I really hope this is some kind of parody act that you do.
The ancient greek society encouraged erotic relationships between members of the same sex, usually in older-teacher with younger-student relationships. To quote Xenophon: "In other Greek states man and boy live together like married people; elsewhere they become intimate with youths by giving them gifts..." Truthfully, homosexual marriage was still uncommon, as the purpose of marriage for the greeks was mainly to produce children. This really isn't the case in America.
So there goes that. As for the rest: your country is already allowing homosexual practises to happen. It's a difficult thing to stop, without having an "anal sex" police of some sort. They already live together, fall in love with each other, have sex together, grow old together... they do pretty much everything a married couple does now, except they don't get some tax benefits or next-of-kin status under the law. So having the government recognize that minority group really wouldn't be much of a change. If you're not gay, it would certainly have a less-than-minimal impact on your life. Remember, it being recognized while not change the amount of gays in the world, one way or another.
And finally: Onus of proof? What the hell are you talking about? The changes would be good so that a group of people could get equal rights under the law, so there's the benefit. Nothing changes for you, things get a bit more equal for them.
Bah, that's a load -BUYVIAGRANOW2FOR1!-
of BS. I haven't patched my PC since I bought it -FREEMORTGAGEQUOTES!- and it's running just -TIREDOFCONSOLIDATEDDEBT?- fine. No viruses, no trojans, -TIREDOFSPAM?BUYTHISCRAP!- nothing.
I'm not...and I know that. There are far too many people who want the game badly enough that they won't think twice about installing Steam, indeed, I can see myself caving in as well.
That being said, if the program wouldn't run if daemon tools/nero/CloneCD were installed (the way Doom 3 did), people would still buy it. If the program wouldn't run if a competing product was installed, people would probably still buy it (it IS Half-life 2, after all). If the program required you to pay a monthly fee to play online, possibly single player, possibly pay-per-play, well they might lose out on their audience, but I'm sure people would spend the money in the long run. I'm not particular fond of any of those options, indeed I think most gamers would find them vexing. But what's stopping developers? They can just put it in the EULA and that'll be the end of it. If it becomes an industry standard, then in the end you won't be able to boycott or avoid it (see: standardized smaller game box sizes with PDF manuals instead of actual books).
They make a product good enough and they can put you through hell, you'll still buy it. I'm just saying it would be nice if they didn't. But once again, they're not here to be nice, they're responsibility is to make the largest profit possible.
It's like a horrid mixture of OSX and windows olive-green theme gone horribly wrong... The upper bars look cramped and the top right portion is a mess of buttons and widgets.
This isn't all that surprising. Steam distribution was at first heralded as a way of getting away from the "big evil publishers" and creating an alternative for developers. But it still has to administer the accounts, and in the end its still run by a corporation whose end goal is to make the most amount of money possible. If anything, having an even further distancing between licensing a product and actually owning it can make potential abuses against the customers even worse.
And for all those "they're not forcing you to buy it" people out there, of course they aren't, but if they'd remove the mandatory Stean registration I probably would have given them my $50 by now.
It is critical that we liberate the moon's cheese supply. The U.S.'s dependence on foreign cheese as a source of garnishing is beyond absurd, it's a stance where the slightest change in the powder keg that is Italian politics could send the price of mozerella skyrocketing! Our citizens deserve better than to be beholden to the interests of a foreign government bent on removing our right to a three-cheese blend pizza with stuffed crust.
For the sake of our country and that of our children, the CHEESE MUST STAND ALONE!
On Canadian TV (Global) they already try and superimpose advertisements on the screen - I believe there is a specific dealbetween Canadian Tire and NFL football games, but I have seen others:
they put a CG Canadian tire blimp in the sky,
a CG Sprint Telepohne logo on the field (this also screws up often, with the logo being superimposed on top of the players, or panning along with the camera)
and I've even seen Lipton's ads being drawn over sections of fans, as if they're all holding together carefully placed signs above their head to make a picture of a giant cup of soup. It looks absolutely fake and horrible.
I need to start carrying around a list of companies whose advertising policies annoy and disturb me, so I can remember who not to give my money to.
Boy, you must really hate Firefox's Adblock and Flashblock features.
As much as I'd like to preserve the old business model of being forced to look at ads for minutes at a time, it's time to rethink this strategy now that we have 21st century technology... simply giving them billions of dollars in revenue because the're accustomed to getting billions of dollars of revenue doesn't cut it anymore.
I don't know why anyone bothered with Tivo in the first place - the promise was of "TV Your Way", but TV my way has always been best served by Bit Torrent. It's quasi-legal to be sure, but I can get a 400 meg HDTV broadcast of one of the very few shows I do watch over TV, the commercials are nicely stripped (so I don't even have to fast forward them) and the service is fast and reliable, especially on third generation high-speed internet technology.
If you're getting a TIVO, I'm assuming the moral issue of skipping the stations precious advertisements don't matter to you that much anyway, right?
Goddam! I actually threw the post into my spellchecker extension, but completely forgot the title - doesn't forgive me for being an idiot, though.
I concede defeat, good sir.
It used to be in the old days, if you were on your own a larger company would simply come along and acquire your program, costs them a couple hundred thousand dollars and they get a program out of it.
Now they just sue the shit out of you, doesn't matter if there's any justification to it, legal fees and time spent in court alone can screw you. Costs them a couple hundred thousand dollars of lawyer fees, and you get bankruptcy out of it.
There's no question that you guys are funny and talented, however I'm sure that there are lots of other comics out there that you've seen that have been in your leaque in terms of quality and content, yet never seem to reach the same popularity.
What would be the most important thing - outside of actual comic and newspost quality - to creating a popular web comic? Were there any specific promotional avenues you took that made Penny Arcade into the success that it is?
I can take a guess at outside sources linking to Penny Arcade and your first Child's Play, but that doesn't seem to account for the steady slide that's being going on this year.
This article was quite good, considering its 25 page length. The most notable highlights being some of what we didn't know but guessed at: Yes, Gabe was 'lying' to us with all of the "September 30th release date" bruhaha - the game was far from complete, as many people figured out when they were still adding features in early 2004 (some figured the delay was in large part due to anonymous hacker).
Even more interesting still: post-release content - the "ATI" levels (heavily misleading name, but whatever) which are eye-candy filled to stress out video cards, and other small episodes that will be released from the viewpoint of Alyx. Still no word on TF2, aside from a vague statement we'll get it at some point.
If I recall correctly, Google does a lot of its indexing and listings by how many web pages link to the page in question, the more popular the page, the closer it is to being first in relevance of a search.
I've found this to be quite troublesome when it comes to searches for information that instead give me commercial sites trying to sell things - "samsung 753df monitor review" gives me one actual review and then a couple of pages worth of links to sites that simply include user reviews.
Google really needs a better way to filter out these pages than having users type in "-consumer, -resale -'buy now!'".
I find it disgusting that Microsoft has plans to sell anti-virus software to plug up the holes they stupidly left in their OS. Shouldn't developers be forced to make secure products?
If it's discovered my model of car has a set of brakes that have a chance of not working after a certain gear shift combination, the car company issues a recall - they don't tell everyone "oh it's not a big deal, if you want go to a mechanic and buy a new set of brakes."
We get patches for free (well kinda...after paying for the software) but they only seem to fix one problem *at best) for a hole found in the wild by people outside MS anyway. That doesn't even begin to cover spyware and viruses.
... but with out Steam registration you're not going to get very far. He can't play single player, multiplayer, or anything else but look at the box and manual. You're waiting until the 16th, get used to it.
And not just for kids either... this has been seen on slashdot before, but the things people can do with Lego Mindstorms is simply amazing. An expensive set to be sure, but it's a toy that will scale up as the child grows older, and it's probably the most user friendly robotics set ever created. Of course, for $179.99 US (MSRP) you might want to just get one for yourself and ignore the kids altogether.
It's not a classic, but the Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 is a fun toy for younger children, and surprisingly for a lot of older girls (13-18) as well. Just straddle the broom's comfortable girth, activate the magic vibrating switch, and away you go for blissful sessions (about 15-35 minutes, varies) of fantasy fun!
Ah yes, the Hulk - because BIG GREEN GUY with TORN PANTS is such a hugely original concept and - what's that Mr. Hyde? I wouldn't like you when you're...mad... no... wait NOOOOO!
Slashdot Mirror
Going back to the romans and greeks?
Going back to the romans and greeks?
I really hope this is some kind of parody act that you do.
The ancient greek society encouraged erotic relationships between members of the same sex, usually in older-teacher with younger-student relationships. To quote Xenophon: "In other Greek states man and boy live together like married people; elsewhere they become intimate with youths by giving them gifts..." Truthfully, homosexual marriage was still uncommon, as the purpose of marriage for the greeks was mainly to produce children. This really isn't the case in America.
So there goes that. As for the rest: your country is already allowing homosexual practises to happen. It's a difficult thing to stop, without having an "anal sex" police of some sort. They already live together, fall in love with each other, have sex together, grow old together... they do pretty much everything a married couple does now, except they don't get some tax benefits or next-of-kin status under the law. So having the government recognize that minority group really wouldn't be much of a change. If you're not gay, it would certainly have a less-than-minimal impact on your life. Remember, it being recognized while not change the amount of gays in the world, one way or another.
And finally: Onus of proof? What the hell are you talking about? The changes would be good so that a group of people could get equal rights under the law, so there's the benefit. Nothing changes for you, things get a bit more equal for them.
Bah, that's a load -BUYVIAGRANOW2FOR1!- of BS. I haven't patched my PC since I bought it -FREEMORTGAGEQUOTES!- and it's running just -TIREDOFCONSOLIDATEDDEBT?- fine. No viruses, no trojans, -TIREDOFSPAM?BUYTHISCRAP!- nothing.
I'm not...and I know that. There are far too many people who want the game badly enough that they won't think twice about installing Steam, indeed, I can see myself caving in as well.
That being said, if the program wouldn't run if daemon tools/nero/CloneCD were installed (the way Doom 3 did), people would still buy it. If the program wouldn't run if a competing product was installed, people would probably still buy it (it IS Half-life 2, after all). If the program required you to pay a monthly fee to play online, possibly single player, possibly pay-per-play, well they might lose out on their audience, but I'm sure people would spend the money in the long run. I'm not particular fond of any of those options, indeed I think most gamers would find them vexing. But what's stopping developers? They can just put it in the EULA and that'll be the end of it. If it becomes an industry standard, then in the end you won't be able to boycott or avoid it (see: standardized smaller game box sizes with PDF manuals instead of actual books).
They make a product good enough and they can put you through hell, you'll still buy it. I'm just saying it would be nice if they didn't. But once again, they're not here to be nice, they're responsibility is to make the largest profit possible.
It's like a horrid mixture of OSX and windows olive-green theme gone horribly wrong... The upper bars look cramped and the top right portion is a mess of buttons and widgets.
This isn't all that surprising. Steam distribution was at first heralded as a way of getting away from the "big evil publishers" and creating an alternative for developers. But it still has to administer the accounts, and in the end its still run by a corporation whose end goal is to make the most amount of money possible. If anything, having an even further distancing between licensing a product and actually owning it can make potential abuses against the customers even worse.
And for all those "they're not forcing you to buy it" people out there, of course they aren't, but if they'd remove the mandatory Stean registration I probably would have given them my $50 by now.
Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?
Plant your mac, grow an apple tree, of course.
Plant your windows PC, grow some blue flowers... of DEATH!
It is critical that we liberate the moon's cheese supply. The U.S.'s dependence on foreign cheese as a source of garnishing is beyond absurd, it's a stance where the slightest change in the powder keg that is Italian politics could send the price of mozerella skyrocketing! Our citizens deserve better than to be beholden to the interests of a foreign government bent on removing our right to a three-cheese blend pizza with stuffed crust.
For the sake of our country and that of our children, the CHEESE MUST STAND ALONE!
On Canadian TV (Global) they already try and superimpose advertisements on the screen - I believe there is a specific dealbetween Canadian Tire and NFL football games, but I have seen others:
I need to start carrying around a list of companies whose advertising policies annoy and disturb me, so I can remember who not to give my money to.
Boy, you must really hate Firefox's Adblock and Flashblock features.
As much as I'd like to preserve the old business model of being forced to look at ads for minutes at a time, it's time to rethink this strategy now that we have 21st century technology... simply giving them billions of dollars in revenue because the're accustomed to getting billions of dollars of revenue doesn't cut it anymore.
I don't know why anyone bothered with Tivo in the first place - the promise was of "TV Your Way", but TV my way has always been best served by Bit Torrent. It's quasi-legal to be sure, but I can get a 400 meg HDTV broadcast of one of the very few shows I do watch over TV, the commercials are nicely stripped (so I don't even have to fast forward them) and the service is fast and reliable, especially on third generation high-speed internet technology.
If you're getting a TIVO, I'm assuming the moral issue of skipping the stations precious advertisements don't matter to you that much anyway, right?
Goddam! I actually threw the post into my spellchecker extension, but completely forgot the title - doesn't forgive me for being an idiot, though. I concede defeat, good sir.
It used to be in the old days, if you were on your own a larger company would simply come along and acquire your program, costs them a couple hundred thousand dollars and they get a program out of it.
Now they just sue the shit out of you, doesn't matter if there's any justification to it, legal fees and time spent in court alone can screw you. Costs them a couple hundred thousand dollars of lawyer fees, and you get bankruptcy out of it.
Har! But I already wrote & patented a program like that, so the MPAA is infringing on my copyright by distributing it for free over the internet!
There's no question that you guys are funny and talented, however I'm sure that there are lots of other comics out there that you've seen that have been in your leaque in terms of quality and content, yet never seem to reach the same popularity.
What would be the most important thing - outside of actual comic and newspost quality - to creating a popular web comic? Were there any specific promotional avenues you took that made Penny Arcade into the success that it is?
Can you guys explain why your site was getting so much more traffic this time last year as opposed to this year?
I can take a guess at outside sources linking to Penny Arcade and your first Child's Play, but that doesn't seem to account for the steady slide that's being going on this year.
Thanks for the strip, by the way!
This article was quite good, considering its 25 page length. The most notable highlights being some of what we didn't know but guessed at: Yes, Gabe was 'lying' to us with all of the "September 30th release date" bruhaha - the game was far from complete, as many people figured out when they were still adding features in early 2004 (some figured the delay was in large part due to anonymous hacker).
Even more interesting still: post-release content - the "ATI" levels (heavily misleading name, but whatever) which are eye-candy filled to stress out video cards, and other small episodes that will be released from the viewpoint of Alyx. Still no word on TF2, aside from a vague statement we'll get it at some point.
Fawk - knew something seemed wrong there...
Proper link for parent post
If I recall correctly, Google does a lot of its indexing and listings by how many web pages link to the page in question, the more popular the page, the closer it is to being first in relevance of a search.
I've found this to be quite troublesome when it comes to searches for information that instead give me commercial sites trying to sell things - "samsung 753df monitor review" gives me one actual review and then a couple of pages worth of links to sites that simply include user reviews.
Google really needs a better way to filter out these pages than having users type in "-consumer, -resale -'buy now!'".
These are very obvious links to a shock site, ignore them and mod parent down. Seriously, AC, don't you get tired of this?
Link ... they might be blocking links from /. ?
I find it disgusting that Microsoft has plans to sell anti-virus software to plug up the holes they stupidly left in their OS. Shouldn't developers be forced to make secure products?
If it's discovered my model of car has a set of brakes that have a chance of not working after a certain gear shift combination, the car company issues a recall - they don't tell everyone "oh it's not a big deal, if you want go to a mechanic and buy a new set of brakes."
We get patches for free (well kinda...after paying for the software) but they only seem to fix one problem *at best) for a hole found in the wild by people outside MS anyway. That doesn't even begin to cover spyware and viruses.
... but with out Steam registration you're not going to get very far. He can't play single player, multiplayer, or anything else but look at the box and manual. You're waiting until the 16th, get used to it.
And not just for kids either... this has been seen on slashdot before, but the things people can do with Lego Mindstorms is simply amazing. An expensive set to be sure, but it's a toy that will scale up as the child grows older, and it's probably the most user friendly robotics set ever created. Of course, for $179.99 US (MSRP) you might want to just get one for yourself and ignore the kids altogether.
It's not a classic, but the Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 is a fun toy for younger children, and surprisingly for a lot of older girls (13-18) as well. Just straddle the broom's comfortable girth, activate the magic vibrating switch, and away you go for blissful sessions (about 15-35 minutes, varies) of fantasy fun!
Ah yes, the Hulk - because BIG GREEN GUY with TORN PANTS is such a hugely original concept and - what's that Mr. Hyde? I wouldn't like you when you're...mad... no... wait NOOOOO!