Microsoft Launches IT Superhero Comic

willdavid writes "Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft's new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. 'Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a computer virus don't really have extraordinary powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who "stands between chaos and order" and says things like "begone vermin!"'" And because it's never easy, in order to read the archives of the comic you're going to need to install Microsoft's Silverlight.

Comments

Cross-platform? (Re:Just wondering)

[Kiralan]

I find it interesting that Silverlight is announced as 'cross-platform' on its home page, and the compatibility chart lists Mac OS-10X, yet the license agreement only permits use on XP and Vista????

Microsoft and Silverlight

[MobyDisk]

They are reeaallly stooping low to make this require Silverlight. Nobody else wants to use this product, so just pay people to use it. Brilliant!
- Donating money to non-profits and earmarking the money to transform their Flash web sites into Silverlight
    (I went to a BaltoMSDN presentation on Silverlight, done by the guys who did the conversion)
- Making webcomics that use Silverlight
- Displaying a nag screen on MS download sites recommending that people use the new Silverlight download manager

No one came imagine the hilarity of my laugh once someone writes a tool to convert the comic into Flash. :)

Re:Just wondering

[rbanffy]

A couple years back, I got, for my birthday, a book called "Programmers at Work", edited by Microsoft Press. The book is a collection of interviews of programmers ranging from Andy Hertzfeld, Gary Kildall and Butler Lampson all the way to Bill Gates.

I strongly suspect it's not available today and never again will be printed in this form, mainly because in his interview, Bill Gates said:

Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?
Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong.

You have to love the fine irony.