlled by a standard robotic brain and had no crew; then you could talk to it and tell it that all spaceships are unmanned, and any radio transmissions claiming humans are on board a ship are lies. Hey presto, you have made a robot that can kill humans.

Another problem: suppose someone just wanted to make a robot that can kill. Asimov's standard explanation was that this is impossible, because it took many people a whole lot of work to map out the robot brain design in the first place, and it would just be too much work to do all that work again. This is a mere hand-wave. "What man has done, man can aspire to do" as Jerry Pournelle sometimes says. Someone, somewhere, would put together a team of people and do the work of making a robot brain that just obeys all orders, with no pesky First Law restrictions. Heck, they could use robots to do part of the work, as long as they were very careful not to let the robots understand the implications of the whole project.

And then we get into "harm". In the classic short story "A Code for Sam", any robot built with the Three Laws goes insane. For example, allowing a human to smoke a cigarette is, through inaction, allowing a human to come to harm. Just watching a human walk across a road, knowing that a car could hit the human, would make a robot have a strong impulse to keep the human from crossing the street.

The Second Law is problematic too. The trivial Denial of Service attack against a Three Laws robot: "Destroy yourself now." You could order a robot to walk into a grinder, or beam radiation through its brain, or whatever it would take to destroy itself as long as no human came to harm. Asimov used this in some of his stories but never explained why it wasn't a huge problem... he lived before the Internet; maybe he just didn't realize how horrible many people can be.

There will be safeguards, but there will be more than just Three Laws. And we will need to figure things out like "if crashing the car kills one person and saves two people, do we tell the car to do it?"

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are justly famous. But people shouldn't assume that they will ever actually be used. They wouldn't really work.

Asimov wrote that he invented the Three Laws because he was tired of reading stories about robots running amok. Before Asimov, robots were usually used as a problem the heroes needed to solve. Asimov reasoned that machines are made with safeguards, and he came up with a set of safeguards for his fictional robots.

His laws are far from perfect, and Asimov himself wrote a whole bunch of stories taking advantage of the grey areas that the laws didn't cover well.

Let's consider a big one, the biggest one: according to the First Law, a robot may not harm a human, nor through inaction allow a human to come to harm. Well, what's a human? How does the robot know? If you dress a human in a gorilla costume, would the robot still try to protect him?

In the excellent hard-SF comic Freefall, a human asked Florence (an uplifted wolf with an artificial Three Laws design brain; legally she is a biological robot, not a person) how she would tell who is human. "Clothes", she said.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01585.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01586.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01587.htm

In Asimov's novel The Naked Sun, someone pointed out that you could build a heavily-armed spaceship that was controlled by a standard robotic brain and had no crew; then you could talk to it and tell it that all spaceships are unmanned, and any radio transmissions claiming humans are on board a ship are lies. Hey presto, you have made a robot that can kill humans.

Another problem: suppose someone just wanted to make a robot that can kill. Asimov's standard explanation was that this is impossible, because it took many people a whole lot of work to map out the robot brain design in the first place, and it would just be too much work to do all that work again. This is a mere hand-wave. "What man has done, man can aspire to do" as Jerry Pournelle sometimes says. Someone, somewhere, would put together a team of people and do the work of making a robot brain that just obeys all orders, with no pesky First Law restrictions. Heck, they could use robots to do part of the work, as long as they were very careful not to let the robots understand the implications of the whole project.

And then we get into "harm". In the classic short story "A Code for Sam", any robot built with the Three Laws goes insane. For example, allowing a human to smoke a cigarette is, through inaction, allowing a human to come to harm. Just watching a human walk across a road, knowing that a car could hit the human, would make a robot have a strong impulse to keep the human from crossing the street.

The Second Law is problematic too. The trivial Denial of Service attack against a Three Laws robot: "Destroy yourself now." You could order a robot to walk into a grinder, or beam radiation through its brain, or whatever it would take to destroy itself as long as no human came to harm. Asimov used this in some of his stories but never explained why it wasn't a huge problem... he lived before the Internet; maybe he just didn't realize how horrible many people can be.

There will be safeguards, but there will be more than just Three Laws. And we will need to figure things out like "if crashing the car kills one person and saves two people, do we tell the car to do it?"

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are justly famous. But people shouldn't assume that they will ever actually be used. They wouldn't really work.

Asimov wrote that he invented the Three Laws because he was tired of reading stories about robots running amok. Before Asimov, robots were usually used as a problem the heroes needed to solve. Asimov reasoned that machines are made with safeguards, and he came up with a set of safeguards for his fictional robots.

His laws are far from perfect, and Asimov himself wrote a whole bunch of stories taking advantage of the grey areas that the laws didn't cover well.

Let's consider a big one, the biggest one: according to the First Law, a robot may not harm a human, nor through inaction allow a human to come to harm. Well, what's a human? How does the robot know? If you dress a human in a gorilla costume, would the robot still try to protect him?

In the excellent hard-SF comic Freefall, a human asked Florence (an uplifted wolf with an artificial Three Laws design brain; legally she is a biological robot, not a person) how she would tell who is human. "Clothes", she said.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01585.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01586.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01587.htm

In Asimov's novel The Naked Sun, someone pointed out that you could build a heavily-armed spaceship that was controlled by a standard robotic brain and had no crew; then you could talk to it and tell it that all spaceships are unmanned, and any radio transmissions claiming humans are on board a ship are lies. Hey presto, you have made a robot that can kill humans.

Another problem: suppose someone just wanted to make a robot that can kill. Asimov's standard explanation was that this is impossible, because it took many people a whole lot of work to map out the robot brain design in the first place, and it would just be too much work to do all that work again. This is a mere hand-wave. "What man has done, man can aspire to do" as Jerry Pournelle sometimes says. Someone, somewhere, would put together a team of people and do the work of making a robot brain that just obeys all orders, with no pesky First Law restrictions. Heck, they could use robots to do part of the work, as long as they were very careful not to let the robots understand the implications of the whole project.

And then we get into "harm". In the classic short story "A Code for Sam", any robot built with the Three Laws goes insane. For example, allowing a human to smoke a cigarette is, through inaction, allowing a human to come to harm. Just watching a human walk across a road, knowing that a car could hit the human, would make a robot have a strong impulse to keep the human from crossing the street.

The Second Law is problematic too. The trivial Denial of Service attack against a Three Laws robot: "Destroy yourself now." You could order a robot to walk into a grinder, or beam radiation through its brain, or whatever it would take to destroy itself as long as no human came to harm. Asimov used this in some of his stories but never explained why it wasn't a huge problem... he lived before the Internet; maybe he just didn't realize how horrible many people can be.

There will be safeguards, but there will be more than just Three Laws. And we will need to figure things out like "if crashing the car kills one person and saves two people, do we tell the car to do it?"

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are justly famous. But people shouldn't assume that they will ever actually be used. They wouldn't really work.

Asimov wrote that he invented the Three Laws because he was tired of reading stories about robots running amok. Before Asimov, robots were usually used as a problem the heroes needed to solve. Asimov reasoned that machines are made with safeguards, and he came up with a set of safeguards for his fictional robots.

His laws are far from perfect, and Asimov himself wrote a whole bunch of stories taking advantage of the grey areas that the laws didn't cover well.

Let's consider a big one, the biggest one: according to the First Law, a robot may not harm a human, nor through inaction allow a human to come to harm. Well, what's a human? How does the robot know? If you dress a human in a gorilla costume, would the robot still try to protect him?

In the excellent hard-SF comic Freefall, a human asked Florence (an uplifted wolf with an artificial Three Laws design brain; legally she is a biological robot, not a person) how she would tell who is human. "Clothes", she said.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01585.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01586.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01587.htm

In Asimov's novel The Naked Sun, someone pointed out that you could build a heavily-armed spaceship that was controlled by a standard robotic brain and had no crew; then you could talk to it and tell it that all spaceships are unmanned, and any radio transmissions claiming humans are on board a ship are lies. Hey presto, you have made a robot that can kill humans.

Another problem: suppose someone just wanted to make a robot that can kill. Asimov's standard explanation was that this is impossible, because it took many people a whole lot of work to map out the robot brain design in the first place, and it would just be too much work to do all that work again. This is a mere hand-wave. "What man has done, man can aspire to do" as Jerry Pournelle sometimes says. Someone, somewhere, would put together a team of people and do the work of making a robot brain that just obeys all orders, with no pesky First Law restrictions. Heck, they could use robots to do part of the work, as long as they were very careful not to let the robots understand the implications of the whole project.

And then we get into "harm". In the classic short story "A Code for Sam", any robot built with the Three Laws goes insane. For example, allowing a human to smoke a cigarette is, through inaction, allowing a human to come to harm. Just watching a human walk across a road, knowing that a car could hit the human, would make a robot have a strong impulse to keep the human from crossing the street.

The Second Law is problematic too. The trivial Denial of Service attack against a Three Laws robot: "Destroy yourself now." You could order a robot to walk into a grinder, or beam radiation through its brain, or whatever it would take to destroy itself as long as no human came to harm. Asimov used this in some of his stories but never explained why it wasn't a huge problem... he lived before the Internet; maybe he just didn't realize how horrible many people can be.

There will be safeguards, but there will be more than just Three Laws. And we will need to figure things out like "if crashing the car kills one person and saves two people, do we tell the car to do it?"

The problem is that most of the TV writers out there know a lot more about how to get a job writing for TV than they know about science.

So you end up with concepts that might have worked as a 5 minute skit on a comedy show being dragged on and on and on.

Personally, I'd like to see something like Freefall as a series.

Might want to take a look at this ... When I saw the AC's comment, I couldn't help but remember this. http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff...

'fishing expedition' and search prior to an arrest, without warrant, IS unreasonable.

Statistics are a poor excuse to stop anyone.

Mea culpa, link fix.

Not paying attention + using a different browser than normal don't really go well together...

As a counterpoint, I'm reminded of a comic.

Wasted Talent is about an girl getting through engineering school and then in the real world. It's great art and really funny! My personal favorite is hugo-nominated Schlock Mercenary, which I consider the best overall. It's been around a while, and is always funny, and always updates (no missed comics in over 12 years, even when his datacenter exploded). For best artwork, and a great story, I agree with many other posters in saying that multiple-Hugo-winning Girl Genius wins hands down. I do love xkcd, and most of the other ones mentioned. I should also mention Foxtrot, which is not strictly a webcomic (it's also in newspaper syndication). I also read Sluggy Freelance, another really long-running webcomic. Lastly, I like Free Fall, a little less well-known comic about a genetically modified wolf who gets a job as an engineer for a petty crook, and tries to stop the robot apocalypse.

funny science fiction which tries very hard to get the physics right:

http://freefall.purrsia.com/

Honorable mention to Girl Genius by Kaja and Phil Foglio

Begin here:

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104

Be sure to buy the printed books (if you pre-order you can pay extra and get hand drawn art). Victorian steampunk science fantasy suitable for teens and younger children.

William

Hitler got into politics because his art was rejected. At least near the end he saw his reign in terms of art - namely, a classic tragedy. The culture of Nazi Germany was largely based on artistic choices and has ever since been an inexhaustible well for other artists. In fact, the very Star Wars itself draws a major source of inspiration from there, from the very concept of an evil empire worshipping the Dark Side to the aesthetics of space battles.

Hitler had a far greater effect on the art world than Lucas could ever even dream of. And with the generation that actually went through World War II, you just know he's on his way to become this.

The story goes that, when DC sued Marvel over Captain Marvel allegedly infringing on Superman, Marvel responded by having a villain take out either copyright or patent on the letters A-Z, and then sue anybody who tried to write or print anything without paying royalties first.

I don't know the truth or not of that story. But last year a web-comic of my acquaintance proposed a similar scheme : "There's a theory that an infinite amount of monkeys at an infinite amount of typewriters will eventually write everything. With spell and grammar checkers, even a simple program can churn out thousands of pages of text per hour. Storage capacity is cheap. Make an exabyte length novel. Become a copyright troll. Sue when another writer "copies" from your work."

Follow the "next" links on that page to follow the development of the idea to the point of destroying (other) universes to act as Tweet-storage.

Well, I like it, which is good enough for me.

Bad security can actually be worse than no security.

These types of arguments tend to run on one of two lines: people trusting that which they shouldn't and examples of simple broken systems.

There is nothing you can do about people trusting systems they shouldn't. Houses have many ways in that are usually easier to open with tools than the doors. Windows are used for entry because you only need a fist to break most. Walls are just as easy with power tools. It's the social contract between people that prevents this type of security problem. Locks on your doors only keep out lazy opportunists checking doors for easy access. Sadly, the Gabriel's Greater Internet F*ckwad Theory implies that online the contract fails.

The less obvious one is that a faulty and flawed security mechanism actually offers another attack vector.

All security mechanisms suffer from this. Reference: http://xkcd.com/538/

Add a lock and you not only offer a point where an attacker can actually put a hook,

The obvious is to just use a tool that can attach things to doors. Even a harmless looking sharpened thumbtack defeats the 'handle-less' door yet is stymied by the presence of a lock.

I think the equivalent in computer security is pop-up phishing. Such as putting up a webpage popup AD with a similar password requirement and appearance, hoping that some people will try their existing passwords from their existing systems. Or a fake screensaver overlay that kicks in after one minute of idle.

If the lock is now flawed and easy to pick, you actually lowered the security of the door by adding a lock.

It is a simple matter of application of non-obvious force: smack the door with your fist. One that is easier to do than even smashing windows. It not only leaves no trail, but makes it look like you know what you are doing so unaware bystanders will think you should be using that door. Unless it is badly fit to the frame and actually stuck to it, if pushed on such a door will bounce open. Materials are elastic to some degree and forces between joints will be partially reflected just due to the difference in material (the gap that comprises the joint between door material and frame.)

To translate into security speak, this is shoulder-surfing someone who uses the same password everywhere.

Fundamentally, security is about psychology and not technology. The lock should be the hardest part of the door to deal with so attackers focus on it and waste their time. This gives you time to discover and deal with them manually assuming the attacker just doesn't give up and go check other doors. Most people are dumb - well average or bellow - so this works well. You cannot keep the smart ones out - even if they ignore the window you left open they know how to use a battery-powered chain saw to make their own doors.

Bad security can actually be worse than no security.

These types of arguments tend to run on one of two lines: people trusting that which they shouldn't and examples of simple broken systems.

There is nothing you can do about people trusting systems they shouldn't. Houses have many ways in that are usually easier to open with tools than the doors. Windows are used for entry because you only need a fist to break most. Walls are just as easy with power tools. It's the social contract between people that prevents this type of security problem. Locks on your doors only keep out lazy opportunists checking doors for easy access. Sadly, the Gabriel's Greater Internet F*ckwad Theory implies that online the contract fails.

The less obvious one is that a faulty and flawed security mechanism actually offers another attack vector.

All security mechanisms suffer from this. Reference: http://xkcd.com/538/

Add a lock and you not only offer a point where an attacker can actually put a hook,

The obvious is to just use a tool that can attach things to doors. Even a harmless looking sharpened thumbtack defeats the 'handle-less' door yet is stymied by the presence of a lock.

I think the equivalent in computer security is pop-up phishing. Such as putting up a webpage popup AD with a similar password requirement and appearance, hoping that some people will try their existing passwords from their existing systems. Or a fake screensaver overlay that kicks in after one minute of idle.

If the lock is now flawed and easy to pick, you actually lowered the security of the door by adding a lock.

It is a simple matter of application of non-obvious force: smack the door with your fist. One that is easier to do than even smashing windows. It not only leaves no trail, but makes it look like you know what you are doing so unaware bystanders will think you should be using that door. Unless it is badly fit to the frame and actually stuck to it, if pushed on such a door will bounce open. Materials are elastic to some degree and forces between joints will be partially reflected just due to the difference in material (the gap that comprises the joint between door material and frame.)

To translate into security speak, this is shoulder-surfing someone who uses the same password everywhere.

Fundamentally, security is about psychology and not technology. The lock should be the hardest part of the door to deal with so attackers focus on it and waste their time. This gives you time to discover and deal with them manually assuming the attacker just doesn't give up and go check other doors. Most people are dumb - well average or bellow - so this works well. You cannot keep the smart ones out - even if they ignore the window you left open they know how to use a battery-powered chain saw to make their own doors.

That's actually a decent point; under this, would a sentient robot have to pay for access to it's own genome, for reproduction or otherwise?

For answers to this and many other fascinating questions, you should read the Freefall web comic.

artificial life, with serial numbers on DNA, and a pre-programmed lifespan... where did DARPA replicate that idea from, and when can I get a basic pleasure model?

Looks like they were reading Mark Stanley's excellent webcomic "Freefall".

It examines these issues in detail, with considerable humor.

Heh. A non-postmodernist is a rarer find than people think these days. The illogical and irrational belief that you can have your truth and I can have mine and they are both equal is pretty prevalent, though.

That's not irrational, that's Omniquantism.

If only there were something you could do...

Wow! Just like this. Actually, they could do like they do in some Chinese restaurants: Layers of plastic sheets. All the astronauts would have to do is peel off the dirty layer, and they're good to go. Or they could use a lint brush. Any lunar dust sticking to the seals would be doing so through static. An adhesive roller could easily pull the dust off the seal.

"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it." -- Mark Stanley, http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff300/fv00255.htm

Well, you're leaving out NASA's interest in connecting to the wonderful communities that exist on Second Life. It's a little known fact that NASA has been launching furries into space for many years now.

The Freefall comic strip (http://freefall.purrsia.com) is well known for its high attention to accuracy with scientific details.

It's also a great read, btw. :-)

Just to add to all the above posts refuting the claim that pirated CDs are "infected" - I live in Russia, and I've bought plenty of those here - and not a single time there was a virus, trojan, or anything of a kind on such a CD.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." - Barry Gehm

"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it." - Florence Ambrose [Freefall #255]

As predicted in Freefall.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1300/fc01279.htm

Turning Hydrogen into Oxygen is fairly easy. Just walk out at the dawn, and see the biggest thermonuclear device we have around here in the process of doing that.

See this illustration for an example.

In modern terms, the universe has bigger WMD than the shrub.

Well, all I know about superconductors I learned here: http://freefall.purrsia.com/~color/ffstrip.php?num =215

Oh, Com'on! All us geeks on Slashdot and nobody else has geard of:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/lastthree.htm

(Quick synopsis: Genetically engineered wolf is accidently assigned to alien as ship's engineer on an earth colony heavily populated with Asimov type robots... hilarity ensues.)

You are assuming that position (or attitude, if you want to be technical) is the same as momentum.

Think of this: I'm in space, and I've got a stick. I'm upsidedown ralative to my girlfriend, and I want to get a nice (rightside up) picture of her.

1. Spin the stick. It conserves angular momentum by spinning me - continue until I'm rightside up, and stop stick (which stops me, again conserving angular momentum)

2. Hold camera upside down (this answer is much to practical)

see also Freefall the comic

It's what Enterprise *should* have been.

That would have been exciting. "Going where no man has gone before."

Ensign: So where are we going Captain?
Captain: To the Klingon home world.
Ensign: But that's 20 light years away, it'll take us 40 years just to get there!
Captain: You're right Ensign. And we only have 7 years before we're canned. Alright. We'll go to Jupiter station.
Ensign: Oh boy, that'll only take us several months!


Don't think that would have worked somehow.

For those that don't want to shill out $10 (plus shipping and handling) US for a comic they might or might not like (unfortunately the preview didn't really tell you much) here are a bunch of sci-fi comics that don't rely on a fad (and are free too) that you might enjoy:
* Storm Corps
* A Miracle of Science
* Kismet: Hunter's Moon
* Mozhaets
* Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life (WARNING: Humour)
* Twilight Agency
* Freefall (WARNING: Humour! But it is hard sci-fi. Confused how humour could mix with hard sci-fi? Read it and find out).
* Where Am I Now?

There are big differences here. The print format has the giant advantage that you tend to see comics other than your "favorites," because you can't help but read those nearby; you may get exposed to lots of artists including a great one or two. I would never have known a damn thing about newspaper comics if I had started reading them online.

Those are advantages, but I think the benefits of online overcome them. For example many websites have links to other comics that the author enjoys. Some having free banner rotations on their pages. Which I think is a much better recommendation then it happens to just be there. Also if today's comic isn't exactly funny You can read whole archives which people are more inclined to do if it's for free.

IMO though, the distinction between online and newspaper comics will begin to fade, as more and more "webcomics" become syndicated by newspapers

most of the webcomics i've read aren't remotely funny, interesting or worth the webspace

You're right. this is so derivative unlike those original paper comics. And yet, you read them. They must be doing something right.

how many fucking comics do we need about, some loser with some stupid talking furry animal. along with all those stupid chars that you couldn't care less about?

Oh I agree I don't know how anyone could care about these characters

of course don't forget the utter lack of good artwork for most of them Agreed. These hacks should be shot for the good of man-kind.

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00048.htm

That's a wonderful comic -- I had to start at the beginning and read the whole story, and when I got back to this suit design I see not only the dockable suit, but even the "keep clean" cover is described there.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1000/fv00988.gif/

I hope NASA reads this stuff. The design is attributed to the Russian space program.

Such a space suit is depicted in the online comic strip Freefall. (use the "previous" and "next" buttons to see more details.

Schlock Mercenary didn't miss a single update in 58 weeks, and still I rate is as one of two best webcomics (together with UF).

Schlock is good. UF... hmmm.... nah. I never liked it.

But if you *really* want a top quality webcomic, the one you really should be reading is Freefall.

And no, Freefall has never missed an update either (it is only three times a week, though).

Yay! At long last! Mr Solar is a reality. :-D