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Right, nobody could have expected there to be holidays in december. This is obviously an evil plan of IBM/Novell/GNU/Eric Raymond to make SCO look back. Or rather - I'd recommend they sue Bun Bun, but that may be tricky given recent events and the fact that he cannot be found right now.

Hmmm, has someone been reading Sluggy Freelance?

Great free online cartoon, BTW :)

Sorry, forgot the obvious blarg reference.

-Adam

An interesting side effect of the Baen Free Library - it has indirectly contributed to my buying a Sony Clie and a 256 mb compactflash card, just so I can store my books to read on the go when traveling. What happened? I downloaded one book by David Weber to start off (Mutineer's Moon) after reading about the free library on Slashdot. One thing led to another, and I became the owner of War of Honor, and later Hell's Faire, both of which have CD's containing a bunch of eBooks, completely free.

In addition to the random selection from the free library, I can now take advantage of Project Gutenberg titles, and I've been seriously considering signing up for Webscriptions just so I can get first crack at some of the new titles coming out.

So, more digital media for free not only helps to boost sales of physical copies (I also bought dead-tree versions of Sluggy Freelance as well - I got hooked on Sluggy after reading obscure references in John Ringo's "When the Devil Dances" and visiting the Sluggy website trying to figure out who "Torg", "Zoe", "Riff", and "Bun-Bun" were.)

So, just from trying out one free eBook, I went ahead and have bought:

(2) Hardcover books from Baen, new

(7) Softcover Sluggy Freelance books from Plan Nine Publishing

(1) Clie NX60 [320x480 screen, a bit small, but very legible]

And a 256mb compactflash card [overkill, until you start putting MP3s on it]

That's several hundred dollars of spending on my part, and it cost Baen about 15mb worth of bandwidth for all the books that I've downloaded from the free library. For me, it's a great deal - lots of books for very little money. For Baen and their authors, it's a great deal - they get new customers (I never would have tried David Weber otherwise - now he's one of my favorite authors), and lots of good press (ie, Slashdot and word of mouth.) Incidentally, this happens with titles I check out from the library (I like a book or author, and end up buying books to add to my personal library), so there's preceedent for the sharing of "free" media.

Coming soon to Broadway: The Cylon King.

Was accomplished by Sluggy Freelance, when Pete did a strip of a Broadway musical of Battlestar in the style of the Lion King. After that, sci-fi mehums can't compare.

Was accomplished by Sluggy Freelance, when Pete did a strip of a Broadway musical of Battlestar in the style of the Lion King. After that, sci-fi mehums can't compare.

All this talk about bridging VoIP with the phone system. I dan't care about the problems with that, I don't want to do it, I have no interest in it, and if somehow telemarketers start hitting me up on VoIP over it, I'm gunna go Bun Bun on them.

Well, I don't know if webcomics count, but what about Boa Yvette?!

Emergency Pants!

Lop?

Hereti-Corp Freelancers

I'm glad I went ahead and put my cellphone number on the Do Not Call list when I signed up. Sometimes foresight really does pay off.

On a similar subject, folks might find today (Tuesday)'s Sluggy Freelance amusing...

If only. If only...

... or at least Bun Bun from today's Sluggy Freelance.

As mentioned in the original post, Baen has the free library, which contains the first few books of a given series (for instance the free library includes the first couple of Honor Harrington books). When David Weber came out with the 10th book in the series, the first-release hardback included a CD which not only included the entire Honor Harrington series (including the book that it came with) in ebook format, but selections of other authors, in total, 40 or 50 books, plus pictures, fanfiction, and other sci-fi goodness.

John Ringo recently came out with the fourth (book 3 part 2 by his counting) book of his Posleen series, and version 2 of the Baen CD came out as well. Surprisingly, there was no overlap in titles. This CD not only included a roleplaying game, but also selections of Sluggy Freelance (Bun-bun plays prominently in his books).

And the best part of this? The CDs license reads This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold.

If more publishers would follow Jim Baen's example, ebooks would be as common as paperbacks. I will continue to buy Baen books, in hardback, especially if he continues to give away CDs with ebooks. I'm almost to the point where leisure reading on dead trees feels alien and wierd.

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.

You guys are all losers. You say "I'm Thankful," but you have to stipulate it in some way. "I just wish..." not me. What I am thankful for is pure and unalienable. It is a right for which I have nothing but gratitude. The right to shoot all telemarketers on site!"

This looks like a job for emergency pants!

remember kids that the majority of americans & the congress & senate voted to go after iraq...also bush isn't the 1st or only one who said iraq had wmd and saddam was a threat...remember these?

Not to mention how Clinton continually interrupted the inspections proccess by repeatedly bombing Iraq. According to Scott Ritter 95% of the WMD had been accounted for and the only reason they were not able to complete the job was because Clinton would not let them.

Does anyone have any documentation on how many times Clinton bombed Iraq? The exact dates would be nice too. Not to mention how much money those bombing runs cost us. F*#&ing liberals wasting our taxpayer dollars on a scumbag like Saddam Hussein!

(What does this have to do with the Segway anyway?)

(Guess I'll put in a link to the Smegway to make this somewhat on-topic. The Smegways explode by the way. I wonder if they count as a WMD?)

Not so fast there, bub. As it so happens, this little flaw has been known for some time now. Pete Abrams was the first to break the story over 6 months ago, and its a lot more serious than simply falling over.

I refer you to this comic, in which this *very same* flaw in the 'Smegway' is part of an evil plot to take over the world! My god, it's true! But... but... if Sluggy Freelance is ture, then that means Santa is actually an EVIL ALIEN!!! AAAAAAHHHHH!!!

I refer you to this comic, in which this *very same* flaw in the 'Smegway' is part of an evil plot to take over the world! My god, it's true! But... but... if Sluggy Freelance is ture, then that means Santa is actually an EVIL ALIEN!!! AAAAAAHHHHH!!!

I'm reminded of a certain Sluggy Freelance.

8-bit Theater. Remember Fighter, Thief, Red Mage, and Black Mage from Final Fantasy? Well, they're the main characters in this strip. Archives go back a year or two. Rather entertaining.

d+pad covers the goings-on at a video game store. The artwork is pretty crude, but if you're into the gaming world at all, you'll enjoy it.

Goats is a VERY disturbing strip. The early artwork was a lot less refined than it is now, but how can you go wrong with a strip that involves overclocked lemons and a Satanic chicken named Diablo?

PvP is a strip about a fictional gaming magazine. Sometimes crass and goofy, but often hilarious (go to any geek gathering and see how many people laugh when you shout "Panda attack!"). I know I'd subscribe to any magazine that had a 300-year-old blue troll as an intern.

And, of course, Sluggy Freelance. Best. Webcomic. Ever. But you really have to go all the way back to the beginning of the archives. There's years of great stuff in there. (Worship Bun-bun!)

I know that no day is complete without reading all my webcomics... which is really easy using bookmarked tabs in Mozilla. I just click on one bookmark, and the browser opens up a dozen separate tabs with all my comics loaded.

And I was hoping to get the first Sluggy post.. ;-)

Sluggy Freelance is possibly the finest web daily out there. The following is powerful enough that when the author (Pete) found out that the comic was making no money, he cried out 'Help Me!' Shortly thereafter, they had a flood of small payments from loyal readers.

A fine example of how online entertainment should be handled. The online comic is free (save a banner ad). You can pay to rid yourself of ads. You can pay to get merchandise (printed books, tshirts, etc). No 'required subscription' or any of that bull$hit.

Worship the comic. Go read some archives. 6 years of comics are online, for no charge. Go get addicted, and give Pete some money.

> I check Penny Arcade, Little Gamers, and Real Life Comics an awful lot. Probably too much to be healthy.

I think you forgot someone , NerdBoy. *Ka-CLICK!*

I think it stands for "Meanwhile In the Dimension of Pain"

That is why if a webcomic gets popular enough, they can start selling merchandise (coffee mugs, t-shirts) with pictures of the characters on them. Not to mention book compliations of the comics

"Damn multi-LED faced monsters."

By your command.

Actually, I think the honor goes to Sluggy Freelance and Gofotron. ;-)

I'm still waiting for the first Voltron-sim network game where the robots are controlled by individual players and can team up to form a giant robot. Now there's a game that needs to be made.

I actually believe that they will. Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance recently made a request for money, because he had trouble making ends meet. He arranged a donation-drive which was supposed to go on for about two weeks. After one (1) day he shut it down because they had gotten enough donations, and apparantly were almost drowning in credit card - payments that they had to process and accounts they had to activate.

It should be mentioned that Pete mentioned the donation-drive as a "perhaps I'll stop sluggy"-thing.

Alas, we still have to wear pants.. Some of us even need emergency pants.

A great comic on ties.

http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=030716

Other sites have also been experimenting with this sort of thing, like User Friendly's membership program.

So I don't think it's a huge step to get to micropayments - the only real advantage micropayments have over the current methods is that you can try content earlier for lower risk (ie, $.25 vs. $10).

And of course people have mentioned Apple's success with single song downloading. I think people are ready/willing to pay for what they get online, the price just needs to be right.

...no Sluggy Freelance reference? Philistines!

(Note: Bad time to link as Pete is on holiday, but fill-in artist is doing a pretty good job. Oh well.)

Hey, is sluggy ob around here or not?

Well, I can think of two :)

sluggy glove ref 0
sluggy glove ref 1

Well, I can think of two :)

sluggy glove ref 0
sluggy glove ref 1

bwaahha! another great sluggy.com reference goes wizzing under the radar!

(week's compilation link)

Simpsons did it!

No, not really. Sluggy Freelance did it. Except it was called a Smegvay. Just don't let the tip over.

Reminds me more of that Sluggy Freelance segment a while back.

Pah. A Kiki reference and he gets modded down?!

Sluggy Freelance Explanation

"Do you know what Hell is like? It is hot! It is uncomfortably hot and humid all the time. So what do we have? Comfortable bathing suits? Margaritas? No! Parkas and mittens! Because it is Hell!"

This is one is one of my favorite comics of all time
Nal

And buying or adopting a pet and not making the proper accomadations for it is moronic. It is not a person you have let into your house, but an animal that does what it's insticts tell it. It can't be expected to know your rules or uinderstand if you tell it.

And to wrap up, I quote Sluggy Freelance:

"I'm a rabbit, I chew stuff."

...the most dangerous rabbit of all

ChicagoFan

Chick Magnet

Be careful what you wish for.