What passes for comic books these days simply blows my mind. I have been to the museums of the world. I have seen David and the Mona Lisa, and the water lillies of Monet and the sunflowers of Van Gogh, and there are things I have seen today on the printed page which have made me shake my head in wonderment.
I love books, plain, printed, textual books, as much as anyone. More than you, most likely. But comics and books are apples and oranges, and your comments show only your ignorance.
He's the brains behind this operation. Everybody has seen his amazing work on Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack, and apparently he got the job partially because George Lucas is a huge fan of Samurai Jack. I have no fear that if anybody can do this project justice, it's him.
Maybe not to you. I went to college to get a degree in Broadcast Journalism, and I know that the final product probably uses about 5% of the actual footage that you shoot. If you were interested enough, you might want to see what they didn't show you, as well as what they did.
While I'm not in favor the government regulating anything the private sector can do better, it seems clear that the Internet is a piece of infrastructure at least as critical as the power grid, road network, or water system. All these industries have had, or continue to have, some level of government intervention in continuing their operation.
We can't go back to the pre-wired world, anymore than we could go back to a world without roads. What if your local road construction company declared bankruptcy and you suddenly were unable to drive anywhere because all the roads shut down at midnight? It's a good parallel...
If the private sector can't manage the Information Superhighway, maybe the public sector (i.e. Federal Government) ought to take an interest in maintaining it.
(yes, I know there are some downsides...but I'd like to here the opinions of some other people on just what those might be:)
Television makes you watch interstitial ads. If you want to watch the show, you watch the ad. Or you channel flip, but one way or another, it's almost impossible to avoid seeing advertising at one time or another. How many of us were complaining about ads when we were watching Enterprise last night?
"Man, these ads suck! Why can't I watch the whole show without being pressured to buy a Compaq or Doritos or whatever? I remember when there were NO ads on TV! It was so much cooler back then...TV is so commercial now..."
Gimme a break. Webmasters need to make a buck to keep their sites running, sites that you and I pay not a dime to reap the benefits of. All other media that manages to stay in business does so because of advertising. Banner ads are easy to ignore, and it's terribly difficult to be creative with about 20K and 468x60 to work with. It's no wonder advertisers are giving up on internet advertising.
Hey, maybe having a full page to work with will give designers a chance to make Good ads for a change, ads that grab and engage us, the way that good TV ads do (I'm thinking SportsCenter ads, or the original 3D Doritos spot). Can you imagine never seeing another "click here, you have a message!" or "shock the monkey!" ever again?
Look, it's capitalism. If you don't like it, get out your checkbook and offer to pay the hosting fees for your favorite site. Otherwise, feel free to complain, but make sure you click on those ads.
Consider these three meatspace examples of things you would spend money on:
A really comfy optical mouse
A case of really good imported beer
A day at a big amusement park
After the fact of the purchase, think about how each would make you feel. A day at the amusement park is fun, but after it's all over, all you have is a memory. A case of good beer may last you at least a few days to a few weeks, but after it's gone, it's consumed. While the experience lasts longer, it too becomes a memory. You may use the mouse for years. At the end, it may break or get replaced, but it will have been a part of your life for some time.
Which of these expenditures seems most "practical" to you? I would say that we tend to spend money on things that are tangible, practical and long-lasting. We tend to consider money spent on "intangible" and emotional things--a good dinner with friends, a day at the park--to be money that we "blow" rather than invest.
Bottom line: if we attach the greatest monetary value and have the least problem buying things that are tangible, how do you convince people to spend money on bits and bytes, things that cannot be seen or touched, things that have no permanence at all? You don't pay for the words of the writer, you pay for a solid book that goes on your bookshelf. You don't pay for the music of the musician, you pay for the CD and artwork that goes in your CD rack.
People are not yet used to separating the tangible, physical thing from the information or experience it provides. Until that happens, an economy of information will never happen.
On my worst days at work, I'm happy that I'm not scraping gum off the floor of my old convenience store. And on the best days, I'm thankful that I ended up at a dot-com where a) I have to wear a tie to work b) there is no foozball and c) we're not going out of business. "C" makes up for the other two.
Seriously, though...I'm ready for interstitials. No, not popup windows. I hate them and close them immediately. I'm ready to go to The Onion, click on a story, see a full-window ad for a product, which disappears in 5 seconds, or when I click.
Why? Because while I love the wonderful and boundless and free exchange of information made possible by this Network of Networks, I am realistic. The Web is no longer academic. You can argue for the free exchange of useful (i.e. "educational" in the traditional sense) information, and I will agree 100%. But academic media is subsidized by universities and research organizations that make money, perhaps indirectly, through that research.
Meanwhile, all traditional media (i.e. non-useful, entertaining, fun, like Daily Radar and its ilk), like it or not, makes money from advertising. Whether banner ads work or not is moot; the advertisers have said that they don't work, and because they're the ones with the checkbooks, they can write reality any way they see fit. But if you're guaranteeing that every time you click on a story, that advertiser is getting a guaranteed full-screen impression, maybe...just maybe...the same people that put ads for laptops in PC Computing will pay the same CPM for ads on PC Computing online. Which means that good people like the folks at Daily Radar and countless other dot-coms might keep their jobs and be able to feed their families.
Frankly, I like good ads. I don't want to shock the monkey. I don't care if "there's a message waiting for me." And that flashing "WINNER" ad--you know what I'm talking about--makes me refresh every time. I'm talking about stuff the caliber of the John West Bear Fight ad on Adcritic. Interstitials might just give ad designers the space they need to produce more ads that aren't just annoying wastes of time.
No, I don't work for an ad firm, and yes, I do believe in subsidized Federal health care and a bunch of other hippie causes. But I do recognize that as long as most of the free world operates on a capitalist economy, somebody has to pay the bills. Advertisers have done that for a good long time now. Nobody is forcing you to drink Soft Drink Product A (tm). I ignore as many ads as you do. But that bottom line is, any business--no matter how noble and free-expression oriented the cause--needs to make money just to pay the bills.
Daily Radar is just the latest casualty. Hopefully Slashdot won't be next. I'll suffer for 5 seconds to keep the sites I love online.
Slashdot Mirror
No. They are not entertainment. They are ART.
What passes for comic books these days simply blows my mind. I have been to the museums of the world. I have seen David and the Mona Lisa, and the water lillies of Monet and the sunflowers of Van Gogh, and there are things I have seen today on the printed page which have made me shake my head in wonderment.
I love books, plain, printed, textual books, as much as anyone. More than you, most likely. But comics and books are apples and oranges, and your comments show only your ignorance.
He's the brains behind this operation. Everybody has seen his amazing work on Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack, and apparently he got the job partially because George Lucas is a huge fan of Samurai Jack. I have no fear that if anybody can do this project justice, it's him.
Maybe not to you. I went to college to get a degree in Broadcast Journalism, and I know that the final product probably uses about 5% of the actual footage that you shoot. If you were interested enough, you might want to see what they didn't show you, as well as what they did.
While I'm not in favor the government regulating anything the private sector can do better, it seems clear that the Internet is a piece of infrastructure at least as critical as the power grid, road network, or water system. All these industries have had, or continue to have, some level of government intervention in continuing their operation.
We can't go back to the pre-wired world, anymore than we could go back to a world without roads. What if your local road construction company declared bankruptcy and you suddenly were unable to drive anywhere because all the roads shut down at midnight? It's a good parallel...
If the private sector can't manage the Information Superhighway, maybe the public sector (i.e. Federal Government) ought to take an interest in maintaining it.
(yes, I know there are some downsides...but I'd like to here the opinions of some other people on just what those might be :)
Television makes you watch interstitial ads. If you want to watch the show, you watch the ad. Or you channel flip, but one way or another, it's almost impossible to avoid seeing advertising at one time or another. How many of us were complaining about ads when we were watching Enterprise last night?
"Man, these ads suck! Why can't I watch the whole show without being pressured to buy a Compaq or Doritos or whatever? I remember when there were NO ads on TV! It was so much cooler back then...TV is so commercial now..."
Gimme a break. Webmasters need to make a buck to keep their sites running, sites that you and I pay not a dime to reap the benefits of. All other media that manages to stay in business does so because of advertising. Banner ads are easy to ignore, and it's terribly difficult to be creative with about 20K and 468x60 to work with. It's no wonder advertisers are giving up on internet advertising.
Hey, maybe having a full page to work with will give designers a chance to make Good ads for a change, ads that grab and engage us, the way that good TV ads do (I'm thinking SportsCenter ads, or the original 3D Doritos spot). Can you imagine never seeing another "click here, you have a message!" or "shock the monkey!" ever again?
Look, it's capitalism. If you don't like it, get out your checkbook and offer to pay the hosting fees for your favorite site. Otherwise, feel free to complain, but make sure you click on those ads.
Consider these three meatspace examples of things you would spend money on:
After the fact of the purchase, think about how each would make you feel. A day at the amusement park is fun, but after it's all over, all you have is a memory. A case of good beer may last you at least a few days to a few weeks, but after it's gone, it's consumed. While the experience lasts longer, it too becomes a memory. You may use the mouse for years. At the end, it may break or get replaced, but it will have been a part of your life for some time.
Which of these expenditures seems most "practical" to you? I would say that we tend to spend money on things that are tangible, practical and long-lasting. We tend to consider money spent on "intangible" and emotional things--a good dinner with friends, a day at the park--to be money that we "blow" rather than invest.
Bottom line: if we attach the greatest monetary value and have the least problem buying things that are tangible, how do you convince people to spend money on bits and bytes, things that cannot be seen or touched, things that have no permanence at all? You don't pay for the words of the writer, you pay for a solid book that goes on your bookshelf. You don't pay for the music of the musician, you pay for the CD and artwork that goes in your CD rack.
People are not yet used to separating the tangible, physical thing from the information or experience it provides. Until that happens, an economy of information will never happen.
On my worst days at work, I'm happy that I'm not scraping gum off the floor of my old convenience store. And on the best days, I'm thankful that I ended up at a dot-com where a) I have to wear a tie to work b) there is no foozball and c) we're not going out of business. "C" makes up for the other two. Seriously, though...I'm ready for interstitials. No, not popup windows. I hate them and close them immediately. I'm ready to go to The Onion, click on a story, see a full-window ad for a product, which disappears in 5 seconds, or when I click. Why? Because while I love the wonderful and boundless and free exchange of information made possible by this Network of Networks, I am realistic. The Web is no longer academic. You can argue for the free exchange of useful (i.e. "educational" in the traditional sense) information, and I will agree 100%. But academic media is subsidized by universities and research organizations that make money, perhaps indirectly, through that research. Meanwhile, all traditional media (i.e. non-useful, entertaining, fun, like Daily Radar and its ilk), like it or not, makes money from advertising. Whether banner ads work or not is moot; the advertisers have said that they don't work, and because they're the ones with the checkbooks, they can write reality any way they see fit. But if you're guaranteeing that every time you click on a story, that advertiser is getting a guaranteed full-screen impression, maybe...just maybe...the same people that put ads for laptops in PC Computing will pay the same CPM for ads on PC Computing online. Which means that good people like the folks at Daily Radar and countless other dot-coms might keep their jobs and be able to feed their families. Frankly, I like good ads. I don't want to shock the monkey. I don't care if "there's a message waiting for me." And that flashing "WINNER" ad--you know what I'm talking about--makes me refresh every time. I'm talking about stuff the caliber of the John West Bear Fight ad on Adcritic. Interstitials might just give ad designers the space they need to produce more ads that aren't just annoying wastes of time. No, I don't work for an ad firm, and yes, I do believe in subsidized Federal health care and a bunch of other hippie causes. But I do recognize that as long as most of the free world operates on a capitalist economy, somebody has to pay the bills. Advertisers have done that for a good long time now. Nobody is forcing you to drink Soft Drink Product A (tm). I ignore as many ads as you do. But that bottom line is, any business--no matter how noble and free-expression oriented the cause--needs to make money just to pay the bills. Daily Radar is just the latest casualty. Hopefully Slashdot won't be next. I'll suffer for 5 seconds to keep the sites I love online.