Slashdot Mirror

Of course it's not NASA. The NASA Mars mission really did land with a boom.

(The question is, since there is no life on Mars, did it make a sound ?)

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030301& mode=classic

Damn UserFriedly readers

What about drop bear? Can we use that?

Bahh I'll call it Mac OS X T1gu3r.

BTW, copyright over drop bear has just been atribuited to moi. Who want's some?

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010523

When this came out as a strip in the Userfriendly comic universe.

Way to perpetuate the Urban Legends there Cmdr T!!

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010523

I actully remember seeing it in a http://www.userfriendly.org/ strip.

Does anybody know what happened to Miranda? Will she and AJ ever come together?

Life imitates art (or else some would-be "author" copies Illiad):

Another reason people should read Userfriendly.org.

Life imitates art (or else some would-be "author" copies Illiad):

Another reason people should read Userfriendly.org.

This wonderful piece of art would never have existed without the DMCA! :-)

As long as O'Reilly doesn't start doing that shit ...

For the User Friendly plug-of-the-day: Try reading Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell. The Steve Jobs version isn't too far behind. :P

The crew is down in Australia... User Friendly

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.

Speaking of Austrialia... see User Friendly.

1. jacksonj04, say what you want but people do care about security. They may not be security fanatics, but they do care. I switched my uncle to Firefox soley on the basis of Firefox being more secure than Internet Explorer. To him, tabbed browsing was icing on the cake.
2. 
   Now my uncle is fairly literate in computers; he isn't a guru, but gets around pretty well; so he probably isn't a good example of computer illiterates caring about security. But for whom I did a spyware removal understood the concept of increased security perfectly. How did I convince her? Well, she brought in her PC because it was running slow and getting a bunch of pop-ups. I installed Ad-Aware and it found about 1,000 instances of spyware. I ran Ad-ware several times, went through the registry manually, and still was not able to remove everything. I did a system restore, reinstalled her software, installed Firefox and Ad-Aware, told her to update Ad-Aware as she would her virus scan, and sent her on her way. When I told her that using Firefox would reduce her chances of getting spyware; this lady, whose computer knowledges stops at being able to open Word and browse the internet, grasped the concept that better security is good. In order to get people to care about security, and ultimately switch to Firefox (or OSS), is to put how the better security will benifit them. They don't care that Firefox doesn't have ActiveX or whatever, all they care is how this will benefit them.
   
   2) Pop-up Blocker:
   Yes, Internet Explorer 6 SP2 has a pop-up blocker. Yes, it works. But the one in Firefox works better. I actually switched to Firefox from IE 6 SP2 (I waited for version 1.0); and let me tell you, the pop-up blocker in Firefox is better. It gives me more control and does a better job than the one in IE.
   Now again, illiterates won't care that the pop-up blocker in Firefox is better or gives the user more control. So why mention it? Tell the user that Firefox has this feature. If they are comimg from the IE 6 SP2 world, they will demand a pop-up blocker. This is more of a reassurance that Firefox is infact a modern broswer with features to match. Informing the user that Firefox had the feature first and infact forced Microsoft to include one with IE will be icing on the cake.
   
   3) User-friendly:
   In this category are all the other features of FIrefox that in my eyes are icing on the cake. Features such as tabbed browsing, themes, extensions, download manager, etc. These features won't make someone drop IE and switch to Firefox, but are kind of cool. When I install Firefox for someone I usually show these features last because most users can live without them.
   What these features contribute is a certain cool factor to Firefox. When people are told that Firefox is more secure, etc, etc; the right brain says, "Switch!" But the left brain stall has veto power. Which is why it is important to show all the different ways you can customize Firefox with themes, extensions, live bookmarks, search engines, and so forth.
   
   People don't care if Firefox is free (so is Internet Explorer) or that it is Open Source (Open Sores? - people who read http://www.userfriendly.org/ will get the joke). All they care is how will this benefit them. And as the missionaries of OSS, we must show them.

Actually, I had a brief conversation with Illiad about it in the comments.

My commentary on the absurd severity of the sentence caused quite a stir. In light of some of the other comments, this is unsurprising. I had merely intended to comment that 9 years is asinine, but in light of other comments made, one can see why people might think differently.

Just for reference to any delusional /. readers. Spam is definately not comparable to rape or murder. If you doubt this, talk to your self about your frustrations over spam, then talk to a rape victim over their frustrations regarding rape.

Now, go look at the grid linked to the link that I posted, and consider, deep down inside, if 9 years is at all appropriate.

If you do, you can go join all of the other groups trying to hammer their point of view down on the populace by making it law.

You must've missed yesterday's User Friendly.

Redundant but UserFriendly liked it.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050410

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20011229

What is this sun of which you speak?

And, for the record, I do get plenty of natural light!

Some people simply should not own computers.

LK

this sequence

... if they use the right advertising method.

But yeah, I think I should sing Hey Vendor ! , leave our kids alone ...

But yeah, I think I should sing Hey Vendor ! , leave our kids alone ...

But yeah, I think I should sing Hey Vendor ! , leave our kids alone ...

How do you update something that doesn't exist on your PC?

The Windows Update occasionally has new software that are recommended updates. It could easily be reprogrammed to install Media Player as a required update for the reduced version.

Government officials are often too concern about the big details that they usually miss the small ones that could have significant impact. If they haven't covered Windows Update, don't be surprise if Microsoft drives a semi through this loophole.

As a side note, this is how things should be. :)

lets face it wv all been here @ sm point

It's a guy in a "bunny suit" (the 'labcoat' dancers from the intel commercials of the late 90s) with a bottle of white-out. I remembered this one for some reason and a quick search on their site brought it up. here

"So far, iTunes has been a big success, so apparently a lot of consumers have no problem with DRM and online legal music-downloading." http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991114

It would be nice to have a Penny Arcade book to read since I normally don't read them on the web. (Several friends would usually send me a link if a particular strip was funny.) I'm still waiting for the next User Friendly book. :)

"Teh Scene." That reminds me of today's User Friendly Static.

You almost had me there, Bezos ...

Well, that's a patent to patent patents, I think it's enough to prove prior art to your idea :).

Actually, that's High Altitude No Opening (the MPAA commandos forgot the parachutes): http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010213

Come get some.

Now if only someone could get Reveal Codes into OpenOffice.org ...

IIRC, OpenOffice.org documents are zipfiles containing XML of various DTDs. Open the XML file in notepad or emacs or any of the other 6 editors you have installed to see all the codes you want.

If the Microsoft robot has a blue screen of death (BSOD) while watching the kid, the kid plays "Duke Half-Doom 5004: Death To The Pigs!" (a Mature-related game with extreme cartoon violence) on his older sibling's computer, and the kid goes on a neighborhood rampage with his daddy's bazooka and pineapples left in the hallway closet, is Microsoft legally liable for the kid's action?

I have the funny feeling that the answer could be this.

Heh, only good comics out there is Scott Adams' Dilbert and the UserFriendly.
Userfriendly is maybe a bit...uhm...to geeky?

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).

Emacs doesn't have Clippy, but VI does. :-)

(This was inspired by the webcomic User Friendly, specifically the January 2000 storyline.)

No, they'll partner with them. See this User Friendly strip and this one.

No, they'll partner with them. See this User Friendly strip and this one.

Speech-to-text.

It prob. will not be too bad, for some levels.

UserFriendly's take on VUI

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030220
The great western dream adds up, dude :)

This has already been done:
Userfriendly 1
Userfriendly 2
Userfriendly 3

This has already been done:
Userfriendly 1
Userfriendly 2
Userfriendly 3

This has already been done:
Userfriendly 1
Userfriendly 2
Userfriendly 3

If the entire planet switched to non-Microsoft software, where would we get our daily dose of Clippy?