Strips Archives

James Turner

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You may have noticed that Tuesday’s strip disappeared. We’re having problems with the old blogging system, so we’re going to hold off on posting new comics for a few days. Next week, we should be moving over to the brand new news.oreilly.com site. The production folks are just working out what the templates for the WH should look like. Stay tuned, and I’ll announce when new strips start running.

James

James Turner

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I may not have been physically injured by a loose curly-brace, but I’ve had some code go very strange for the lack of one in the right place…

James Turner

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Something weird happened and we lost this comic for a day or two after it was posted… Sorry folks. Mike Rowe hosts Dirty Jobs and narrates Deadliest Catch.

James Turner

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After torturing Randy with impossible-to-draw scripts for 63 strips, I thought it was only fair to let him vent his frustration…

No idea what comes next, as I’ve been in Austin all week and haven’t gotten next week’s scripts to Randy yet. Luckily, I’ve got 7 hours of plane rides tomorrow to work it out…

James Turner

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It’s always a good day when you can get a Prisoner Reference AND a BSG gag in the same strip….

Tricia Helfer, of course, plays the Baltar-tormenting Cylon, Number 6, in the current BSG.

James Turner

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Am I the only one who wondered why the Robinsons didn’t throw Dr. Smith out the airlock about 3 episodes into Lost in Space? The original Baltar was pretty much the same deal.

James Turner

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For you young whipper-snappers, before Starbuck and Boomer were women and Cylons looked like humans, there was the awesome spectacle that was Original Battlestar Galactica. For those of us who watched the original, massive sighs of relief were made when it became clear that Boxy and the Daggit got thrown out the airlock somewhere early in the first season of the new show.

And Edward James Olmos could kick Lorne Greene’s butt with one hand tied behind his back (and teach him Calculus too!)

James Turner

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Ruby’s safely back at the compound with goodies for all. She knows how much Pearl appreciates vintage computer equipment, and things have calmed down enough between them that she didn’t even make a snide remark about Pearl having been around when the Colossus was first in use, circa WW2…

James Turner

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You’ve heard of fat pipes? Well, meet the XXXL version of the Cat5 patch cable…

James Turner

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Since Microsoft insisted on promoting a document standard that’s joined to Office at the hip, I guess the guys at the CCC thought that OOXML should properly reflect the long, storied tradition of Office. And what would office be without Clippy?

James Turner

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When visiting foreign lands, Ruby can’t resist dropping in on the local Evil Geniuses to check out what’s new in world domination. Ask to see the photos of her ski vacation with Ernst Stavro Blofeld if you ever run into her.

James Turner

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It’s not widely known that Josie of “Josie and the Pussycats” is a big Open Source enthusiast. Alexandra is strictly a Windows gal, of course and Melodie is definitely going to go for a Mac.

James Turner

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If Ruby had looked carefully, she might have been able to see Randy and I waving up at her, as we both live in Derry. But who could resist the allure of such a tasty meal, especially compared to the unidentifiable substance wrapped in plastic that most folks get in coach these days?

James Turner

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What, you may be wondering, could possibly set off a metal detector on a naked Jackel? Well, you see, Ruby went through a rebellious phase in her youth, and .there was this piercing shop…

James Turner

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Ubuntu has already chosen the ‘I’ animal: Intrepid Ibex. If you look at the scorecard to date, we have yet to see a scavenger, and only one carnivore (the badger.) You kind of get the feeling that the Canonical crew are avoiding ‘mean’ animals and concentrating on the cuddly ones.

James Turner

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Hard to believe that a year has gone by since we launched this little venture. It’s always a high point in the week when I get the next batch of strips from Randy, and writing the scripts has been a real joy. I hope you all have enjoyed reading the strip half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it!

James Turner

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Actually, Manuel just wants Google to think he’s working for them, he’s really working for Apple. Colonel Flagg would be proud!

James Turner

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Welcome to our new Thursday edition of The Watering Hole, now available twice a week!

James Turner

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Microsoft Kool-Aid comes in two flavors, Blue Screen of Death Berry and Rootkit Red Punch

James Turner

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This is our first view of Camp Ballmer, the portion of the O’Reilly compound where all the animals for the Microsoft books live. Looks like one of the happy citizens is trying to defect, though…

James Turner

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Pamela Jones (or PJ as we like to call her) has faithfully chronicled the ups and downs of the SCO campaigns from pretty much day one, and taken a lot of unwarranted and abusive flack for it. If you don’t read Groklaw, you’re missing some outstanding legal analysis of not only SCO & friends, but many other legal cases of interest to ‘the community’.

James Turner

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Let’s be honest, investing in SCO is just about as insane as dropping an infusion of cash into a well-known energy company depicted above.

James Turner

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Illuminati is one of the stranger ‘card-type’ games I ever had the pleasure to play. It is definitely the only game where you’ll hear a phrase like “The Bavarian Illuminati, aided by the Boy Sprouts, will attempt to take over the CIA…

James Turner

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Ah, nothing like the classics. For those of you that don’t get the reference, a guy works at the circus cleaning up after the elephants. One day, a friend comes and tells him he has found him a great desk job in the city, good pay and easy work. “What,” the man replies, “and give up show business?”

James Turner

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Unsolicited manuscripts are also known (somewhat) fondly by editors as The Slush Pile, especially fiction editors. A favorite pastime of editors is to trade around some of the more incredibly bad submissions they receive. This is done more out of a sense of sanity self-preservation then malice, going through the slush pile is thankless work.

This gag originally was going to run as Gwen’s introduction way back when, with Gwen as the poop scooper. It was decided by wiser heads that our first female lead character shouldn’t be introduced shoveling excrement, and so we bumped her a few notches up the food chain to marketing. In hindsight, it was absolutely the right decision, but the gag was worth recycling. Sometime, I’ll stick some of Randy’s concept art of Gwen as lowly intern up on the voting incentive…

James Turner

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One of the interesting results of the Linux kernel staying with GPLv2 is that it is unclear how distributions will be able to package up GPLv3 software moving forward. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe it’ll be a mess. Computers probably won’t explode, but stranger things have happened…

James Turner