Grrl Power #770 – Reactions are… mixed
I would watch Most Extreme News Network. I’m assuming the format is them mentioning a top level piece of news, basically just the headline. Nothing in depth. Then they make a bunch of bad puns and tangentially related goofy comments.
I’m not 100% sure that what Suzie is saying totally makes sense, but I figure her exuberance is part of her charm.
Deus not knowing how to use PowerPoint is a lot funnier to me than it should be, just because he’s supposed to be pretty smart, and PowerPoint is some basic ass software.
Thinking about exporting our entertainment to the universe, pornographic or otherwise, I’ve come to the conclusion that it would radically change the economy of Earth. Imagine if someone made a movie here on Earth that cost $200 million to make, and after international ticket sales were accounted for, it nets a billion dollars. Now imagine that there are 5,000 other worlds the studio could sell that movie to. So, okay, let’s be conservative and say only 1,000 of those worlds really do gangbuster sales, because we’re talking about aliens and The Titanic, or Avatar, or Airplane III may not land culturally with every species. So 1,000 new worlds of audiences with comparable populations and desire for entertainment, etc.
That would be a trillion dollars in revenue… okay, minus a few bucks for advertising. But still, that’s one movie. Studios with 80 years of back catalog would become economic superpowers with more clout that all the world governments combined, and it would happen practically overnight.
Independent authors could knock out a book, what, it only sold 1,000 copies on Amazon? Guess what, it sold one million copies on Galamazon, and at $2.50 net revenue per copy, they’d be set for life. And that’s for a book that sold pretty poorly by local standards. Stephen King would be able to buy Saudi Arabia just to use as a place to keep all the rest of his money.
Seriously, if the galactic appetite for human porn was at that same level, every webcam girl would be able to retire comfortably after six months of weekly shows.
I’m telling you, the world economy would shift dramatically and rapidly. Of course, we’d probably have a massive trade deficit for a while. Even if we couldn’t get our hands on the latest portable holodeck gameboy gadgets and other sorts of tech, our own consumption of alien media would be completely nuts for decades to come. I mean, imagine if there was a show like Red Dwarf or Star Trek that were literal documentaries because spaceships were fucking real. Ice Road Truckers, except its… well, Planet Express.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Is Deus wearing a set of Infinity Cufflinks?
Yes.
Dang… now I need to go back and check if he’s had them before…
Oh wow, he totally is!
Only one is a cufflink. The other five are buttons on his jacket.
so real talk… As an IT guy, I empathize with Vale so hard
Another one that I heard …
Customer: “My automatic coffee cup holder on my computer broke off … how do I get another one?”
Tech: “Automatic coffee cup holder??? Was this something that was given to you with your purchase?”
C: “No … it was part of the computer … It broke off and spilled coffee everywhere … but I don’t care about that … I want a replacement holder?”
T: “Could you describe it to me please …”
C: ” … It’s an automatic coffee cup holder … it has a button that you push and it moves in and out of the computer case … ”
T: ” … are there any markings on it?”
C: “I say 16x on the front of the holder …”
T: ” … … … … Give me a minute (holding back laugher) … I need to check with my supervisor …”
C: “Okay … just as long as I get another automatic coffee cup holder …”
I used to think that was only an urban legend, until I started working in an IT support related field.
I’d actually encountered that legend before I heard it as an urban legend, but it never made sense to me, until a friend found online some accident-resistant mugs. She’s not a coffee drinker, but they are marketted as coffee mugs. Prior to encountering those mugs, I’d always thought the hole in the CD tray would be large enough for any coffee mug to fit through, but these mugs have a base nearly as big around as a CD, so it’s like a perfect fit.
That having been said, those mugs have a much higher capacity than normal mugs, and I can’t understand how it is these people don’t realize that the “coffee mug holder” is *way* too flimsy to plausibly be a coffee mug holder.
These are the same people who, after doing a task every week for years, completely forget every step of it because the menus changed so the first step is slightly different.
Believe me. Most of these IT urban legends are based in truth.
During my IT career a few of the things I had to deal with included:
* floppy disks stapled to papers
* engraving pens used to engrave ownership marking onto CDs
* operating system files deleted because nobody ever used those files
* user taking needle nosed pliers to his floppy drive because he saw some wires in there he didn’t think belonged there
* a shop supervisor that insisted she needed access to the supervisor (the main admin) account on a NetWare network because she was a supervisor
* janitors crashing mainframes because they randomly flipped breakers trying to reset the line their floor buffers overloaded.
* a manager who thought that it was a good idea to demonstrate how failsafe our network storage was by pulling multiple drives out of a RAID array at the same time
Let us not forget the floppy disk stuck to the fridge with a magnet, and a helpful note that says, “Is this yours? Found it in the server room!”
(Back in the day when floppy disks were 8″) Customer has two sites, and a backup is taken at one and shipped to the secondary for mirroring updates (yeah, I know, sneakernet, or better stated FedExNet. This was way early internet). This works fine for a long while, then begins to fail. No diagnostics or testing can find the reason. After weeks of frustration, we follow the process from start to finish. It ends with the disk in a mainer pouch being handed to the front desk secretary, who picks up this huge magnet from her desk and pins it to the file cabinet next to her. She’d received it as a gift right when the issue started manifesting…
Building maintenance staff needs to do some drilling in the server room. I’m escorting them in as they do not have the correct magcards. They need a power outlet. This is an ISP, and we have large hunt groups of modem servers (again, fairly early internet) so I tell them they can unplug the last server in the hunt group which will not have any customers on it (well, if someone was on their 17th of 18 hours of downloading some huge file that they initiated after logging during peak hours, I’ve just screwed them, but yeah). Before I can stop him he plugs it into a free nearby outlet… I said he could unplug it, not plug it back in. The outlet banks were different capacity, and the modem servers were the higher draw. Blew the breaker and took down a fairly important server… I issue a new SOP – Any maintenance work in the server room uses extension cords and plugs in outside the server room.
How about: Cleaning personnel crashing servers by unplugging the power to get power for their vacuum cleaner…
I think they were using coffee mugs small enough to fit neatly in the indentation (originally designed for those Mini CD’s), or with a little rim on the base that fit. Bigger coffee mugs are a fairly recent phenomenon. Every DC and DVD drive I’ve used, the hole has been fairly small.
First job out of college, many years ago in a galaxy far, far away, I worked customer support for America Online.
Nothing users do can surprise me anymore.
It’s not an urban legend. I’ve seen it happen as well. :)
Just about every urban legend about “stupid user tricks” are real, but that coffee cup holder I’ve never known anyone to actually encounter, other than someone making a joke.
On the other hand, you have no idea how common it is for people to turn off the power, and be surprised that a scheduled event didn’t happen when the computer was off…
Also, when faxing was still a thing, the number of people that kept trying to fax stuff by holding it up to their monitor or trying to slide it into or under the keyboard is just astounding!
There’s a ton more where that came from, and I think it would shock most people.
I’ve been told I should write a book about it. The title would probably be, “And they call us geeks”
Don’t ask about the guy I was trying to get to right click on the icon so we could get to it’s properties. After around 15 minutes we finally got to what the problem was, instead of doing a right click, he was typing “right click”….
We often refereed to these kinds of things in our private notes as “PLBKaC issues”.
That means Problem Lays Between Keyboard and Chair.
Got a second one later when one guy figured out it was him doing something rather wrong, and he told me it was an Eye Dee Ten Tea Error. It had been a long day, and I didn’t immediately get it, so he said, “Write it out”.
Soon as I saw “ID10T” it was obvious.
Oh yes, a final note on this. Do NOT lie to tech support. They don’t give a rodents donkey about your adulterous emails or your porn collection, but lying to them might cause you to lose the entire contents of your computer. Usually not that bad, but something will usually be F’d up if you lie. They’re the surgeon, but you’re their hands and eyes. You tell them something that’s not correct, and it’s bound to have repercussions. Also, don’t try to second guess them, they are the experts on their software, and even if it seems pointless to you, they are doing it for a specific reason.
Lastly, when talking to techs, get to the frigging issue! They have a lot of people to help, and every minute you waste, is an extra minute for EVERYONE ELSE in line. Who then gets upset over the delays, and wastes more time, and it just snowballs into horrible wait times and awful days for everyone.
Ok, that’s enough babble on that subject. Thanks for reading my pointless post. :)
A classic that was supposed to be along the lines of an urban legend – sadly not.
The accelerator pedal doesn’t work – mouse on the floor
Mouse doesn’t work – still in plastic wrap. They didn’t want it to get dirty.
Mouse doesn’t work – someone didn’t like them and put a sticky tab over the laser window
“Any Key” – hit any key? but there is no any key! – yes this STILL happens.
The terminal is dead! Power switch? What power switch? It’s always on. – Original PCs, big red toggle on side labelled Power. Annoyingly this included my sister the executive secretary.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do – I.A.
I worked IT for several years. while I wasn’t the most technically proficient tech I was the most patient. had an old man call us up. he was transferred to me as I could speak “old folks”. his mouse wasn’t working. I went through all the steps, eventually, I uninstalled and reinstalled his mouse drivers…still wasn’t working. this was back in the old Windows 98 2nd edition days, his mouse wasn’t working…did it all with keyboard commands. I’m just about to flatten the machine and reinstall the OS. we had been on the phone for well over an hour and I had learned quite a bit about the old man. He was a pilot, flew Mustangs over the beach in Normandy during WWII, He was tickled to death about these new-fangled computers and was looking forward to using his new one. I got to thinking and I asked him how he was holding his mouse, what happened to his cursor when he pulled the mouse toward him? He said it went to the top of the screen. used to flying planes he had the mouse turned around. we laughed and had a quick class on how to use a mouse.
mine was from the 90’s, so some may not know what I’m talking about these days…
had a home ISP my dad ran, I had to do the tech support during the day as he worked night shifts at the time.
had one older guy in our neighborhood trying to install it, and had called us up because it wouldn’t take the second disk of the five disk install.
tried getting him to describe what was happening, he said that he was following the instructions and it wasn’t seeing any of the other disks.
I thought it was odd, but maybe the disks were corrupted, not uncommon with old floppies. I offered to run him another set and help him install it (it was one street over, this like I said, neighborhood ISP) he accepted, grabbed my bike and I was off
when I got there, and I see the comp asking for the next disk, I check the computer…i couldn’t eject the disk, it’s like it was jammed.
turns out, when it said ‘insert disk 2’, he did…he just didn’t eject the first disk. he had forced disks 2 AND 3, into the floppy drive and had destroyed the drive in the process, he wasn’t happy when I explained it to him, didn’t beelve me and kicked me out.
reason he didn’t believe me? I was 12.
I guess that was before the old folks realized all the 12 year olds knew computers better than anyone else!
IT isn’t the only field with stupid customers. I worked in the CC industry.
Customer calls in.
“I know my credit limit is 4000 dollars.”
“Ok.”
“I’ve spent 2000 dollars.”
“Ok.”
“How much do I have available?”
Instant face palm. Had that call in the first week in the call center.
The job I was doing when I was killed was Windows support for a major manufacturer. I got stuck with instructing people how to manually remove trojans/viruses after they opened an infected e-mail (Win98se and Me) because I was one of those diligent people who followed through and did all the steps.
I work at a Chemical Plant, and one of the plant control areas was a little one-room brick building with a window air conditioner. They reported the computer was making odd noises and would shut down. I get there to find the problem was that the computer had three mice –and two of them were happily living inside the space where the CDROM in the tower would go. When I wrote up the trouble ticket it was “Uninstalled extra mice and rebooted. Recommend putting covers on open card bays back on.” The field mice coming in can fit through the width of a PC car slot… Thankfully that was years ago and now I am a DBA, so I only have to watch for digital ‘mice’ chewing in the data.
Earth would have to get on whatever currency the galaxy uses for interstellar trade before profiting on selling their entertainment. Assuming the galactic citizens even bother respecting Earth copyright laws.
Why would the respect Earth’s copyright laws?
They are bogus, and if they were TRULY obeyed, then Nature Itself could sue EVERYONE’s asses off.
They probably are already torrenting the latest movies as we speak, or even more likely, copy directly from any streaming service.
Bogus? No.
Anyone who’s creative knows why copyright matters. And curses the little shits who create nothing, but feel entitled to steal their stuff online, and leave them broke.
Unenforceable on line? Probably yes.
Little shits wouldn’t steal a copy of my work from a store. But they have no problem stealing it online. And boasting about it.
I feel like there’s a difference between “copyright laws are bogus” and “copyright shouldn’t exists and I’m entitled to everything for free” that you’re ignoring here.
I think the part he’s ignoring is ‘fair use doctrine’ :) It’s enforceable online also btw Mike.
Btw legal educational lesson. Fair Use Doctrine is the exception to copyrights. A ‘fair use’ is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon (ie, movie reviews, Youtube commentary), criticize (ie, also movie reviews, Youtube commentary), or parody (ie, Weird Al Yankovic songs) a copyrighted work, or for purely educational, non-profit purposes. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. Otherwise, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Disney did some shenanigans to keep extending the copyright of its characters like Mickey Mouse, but that just ended and they can’t get any more extensions now (Mickey Mouse’s copyright will end in 2023 – normally it should have ended in 1984 (back when Mickey Mouse was created, the copyright protection under the 1909 Copyright laws was for 56 years, not the life of the author + 70 years, although a 1976 law changed the protection from 56 years to 75 years for already-published works at the time).
Fun Fact: While Weird Al does not need artist approval, he always gets it first. There was a case (White & Nerdy) where approval was pulled after the video was created. (Al’s a good guy, not a pushover.)
Not Fun Fact: Disney, et. al. have repeatedly gotten the law changed to extend copyright. The Mouse will NEVER be free. Yes, it’s a violation of the US Constitution. You new here?
I remember the artist getting SUPA pissed about Amish Paradise but I’m just wondering how much of a hypocrite can rappers be when so many regular songs are redone as rap songs… but rap songs are somehow supposed to be off limits?
Actually the method that Disney was using to keep extending Mickey Mouse’s copyright is no longer able to be used, so by 2023…. Mickey Mouse will be public domain. The mouse will finally be free :).
No, I’m not new here. And I am, in fact, an attorney that specializes in intellectual property law – copyrights, trademarks, and patents :).
With Weird Al, he’s a good guy to get the permission first, but honestly, like you said, he does not need permission at all. His songs are parodies, and parodies clearly fall under Fair Use, and are significantly different enough to be considered transformative works.
Heh, Disney so very much wants the right, or at least access, to The Wizard of Oz. But in a twist of irony, guess who it was who pushed for the extensions of copyright? One guess only.
:)
I’m well aware of copyright law – I used to be a practicing lawyer.
On the face of it, Catelf’s comment is not pointing to fair use issues. My response is not either.
The worst part about fair use is that too many companies tend to ignore it. In fact many companies use copyright strikes on youtube as a weapon to silence people who disagree with them. Outside the US its even worse as there are countries that ignore the very idea of intellectual property.
Yes. Especially with how Article 13 has now passed in the EU, that makes a mockery of fair use and weaponizes copyrights to an insane degree that will ruin what made the internet useful for disseminating news and information in the first place.
Or be yet one more overreach by Brussels which kills the golden goose and leads to the dissolution of the EU.
If you only get a dozen or so visitors a day in your store, then it’s okay to think that theft is so rare it almost doesn’t happen, but when you scale it up to millions, or more….
On a related note to this and the comic, I’m actually wondering why they haven’t hired a security guard for the comic shop yet.
We don’t know that they haven’t. We haven’t seen Sydney visit the store since she got back from the Alari war.
That sort of thing is usually done as a reactive measure, not prophylactic. Unless there is trouble at the store, constant non-customers flooding the place, etc. then why pick up the expense? Shops like that typically have low margins as it is, and this is true for Sydney and Joel’s shop, so unless Sydney’s notoriety is bringing in much more business they probably can’t afford a security guard.
They might respect the copyright laws of a planet which is able to repel and defeat a Fel super battleship with only a few Earth soldiers, actually :)
Not to mention it’s a disincentive to making new material if they breach the copyright laws too much :)
Forget exchange rates and move them to our currency.
Which they can probably print easily. Their own currency is probably more secure or based on coins of a high value material so copying them won’t have any benefit.
It would be easier for them to infiltrate our preFTL tech electronic credit system and create electronic money.
Yeah interstellar copyright would be a hairy beast to negotiate. Likely not workable — look at China for example.
Probably a better model would be what most web-comickers do: Give it away for free but then sell related physical items and ask for patronage.
(Because after all the biggest problem most artists face is obscurity, and joining such a massively huge trading culture would be an even bigger challenge.)
I wonder what an interstellar Patreon would look like?
You need to schedule a meeting with Arianna to set up a marketing plan for Archon action figures off world.
Another factor in trade is relative scarcity of an item. I remember a short story about Earth first contact with a visiting species. They both sent a low level functionary to a side room to set up times and dates for formal meetings. When they got out their notebooks the Earth diplomat said “Is that pen maid out of DIAMOND?” His opposite said “Is that pencil made out of WOOD?”. They both suggested a trade and thought they got the better of the deal.
Hey, it’s Kenny Blankenship and Vic Romano! I always wondered what those two were up to these days.
Is Vale a daughter (or wife) of Deus? A lot of tech-savvy people scream the same things in their minds, but relatives are more likely to say it out loud.
I’m pretty sure Deus is human, and Vale is some sort of miasma of darkness and eyes wearing a person suit. I’m not ruling out a father/daughter relationship, considering the number and types of alien/extra-dimensional women Deus has slept with, but it seems unlikely.
I really hope it’s not that type of relationship, not with her watching him sleep with some of those women.
Good point. However, wife (or sister) is not out of question.
This if course begs the question: Has Deus slept with one of Vale’s species? And if she’s the only one around…
No. She is a lovecraftian creature in a human skin suit.
Which doesn’t mean she wasn’t human before.
She watches Teen Titans Go.
I tell ya, she ain’t human.
Teen Titans Go is a fine show… if you’ve never heard of the first Teen Titans show.
It’s a goofy, light-hearted chibi type show which is fine except when you’re wanting something deep and well written like other DC animated shows.
She was watching Teen Titans Go to the Movies, not just Teen Titans Go. It’s forgivable.
KYOOOOT!!!! Like Acacia (the blonde one) + read forward…
But Dave, we already have a show that documents space travel.
Galaxy Quest.
I dont think it would happen overnight with entertainment going super rich. Because the easiest way to get media is to pirate it, and theoretically an alien computer work could take every movie ever held on a PC in an hour
I would argue that. The majority of piracy is a service problem, not an intrinsic one.
It depends a lot on the legal ways to get said media. Look at PC games, where the introduction of online platforms as steam has almost eradicated piracy of the majority of games.
Pirates have up’d their game. NOW they steal credit cards – buy tons of game codes – sell the game codes cheap… and then the game devs (usually indy devs) have to refund the original game price, the charge-back fee on the stolen credit card AND provide free tech support to the person who bought the cheep game code!
Even if their computers are faster than ours, they can only download files as fast as the slowest connection. They could have internet equivalents of terrabits / second but if the slowest connection between them and the file they want is only running at 150 megabits / second, that’s how fast the download will go.
Also, their software would need to be compatible with our software, and they’d need software to play the video files. Stronger computer doesn’t preclude compatibility issues. It can reduce them because you could more easily run a virtual machine, but it won’t eliminate them.
You’d really think Deus would use something a bit more modern than old fashioned PPT. PPTX has been around for years now.
Isn’t that part of the joke?
Isn’t this story still happening some years ago anyway, as a flashback before the date at which it began to be posted here?
I’d think he’d make it in Microsoft Project, which is software made for project and timetable planning. In which case, it’d be .PRJ.
https://i.imgur.com/U7Ghu2s.gif
The markets wouldn’t go crazy because of aliens being scared little sheep. It’d be going crazy because hundreds of thousands of people would be going “SUPERS! AHHHH! ALIENS! AHHHH! HOW DO I MAKE MONEY OFF THIS?!” Seriously. That teleporter girl could write her ticket for Amazon, simply by being a mascot. ‘Forget next day delivery. Amazon delivers NOW.’ Amazon stock up 5%. News that an ‘infomancer can access, change, and delete data in their sleep?’ Alphabet stocks tank. Oddly, Deus would be one of the people thriving in such an environment because they’re driving the storm instead of reacting to it.
I’d also love to know Deus’s criteria for ‘world domination’? Is it him telling the world what to do… which would get tedious, even for him, or the world doing what he wants it to do?
Sometimes world domination isn’t worth the effort. Just give me a small island with good internet access, and I’ll be happy to restrict my tyranny to the dozen or so employees who keep the palace clean.
I’d be happy for life. Well, at least until some idiot tried to invade my island of course or try and tell me I owe their country money. But leave me alone, let me buy your stuff and sell you my stuff and I won’t have to summon cthulhu driving a tank.
…….Deus owns and runs Machina Industries.
[Slow clap]
And has an x shaped scar on his face.
That scar actually bugs me.
See, if you lived in some areas of Northern Europe or Scandanavia about six hundred years ago, that was pretty much exactly the kind of scar they’d have carve into your face before they exiled you, if you’d committed some kind of heinous crime. They didn’t really believe in the death penalty, but the big ol’ ‘X’ scar meant that nobody would ever see you again without knowing that you were a ‘Nidling’ and your prospects for a future life were lowered accordingly.
Unless you moved someplace where nobody knew what that kind of scar meant, and that involved crossing the known world.
Or unless you lived so long that most people had forgotten what that kind of scar meant….
…. but it’s unlikely that Deus is really over 600 years old.
Unlikely.
Not impossible.
I don’t know that the proposed entertainment economy would actually work the way DaveB suggests. He sort of alludes as to what a problem would be: Advertising.
In a multiplanetary society of several thousand worlds, all of them producing content, the average consumer wouldn’t just be drowning in things to watch, they’d be well below crush depth in a planetary sized sea of content. Presumably, only the most superlative entries in a particular genre would ever get much broad traction.
You could fight that with a hefty advertising budget, but it would likely need to be REALLY hefty, which would in turn directly negate the advantages of the broader market. Especially since the ad budget would need to be paid up front.
And that’s ignoring the problems inherent with post scarcity currencies, intergalactic ip rights, the fact that Terran content is going to be hilariously out of date technologically / standards wise, culture issues, etc.
On earth, more new books are produced per year than anyone could hope to read. A similar problem exists with other types of media. And that’s just one planet. Now multiply the content by 5,000 plus. And consider that all of those planets have possibly thousands of years of media that would be “new to us”.
A potential solution, although probably not one in line with the universe Dave is setting up, is simply to say that “entertainment” is a uniquely human concept which the rest of the galaxy mostly never thought of, but quickly develops a taste for. Eventually they would begin flooding the market the same way we do, but there could be a huge cultural renaissance after we first came onto the galactic stage.
It puzzles me all the ninety five percent of everything is crap discussions we’re getting here.
If earth-porn is so valuable that aliens will go to the time and expense of visiting Earth, then the demand for it over and above local entertainments has already been established. Since the opportunity cost of downloading the stuff is less than the cost of physically coming here, the stuff WILL sell.
My memory of the comics which touch on the alien tourists is dim, but I think you may be conflating pornography with regular / sex tourism. I’m not sure that the two are equivalent.
Also, if the internet has proven anything, just because something is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it will sell. Be stolen and enjoyed for free, sure. But sell? Not guaranteed.
Remember, this is porn we’re talking about. There exists a core of aficionados of many …. extremely specific niche products. They are noticed, with porn, specifically because they tend to be relatively prolific spenders, creating a situation in which a truly tiny cadre of enthusiasts of, for example, sticky notes and women with hamburger on their feet stomping balloons in high heels, constitute a market for which it is actually in someone’s interest to produce videos in that genre. It’s what economists call a “price insensitive market.”
At the extreme, bespoke pornography is produced, professionally for audiences of one. By directors and crews and actors well known (in porn anyway) for their other works. The customer tells them what he (or she) wants, and they produce it, and all of them get paid just as they do for their wider market videos. That’s the price point for some of these consumers with their extremely specific tastes. I heard about one series of videos where the client provided them with albums containing stamp collections worth about a hundred thousand dollars, for each of three videos, specifically for them to destroy on camera.
And if our appreciation for such things was similar to his, that would be NSFW information. But it’s not, because it isn’t.
You know what Earth porn is? It’s something that serves the consumers of an extremely specific niche.
If there are just a few aficionados per planet, in each of a hundred thousand worlds? That’s a potentially lucrative market.
This sounds less to me like a really specific sexual kink and more like an ex deciding to rub their ex-partner’s nose in the destruction of something they loved but which the ex got in the divorce settlement.
Recall that, per Cora, there are already humans who have been uplifted to space.
If the hyper-specific fetish, ultra wealthy clients you describe do exist, there was already a market for them to fulfill their particular need. Presumably one accessible with considerably less difficulty than semi-uplifting a technologically backwards planet (to provide earth with the necessary technology to meet galaxy standard recording formats). Alternatively, they could have just visited the planet since some amount of alien tourism is apparently a thing.
Opening up a new market does indeed mean there’s a chance for much greater revenue – assuming galactic intellectual property laws are compatible. Historically, support for artists has taken many forms – from requiring them to support themselves, to patronage by wealthy individuals, to royalties from mass-media, to direct crowd-funding, to state-sponsorship, to corporate vassalage – so, even if there’s nothing new out there, there’s still plenty of scope for systems that wouldn’t push significant sums of money back.
One system that wouldn’t flood Earth’s economy would be mass-licensing – rather than collecting a cut of every ticket for the general galactic release of ET, and having to wait for the accountants and reporting to sort out how much you’re owed, what the exchange rates should be, etc, instead some galactic entrepreneur makes single lump-sum deal for the exclusive license to Universal’s entire back-catalogue for a thousand systems, for the next century, in exchange for half a dozen holodecks and a couple of AI CGI experts, letting them slash production budgets while improving FX quality. Anyway, the basic idea here is that, rather than trying to get your profit directly from a foreign system, instead you sell/lease the rights to someone else and let them worry about making money out of that system.
Even if the galactic market is compatible with contemporary Earth capitalism, the effect of a massively expanded market is pretty consistent historically – most local “stars” discover that they were only big fish because they were in such a small pond, and the increased competition knocks them way off the charts, while a very small number, who can actually compete in the wider arena, end up much better off…
Ultimately, the same fundamental calculations apply – if the average person spends $X on entertainment each year, and 1% of the population are entertainers, the average entertainer is going to make $100X per year ($X of which they then spend on their own entertainment). For a typical entertainer, rather than one of the big stars that get, say, 90% of the entertainment dollars, the amount’s going to be much smaller – $10X per year (and they’re probably not spending as much as $X on entertainment themselves).
For the stars, market size is the limiting factor, and opening up the galaxy means the sky stops being the limit; for the vast majority, the main factor is individuals’ luxury budgets, and opening up galactic markets only makes a difference if there’s a significant difference in standards of living.
There may be a soon-to-be-lucrative market in dubbing Earth videos into various alien languages. This might be circumvented by audiences with universal translators, but:
1) There is always the possibility that they can only function using living beings and not from recordings.
2) If you are sitting (swimming, hanging, etc.) at home, are you going to have a U.T. handy?
I was not actually ready for that level of intellectual diction from panel 4 after the first bubble…
Typo alert, @DaveB: The verb form you’re looking for in Vale’s magazine is “secrete”, although many readers might not recognize it, so I’d suggest inserting the word “hide” instead.
This is a duplicate comment; please delete.
No, no, no, no. You do NOT want to be secreting knives.
Secrete: verb “to produce and discharge (a substance).”
“Secret” isn’t a verb yet in all dictionaries but used as a verb it means “To make or keep secret”.
You’re looking for the second definition. “to place out of sight; hide; conceal: squirrels secreting nuts in a hollow tree trunk.”
Secreting a weapon about your person (yes, with that phrasing) is entirely cromulent.
Does Vale even NEED knives?
Hey DAVE! Do you know how much anime discs cost in Japan? Tens thousands yen for dozen episodes! I kid you not, just look at these prices!
https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=%E9%8A%80%E6%B2%B3%E8%8B%B1%E9%9B%84%E4%BC%9D%E8%AA%AC&i=dvd&__mk_ja_JP=%E3%82%AB%E3%82%BF%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
Would it sell at that price in North America and the rest of the world? What about outside the Earth then? If foreign (of Japan) publishers manage to negotiate reduced prices to match their culture, then surely extraterrestrial counterparts can too or it’ll be no sale. So entertainment producers wouldn’t get as much of income as you predict.
Comparing media prices between Japan and the US is like looking at a reflection in a funhouse mirror – too distorted to get a real picture of what’s going on. Two reasons.
First, the exchange rates between the two countries have changed radically. VHS tapes came onto the scene around 1977 or so; CDs in 1983. These releases effectively set the price for video and audio entertainment going forward. At the time, the exchange rate between dollars and yen was about 230 yen per dollar. So a $15 CD in 1983 would cost about 3500 yen. So what is a CD nowadays in Japan? About 3000 yen. It seems so high to us because the exchange rate is now closer to 100 yen per dollar, meaning that import CD runs about $30 to us.
Second… something weird happened in the US with regard to video media, which also puts the high price in Japan in perspective. Until 1987, the price of a movie videotape in the US was in the $70-80 range. People generally rented their videos rather than bought them, because it was just too expensive. Then, well… Top Gun happened. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to sell the Top Gun movie on VHS with (1) a Pepsi commercial at the beginning to subsidize the cost, and (2) a $27 price tag. And the tapes sold like wildfire. Suddenly the US entertainment industry realized there was a price point for the tapes at which people would be willing to buy the tapes, and the studios would be able to make a profit off of the tapes. From then on, movies, either on VHS or later DVD and Bluray, would be sold somewhere in the $20-30 price range, leading to millions upon millions of movies being bought, watched, and eventually dumped into landfills after being left unclaimed at garage sales. Way to wreck the planet, entertainment dudes!
Anyway, because of those two developments – changing exchange rates, and a radical change in the price point of movies in the US – the prices of entertainment in the two countries, once similar, diverged in radically different ways.
10,000 yen for a dozen episodes? So, like, ~$100. That’s a bit high for a season of some TV/cable show, but not outrageously so.
I recall seeing DVD version of Legend of Galactic Heroes being around 40k-50k yen per box (dozen episodes or so). Maybe there was shortage at the time, and price was dictated by supply/demand?
Typo alert, @DaveB: The verb form you want for Vale’s magazine is “secrete”, although it’s not in common usage, so you should probably just insert the word “hide” instead. Thusly, “Best Places to Secret Knives” (pronounced “seek-ret”) becomes either “Best Places to Secrete Knives” (pronounced “see-kreet”) or “Best Places to Hide Secret Knives” (pronounced “seek-ret”again).
Secrete: verb “to produce and discharge (a substance) (from a cell, gland, or organ).”
“Secret”: verb “To make or keep secret”.
I don’t know about you but I suspect most assassins don’t want to be discharging knives from a gland.
That said the past tense for both is “secreted” so it’s understandable to be confused if you’ve only read it.
“Conceal” or “Hide” would probably be more correct, but this is a magazine cover.
“Secret” is an adjective, not a verb: describing something as not common knowledge.
“Secrete” has two meanings, both verbs: the biological discharge cited above, and the act of hiding something.
yes to all those shows.
And i imagine he is using some over complicated pos hi end super expensive program for the slide thing.
Then again, yeah he should prob take the little time to learn simple stuff.
I am amused at Deus’s “How do you make it stop blinking 12:00?” moment with powerpoint. He needs a 5-year-old advisor. Maybe a son or daughter of his own (yes, I know, having the latter is a violation of the list of rules that advocates the former, but he’s not REALLY all that evil).
Also, I’m amused by the multiple different-colored cufflinks; are they an Infinity Gauntlet reference, or are they more in reference to Sydney’s orbs? Or just an unusual fashion statement?
After reviewing the events of the day I am starting to think the movie ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ was actually a documentary.
It’s hard to tell – is most of what Deus says gold because he’s just that rich, or because he’s just comedy gold anyway?
(Also who seriously names their plans “World Domination”. I would love to see him try to get anyone to take that seriously. XD)
“Powerpoint makes us stupid” — Jim Mattis.
While the interest in selling to aliens and the market reaction to the concept is realistic, all of these people are forgetting something:
Life on other planets is news to them. Life on Earth is not news to the other planets. To the extent that aliens are interested in our culture and entertainment industry, they’re already here, partaking in it.
Marketting to the rest of the galaxy won’t happen until Earth is recognized as an interstellar capable homeworld. That’s going to take more than one girl in a viral video eating grakz, or one business man walking casually onto Fracture Station and making a discrete purchase or 20.
Even still, it won’t be amazing, due to the many reasons others have already mentioned: differences in currencies, galactic competition, inflation responses, trade disparities (which may be just differences in currencies combined with inflation responses, but it could also be poor worlds have no materials to exchange for foreign products), and pirating. These factors should not be news to these people, as we already have discovered these same issues with international markets.
I’m amused at seeing the normally unflappable Vale lose her temper at being asked for IT help, of all things.
Clearly you have never worked in IT, or you’d understand her temper at being asked such a thing. :)
Indeed – I once spent 45 minutes trying to teach someone how to right-click over the phone. The customer is not always right.
That porn star (is she supposed to be a parody of Jenna Jameson, porn actress and businesswoman?) is extremely topical given recent news. Has anyone at this point NOT heard about Pamela Anderson going on “the View,” going at it with every single hostess on the show… and making it clear she was the smartest person on that panel?
Of course some people haven’t heard (and don’t care).
There are bibliophiles who don’t even own a television.
Being the smartest person on The View doesn’t seem like a very high bar.
Hey Dave,
You forgot two very important thing in your economic analysis of interstellar entertainment sales. Exchange Rate and competition.
For starters the exchange rate between Earth money and Alien money is probably going to be very much in favor of the Alien Money. That is because there a lot more things and a lot better things you can buy with Alien Money than Earth money. This a common feature of the money of an larger and more developed economy compared to the money of a smaller and less developed economy. So an alien working a minimum wage job on Planet X could probably earn enough in a day to retire to to Earth when the exchange markets first open. So a single porn star might only have to sell 100 copies of her porn for her to be a billionaire. Also the exchange rate might make a LOT of entertainers wealthy as that might be the only thing that Earth can sell to the Universe at large.
The other thing is competition. Once other worlds recognize the quality of Earth entertainment they might start copying it. Holograms could soon replicate earth entertainment.
All you guys trying analyze alien economies are making the assumption that aliens are going to have competitive economies like we do here on earth. But even here, we’ve very adequately proven that money and themarkets are a bad way to distribute material goods to the world.
There will be some kinda motivator like money, but I suspect our economies will be incompatible with alien wealth distribution methods.
No, I have no idea what they might use – I’m human, and have the same limitations as you.
“we’ve very adequately proven that money and themarkets are a bad way to distribute material goods to the world.”
The worst way … except for all the other ones.
…That humans have currently figured out.
… Using a purely Darwinistic definition of ‘fitness’, in which the vested-interest power of the incumbent easily outweighs such trivialities as effectiveness.
“….. I mean, imagine if there was a show like Red Dwarf or Star Trek that were literal documentaries because spaceships were fucking real. Ice Road Truckers, except its… well, Planet Express….”
Isn’t that “Galaxy Quest” ?
Nice speech bubble placement so you never ‘quite’ show a copyrighted logo.
Trademarked. Logos are trademarked. And I agree, nice speech bubble and porn star placement. :)
I liked how Family Guy handled it also with Quagmire breaking the fourth wall to complain about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdTQ6ulgQ0o
Actually given what has actually happened on earth with motion pictures and later TV, at best the local earth entertain industry would collapse outright for a few years then slowly recover. Some forms will vanish outright, others will mutate into a new form.
You see, Humans would go ape for whatever entertainment is new. vaudeville was replaced, often literally, with movie theaters, which gave way to TV, which is loosing ground to Video on demand and it’s ever growing archives, in the mean time Vaudevill mutated into various comedy films then sit coms.
In the mean time most country’s that were early adapters ended up with the larger entertainment studios, see Hollywood, while county’s that play catch up and struggle to be relevant outside its own nation, even when they have massive revenues internally.
see:
Bollywood, China’s movie industry, Spain’s movie industry, Mexico’s Video game industry,
awesome on the kenny and vic cameo there. you sir have good taste.
I want to see scenes of the GAL News Networks (and their cable shows) discussing what was revealed about Earthers…
Especially those muggers that survived Cora and Halo and still are in hospital being regenerated.
BONUS IF MORBO is one of the talking heads!
I’d like to see Drexx Drudlarr and Tuva Van Void covering the story :). They tend to be pretty interested in covering all the latest Earth Usan news.
(Bonus points to whoever recognizes those names)
I was hoping to see Peggy see the other aliens in those little pods and have Sydney capture them somehow.
Am I wrong, or is the third guy in the third panel Tommy Chong?
I think adding him to political panel discussions would make me watch the news again.
I was trying to figure out who would look like that and rate a seat on a panel show. My first guest was Richard Branson. Maybe in their universe he let his hair grow out and colored it.
I’m not saying it’s not Tommy Chong, but it sure looks like him.
The most entertaining part of this is Deus’s powerpoint file.
First, because he’s got his world domination plans on a desktop(!) icon, on a computer which Vale seems to think is connected to the internets. This is…. not secure.
But more entertainingly, he’s using powerpoint for it. Not project management software, not a spreadsheet, not even a text file or word processor or a flow chart. Powerpoint. Powerpoint’s all about presenting a slide show, and the software’s abilities and limitations are built entirely around that particular paradigm. Which suggests 4 possibilities to me.
1) Deus is really really really bad at choosing software. Given that he’s a genius CEO of a huge corporation who can rely on probably thousands of tech experts to make the decision for him, this is very plausible.
2) It’s a decoy file, full of misinformation to be stolen by his enemies. He has to update the misinformation to reflect new developments if it’s going to work.
3) Deus has investors, shareholders, or a Committee of Evil overseeing his actions and he’s actually committed to telling them the whole truth about his long-range plans.
4) Deus puts his plans into powerpoint so he can have a flunky present them to him, because that’s how his ego rolls. This one’s now my headcanon.
I’m sure there must be some people who are (partially) in the know about Machina’s plans.
Remember, one of the things that make him different from Sciona is that he can recognize the value of loyalty. Your troops don’t stay loyal if you constantly give them the mushroom treatment.
I suspect that Deus’ power point has been hacked by Doctor Software.
Other people have plans for poetry, tea, and World Domination
I’m sure he tells some of his underlings some of the plan. Remember, recognizing the value of loyalty is one of the things that set him apart from Sciona – and your underlings don’t stay loyal if you keep giving them the mushroom treatment.
*sigh* Apologies for double-posting. My first reply just wouldn’t show up before I posted the second one, so I assumed something had gone wrong.
Well, at least SOME lip service was paid to the whole “Archon lied” bit. Plus it lays the groundwork for later exploitation. (likely by Deus)
Meh. How many South African movies do you buy? Malaysian? Argentinian? 99.99999% of the galaxy will not even hear about earth, let alone want to buy a movie from earth. The market potential may increase an insane amount, but the market penetration will drop by an insane amount.
I think residents of the Gorn home world would pay to watch Godzilla stomp on puny humans.
I buy Japanese, Vietnamese, British, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Australian, and French movies.
Just from a quick perusal of my entertainment cabinet.
But I like ballroom dancing and little wistful stories of families. Genres neglected by Hollywood.
The … actress … looks pretty gross to my eyes, but I got a huge laugh out of her mask slipping and revealing the firmly financial underbelly of the beast.
Machina sure likes to push his luck, trying to push around a Small (or is that Medium?) Old One like that. She could have done far worse than shout at him in anger.
the BEST part of cultivating a personality of eccentricity that makes everyone think you’re just PLAYING at being an evil overlord is that you can legit just make shit like that on your personal computer and move on with your life because even if somebody does find and report it, what’s gonna happen? Everybody is just going to go
“Yeah, that guy would totally have that.”
“HAHA! Sure yeah man, fake news”
“If he runs our place as well as that nation he owns right now is running I’ll lay out the welcome mat!”
Not to mention: https://img.ifunny.co/images/8ed0675100acdef564b4b483c35f8b12fb267aa6b22caf2ebbbfe11dcfd0f4d7_1.jpg Another thing I can totally
believe everyone’s favorite Lawful Evil overlord would do.
Also, Somebody should totally do a Most Extreme News Network podcast.
“…every webcam girl would be able to retire comfortably after six months of weekly shows.”
Eeehhhhh, maybe not. There’s a lot of expensive infrastructure behind the scenes there. Can you think of the bandwidth costs of trying to stream to 1000 WORLDS worth of people? I think I just heard my ISP’s modem, scream and die at the mere idea off all that traffic.