I've noticed this as well. But, I think the comic industry is the one that could benefit from the digital distribution of the media. Books have an indefinite shelf life. They get on the shelves, get sold, have more print runs, and so on.
Comics are different. They are only on the shelf a couple of months, at most. The unsold comics either are bought by the store, or they get sent back to the publisher unsold. The ones that get into the long boxes of the comic stores, if sold, will only generate profit for the comic store itself; no additional profit is given to the publisher.
The majority of the runs of comics I've seen online are older comics that would cost an exorbitant amount of money to buy the originals from a store or collector. The people downloading these have no interest in selling them for more money, or in "ripping off" the comics publishers. They just want to read the old stories in complete chunks!
Now, there is a danger when people scan in 0day releases, or comics currently available in TPB format. But if someone wants to read hard-to-find independent comics, such as the early, gritty TMNT stuff, they should not have to pay the inflated prices comic stores want to charge.
I haven't followed comics in about ten years, so my thoughts are obviously dated. Peter David did a nice run on the Hulk that was thought provoking, dealing with the multiple personalities of Banner (original stupid "Hulk Smash!" Hulk, a mafia-style Grey Hulk, and a very intelligent combination of the two). I haven't followed the movie too closely, but from what I've seen, they've opted for the dumbed-down, "Hulk Smash!" variety.
Which is stupid, but stupid sells.
I can see a lawsuit waiting to happen.
on
Underworld Trailer
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· Score: 0
Unless White Wolf Publishing is involved, this could easily lead to a lawsuit. Their World of Darkness roleplaying environment hinges around vampires, werewolves (aka Lupines), mages, and other supernatural creatures. However, the Vampire and Werewolf lines are by far the most popular and developed.
Needless to say, the two groups don't make the best playground buddies. Things can be interpreted different ways, but generally the werewolves are portrayed as the "good guys" in the ages-old conflict. (Of course, neither group is human, and shouldn't be judged by individual action, just intent. But that's neither here nor there.
Even before watching the trailer, I could hear the sounds of legal papers shuffling. Hopefully it gets to screens...it doesn't look very character-driven, but it does look a lot better than anything White Wolf has put out. Anyone remember the (thankfully) short-lived show "The Kindred" on Fox?
Really, what does it matter who invented it? The fact that it was invented is important. Monetarily speaking, it is important in today's world for people to be able to prove that they invented Invention A, but for something long since incorporated into our lives (not to mention the inventor is long since deceased, whoever it may be) it just doesn't make sense.
Certainly, we can't forget our history, but in this case, who invented it is irrelevant; the fact that it was invented is. The recognition of a name is, frankly, petty.
About ten years ago, I started playing a mud. For those not familiar, it stands for "multi-user dungeon," a telnet-based game. Muds (and various variants) were followed by graphical muds and eventually MMORPGs. They are generally free, but, like I said, are not graphical, excepting ascii art.
Anyway, the ideas are basically the same, just on a smaller scale. People from across the world would telnet into the server, log in as their character, and parade around the text world slaying creatures you could only read descriptions of and occassionally stopping to figure out a particularly difficult puzzle or maze. If this were a single-player game, ala Zork, I would have quickly become bored with it. But there were dozens of other people playing, and soon it became a competition. The creatures in the game were things to fight between the quests that pitted you against the other players. I began playing more and more, to the point it was severely affecting my life.
I'd like to say I'm not blaming the mud for those problems. I was having many other problems, and just couldn't handle the pressure. Something had to give; the mud was just an avenue of escapism. If not the mud, I would have ran elsewhere. To that end, I don't think the mud was (nor Everquest is) addictive. Rather, I needed a release, somewhere I could run from my problems. Sadly, many people were doing this on the mud, as I'm certain many of EQ's clientele are all trying to find some form of escape.
This creates a very unhealthy environment, as you can imagine. People who know they probably should go out and get some fresh air, maybe see their flesh-and-blood friends, instead decide, "Oh, I'll just play this a little longer..." The next thing they know it's three in the morning, and they are on their last Mountain Dew. The people online who convinced them to stay are probably in the same boat, and the behavior just worsens.
EQ is not inherrently evil. It is, though, an attractive scene for people with, oftentimes social, issues, which can frequently become an unhealthy environment. There are countless real-life places, including (but hardly limited to) casinos. Millions of people gamble every year and have no problem walking away after a weekend, but many people just can't stop. It's more a reflection on society that people have problems with a setting such as Everquest, rather than a damnation of the game itself.
Spam is annoying, to be sure, but I find it to be the lesser-evil when compared to other forms of invasive advertisements. Pop-ups, pop-unders, and especially the flash ads that animate (as part of the page) over the text you wish to read.
I don't use AOL, but I know several ISPs who employ these and other forms of active, invasive, in-your-face advertising. Spam email is evil, don't get me wrong, but it's more of a passive evil.
Good victory for AOL, I just hope the money goes into getting their users better content on their pages, rather than going into R&D to find new ways of promoting their service.
"But you figure it out," said Ralsky. "When you're sending out 250 million e-mails, even a blind squirrel will find a nut."
I really doubt this double-entendre was intentional, but it is very true. The only reason spam is so prominent is that people are making a lot of money from sending them out. They blanket the world in their spam, and there are many thousands of nuts who see themselves losing twenty pounds a week, or whatever else the spamoftheday is proferring, and proceed to follow a link and make a purchase of some sort.
If nobody clicked these things, they would go away. A law that would penalize people who clicked the links in spam would be much more effective than laws preventing the spam to be sent out, IMO, but such a law would also be far too controversial.
I mean, if we start passing legislation to go after the ignorant, what next?;)
Our freedom of speech is purely illusory. We are forced to guard our speech by politically-correct watchdogs. Saying something deregatory or threatening about our President, even in a completely joking manner, can legally be construed as a felony.
True freedom has no limits. I'm not saying we live in a society as suffocating as many Balkan states, and I'm not saying that we don't lead a blessed life in the US. However, to say we are a free people is simply false.
How much of our freedom do we sacrifice for safety?
Either all or none. Freedom doesn't come in variable quantities, ladies and gentlemen. You have it, or you don't. And as much as we'd like to think otherwise, so long as there are Osamas, we will never be free.
We'll either be slaves to the tyranny or slaves to bureaucracy.
Slashdot Mirror
You might want to consider using MyIE2. It's not at 1 either, unfortunately, but I have been very impressed.
...that Microsft was adding bugs to Longhorn.
Comics are different. They are only on the shelf a couple of months, at most. The unsold comics either are bought by the store, or they get sent back to the publisher unsold. The ones that get into the long boxes of the comic stores, if sold, will only generate profit for the comic store itself; no additional profit is given to the publisher.
The majority of the runs of comics I've seen online are older comics that would cost an exorbitant amount of money to buy the originals from a store or collector. The people downloading these have no interest in selling them for more money, or in "ripping off" the comics publishers. They just want to read the old stories in complete chunks!
Now, there is a danger when people scan in 0day releases, or comics currently available in TPB format. But if someone wants to read hard-to-find independent comics, such as the early, gritty TMNT stuff, they should not have to pay the inflated prices comic stores want to charge.
In some places, bottled water is cheaper than Boone's Farm wine, heh. That's pretty disturbing, actually.
Should I be concerned that I find that term highly erotic?
Well, come on. Let me introduce you to Bruce Jenner, and then you'll see where they got the connotation, heh.
I haven't followed comics in about ten years, so my thoughts are obviously dated. Peter David did a nice run on the Hulk that was thought provoking, dealing with the multiple personalities of Banner (original stupid "Hulk Smash!" Hulk, a mafia-style Grey Hulk, and a very intelligent combination of the two). I haven't followed the movie too closely, but from what I've seen, they've opted for the dumbed-down, "Hulk Smash!" variety. Which is stupid, but stupid sells.
Needless to say, the two groups don't make the best playground buddies. Things can be interpreted different ways, but generally the werewolves are portrayed as the "good guys" in the ages-old conflict. (Of course, neither group is human, and shouldn't be judged by individual action, just intent. But that's neither here nor there.
Even before watching the trailer, I could hear the sounds of legal papers shuffling. Hopefully it gets to screens...it doesn't look very character-driven, but it does look a lot better than anything White Wolf has put out. Anyone remember the (thankfully) short-lived show "The Kindred" on Fox?
Certainly, we can't forget our history, but in this case, who invented it is irrelevant; the fact that it was invented is. The recognition of a name is, frankly, petty.
Anyway, the ideas are basically the same, just on a smaller scale. People from across the world would telnet into the server, log in as their character, and parade around the text world slaying creatures you could only read descriptions of and occassionally stopping to figure out a particularly difficult puzzle or maze. If this were a single-player game, ala Zork, I would have quickly become bored with it. But there were dozens of other people playing, and soon it became a competition. The creatures in the game were things to fight between the quests that pitted you against the other players. I began playing more and more, to the point it was severely affecting my life.
I'd like to say I'm not blaming the mud for those problems. I was having many other problems, and just couldn't handle the pressure. Something had to give; the mud was just an avenue of escapism. If not the mud, I would have ran elsewhere. To that end, I don't think the mud was (nor Everquest is) addictive. Rather, I needed a release, somewhere I could run from my problems. Sadly, many people were doing this on the mud, as I'm certain many of EQ's clientele are all trying to find some form of escape.
This creates a very unhealthy environment, as you can imagine. People who know they probably should go out and get some fresh air, maybe see their flesh-and-blood friends, instead decide, "Oh, I'll just play this a little longer..." The next thing they know it's three in the morning, and they are on their last Mountain Dew. The people online who convinced them to stay are probably in the same boat, and the behavior just worsens.
EQ is not inherrently evil. It is, though, an attractive scene for people with, oftentimes social, issues, which can frequently become an unhealthy environment. There are countless real-life places, including (but hardly limited to) casinos. Millions of people gamble every year and have no problem walking away after a weekend, but many people just can't stop. It's more a reflection on society that people have problems with a setting such as Everquest, rather than a damnation of the game itself.
I don't use AOL, but I know several ISPs who employ these and other forms of active, invasive, in-your-face advertising. Spam email is evil, don't get me wrong, but it's more of a passive evil.
Good victory for AOL, I just hope the money goes into getting their users better content on their pages, rather than going into R&D to find new ways of promoting their service.
I really doubt this double-entendre was intentional, but it is very true. The only reason spam is so prominent is that people are making a lot of money from sending them out. They blanket the world in their spam, and there are many thousands of nuts who see themselves losing twenty pounds a week, or whatever else the spamoftheday is proferring, and proceed to follow a link and make a purchase of some sort.
If nobody clicked these things, they would go away. A law that would penalize people who clicked the links in spam would be much more effective than laws preventing the spam to be sent out, IMO, but such a law would also be far too controversial.
I mean, if we start passing legislation to go after the ignorant, what next? ;)
...apparently this motorcycle/jetski thingie can't outrun the slashdot effect.
Our freedom of speech is purely illusory. We are forced to guard our speech by politically-correct watchdogs. Saying something deregatory or threatening about our President, even in a completely joking manner, can legally be construed as a felony. True freedom has no limits. I'm not saying we live in a society as suffocating as many Balkan states, and I'm not saying that we don't lead a blessed life in the US. However, to say we are a free people is simply false.
How much of our freedom do we sacrifice for safety? Either all or none. Freedom doesn't come in variable quantities, ladies and gentlemen. You have it, or you don't. And as much as we'd like to think otherwise, so long as there are Osamas, we will never be free. We'll either be slaves to the tyranny or slaves to bureaucracy.