What's actually wrong with xkcd?

Upon rereading, I find it easy to agree that xkcd usually sucks and that it's often only good for the odd few times where Randall really nails it and makes some sort of good point (pic related is one such example), but generally speaking, why does it suck?

All that comes to my mind is that it isn't funny, which isn't so bad because I often don't think that it's even trying to be funny, and that Randall often senselessly expects you to get whatever references he's making, which is a point that I can't as easily forgive.

randall is a moron with the ego of a genious who is perpetually stuck in the early 2000s online atheist movement because thats the last time he felt any sorth of fufillment
He doesnt have any actual insight you cant get by watching the last trendy flick with some popcorn and a little bit of booze, why dont they allow drinking at the movies?

/thread

>ego of a genious
I disagree. Heck, most of the Cueball comics are nothing but Randall demonstrating that he is aware that he is a creature of pure autism.

>He doesnt have any actual insight you cant get by watching the last trendy flick with some popcorn and a little bit of booze
Totally disagree. Are you from Sup Forums or something? You must be watching much better movies than what I've been.

Risk management

XKCD is an actually solid comic that is misinterpreted by people who don't understand it and assume it's simpler minded than it is.

>Heck, most of the Cueball comics are nothing but Randall demonstrating that he is aware that he is a creature of pure autism.

Yes, it's this self awareness that comes across as being honest, but which people take to be him gloating about his perceived superiority instead.

>Randall often senselessly expects you to get whatever references he's making
Yes, he expects the reader to be educated in STEM. If you aren't than it's not aimed specifically at you.

>Yes, he expects the reader to be educated in STEM. If you aren't than it's not aimed specifically at you.
I knew that I should've brought this up in the OP. Even despite being in the third year of my maths degree, I still don't think much of xkcd.

The dudes a 100% pretentious cunt and this comes across in XKCD. The only comics with any merit are the ones using objective fact(s) and even then not all of them, anything subjective shows just how much of an asshole he really is.

You are giving him way WAY too much credit.

Even stupid people are allowed to pay their way through school

Wtf is DRM and when does it ever get in the way?
I don't ever remember having trouble getting a song from iTunes and putting it on another mp3 player

What's the actual technical difference in a file that's with DRM and not and what does it even do?

Or make webcomics.

fpbp

Data Rights Management, look it up.

How new are you?

It's not like CDs and books are still a thing. Why do neckbeards want to justify piracy? I don't advocate for eradicating it, imo it will always happen. But you don't have a right to own stuff you filthy commies.

He has no sense of comedic timing. There's usually some good joke in his strip, but it's buried beneath tons of unneccessary exposition, misplaced setups and other garbage.

I know what it is
>A digital rights management policy will usually embed code within these digital media to prevent copying.
I'm saying that has never worked for me

What actually happens if you try to copy? Is it encrypted?
I definitely don't buy digital copies of games and that's the only media with DRM that anyone gets a fit about on Sup Forums

Comes in a lot of different flavours. Some are fairly benign, like Steam - with Steam, should Valve suddenly vanish from the face of the earth, a lot of people would have lot access to games they had legally paid for. But that's unlikely to happen and Steam is really chill about letting you move computers or even accounts.
Some is more extreme - you get one (1) copy. If your computer should die tomorrow, tough luck. You are not legally allowed to copy the program that you legally paid for to another computer. This sort of thing you usually need to register online before you can use it (Microsoft Windows).

In a lot of cases, you don't actually own the thing you bought. You're essentially just leasing it.

A webcomic about love.

>Buy a book
>House burns down, taking book with it
>Company doesn't send me a free book to replace it
Fucking physical DRM.

>physicall DRM
>Not PRM
Embarrassing.

If you bought something, you definitely have the right to own the thing you bought.

Now a days its more like a lease with a 1 time fee. That's why you should read the terms and conditions.

>he thinks companies care about consumer rights

>why dont they allow drinking at the movies?
They do. What kind of lame theaters do you go to? All the theaters around me, including major chains like Regal, serve beer and wine after 5 PM.

Holy shit. Where do you live!?

Oregon? I thought this was normal.

I've never seen that anywhere. There are theaters that sell liquor near me, but those are very special places. Chain theaters like Regal or AMC? Fuck no.

>It is now communist to think that a person should have ownership over the thing they bought with their money that they worked to earn
Wew lad

DIfferent user, just outside of Boston here. Big chain theaters won't because you need a liquor license and MA has weird laws, but the smaller or indie theaters always have a bar in the lobby.

Well, you can walk into a movie theater in Amsterdam and buy a beer. And I don't mean just like in no paper cup, I'm talking about a glass of beer. And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald's. And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

> Implying that the cost of distributing a file is remotely comparable with that of an actual book

Fuck off with your strawman argument user, that's not even the scenario most of us are complaining about. The real issues with drm look more like

> Buy a book
> Would like to lend the book you paid full price for to a friend
> Fuck you, magic robot inside the book holds it shut unless it's you reading it

Another one looks something like

> Want to buy a book
> wtf I have to "subscribe" for a monthly fee!?
> Turns out the subscription fee is so that book automatically updates to new editions
> Not really interested in new editions, but whatever buy subscription anyways
> Wait until subscription costs exceed the cost of the actual book because I'm a moralfag
> Cancel subscription
> Book self-destructs
> FUCK

DRM needs to die

>And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
رويال مع الجبن ?

Are DRMs still a thing? I haven't really seen these on anything but ebooks lately.

You should look up in the EULA to see what you actually bought. Because it's not what you think you bought. What you pay for when you buy software, any kind of software including games, regardless of what media it is purchased on or through, is a limited license to use that software, not the software per se.

When you buy Windows on a CD you don't own a copy of windows, you own a CD that gives you a license to use a specific version windows on a single machine. That is what you paid for. Similarly when you buy a video game you do not own the game, the game and all its intellectual property belong their respective copyright holders. What you own is a license to play that game on approved platforms.

Because of the nature of software, if you want to sell it as a consumable product it has to be leased to customers. You cannot "sell" the software itself without losing the rights to the source code, if you want proprietary rights to it and to continue making money off it, you have to lease it.

>Not just sharing the account and password with your friend so the robot will open up
>Subscribing to a monthly fee for just one book

It's like you want me to call you stupid

No one is forcing you to buy DRM things friend. In the examples given, you can still buy CDs and books, some audiobooks also have physical CDs. The only DRM thing only I know are Steam-only games. That's why you should support free DRM stores, instead of being a little bitch and torrenting them.

>you can still buy CDs
Which are copyright protected and have DRM.

if they served hrd licuor at the theater i would probably never leave
nowdays that movies keep failing and cinemas go out of buisness is downright moronic not to do it
you can get away with overcharging, hell once people are drunk enough they will pay for your expensive mark up candy you have to sell to stay afloat

A math degree isn't a easy one, speaking as someone who knew a few who pursued that path. And it's literally the M in STEM.

Most STEMlords either didn't study it, or ended up dropping out and getting a degree in business administration.

Nobody cares if you're right if you're gonna be smug about it.

It's still very much a thing, but I think the video game industry is moving away from older models of it. Very slowly. Basically they have begun to realize what was obvious to everyone else 10 years ago: it is impossible to make un-crackable DRM. If you want players to be able to access the game at all, you need to have holes in your security, and pirates will eventually use those to bust the game wide open. It's just a matter of time. And the worst part is that people who legally purchased your game are stuck with the obnoxious DRM forever while pirates don't have to deal with it. DRM ultimately only punishes paying customers.

So what they've started doing is stopped trying to make "uncrackable" DRM and just use DRM that can delay the crack for about 1 month. Because most video game sales happen the first month after it is released. So they decided if the reality is they can't stop the crack they should just delay it for as much as is reasonable. And that's why Denuvo is a thing. They specialize in making hard-to-crack DRM that has pretty successfully delayed game cracks for up to 1 month or even longer.

>Which are copyright protected
What? Of course they are, do you think because you payed 2 dollars you now own the rights of a song?
DRM that prevents you from accessing the content without their proprietary hardware, or while offline are the problem. Not DRM that prevents you from making copies.

They serve wine and beer by the glass here. They have the bottles of wine on a rack behind the counter.

I support Steam because it is superior while nonDRM stores rely on people like you to try to shame consumers into supporting them like a true bitch

Free market is a jungle

>Not DRM that prevents you from making copies.
Go pick your favorite legally purchased music CD and try to copy the files off of it. You can't. You need burning software to pierce the DRM

...

I mean, you do own the CD. You're free to sell that if you want.

>do you think because you paid* 2 dollars you now own the rights of a song?
I think I own the right to listen to it as many times as I want for as long as I want.

I like Steam too, and my point is that if you don't like DRM the Free market has an option for you already. You don't have to download shit for free like a leech.

Yes, and? Why would you need to make a copy? You bought just one.

>Yes, and?
You just claimed CDs don't have DRM that prevents you from making copies, that's what. It's patently obvious you've never even tried copying a music CD before.

>Yes, he expects the reader to be educated in STEM.

>You have to be a STEMfag to understand ball pits

>i dont like music
was this written by a computer software of some sorth?

I get the impression that Randall makes these comics only because no one pays attention to him in YT comment sections.

Are you an idiot or just don't know what copyright means?
>Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution.
If you buy something you don't now have rights to distribute it or use it as your own. Of course here is where fair use enters.

Enjoy your ban.

Fuck, are you being obtuse on purpose? Go back to OP. Randall and all the other 'I have a right to pirate shit' crow argue that because something is DRM locked someday you will be unable to access it because of technology changes or the distributor just stops working. Nothing to do with copying.
CDs work offline, even if the company who sold it to you goes out of business you can still have your collection because CDs are pretty standardised technology even now (and even when they stop, you really should have kept a CD player with your CD collection). So pirating because you feel like you don't own what you payed for is retarded, there are still ways you can own what you paid for.

It's not really about DRM, it's about whether you can download it. Believe me, if the world suddenly exploded and the only backup copies of media we had were DRM locked DVDs, Steam games, proprietary Ebooks and Spotify backups, we would manage just fine. Someone would reverse engineer the format and defeat the protection in about 3-4 months, assuming backups of the existing ways to do so weren't also available for some reason.

If you're worried about the apocalypse, get yourself MakeMKV, ffmpeg, a cracked Steam DLL, an Ebook decryptor, Despotify, AAXtoMP3 and whatever the fuck else you need, put them on a USB stick and you'll be fine.

I'm talking about consuming the product I bought, not repackaging it under a different label label and selling it as if it were my own, you dumbass.

I mean, if we want things to be fair, then companies shouldn't use the money I gave them in exchange for their product. They should have to ask for my permission every time they want to spend an amount equal to what I paid for said product.

>Someone would reverse engineer the format and defeat the protection in about 3-4 months
And then the companies would either have the guy arrested or hired. The former happened to the Pirate Bay people, the latter happened to moot.

And I guess that's why there are no more crack groups working today. They've all been arrested or hired.

Yeah, I don't think you'll have to worry about MPAA death squads if you're trying to archive media in a post-apocalyptic scenario or 200 years in the future. The worst case scenario would be some music/movie/book/whatever only being available in a no longer supported DRM format and the people owning it refusing to release it in a new one. In which case I don't think uploading the decryption program on the Pirate Bay next to the file itself is going to add an extra 50 years to your nonexistent sentence.

>comparing moronic weeaboo loser to actual software crackers

Account sharing is against like 90% of TOSs, maybe you'd like to read one sometime?

As for the book thing, your response only confirms you weren't born with enough brain cells to understand analogy

or you could just buy it on CD

user, who do you think companies hire into their department for software security, if not the hackers that broke into it in the first place? It's just like Vegas hiring successful cheaters to spy on the other cheaters.

that's some brilliant bait, user.

>that is misinterpreted by people who don't understand it and assume it's simpler minded than it is.
>Yes, he expects the reader to be educated in STEM.

Top tier.

>TFW no one ever believes me when I say I don't like music

...

It exists in Ohio, AMC has a bar and marcus, another chain, usually does too

...

No, seriously. Is this some inside joke?

He's standing on a glacier.

But how do those two things connect? I have to believe there's some kind of tenuous strand of logic (however stupid) connecting glaciers to DRM, but I can't think of it and it's driving me mad.

The connection is his threat to crush them with the glacier.

...

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is better imo

Wiener does tell some good dad jokes.

It's just lowest common denominator "relatable" shit with %500 more smug pseudointellectualism.

If you go through many XKCD "comics" you find

Many don't have jokes of any sort
What passes for a joke is sometimes just a reference(References aren't jokes)
Graphs aren't jokes either
If an opinion is presented, it is condescending
TOO MANY WORDS
The same "jokes" are repeated over and over. You could make an XKCD joke generator by parsing conversations about Roombas, Planets, and random graphs and stitching them together.
Art is shit

The comic is given a pass because of its obscurity. This is funny to me because I get all of the XKCD "jokes", I simply don't find them funny. A bad joke about Topology is just a particular flavor of bad joke. It doesn't get a pass because it's about something obscure.

His preachiness was acceptable when we agreed with him, but now that he's gone SJW, it's become grating.

>randall is perpetually stuck in a time his beliefs were confirmed
>Sup Forums is perpetually stuck in a time thEY GOT TURNED INTO A PICKLEEEEEE!

It all makes horrid, horrid sense now.

Um, hey. Hi.

We're kind of...

oooooh... how should i put this?

Showing? You? The proverbial door? And we don't have to tolerate hatespeech on our comics and cartoon board?

Ouch. oh geez (rick) try not to let the door hit you on our ass on ur way out maybe???

He needs to shut the fuck up about politics.

Like a lot of entertainers today.

That's about it.

He is an entertainer in the same way that a SJW is a gentleman.

Pretty much this. I didn't get why people hated xkcd but after the free speech and Hillary strips, I went "oh yeah that's why".

Nobody is talking about buying the whole property you crony capitalist faggot. What people want is strict enforcement of the first-sale doctrine for ALL media, physical or digital.

He's a NASA engineer.

In 2017?

yes, and?
being a nasa engenieer doesnt make you an expert on politics or biology or social interactions for that matter
if anything it just means he devoided a lot of time to one field of knowledge in particular
i wouldnt ask my psychatrist to take a look at thar rash i got in my balls, would you?

One of the most incompetent meme "artists" works for one of the most incompetent meme organizations? Yeah I believe it.

NASA sucks. Working for it is about as prestigious as working for the DMV.

Are you all actually fucking autistic? It's obviously a climate change joke.

I would just to show xir my balls. That would make me laugh like mr.burns in that clip you dont know about since you came here for reddit and memey discussion lol

Climate change is a joke.

Yeah, exactly. Makes me wonder if we sound the same way to people who disagree with us.

After the free speech one I just stopped reading. Showed him to the door, if you will.

>i wouldnt ask my psychatrist to take a look at thar rash i got in my balls, would you?

Psychatrists are MDs, so if you're already seeing one, you might as well.

Did you miss keys while typing since you posted something so HRC-like or are you just that dumb?

sorry, i forgot that people who know math know literally everything randall
you should be a character in the big bang theory, thats where al the smarty folk go ha hya

So what's his personal life like? For a guy that considers himself a witty humorist whose observations and opinions are good enough to share with the world he's bound to have his life together.

How's his kids?

How's his wife?