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Being a bio-droid WOULD be pretty awesome.

Hopefully not chunky soup.

People are indeed far worse than anything they create

I for one welcome our new waffle overlords

[Mr_Rose]

If you think of the AI placement agent like a dating service, yeah the fees could be pretty low. Or ridiculously high. Maybe there are even free agencies? I guess that would depend on how many groups are 'seeding' AIs for commercial distribution and whether they are competitive or not.
Or perhaps some manufacturers (e.g Dell) include a placement service with hardware purchase, to make themselves a "one-stop shop" as it were.

[LoveJaneAusten]

I don't care how techy Marigold is supposed to be, no one remembers an email they thought was spam from more than a decade ago. What the hell.

[westrim]

I don't care how techy Marigold is supposed to be, no one remembers an email they thought was spam from more than a decade ago. What the hell.

They do when they turn on the news later that day and there's coverage of said email going to everyone in the world, and everyone talks about it until something else catches their attention. Marigold is already familiar with Gary, having lived through it- Momo isn't.


Thought: Hannelore is college age and both of her parents are highly educated people, so why has there been no mention of what happened to her in that department?

[akronnick]

Hannelore is Gary...



...or maybe her parents didn't obsess about the internet in 1997.

[westrim]

Hannelore is Gary...

...or maybe her parents didn't obsess about the internet in 1997.

The college department, not the Gary department.

[DSL]

Hannelore said in-strip she went through college, but Jeph said -- somewhere in his Tumblr, I think-- she didn't.

[SomeCanadianWeirdo]

Hmmm, perhaps what she thinks was her college stint actually took place in a virtual reality program cooked up by her dad, and her mom bought her a college degree.  I'm sure some college would give Hannelore a degree if her mom shoved a spare million or two their way.

[Sidhekin]

Hannelore has also said she didn't – in http://www.formspring.me/hanneloreEC?_escaped_fragment_=start%3D1916610313#!start=1916610313 though, and not in the comic – which prompted at least one question on Tumblr.

... let's see ... http://jephjacques.com/post/11265563239/qa-dump-09

She was joking, obviously. I would never, ever accidentally contradict myself.

[Method of Madness]

Thought: Hannelore is college age and both of her parents are highly educated people, so why has there been no mention of what happened to her in that department?

I'm assuming she got her entire education on the space station.  Also, it's weird that Hanners and Marigold are younger than me (I was 19 when I started reading, and I'm 24 now).  So yeah, using 1069, Hanners is either 22 or 23 now, depending on time skips, I think it could've been a year since then.

So canonical ages are Hanners at 22/23, Sven at 28/29 and Assbutt Dora at 27/28.  Anything for Marten, Faye, Angus or Marigold?

[Wagimawr]

I don't care how techy Marigold is supposed to be, no one remembers an email they thought was spam from more than a decade ago. What the hell.

I thought that was a very subtle but very funny joke; that Marigold is SUCH an internet addict that she remembers crap like that.

[pwhodges]

I don't care how techy Marigold is supposed to be, no one remembers an email they thought was spam from more than a decade ago.

Wrong.  Back then spam was still only a minor irritation, and for some people receiving one at all might be a somewhat notable event.  And remembering inconsequential oddments is a common enough thing to do anyway.

[jwhouk]

Mr. Hodges is right. I remember the "I LOVE YOU" virus (Written in Microsoft VBS code - eetch), which was kinda scary because it was one of the first ones that could sort-of affect both PC's and Macs. (The VBS code could be run on Macs that had Office software installed.)

[Near Lurker]

I don't care how techy Marigold is supposed to be, no one remembers an email they thought was spam from more than a decade ago.

Wrong.  Back then spam was still only a minor irritation, and for some people receiving one at all might be a somewhat notable event.  And remembering inconsequential oddments is a common enough thing to do anyway.

In '97?  Maybe in '94, but not in '97.  I was scrolling through much more spam back then than I do today; pretty much everything I know about sex other than the basic mechanics comes from spam I read in the nineties.

My guess would be Marigold remembers because she heard about it within a few days.

[Method of Madness]

Was there actually more spam back then, or did it just seem that way because there were no good filters yet?

[Near Lurker]

The latter, I'm sure... or at least, if there is less spam, it's because a lot of them have just given up, although I do think there was a definite drop around '02-'03, and I don't think I actually installed a spam filter until '04.

[Sidhekin]

I think filters came first.  Both filtering amongst ISPs (quickly adopted) and for end-users (perhaps earlier, I'm not sure, but more slowly adopted).

Then followed the drop.

Of course, much of this drop is due to spammers finding targets other than e-mail.  Web forums of various kinds ... even wikis ... and recently Facebook, Twitter, G+ ...

I think I first received spam and/or attack email back in 1994.  By 1997, I had at least four different e-mail accounts, about as many aliases, and I had left behind at least two accounts (moved on).

The only reason I even vaguely remember ILOVEYOU &c was there was talk about them.  I didn't read any of them.  If there'd been a Gary-mail, I'm sure it would have been a notorious subject – even without the spreading to offline machines.  The contents would not even matter: Any geek would remember the event.

[pwhodges]

I run spam filters on servers (work and home), and the proportion of mail that gets blocked is still around 50%.  It's hard to quantify precisely, because some is blocked at the point of identifying the IP address of the connecting server and dropping the connection with no message being transmitted at all, while some is only recognised by analysis of the message contents; and of course some will retry and others not.

I wrote a spam filter for use at work for the first time in about 1999; up till then, the anti-virus mail scanner I ran caught a reasonable proportion of the spam anyway (as transmitting viruses was a significant part of its reason for being sent).

The spam filter for this forum blocks an attempt to sign up by a known spammer roughly five times every hour.

[Akima]

I run spam filters on servers (work and home), and the proportion of mail that gets blocked is still around 50%.

Me too, and yes, easily. There is some evidence that overall spam volume has been falling over the past year, but there is still a lot of it about.

Yay! Hanners gets her zipper back! You know, I must be thick or something, but it's only just dawned on me how tall Hanners is. I don't have time for an archive trawl, but she's at least as tall as Marten. And what's wrong with the name Gary anyway?

[Kugai]

I think part of the dropoff in Spam comes fact that some of it may be someone trying what they think is a 'Hot, New Idea' - only to find it thoroughly blocked because someone tried that 10 or so years ago and everybody is protected against it or spots it for what it is.

I also think a lot more people Online are a lot more savvy about it these days than they were back when the 'Net was virtually a Wild West.

[DSL]

Y'all got me to thinkin', it has been a while since I got wind of any Nigerian investment opportunities.
I do remember part of one particularly obnoxious bit of spam from the mid 90s, though (I was on AOL then; don't judge ...) Don't remember what the fellow wanted me to buy, but the spam contained the words: "And if you're thinking of asking to be taken off my mailing list, sorry, no can do. Welcome to the new world of free speech!" Never heard from him again, though.

[Method of Madness]

"Pardon me, my friend, but I am Nigeran royaltie, and I need you to send me money!  Please ignore the fact that I can't spell 'Nigerian'...or 'royalty'."

[Carl-E]

IIRC, there was an actual Nigerian fellow behind a large amount of that spam. 

He was finally caught. 

[Near Lurker]

Yay! Hanners gets her zipper back! You know, I must be thick or something, but it's only just dawned on me how tall Hanners is. I don't have time for an archive trawl, but she's at least as tall as Marten. And what's wrong with the name Gary anyway?

She's tall, but not that tall; she's wearing platform shoes, I think.  She's a little shorter than Marten in the strips where they first meet, although still taller than Faye.

[Is it cold in here?]

Jeph gave definitive word once on the relative heights of the characters, but his answers are scattered over so many places that are hard to search that I shrink from looking.

Oh, so just Google the entire world:

    How tall is Hannelore?

Taller than Faye, about the same height as Marten, shorter than Sven.

[soonerdog]

from QA Dump #14

"I used to think she was the same height as Marten, but lately I feel like she might be a teensy bit taller than him. She’s gangly."

[rje]

I think part of the dropoff in Spam comes fact that some of it may be someone trying what they think is a 'Hot, New Idea' - only to find it thoroughly blocked because someone tried that 10 or so years ago and everybody is protected against it or spots it for what it is.

I also think a lot more people Online are a lot more savvy about it these days than they were back when the 'Net was virtually a Wild West.

Is it weird I kind of miss those days? Everything was all exciting and new and everybody was making godawful geocities pages with animated gif dividers and pages of shitty poetry and all the photos they could cram on a page (entitled gallery 1, gallery 2) and guestbooks. Everybody had guestbooks.  I can't even remember the last time I've seen a guestbook. It was like we were all stumbling around in the dark but we were together goddammit.

(I speak as a layperson with no real computer knowledge who was in high school when AOL was a relatively affordable internet connection - I'm sure many here were doing more amazing things but for me it was all shiny and fantastical lol. DIAL UP.)

[akronnick]

Is it weird I kind of miss those days? Everything was all exciting and new and everybody was making godawful geocities pages with animated gif dividers and pages of shitty poetry and all the photos they could cram on a page (entitled gallery 1, gallery 2) and guestbooks. Everybody had guestbooks.  I can't even remember the last time I've seen a guestbook. It was like we were all stumbling around in the dark but we were together goddammit.

(I speak as a layperson with no real computer knowledge who was in high school when AOL was a relatively affordable internet connection - I'm sure many here were doing more amazing things but for me it was all shiny and fantastical lol. DIAL UP.)

...Men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri...

[Carl-E]

Ancient porn; slightly NSFW

(click to show/hide)

You have no idea  how many of these got printed on the university lab's line printer...

We're talking late 70's, early 80's.  Those  were the days...

[Changed to a link by moderator. The spoiler tag was Carl-E's idea]

[DSL]

My ma still has a file folder of office humor mimeographed and passed around during her days as an office girl in the 1950s.
Good heavens, Ma ...!
Internet's just a newer medium, folks.

[SomeCanadianWeirdo]

As far as Hannelore's height goes I would imagine she slouches a lot given her less than confident personality.

[Skewbrow]

Dammit. Now I am stuck with this bandicoot rating for who know how many posts. I HATE RANDY.

Well there are two solutions. One is to go back to all your old posts and delete them. The other is to madly spam every area of the forums.

Hey! A psychopath in a hockey mask! A marked improvement!

[DSL]

With that hockey mask on, no one will know you're a bandicoot.

[snubnose]

I'm surprised, I was sure Jeph would fix Marigold in the last panel of #2070 (she's not in perspective and thus suddenly a Hulk) ... !

[AnAverageWriter]

I'm surprised, I was sure Jeph would fix Marigold in the last panel of #2070 (she's not in perspective and thus suddenly a Hulk) ... !

Not to mention it also kinda looks like said Hulk is holding a certain "creepy" someone's hand, as well...

[DSL]

I was reading that panel as Marigold walking in front of the group, just that the back curve of her arm lined up with the front curve of Clinton's. It's happened a few other times, most recently where it's looked like Marten and Steve were holding hands ... And with Padma in the same panel, you know she would have said something ...