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Christmas Cheer It's funny. Laugh. Entertainment Games

Penny Arcade Holiday Strip Series #1 308

Posted by CmdrTaco from the tis-the-season-to-writhe-and-scream-fa-la-la-la-la dept.
While normally we don't do this sort of thing, recent charity work with Child's Play has substantially increased the bandwidth demands over at Penny Arcade. To assist Gabe & Tycho, and keep their site running slightly faster than a snails-pace, we're co-hosting their seasonal holiday strip series "The Last Christmas". The cover and the first page are attached to this story (future pages in coming days), so read on and enjoy until we hit our bandwidth limits! (Warning: Comic may contain Cthulhu)
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Penny Arcade Holiday Strip Series #1 More

Penny Arcade Holiday Strip Series #1

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  • They need to publish this (Score:5, Funny)

    by JJBird ( 831418 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:33PM (#11118113)
    I'd buy it for my kids.

    • Taco says (Score:2, Funny)

      by JaffaKREE ( 766802 )
      "While normally we don't do this sort of thing, this kid Billy is going to help host their seasonal holiday strip series on his 56.6K modem (Warning: Comic may contain Cthulhu)"

    • No can do (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 17, 2004 @03:19PM (#11118694)
      PA's run afoul of some nasty twit who's locked up the IP rights to their published output, book-wise, a tangle that came from their first book publishing fiasco. It was something that came up during thier /. interview a while back. Damned shame, too...
      • Ug, what did they do? Use Ursula K. LeGuin's contract lawyer?

        • Re:No can do (Score:2, Informative)

          by The_Rift ( 257762 )
          they basically didn't have a contract lawyer at the time, they didn't really know what they were doing.

          Recently a new guy joined the team, who left PWC to sort out their business plan, so they're doing a lot better at that kind of thing.

  • One page? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Hatta ( 162192 )
    I'm a little confused. We read this one page at a time? When does the next page come?

    • Re:One page? (Score:3, Informative)

      by UWC ( 664779 )
      I guess the next page will be on Monday, assuming PA sticks to their normal schedule (Monday-Wednesday-Friday).

    • Re:One page? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zonk ( 12082 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:36PM (#11118173) Homepage Journal
      PA post strips Monday - Wednesday - Friday.

      We'll be hosting them here as well until this series is done, though the rest of the strips will be Games sectional only.
      • Games section only! Oh well, it's not that hard to hit penny-arcade.com and add to the overwhelming amount of bandwidth they go through.
        • Actually, I don't quite get it - I checked PA out of curiosity (and cancelled before the download got underway out of consideration) and found that today's comic is still hosted off of penny-arcade.com. I thought the idea would be that PA would temporarily have their heavy comic images hosted over on Slashdot - but they're still hosting their own files themselves. This is pretty bewildering when you consider that they don't get any advertising revenue from Slashdot. I'm kinda confused - I would've though

      • Re:One page? (Score:3, Informative)

        by calibanDNS ( 32250 )
        According to Tycho's post today, the series will run until Dec. 27. So, you should be able to expect the series to run like this:
        Page 1 - 12/17 (Fri)
        Page 2 - 12/20 (Mon)
        Page 3 - 12/22 (Wed)
        Page 4 - 12/24 (Fri)
        Page 5 - 12/27 (Mon)
        The sad part is that they appear to have abandoned the Sony Style storyline, of which episode 3 should've been up today.
      • First, offtopic: the games section is kicking ass lately. Since you seem to talk like you're semi-in-charge, big props for it. I've started reading games.slashdot more than front page.

        Now, on topic, a quick Q: What deal did you make with the PA boys for this repost? Just for fun ("Slashdot has comics!") or did cash/advertising revenue exchange hands?
    • When does the next page come?
      Depends on how many days it takes the first one to load.

    • It's just like "Extreme Programming" -- release early, release often.

      And just as with XP, the result is often so minimal as to be absolutely useless except to indicate that yes, some miniscule level of progress is occurring on a week-to-week basis.

      For those who don't live for the sheer unmitigated adrenaline rush of reading one new sentence a week, my advice is to wait for the damn thing to be finished.

      --

      if (/.id < 16384) status = curmudgeon;

  • Bandwith = getting killed? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `l3gnaerif'> on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:35PM (#11118157) Homepage
    Its slooooooooooow as hell even when hosted on /. ...

    I guess its why Slashdot don't offer to mirror sites they're going to link to on the mainpage.

  • Article text ;) (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:35PM (#11118160) Homepage Journal
    The article is going a little slow, so heres the text:

    Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday December 17, @18:31
    from the tis-the-season-to-writhe-and-scream-fa-la-la-la-la dept.
    While normally we don't do this sort of thing, recent charity work with Child's Play has substantially increased the bandwidth over at Penny Arcade. So to help Gabe & Tycho keep the site running slightly faster than snails-pace, we're helping host their seasonal holiday strip series "The Last Christmas". The cover and the first page are attached to this story, so read on and enjoy until we hit our bandwidth limits! (Warning: Comic may contain Cthulhu)

    • Brilliant! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Safety Cap ( 253500 )
      Now we have the secret to getting the almighty (5, Funny): simply repost the article text!

      • Re:Brilliant! (Score:2, Redundant)

        by NotoriousQ ( 457789 )
        Great, we also have a secret to getting the less then almighty, but still highly desirable (3, Funny): Simply point out how to get the (5,Funny).

        If this trend continues, this post will be rated (1,Funny).

        Oh, Drat!

  • duplicity? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:37PM (#11118185)
    So Slashdot will host penny-arcade's strip because of bandwidth concerns, but they won't mirror the websites they hammer into the ground?

    • Re:duplicity? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by necro2607 ( 771790 )
      Yeah that's what I was thinking... Directly linking video files in articles etc.

      I don't see what the difference is about Penny Arcade. I'm kind of guessing /. wants to support them to due the whole charity thing. Just seems odd when surely sites regarding equally respectable things have been /.ed in the past...

    • Re:duplicity? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by calibanDNS ( 32250 ) <brad_staton@hotm ... com minus author> on Friday December 17, 2004 @03:08PM (#11118570)
      Slashdot could conceivably get into legal trouble by mirroring everything that they link to. If the editors had to take the time to contact content owners before linking, it could significantly slow down the flow of stories on Slashdot. I'm guessing that in this instance, the editors contacted Gabe and Tycho or vice versa and made an agreement to do this.

  • How does *that* work? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:38PM (#11118204) Journal
    Umm... Judging by the time this has taken to load...

    Did we manage to Slashdot Slashdot?

    Freaky!

  • /. fucks up again (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nine Tenths of The W ( 829559 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:40PM (#11118228)
    Penny Arcade seems to be down ATM. Could this be because of /. readers seeing the headline and running to it?
    • /. readers seeing the headline and running to [penny arcade]?

      Well, I saw the headline and remembered "oh yeah, it's friday", fired up Safari (I was on firefox for it's adblockedness) and went to my bookmark bar's comix folder and selected "open in tabs", as is my custom.
      That opens all my bookmarked webcomics in tabs, simulteniously, with one click: Very cool.

      So, yes.

      P.S. Safari has much better tab browsing and navigation than other browsers, but they have it deactivated by default. Go figure.

      P.P.S. I l

      • Re:/. fucks up again (Score:3, Informative)

        by feargal ( 99776 )
        You can do that in Opera.

        P.S. Opera has as good if not better tab browsing than other browsers, and they have it activated by default. Go figure.

        P.P.S. Ever notice that even with The Almighty, there were (at least) four gospels?
        • Opera has as good if not better tab browsing than other browsers

          Can you kill tabs without having them in the foreground? Haven't used it in a while, but I don't remember tabs having individual close-tab buttons like Safari has and Firefox/Mozilla doesn't...

          And Opera doesn't have adblocking, does it? Maybe I should download the latest, but, I'm set in my ways : )
      • Go get PithHelmet [culater.net] and you can have adblockedness in Safari too!

  • Um, no strip!

    A little quick on the draw I see?

    Or maybe you hit your limits already? ;)

  • What do we call it when /. actually tries to help alleviate bandwidth shortage?

    todhsalsing?

  • Child's Play (Score:5, Informative)

    by kippy ( 416183 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:43PM (#11118274)
    Thank God /. gave another plug to Child's Play [childsplaycharity.org]. It's a great cause and if you forgot about it after the initial ./ announcement [slashdot.org], get out there and buy a gift or two for some sick kids who could really use the cheer.

    Time's getting short!

    • Re:Child's Play (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 )
      I prefer the Toys for Ta-tas being held at a caberet joint in Minneapolis. Bring a toy and get free cover for a night, and an entry into a lottery for a free lapdance. Now THATs Christmas Spirit!

      HO HO HO HO HO!!! (no pun intended)

  • The end of the world (Score:5, Funny)

    by Suicyco ( 88284 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:46PM (#11118312) Homepage
    Slashdot is slowly eating itself tail first. This is the end of times, the internet cannot be far behind! I'm going to go grab my wind up radio and get a shotgun.

    Its /.2K

  • Until.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by travdaddy ( 527149 ) <`travo' `at' `linuxmail.org'> on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:49PM (#11118351)
    enjoy until we hit our bandwidth limits!

    I didn't get to enjoy for very long. stick to text.
  • Wouldn't it make sence to have the images posted here be the same size, what happens if I want to print out all the images when it's done and put the book together, the cover is far too large for that.

    Golden book, eat your heart out.
    • Wouldn't it make sence to have the images posted here be the same size, what happens if I want to print out all the images when it's done and put the book together, the cover is far too large for that.

      Yeah, cause that means you would have to scale the cover image. Oh, Discordia! All is lost!

      m-

  • FOR THE LOVE OF CTHULHU! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:59PM (#11118471)
    USE CORAL!

    I mean honestly. Coral is precicesly what this situation was designed for. Penny-Arcade could significantly reduce their bandwidth usage by coralizing the comics. Heck, even Slashdot could get a major speedup on their hosting these christmas pages by using Coral for the links.

    Here are the coralized versions of the Slashdot-hosted images... If a few people request them they should get cached and will load like greased lightning:

    http://66.35.250.242.nyud.net:8090/cover_book.jpg [nyud.net]
    http://66.35.250.242.nyud.net:8090/page_1_book.jpg [nyud.net]
    • How about a link that doesn't use a weird port? Some of us are behind restrictive firewalls...
      • Coral only uses port 8090. There's no way around it. The server network that is hosting them already makes use of port 80.

        However, from what I recall they are planning to set up some sort of virtualhosting network-wide to get access to port 80.
    • Unable to locate the server named "66.35.250.242.nyud.net" --- the server does not have a DNS entry. Perhaps there is a misspelling in the server name, or the server no longer exists. Double-check the name and try again.
      That worked real well.
      • It works fine from here. The problem is you are using a very buggy DNS server (Windows 2000's DNS server for example). Such servers are very rare... As I understand almost all DNS servers out there run BIND on *nix and work fine.

        The problem is explained in detail here:

        http://coral.scs.cs.nyu.edu/wiki/wiki.php/Main/F AQ #SERVFAIL

  • Ctrl+Shift+R I hear makes it load faster (Score:4, Funny)

    by curtisk ( 191737 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @02:59PM (#11118475) Homepage Journal
    and faster in Firefox....the more you do it, the faster it loads, kinda warms the bits of data and lowers viscosity.

    The "R" is for "ReallyFastLoad" it a secret feature *shhhhhhhhhh*

  • I guess it's working (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wordsmith ( 183749 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @03:07PM (#11118553) Homepage
    It actually loaded faster for me off of the Penny Arcade site than it did off of slashdot.

    I guess slashdot got pennyarcaded.

  • Mirrored! (Score:2, Informative)

    by objekt ( 232270 )
    Compressed for faster downloading :-)

    cover [img94.exs.cx]

    page 1 [img94.exs.cx]

  • Coralize (Score:5, Informative)

    by Spankophile ( 78098 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @03:23PM (#11118747) Homepage
    Why don't more people jump on the Coralize bandwagon? i.e. If they won't mirror, why not "Coralize" the links in the stories?

    Just append .nyud.net:8090 to the domain you're after, and presto, automagic load balancing.

    http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/coral/overview/ [nyu.edu]

    for more info.

  • they wanted me to ask if anyone can think of anything that rhymes with Rl'yeh.

    a merry Cthulhu F'taghn to you all.

  • Der Newsposten (Score:5, Informative)

    by mbbac ( 568880 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @03:27PM (#11118799)
    How could you guys forget to mirror der newsposten?

    Alright. So, a couple things happened.

    One, the Sony [penny-arcade.com] Syndrome [penny-arcade.com] "story" is probably over. We're fond of this as an ending place for it, but we your comic masters are mercurial and delight in misdirection. One never really knows. We promise nothing, and you should expect nothing. Nothing!

    The second thing is that the Spike event sort of put me off of awards for the time being. Just as a random comment, if your 2004 awards program does not include Metroid Prime 2 or World of Warcraft, it has no authority whatsoever to coronate the king of any genre. I'm not even saying that those games need to win. I'm simply stating that the games exist and are real, news which has not reached them out there on the ragged periphery of taste and intellect. It has been our annual tradition to list the twelve most delicious games of the year here at Penny Arcade, and though the odds of us telling you our favorites are actually quite high doing it the way we've done it for the last few years really sounds awful to me. To both of us, even. So we're not going to do that.

    What we are going to do is present a very short children's book concerning a celestial alignment which awakens the doom that lies dead and dreaming in R'lyeh. The first page [penny-arcade.com] can be found here. Ia! I'm sure you'll agree that this will be a great deal more fun for everyone involved. It goes until the 27th of December, the Monday after next. This is the cover [penny-arcade.com].

    Child's Play: Kiko's Child's Play Shirt [gameskins.com] is, like his other work, a stunning act of design savvy. He still has a few left [gameskins.com] in the run, if you'd like to climb aboard. We're coming up on the end of this year's drive, and I have every faith that when we incorporate the gifts from the partner sites [penny-arcade.com] last year's high score will be defeated, and we will enter our initials.

    Please consider what the games you enjoy could mean to a young person staring down a long-term illness. If you haven't given yet, it's possible you don't know: you're entirely capable of heroism. The barrier to entry is surprisingly low [childsplaycharity.org].

    (CW)TB out.

  • One page?????

    If you wanted to sustain interest, maybe wait until you have two or even four pages to go begging the attention of millions of slashdot users. Looks like it might have been cool if there was anything of substance by the time /. asked me to notice.

  • John Romero was going to donate some games (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But then someone told him the poor little bastards have suffered enough

  • Plush Santa Cthulhu (kids love 'em) (Score:4, Informative)

    by un1xl0ser ( 575642 ) on Friday December 17, 2004 @04:03PM (#11119180)
    They sell these at a local RPG store (Zombie Planet in Albany NY). The santa one is perfect for the season.
    Buy plush Cthulhus online. [toyvault.com]

    This link is highly amusing. Tales of the Plush Cthulhu [logicalcreativity.com]

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