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xkcd To Be Released In Book Form
History's Coming To writes "xkcd creator Randall Munroe has revealed on his blag that the acclaimed stick-figure comic will be produced in real dead-tree book form. Fantastic news for all fans of comedy, maths, science, and relationship screw-ups — especially given that the book will be sold in aid of the charity 'Room To Read.' Rumors that the book contains a joke in the ISBN remain unconfirmed." The NY Times article that Munroe links (registration may be required) is from April of this year, and I am amazed that this community didn't note the story at that time. The book will be published by breadpig, which was created by Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of reddit.
The NY Times article that Munroe links (registration may be required) is from April of this year, and I am amazed that this community didn't note the story at that time.
Well, using a very simple search (xkcd book) in the firehose, I found spongedaddy's submission, my own submission and even one of the bin spammers submitted it. And we all linked to the same NYTimes story.
... yet you yourselves do not use this tool to your advantage when looking for duplicates.
Your firehose search tool is there, yes it's slow and clunky. I don't care that you rejected my submission of this story three months ago but don't say I didn't notice one of my favorite web comics being published in book form. I mean, go ahead and say "slow news day" in your summary, I don't care if you feel obligated to dig up old news for stories at 12:25 AM EST on a Tuesday. Also, it confuses me greatly that you provide for us a means to make sure we don't submit a URL that's already been submitted as the primary link by another individual
My work here is dung.
http://www.xkcd.com/
I'm not a big fan of actually buying books--my tax money, to some degree, goes to finance my public library (and free library card), so I usually just check out books that I want--but I think this is one I might actually buy. If a Questionable Content compilation would come available at some later point, I'd probably buy it too. I'd venture to guess that webcomics are low-reward thingers, and those out there that are enjoyable, well, the creators should be able to get something out of it.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
Great - something to do on Saturday night! Obligatory link
My hope is they turn Dinosaur Comics into a flipbook!
So if I look at the pictures in the book long enough will the alt text pop up?
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Someone making a joke in base 11 instead of base 13.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Still, great news! May the force be with Randall.
So the editor is surprised no one told /. about the recent news? Hey, they only missed that story by a few months. Surprise? That's a funnier laugh than the best of XKCD, which is saying a bit, since some of them are pretty funny.
Gee, you don't suppose the so-called editor could be in a position to do something to improve /. to the point where interesting news and humor would again be visible around here?
Of course personal recollection is just one data point at best, but... Some years ago I used to visit /. quite often, perhaps several times a day versus several times a week these days--unless a month or two has gone by. On an average visit I expected to see at several very interesting articles and at least one first report that I hadn't seen elsewhere versus my current expectation of seeing one or two non-boring stories and nothing that I haven't seen elsewhere one or two days earlier. A typical visit would reveal a number of very witty comments and usually one or two actually funny and new jokes versus the current crop of a scattering of very tired memes. I remember looking at a relatively large thread (which are relatively rare these days) and finding exactly one comment that had even been moderated as funny--and that one wasn't even amusing.
Most importantly, the moderation used to be pretty poor instead of downright horrendous. Apparently the lousy moderators have won that game--and I expect the moderation of this post to prove my point (yet again).
But the so-called editors are apparently quite satisfied with the devolution of the system. I guess lower traffic on /. means less so-called work for them?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
>Rumors that the book contains a joke in the ISBN remain unconfirmed. Were we talking about any other author, I would scoff. But this being xkcd, it actually sounds plausible.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I'm obliged to post this.. unless binky is on slashdot too.
...how do you mouse-over in a book? I'm hoping magic, sciece will be involved.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
You got to be a that character that is an INTERNET nerd and goes around doing rare stuff to prove points, like buying a domain to show how shitty xkcd is.
Neato, a comic which is funny maybe 15% of the time (but to be fair, it is VERY funny when it does get it right) is going to hit bookshelves.
From the pictures in the article, it looks great for a coffee table keepsake. I cannot speak for your homes clientele, but this will be a wonderful thing guests will enjoy while getting to know me a little better in the process.
Or just throw it on the throne and enjoy.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
I like that you need somebody else's opinion to know whether something is enjoyable or not. I'd like you to check out my new websites: isslashdotshittytoday.com and arehatersshittytoday.com. I'm working on an iskdawsonshittytoday.com, but I keep getting divide by zero errors in the rss.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
I think they must just be suffering from the curse of hating things just because they're popular. I know I have a tendency to do the same thing, but I generally actually do a bit of investigation to find out if it's popular for a reason I can appreciate first.
The other possibility is hating something just because everybody else discovered it and now you can't be cool for knowing about this obscure but fantastic thing that nobody else knows about. Considering this crowd, I expect that's the more likely scenario.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's not the shittiness that's xkcd's real problem, it's the general smugness and smart-arsed nature of a lot of it. And this is coming from someone whose day job is research in a numerate science.
Ooh! I wish I could do some research in a numerate science! But that sounds way too difficult for me. You must be so clever!
I tried hovering a pen over the book pages, but the alt text doesn't show up. Where is the metadata stored for real objects, and what plugin must I install to view it?
I raged at the alt text to http://www.xkcd.com/564/ because he's never been a physics researcher.
Now you are just being silly. He can still have been in a lab. I study software engineering but as some courses are mandatory for all engineering degrees, I do have more than one course of physics labs. Of course, they are very simple as the point is to teach us read and write very exact documentation of the tests we do, not really the physics part. Still... It is very believable that he has been into a lot of labs.
(Not that I thought it has anything to do with whether the joke was funny or not)
I know there's quite a bit of hate in the comments about the late submission, but here are my comments on the actual news bit:
[See comment subject]
Also, I hope Randall doesn't dick his reader fan-base by pullng a Scott Adams and pulling the content that's made its way into the book, OFF his site.
Dear Scott, I know you want to make bajillions of moneys through book deals, but you lost this reader when you sold out to your publisher and removed all the blog posts that went into your book. "Oops" just doesn't cut it.
p.s: Slash-CSS is seriously fucked. I really doubt paragraph line-spacing needs to be that massive.
[Slashdot Comments We Liked]
Which sums up the impression I get reading your average xkcd strip, if I'm not about to hurl at Munroe's insipid melancholy. It turns out you don't need to be that clever; nevertheless I am in xkcd's presumed target audience, and despite getting many of the gags still don't find them that funny. Moreover, I cannot see what the hell my peers think is so great about it. Seriously, do they need a bunch of mathsier-than-thou stick drawings to reaffirm their abilities? Roughly speaking, xkcd is to geeks what The Mighty Boosh is to trendy undergrads. As far as I can see, they're both guilty of flattering their respective audiences to the point where the latter forgets that anything comic should, at least once in a while, make one laugh.
Eeeew.. Well, enjoy mate! No sloppy seconds for me!
XKCD has already a store with some very neat items. But unfortunately you have to become a PayPal costumer to get these. Very unfortunate.
I tried reading xkcd, but...the guy is such a raging pussy, and all I could feel was contempt. I'm sure you slashdotters LOVE it, though. "It's so realistic! Giggle!"
Try dinosaurcomics instead.
Wads.
I thought that was half of the point, the jokes are so esoteric that you can feel proud just by the fact that you get them.
RTFA FFS!
The alt text will be placed below the images.
When I see a printout copy of XKCD I have this urge to hover my finger over the surface of the page, waiting for a bonus punchline to appear.
It's a really weird feeling.
I'm not that into Pokemon.
It's not the shittiness that's xkcd's real problem, it's the general smugness and smart-arsed nature of a lot of it.
Being smug and smart-assed is the real problem? And here I thought it was the whole point.
it's just advertising. how do these things make the front page?
Read the books and substitue the "d" in "wand" with a "g" -- not a waste of paper any more!
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
So if I look at the pictures in the book long enough will the alt text pop up?
There's an image alt text on the comics?!?
I've been reading them to years... never noticed that. I mean in order to display that alt text I would have had to stay absolutely still for one second! Impossible!
You see I never let go of my mouse - and as its a one of those precision ones it'll pick up the pulse from my hand and remain in constant motion. And the cursor! I don't bring the cursor around where I'm looking at the page; I keep it where it belongs, at the tab bar there, and only move it away to click on things...
So I would have to be some sort of zombie with no pulse and a fearful member of the flat-screen society to having any chances of ever coming close to revealing the comments on those alt tags. And what are the chances for that, Randall !
-
Sin-celery, Yellow-fruit-ordering-of-parts.
PS: Now I have to go read all of them again! (head esplodes!)
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
:D
Which sums up the impression I get reading your average xkcd strip, if I'm not about to hurl at Munroe's insipid melancholy. It turns out you don't need to be that clever; nevertheless I am in xkcd's presumed target audience, and despite getting many of the gags still don't find them that funny. Moreover, I cannot see what the hell my peers think is so great about it. Seriously, do they need a bunch of mathsier-than-thou stick drawings to reaffirm their abilities? Roughly speaking, xkcd is to geeks what The Mighty Boosh is to trendy undergrads. As far as I can see, they're both guilty of flattering their respective audiences to the point where the latter forgets that anything comic should, at least once in a while, make one laugh.
This is exactly how I feel about xkcd. It doesn't seem to exist as an honest form of expression for its own sake, but rather as a series of attempts to get its readers to go "yeah! I get that reference! go me!" When it tries to be sentimental or romantic, it ends up being syrupy-sweet glurge. When it tries to make a statement, it comes off preachy. Most of the time, it's just warmed-over references to year old memes and random, bizarre situations that are weird for the sake of being weird rather than actually creative.
The worst part of it all is that I could just dismiss it as yet another webcomic I dislike if it wasn't IMPOSSIBLE to avoid. It's linked to and +5 funnied in nearly every Slashdot thread. You can't bring up something computer or science related on a forum without some "clever" person digging out a tangentially related xkcd strip. Oh, and because I work in computer security, I got that idiotic "Bobby Tables" strip emailed to me about a thousand times.
I'm just glad to find out that there are a handful of like-minded nerds who don't deify xkcd. It's cute sometimes, I guess, but we're not taking Bill Watterson level material here.
Win is not a strong enough word.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
...xkcd has gone from occasionally funny and clever little web comic to hideously self-satisfied, self-indulgent crap, too in love with its own "mythology" and lame, self-referential in-jokes to leave space for anything particularly funny?
People often wheel out the "don't hate it cos it's popular" argument, but there are plenty of previously obscure, now popular things which are not particularly hated, so there must be some distinguishing factor.
Read Pynchon.
I like that you need somebody else's opinion to know whether something is enjoyable or not.
As you are someone who I infer likes xkcd, I should help you by pointing out that Is XKCD Shitty Today is what is commonly referred to by people who aren't slightly creepy wannabe hacker nerds with no real sense of humour as "a joke".
You see, xkcd is frequently shitty and a waste of time, and setting up a website which purports to inform the user in advance of its current shittiness levels before they visit the site is a humorous way of observing this fact.
i wish i had the book right now