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Dilbert Goes Flash, Readers Revolt
spagiola writes "The Dilbert.com website just got an extreme makeover. Gone is the old, rather clunky but perfectly functional, website, replaced by a Flash-heavy website that only Mordac the Preventer of Information Services could love. Users have been pretty unanimous in condemning the changes. Among the politer comments: 'Congrats. Vista is no more lonely at the top in the Competition For The Worst Upgrade In Computing Industry, this web site upgrade being a serious contender.' You have to register to leave comments, but many seem to have registered for the express purpose of panning the new design."
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Clearly, there is some flash on the site, but I can still view all the comics without it.
I have flashblock and noscript up. I tried temporarily allowing just a few things to let me view the site, but when that didn't work, I gave up and deleted Dilbert from my bookmarks.
It's funny, but it's not worth it. He also has an irrational love of Microsoft at times, such as when he thought that Bill Gates would make a good president.
Because, you know, it's not like the rest of the world minds having the USA push them around. And it's not like Bill is known for being good at that kind of business, or anything like that...
Suffice it to say, I didn't feel like it was worth the bother to continue reading it.
My award for "sticking with what works" goes to craigslist.org.
Am I the only one who thinks Dilbert stopped being funny back in the 1990s? The last collection I enjoyed was Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy . Since then, Adams has just been going over and over the same handful of gags. And even though corporate culture in America may have changed to some extent, the Dilbert office seems the same early '90s environment that inspired him to turn the strip towards a parody of office life.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's what I sent them earlier on when discovering that part of the site even does not support Linux:
And that's just one of my gripes. The new UI is clunky; the site is slow; ...
Linux user since early January 1992.
The funny dried out many years ago... It's just a repetition of old jokes (or let's call them situations, since calling them a joke implies they're funnY) or the same old comments over a new subject.
Ought to make them think a little more carefully about extensive use of resource-heavy options such as Flash. :-)
Here's another reason why I hate modern software... Load up on the inefficient resource hogs, then wait for the next generation of hardware to get even faster. All thanks to people who spent most of their lives learning about the physics of the transistor and how to manufacture ever smaller ones.
But the software monkeys just jump around like kids going from one candy bowl to the next.
It's a freaking static cartoon! What possible asinine reason could there be to screw up such a simple concept? I saw this the other day and so, like Doonesbury, won't be visiting it any more due to their use of Flash.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I just checked dillbert.com. There are only two flash images: Animation and the list of most popular comics.
thanks NoScript :-)
Don't these PHB clowns realize that it's content that draws people to a site, and excessive bandwidth, insecure plug-ins required, inane registration requirements, and slow downloads that drive them away again.
Scott Adam's personal e-mail address is well-known (remember to put 'Dilbert' in the subject line to slip past his spam filter). One can still complain to him directly.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Good thing you can still get your dilbert fix at http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/
It uses flash for the menu ... nuff said.
Cowboys will be cowboys.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
After Yahoo! was buying its search from google, they started using pop-up ads. I dropped yahoo! an email about how that was fine, but I do not have to visit them. And have not been back.
Now, the same with Dilbert. Flash is not universal and does not run on my platform of choice. So - Bye United Features. If they bother to not use flash - I won't be visiting 'em to find out.
(Oh that and flash adds to the security risks)
I love them.
If only they fixed the bug that happens when you moderate, then you try to comment, the dialog warns you that the moderation you did it will be undone and you can't get out of there....
I for one am less annoyed than I otherwise would have been.
Thanks, Microsoft?
It's full of stars!
... looking ...
...
My eyes!
Seriously, there's so much stuff going on that I don't know what to do. Is this some kind of weird experiment? Or was the web site designed in Elbonia by Elbonians for Elbonians?
Okay, I've seen today's strip. Does anybody see where to click to get the previous day's strip? I'm looking
searching
They should've just re-direct to MySpace.
...embracing the new realities of intellectual property on the web.
So I guess they don't want people e-mailing the current strip around at work anymore, if it is relevant to a manager or situation on the team. And they don't want people saving one out as desktop background, or keeping a copy of their favourite ones.
Damn, now I have to change my web-comic fetching script (it emails me when a new comic is uploaded) again. I already had to handle Dilbert as a special case since they would insert a seemingly random string of numbers in a seemingly random place in the image file name (e.g. instead of 20080419.gif 20081740960419.gif).
The only logical explanation is that the use of flash is a joke, and it is going over everybody's head. What else could explain the site doing in real life, exactly what the site is designed to make fun of?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
As one not having flash installed at all, the site seems to work ok. There's a lot of "space" where there's obviously some interactive mojo going on, but I can read todays strip, yesterdays, the one before that and so on.
Although I agree the site was better before, all I ever do there is read todays strip (and a couple of days back I've missed).
At Least it's not Silverlight...
That's OK, it's just a genreational change.
Each generation is arrogant enough to ignore the collected wisdom of what's gone before, so it makes the same old mistakes. Hence Dilbert is just as popular with the new "breed" of readers as it was with the last lot. The reason is they get just as frustrated with the same bosses making the same mistakes as their forebears. No doubt in 100 years time, people will still be grousing about the incompetence of their superiors and Scott Adams, or his grandchildren, will still be making money out of it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I care more that there's no "previous" and "next" buttons near the strip. Sure, if you click "strips" at the top you get an archive with thumbnails, which is good if you want to find a specific strip. But the lack of "previous" and "next" make casual browsing more difficult.
It's a ploy to make us all more productive, and damn it, it shall not stand!"
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
For the love of god, when will they show the journal entry you are replying to on the reply page? It is fucking retarded to have to keep open a separate window/tab to do this.
...I'm not even able to see the website. It flashes some content (pun intended) and then goes blank.
If only they fixed the bug that happens when you moderate, then you try to comment, the dialog warns you that the moderation you did it will be undone and you can't get out of there.... I used to love them, until yesterday, when I entered a discussion to discover that about 5 pages of racist bigot droppings, all marked -1 troll, was being displayed prominently, because the Magic Ajax Bar (tm) decided to slide all the eway over to the right on it's own.
Nothing quite like running into GNAA crap first thing in the morning to ruin ones day.
On my Vista sidebar.
http://csharptricks.com/Articles/DailyDilbert.aspx
Are you afraid of new technology? Don't like it when your comfortable Internet existence is shaken up by change? Sure, I had to look at all 5 sites NoScript blocked; and unblock 2 sites to get all the relevant content.
Be thankful you still have the choice of what content to accept and what to block with a proper open source, modern web browser. Be thankful one of the innovative cartoonists of our time is continuing to attempt to expand the horizons of satire and humor. Be thankful you don't have to pay for this content unless you specifically choose to purchase his product.
The only element of the design I think is short sighted is the layout -- narrow and long. Most modern LCD displays' aspect ratio is wider than it is long.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Wouldn't this be something that Dilbert would blame on the idiots in Marketing?
I had been reading Dilbert daily using the dashboard webclip widget on my Leopard Mac. Yesterday it stopped working... I guess this site redesign is why.
By reading it in dashboard I didn't see any of the accompanying ads. I wonder if worries over that kind of thing are the reason they've gone away from a nice functional html page to a flash monstrosity.
Too bad, I liked Dilbert. I'm not braving that website to read him though.
Over all, I wouldn't say I'm a fan of the new layout, but I don't particularly hate it either.
I found three problems with the new layout:
1) Unnecessary flash. Flash makes sense for the animations, most of the flash is literally displaying a single static image. In Unitedmedia's favor, the flash itself isn't all bloated like some flash sites though.
2) No forward/back button on the comics. I like to read, for instance, the last weeks comics all at once.. I can't just click "next comic" with the new layout. Certainly fixable 8-).
3) The BIG problem... the animation player, instead of just checking for flash, does some artificial OS check. If I use User Agent Switcher to lie and say I'm running Mozilla for OSX, they play fine on my Ubuntu systems. Telling me I have to run Windows or OSX when all I really need is flash is sloppy.
is not working either. Lame.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
SO, this website redesign proves that Dilbert has become the PHB. A design not help the customers or users, but to help the bottom line. How does it hep. Well, for one, it put Dilbert on the front page of /. after I don't know how long. It is an marketing gimmick, nothing more. Dilbert is irrelevant, and when one is irrelevent, there is little else to do but employ gimmicks. OTOH, I am sure it will work. Admas will sell some of his collected blog entries, people will reminisce about the good old days, and many will complain simply because they cannot understand that a business must generate a good profit.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I don't much care for the addition of flash (what's the point?). However, in the past I looked for an RSS feed for Dilbert and either I was stupid and missed it or it just didn't exist. But in the flash app that shows the comic, there's now a nice little "RSS" icon. So now I can read my daily Dilbert and not even need to use their new stinking flash!
Personally, I consider this a win.
The 1990's called and said that it wanted Dilbert back.
Look, Dilbert blows. It's as cooked as The Far Side. Let it go. Just let it go.
Garth Algar, Wayne's World, (1992). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105793/
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
The Dilbert site managers, responding to the overwhelmingly negative reaction by users to the recent Flash makeover, just announced that the Flash enhancements will be removed and replaced with Silverlight.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I flash MY dilbert and I get four months.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I'm a regular dilbert.com non-registered reader and I am not revolting at all. At April 19, actually I think the new site is quite an improvement because it has a number of exciting new features. There's this old teaching of life: most statements made speaking for people are actually not representative of peoples feelings. I think this is just the case.
The site is still perfectly functional and showing the strips using plain old .GIFs... *if* you use NoScript.
Allow JavaScript to run and the whole thing blows up in your face and splatters flash everywhere.
Quite amazingly, it seems no one has pointed out that there is now an official RSS feed (in colour) for Dilbert at http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip
I have been visiting the Dilbert Zone web site almost since it was created (I remember submitting stuff to the old List Of The Day before they shut that down)
When I saw this new site the first thing that came to my mind was that the developers had lived up to the standards of Dilbert's Pointy Haired Boss.
My system can't run Flash 9 (it has Flash 7 and works great with most flash sites and Youtube) so when I visit their new shite I get nothing but this HUGE gray box with large lettering saying "You are trying to install Adobe Flash Player on an unsupported operating system for system requirements please visit...."
All this just to display a simple GIF!!! (And I happened to notice if you disable JavaScript it is still served up as a GIF)
And to top if off they had increased the annoyingness of their advertisements recently which was the last straw that made me install that wonderful Adblock extension.
I don't have to visit this site. But now I simply can't. (It's not like I am still expecting it to work in Netscape 3!)
Don't put a hyphen in an email address or the site will say it's invalid.
I should have tried underscores.
-R-
"Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center 2005, Mac OSX 10.3 or Mac OSX 10.4 is required to view this page" How insulting. It appears that since they decided they get enough traffic anyway that they can just cut off part of their audience by using some proprietary crud where a cross platform option to allow everyone full access would have been sufficient. At what point in a website's popularity do you stop writing code that runs on everything in order to maximise your potential audience?
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
But my OSX + FF3 combo doesn't even show the goddamn flash page at all.
Stop whining and subscribe :
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip
http://www.dilbert.com/animation/
-S
Has Scott gone all pointy haired on us?
Alice needs to do some serious punching about this.
Or maybe its a Digbert inspired Micorsoft plot to try and make vista look less bad.
If you are into RSS grab: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip?format=xml
So I went to oops.ismad.com and it's just a stupid redirection to lookscool.com. Lookscool.com is a lame hosting provider with a main page that strongly resembles those piece-of-shit waste-of-bandwidth domain squatter pages. So ah, why wouldn't you just directly use the lookscool.com address if you must spam this silly hosting company on Slashdot? Serious question. Is oops.ismad.com supposed to be more appealing? Is it designed to disguise the destination site? I want to know.
If you're wondering, I went there in the first place to see it was related to the "meds in tapwater" since apparently there is some controversy about whether that is becoming a public health issue.
dilbert.com just loads a big blank white page for me. I see an ad and a video at the top, then a bunch of absolutely nothing but white space, then a footer at the bottom. Clicking "contact us" in the footer takes me to yet another big blank white page.
That's a completely broken site I don't ever need to visit again...
Yuck. What a waste of resources.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As usual, another change just for the sake of change.
ADA USA I am board so lets change it.
Not.
Change for improvement.
Remember.
If it aint broke don't fix it.
If Changing it won't make it better leave it alone.
Some dogbert wanabe consultant/grifter trying to justify a paycheck and padded contract.
Actually, in a lot of places the office life is much the same. And, trust me, not only in the USA.
As a consultant, I can tell you that some of the projects I'm dragged into, the things I see, and the things I piece together, often make Dilbert look tame. At any rate, I see everything from Dilbert:
- Wally clones? Check. Armies of them.
One managed to work for 3 years to make a trivial module, that later someone else rewrote in 6 hours from scratch. The rewrite was also 40 times faster, when benchmarked on a large-ish data set. And that's just one of them. He also heavily obfuscated his code, with over half the techniques from "How To Write Unmaintainable Code." (If you can believe that variable names like Pete, Eve and Steve are anything else, I have a bridge in Sahara to sell. And that's just one of the dozens of sins of that code.)
I've also seen people whose day consists at least half, of doing the grand tour of all floors where they know someone, to find people to talk to. Probably the saddest case was one whose morning, from 9 to 12 consisted of making a list of what pizza each team member wants to order for noon. Now you're probably going, "wtf, that doesn't take 3 hours even for 100 people." Well, let me explain: not just going around and quickly noting what they want. He went and started a whole debate on the pros and contras of ordering a Calzone, or maybe a Quatro Stagioni this time. And, hey, did you see that today they have a special price for Pizza Margarita? With each and every person individually.
- Evil secretaries? Check. E.g., in one project they lost their best programmer, a contractor, when the secretary at the company that supplied him, cancelled his medical insurance just before his wife went into labour. Apparently, for no reason whatsoever, she just called the insurance company and said that he's getting a private insurance somewhere else. The guy understandably went "fuck you very much" and quit.
From what I hear, it was also quite the uphill battle to get her to do anything, including actually get the overtime paid that the client had already paid for.
Last I've heard, she got a promotion.
- Mordac The Preventer Of IT Services? Check. At times it feels like one in 3 guys in IT make it their goal in life to prevent everyone else from getting their job done.
A particular one, well, wasn't even consistent about what he wanted, except that it's the opposite of what you want. To one team and project it was "you're not getting queues unless they're all on the same queue manager", to another one in the same time interval it was "you're not getting queues unless they're on different queue managers". To one it was "you're not getting anything if you work with message timeouts, because it defeats the whole idea behind reliable messaging!", while to another one it was "you're not getting queues from me unless you set timeouts on the messages! I don't want you to fill the whole partition with old messages!" Etc.
One DBA argued that it's not his job to tune the production database.
And it doesn't seem to be entirely unheard of, that some company's internal IT department sets such outrageous prices for any service, that it would be cheaper to burn a large file on a CD and send it by _taxi_ to the other end of the country, than to use their network and their servers. In one place management was actually proud that their IT department is the most productive department in the company and makes the biggest profits. As if that's something positive, and not an undue burden on the other departments.
- Incompetent managers and incompetent management decisions? Oooer. I could fill a tome with those alone. But let's just say: some managers were keeping the above parasites employed. It's not even the biggest management sin I've seen, but it's enough to make me wonder, you know?
Etc, etc, etc.
Basically I'm talking a guess that all that changed there is that you got a new job sometime in the 90's, where that doesn't happen any more.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I stopped reading Dilbert years ago, when a flash Coke ad appeared on the site complete with sound effects. ("SSSSCHLUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!1111ONEOMFGNOOB")
That was about the same time I installed Proxomitron, which was the awesome sauce. It's gone now, but I use this instead: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm It blocks almost all the ads on the internet.
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
Sorry to go against the flash=bad group think but the site worked fine when I wandered around it.
I like the animated cartoons but, See:Charley Brown, the voices never match the voices in my head (that didn't come out right)
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
http://dilbert.com/mashups/punchline/
If you really, really can't stand flash why don't you go on the HUMOR attack.
Create flash based mashup.
Rate it and all other flash bashing scripts MAX stars.
Repeat.
While your bashing flash you may want to point out a lack of simple non-flash link.
~live life like you mean it~
This is another example of linux and firefox performing poorly. don't hate me for pointing out the obvious flaws, as many smartass OSS people have said to me in the past "code your own fix"
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
They may have switched to Flash to make it a little harder to link to their content and to copy the images.
if running into a couple of GNAA posts actually does ruin your entire day, maybe you shouldn't go on the internet, or outside.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The only component of the new ./ I don't like is the inline post comment function; it breaks under the current HTML reshaping rules I have set with Proxomitron and I am loathe to modify them/make exclusions for this. Fortunately the old posting form is still available.
Oh good! I can make my email script work again, so the strip is delivered to me every morning. I thought I was going to be lonely!
They should have used http://www.silverlight.net/ instead :).
It appears most of the page is straight HTML, which makes me wonder why they are blocking your entire browser when they detect Flash...
You see, while I don't actually have Flash -- and very little works -- Gnash is enough to fool some sites into thinking I have Flash.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No. Dilbert is still Dilbert. Scott Adams is now a PHB.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I want my money back.
Look at the most successful and respected sites out there... google, wikipedia etc.
No flash or sizzle, just what people go there to get.
New content? That's exactly what they are providing. Most of the changes implement rich media (mainly animated cartoons) and user mashups. The results are pretty lame (corny voice acting and user-written punchlines are not my cup of tea), but it is new content. And it probably will grab a few new users from the Garfield crowd.
Excessive bandwidth? They're not doing HD video, they're just doing a few simple flash applications. It's 2008, for crisakes. Next you'll be complaining that lynx isn't supported.
Plugins? They require flash, period. Flash is almost as basic these days as HTML. If your browser doesn't support flash, than half the leading web sites are already inaccessible to you.
The reaction to this change is chidish. "Worst design since Vista?" Please. Yes, the web site is feeble, but so was the old one. The old one was easier to use if all you wanted to do was catch up on the strip, but you can still do that on the new site. Though I find it easier to just subscribe to the RSS feed, and haven't been to the site in months. Of course, they don't get a lot of revenue from the RSS feed, so they decided they needed a way to drive more traffic. Curse them for their evil greed!
Obviously i have flash disabled.
So "obviously" i can't even see their website.
Good work there.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
http://feeds.feedburner.com/tapestrydilbert
Everybody prefers Quicksilver over stodgy ol' Flash.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
I wonder how many people view the Dilbert site from their Phone, and whether they bothered to check their web logs before making this move.
Ever since I got my iPhone last December I've been using it to view Dilbert every morning. Part of my ritual before I get out of bed, to help me wake up. But this new site design has got to be the most mobile unfriendly load of crock I've ever seen.
Someone on the Dilbert forums pointed to the daily comic strip being served up from Yahoo ( http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert ) so I'll be giving that a try instead.
Personally, I'm no web designer or script jockey... But I don't mind it too much here. Makes it more readable to me.
For those who use FlashBlock extension for Mozilla's Web browsers, you need to click on top right corner unshown Flash section or allow Flash or else the Web site looks weird (be sure to report it too so its Web staff can fix it).
Here is what it looks like when Flash is blocked: screen shot.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Me Too!
It is getting worse with each upgrade. I still can't reply inline, and trying means I have to reload the browser to avoid the "Slow down cowboy" BS...
FYI, the whole site works on Linux, just use the User Agent Switcher plugin for Firefox and spoof yourself as IE7 on Windows. The animations portion works fine.
On a side note, this is what is extremely frustrating about this really, the fact that they didn't limit it to Windows and Mac because of technical reasons, they ARTIFICIALLY limited it. This is actually worse in my opinion.
Perhaps the pressure being applied by the natural negative reaction to this change will cause them to select a better more refined design better suited to survival.
Rant mode: ENGAGE
They could have gone the minimalist (smart) route, like reddit, but they decided to use wide margins and pretty round shapes. To top it off they have annoying borders everywhere, styled buttons that fail to blend with the background, and a mysterious floating box on the left.
I still don't know what the hell that box is for. It did something crazy while I was typing and it's now across the top of the page.
The worst part is they didn't AJAX-ify the login system, which would have been the best thing they could do. While typing this comment, I clicked the "log in now" link, and it took me to a different page, obliterating my work. It's a good thing I expected that to happen. What it should have done is open an overlay where I could type my credentials, and then drop me back onto the reply page, instead of bringing me to the home page.
In short, Slashdot comments suck now. That's a real problem, because the comments are the only reason why most people read the site.
PS: Once I finished typing this, I tried clicking the "Options" button at the bottom, to see what it would do. To my surprise I was presented with an AJAX login box! Yay! However this was strange, because by this point I was already logged in. And it was half-offscreen because its distance from the top of the page is apparently fixed, and you're not allowed to scroll it or move it. Once I managed to log in, it reloaded the page and clobbered my comment once again. I still don't know what my options are.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
I've almost stopped coming to Slashdot since the switch to the new comments scheme. I want to see all comments, including those at -1. Now I have to click that fucking 'More' link probably 15 to 20 times before I can see all of the posts I want to see.
Before it was simple, just a matter of choosing the moderation level in the dropdown, selecting the viewing style in the other dropdown, and clicking the button to make it all happen.
Reddit doesn't force stupid AJAX bullshit on me, so I find myself going there more often these days.
Try here. Not flash and he apparently has every Dilbert ever since the beginning of time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When Flash is used properly, it can be very good. Animations, small applications and games, and the like are all examples of good uses for Flash.
When Flash is used improperly, it is very bad. Using it for entire Websites is one example of such abuse.
I want the old format back. The new format makes browsing on my blackberry a pain. I've already started looking for a new tech community.
The simple answer to this, that will be sure to get me modded into Oblivion, is that Slashdot is trying to catch up to Digg. It's been trying to catch up to Digg for a _LONG_ while now. They tried just directly lifting stories off the Digg page and posting them here, but that wasn't good enough, so now they're redesigning /. to as closely match the Digg experience as possible. And I do say closely match, because the incompetent administration and veiled product advertisements on /. pretty much ensure that it will _never_ reach Digg's widespread appeal.
/. for you.
In essence they're trying to make a site that's long in the tooth and lacking in decent content a hit, and they're attempting to do it by trowelling more AJAX makeup than a cheap whore on the Vegas strip. If you're wondering why that doesn't make sense, it's because it doesnt. That's
I would be happy to tell him that on his own site, but even after fabricating my location and my birthdate (and why does a COMIC STRIP SITE need to know that?), it still won't let me register so that I can rip him in an up-close and personal kind of way.
This is truly miserable. "A year and a half"? That's a year and half that someone could have been masturbating continuously, with far superior results.
That "mysterious" thing you did was hit the / button. I'm not kidding, the SLASH. Because no browser uses that for find. Nuh uh.
1: Change website to Flash
2: Get posted on Slashdot.
3: Get thousands of your target audience (nerds) to visit site.
4: ???
5: Profit!!!
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Your organization is screwed up in direct proportion to the number of Dilbert cartoons on the walls.
I've never seen it fail yet.
Love it too, especially since they fixed that annoying grey bar on the left...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That has to be the Comedy Central website. Not only terribly, but freshly terrible at high frequency. I had no idea it was possible to find so many bad things to do to a website. That's just the fresh clunkers, and ignoring the neverending confusing about links. Why should a website have to manage links?
Much to my shock, it turns out the website isn't running a Microsoft webserver. I'd name names, but I'm going to assume the vendor is mostly innocent in this case for the abuse of their software. (But I'll leave you with a very bright and shiny hint.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
My Ubuntu won't run Flash.
The new website runs great. It loads quickly, and whilst it looks a bit odd, I see the comics without a problem, and they're in colour every day.
Basically, the new website probably looks great on an iPhone.
... euthanizing Dilbert.
Certainly more ironic than Bill Waterson's shutting down Calvin and Hobbes, this was worthy of the combined efforts of Wally and Dogbert.
Think about it. If before, the site was JPEGs or PNGs, people could just save those to their computer and do whatever they want from then on (I like this). As flash, people have the choices of screen-shot'ing the animation and saving it, decompiling the SWF (I guess) for the original images, or not saving them at all. Perhaps the company is worried that people can steal the images easier when they are in a format like JPEG. Flash is not so easy, in the sense that it is much more tedious to save a screen shot because you save the screen shot, then you crop it, and all that. Not even everyone knows how to do that.
I seriously think part of the reason for the new design is anti-piracy in some way.
No one is mentioning all the groundbreaking features he added, only complaining about the medium. Yeah, Flash sucks. I get it. However:
- All daily strips are now in color online
- Users can re-write the punchlines and vote on the best submissions. Already there are ones that are better than the originals. Original: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-04-19/ Mashup: http://dilbert.com/mashups/comic/3430/
- Short animations. The voice acting isn't as good as the great Dilbert cartoon from a few years ago, but that's to be expected. They are still pretty good.
- Voting on the popularity of pretty much everything on the site
- Saving favorites and searching for comics by date and character. Hopefully full-text searching will eventually be available. You can already hop over to http://www.bfmartin.ca/finder/ and then back to dilbert.com to find the comics you turn up by date
Give the guy some credit.
I am a huge fan of Dilbert, probably like most everyone else on this site.
Either he is a genius and so well versed in irony that his site represents everything Dilbert is about, or getting the ability to speak back in turn stopped his ability to think.
Scott, I'm a huge fan, but the site sucks.
I used to read Dilbert on my little old Asus Pocket PC, but now it crashes the browser. And it's not like I can just download the latest Firefox or IE for it.
Is there any redeeming features using flash as a content management system? Maybe its not exactly a CMS, but is there anything it can be used other then relay a story about a unicorn named Charlie?
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
I like it, but they need to make the spacing more compact.
I generally read Dilbert one a week, or every two weeks. I LOVED being able to click on the calendar to choose how far back I want to go, read that one, then just click 'Next' to go to the next one. Where is that excellent function?!? They made a heavier sight, that loads more slowly, that requires extra plug-ins not every one has, and took away functionality. This is an upgrade?!? I think it might end up at http://thedailywtf.com/Default.aspx! For some of you who seem to think Dilbert is passe... Get a grip. It entertains me. It entertains my PHB (which really entertains me). It still entertains many people, as evidenced by the calendars, mugs, etc that still make the author money. If you don't like it, why are you even here commenting on the website change?
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
Jesus. The thing chain-loads flash applets! How fricking pointless!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I, for one, am waiting for Dilbert to be presented in Silverlight.
.
- aqk
F U
Since only gripers are posting I figured I'd chime in and say that I like the dynamic interface. Given that you can choose to use the older interface if you want to in the site config, I don't see why anyone should complain.
Slashdot pages are very very long after many people have commented. Needing to reload the page or open a new tab just to see a single comment is just not an enjoyable user experience (IMO).
Slashdot has always had the best discussion system on the net. Now it has the best forum UI too.
Given that the discussion system has kept back the griefers who make every other social site unenjoyable, I think slashdot is doing extremely well.
Cow Cube
I don't know what has changed in Flash, cut this site along with the ABC.com to watch video both crash my Internet Explorer.
thanks for giving the guy free publicity for fucking up.
Deus est fatalis
While this doesn't solve the registration, Dilbert can be watched just fine on Linux (Kubuntu, Firefox 2.0 with Flash Player 9 installed) by changing the user agent. Worked for me with the agent string of Internet Explorer 7.0 and Windows Vista. Sad really. There is nothing that is incompatible except that darn check.
Global warming has a sound scientific basis.
And it doesn't seem to be entirely unheard of, that some company's internal IT department sets such outrageous prices for any service, that it would be cheaper to burn a large file on a CD and send it by _taxi_ to the other end of the country, than to use their network and their servers..
They asked for nearly 15.000 a MONTH to have a 24/7 linux server set up. And that wasn't a special origin server or whatnot, it was basically a normal PC with linux. And don't get me started on getting a network drive which cost only 1/3 as much per month. Most of the departments now have their own local servers (which is by the way illegal says the IT policy).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
PS: that was 15000 euro
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
They lost traffic to digg. The problem is it takes forever to submit a comment now.
One of the funniest things in life is watching believers get all bent out of shape when you laugh at them. Creationists, Scientologits, Vegan proselytizers, the Global Warming crowd, the 9/11 troofers, many kinds of new-age woo-woos, radical feminists, anti-feminists, and the list goes on and on.
You forgot to include mac fanbois on your list - they get bent out of shape when mocked more than even Creationists do.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
As for the DBA, well, the more complete way to explain it was: he argued that it's not his job to tune the database, it's the team that should change their SQL statements to work well on an untuned database. Or hey, the team can tune the database too, if they want to. Mind boggles.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Just use http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/index.html , or switch to reading dilbert via rss - I use http://www.caesar.nl/CaesarRSS/DilbertRSS.aspx .
I read slashdot anon a few times a week from various locations. This new "feature" of sensoring all buy +5 comments when not logged in is HIGHLY ANNOYING. one does not always want to login exposing their username and password.
I also hate the stupid new round buttons instead of reply to this text link
-
You can't make comics about stupid people and stay out of it, I guess.
I used to read his blog http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/ . I stop reading when the feed to his blog is restricted to be the first few paragraphs only. Even when he now unrestrict it again, I'm still not his regular reader anymore.
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
How many people have yelled at me that "flash is the future" and think I should quit web design all together for simply not embracing Flash. Psh.
For those that do use Flash, I commend you if you do your research, compatibility checking and (as opposed to Dilbert.com) actually look at load times on different internet connections.
-Kat the Leopardess
AC wrote: Survival of the fittest [and nothing else...] When we look at the possible range of environmental effects from sustained climate change, and your adaptability to them, then 90% of evolutionary scientists agree that you're unlikely to be anywhere *close* to being a member of the set of fit organisms, pal.
Similar experience with Dillo.
I notice the size was reduced too. Today's strip at http://dilbert.com/ is a blurry, eye-straining 560 pixels wide. The same one at http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert has 600 pixels. http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/ shows 750 pixels. I guess that's a no-brainer.
So does global cooling. They both happen, again and again.
Just because the earth warms and cools naturally doesn't mean that human beings can't frig with the same mechanisms, and make it warm unnaturally.
The global cooling scare of the 70s was based on a few concerned scientific papers, and a lot of imaginative reporting. The press knows a good story when they see one. There was no scientific agreement on the issue - just a few papers.
The evidence for anthropogenic warming is there for anybody to look up. I spent some time trying to find the basis for the claims on "skeptic" websites. I have not found a single sound skeptic website, which actually backs its claims up, and is not full of sh1t.
Furthermore, key websites on the skeptic side of things, are run by industry lobbyists and shills who were involved in the tobacco industry mis-information campaign.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
No, it will make a nice powerpoint chart with title:
"New site drives traffic 10fold"
Doesn't matter if I'm baked or fried, The Far Side rocks.
Apparently the developers of the site have also made some clbuttic mistakes with there profanity filter.
No offense, but I don't think anyone on Slashdot has the right to criticize the comment section of someone -else's- site. Not at all. Slashdot practically invented the concept of "crapflooding," a great number of the new users registered here are GNAA trolls. The only reason the quality of discussion "looks" better here is because of the outdated and ineffective karma system.
If your browser doesn't support flash, than half the leading online ads are already inaccessible to you.
Fixed for you. I don't have flash installed because most web sites use it for ads. Don't have flash, don't see the ads.
Yes, I know there are browser plugins to deal with it. I just never bothered with flash from a previous experience. Everyone used it for ads and the flashing/animated widgets are annoying and distracting.
Only one was not invented within the last 100 years. It has survived through torture, cultural take-overs, and comings and goings of empires.
I'd say "My money's on that one" but it also happens to be the one that doesn't want your money.
>That's a real problem, because the comments are the only reason why most people read the site.
Not me, I come here for the pictures.
I think a warming climate and rising seas sounds marvellous. Australia will once again have a gigantic protected estuary, and having water on both sides of the Great Dividing Range will mean more temperate weather and more reliable rain, probably increasing our arable landmass. It's arguable how significant are greenhouse gas emissions, but if the effects are already measurable, you can give up now: the genie's already out of the bottle.
A better summary would be: "Thousands of slashdot users who intentionally block Flash are annoyed that they can't view Flash content."
Use this URL
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert
Old fashoned black and white, no flashy Dilbert strip, and it's being updated. Luckly company agreements are not easily revamped as the sites.
If you don't care for the latest tech, nobody's forcing you. But don't pretend you're a typical user.
I for one give Scott alot of credit for taking risks in trying to bring Dilbert into the 21st Century. Some of the points raised here are valid, but overall they seem to be a bit harsh. It seems like the Dilbert.com re-design has initiated a feeding frenzy amongst a group of his fans!!!! Check out the response to user feedback that Scott actually posted on his blog: (http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/new_web_upgrade_feedback/). Hopefully the improvements to the site will be completed soon.
Dilbert hasn't been insightful for a while and is only funny at times.
I can still read the strip through online newspapers, without the flash-crap, so far.
When I can't, then I won't.
--
Ninety percent of everything is crap - Theodore Sturgeon.
If you're having trouble accessing the comics, you can see them without flash using the RSS feed. It can be found here.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Of course the nice big http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/ has since been redirected to the new crap.
The only problem is that the Great Firewall of China seems to block the site feeds.feedburner.com, meaning that anyone in China is more or less stuck with the Flash-based site.
Oh, and the trick with http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive no longer seems to work either, as of today.
/MC
The bastards! Fortunately, it's just the index page of the archive that they're redirecting, so I wrote a bookmarklet to just show today's archive page: ..of course, they'll break that soon (or simply stop updating the archives...), but for now it works.
http://blog.robwhelan.com/2008/04/25/avoiding-getting-flashed-by-dilbert/
The difference this time is that there's plenty of funding available for those who agree with the position that supports expansion of government power.
There are many ways for the government to increase it's power without resorting to highly unpopular economic measures that such as curbing carbon emissions.
Add to that - it may be possible that the scientific funding is available because GW is real and serious, and there's a lot to learn.
If GW wasn't true, then skeptic arguments would not be completely lame. The conspiracy argument is completely lame because it is never supported by facts - while the GW science *is*.
You will never find any basis to the assertions on impressive skeptic websites. Looking below the surface you'll find nothing. I've have reviewed a number of them, and the situation is appalling.
I challenge you to find a single skeptic website that has valid claims that are supported by some form of evidence. I'm quite happy to take the time to debunk any website you find - that is if you fail to see through the sophistry yourself.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right