22 ms·

That Lost 4G Phone

211 points by alexitosrv 16y ago

MikeCapone 16y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't find it funny? Not because I don't think jokes should be made about the situation, but rather because I think those particular jokes aren't very good.
- nw 16y ago
  I think my chuckling might be disturbing my office mate.
- hubb 16y ago
  i found the punchline to the first one pretty amusing
- flogic 16y ago
  The last line of the blog post "Remember that I'm in the parody business and not the truth business." was the funniest part. Otherwise I got the same amount of boredom from the comic as I did from iPhone-gate.
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  It guess it just came off as strange to me because it's a stretch in terms of scope. For the comic's history, the jokes have generally implied that Dilbert's unnamed employer produces some kind of sprawling enterprise software, maybe with a consumer version, and to suddenly have them building next-gen smartphones is jarring enough to distract from the gag. There is something cool about seeing a never-to-be-printed Dilbert strip, though.
  - allwein 16y ago
    I was always under the impression that Dilbert's company was some sort of sprawling conglomerate like G.E. that produces all sorts of products. Dilbert and his coworkers seem to bounce pretty freely between hardware and software products. Also, I don't think continuity is one of Scott's goals at all. In fact, I suddenly realized how absurd it was to be discussing what is and isn't Dilbert Canon.
    - hernan7 16y ago
      There's no Dilbert canon at all. Adams even draws Dilbert's mouth now and then.
- andreyf 16y ago
  Scott's sense of humor isn't really laugh-out-loud-funny, but more of a weird tickle deep inside your mind. It's more "eerily amusing" than "funny". I think if you read blog or comics often, it'll grow on you :)
- ErrantX 16y ago
  I thought the second one was stronger; the punchline of the first was very forced.
- philk 16y ago
  I thought the first one was better than the second one. Overall I've found Dilbert to be very hit and miss over time. There are some real gems out there but there's also quite a few which miss the mark. Of course, Scott Adams has been at this for years and having to come up with a new joke each day for that length of time would be rather challenging.
  - chbarts 16y ago
    > Of course, Scott Adams has been at this for years and having to come up with a new joke each day for that length of time would be rather challenging. Definitely the case. This comedy degradation happened to Garfield and Peanuts as well, and it hit Peanuts especially hard because, well, it's Schultz. He was doing genius work in the 1950s-1960s, refining a lot of the medium traits we now take for granted. Both Garfield and Dilbert were a lot weirder in their early years, had larger casts, and more diverse settings. In one of the early Dilbert plotlines, he discovers dinosaurs hiding in his home after a computer model tells him they can't all be gone. Not exactly genius, but better than anything Adams is making now. The decline of Peanuts was especially sad. Schultz was a trouper and did the work until he physically and mentally couldn't anymore, and the decline showed painfully. Buying the huge Fantagraphics collection might be beyond your budget, but if you get a chance to flip through it by all means do so. The foregoing illustrates why The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes were ended early. It also illustrates just how resistant to change newspaper readers are: The reason strips are allowed to sit and fester for decades when TV shows are off the air in a few seasons is due entirely to the fact papers will lose circulation if they cut the wrong strip.
- hernan7 16y ago
  I think those were drafts. The Dilbert strips are created using some computer illustration software (Adams even has his own private font that he uses for lettering the strip). So changing the punchlines to something funny wouldn't have taken too much effort. Apart from coming up with the funny punchline, that is.
danieldon 16y ago
"That's a coincidence because I sell other people's belongings" Well put.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- endtime 16y ago
  IIRC, the guy tried several times to return it to Apple, and they kept ignoring him. And he waited three weeks before selling it, giving them ample time to get in touch with him if it was really theirs. Since Apple remotely bricked it, he had no way of getting in touch with Gray or any of his friends/colleagues directly. So it really seems like the guy's options were to sell it to Gizmodo, or let it sit in a drawer forever. If the account above is accurate, then I don't think it's fair to imply the guy was acting in bad faith.
  - jseifer 16y ago
    Then how did Gizmodo find out it was Gray's? Seems like someone knew that along the way and could have tried that avenue.
    - rimantas 16y ago
      just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook. And there, on the Facebook screen, was the Apple engineer, Gray Powell.
  - iron_ball 16y ago
    Or to send it to Apple in a simple padded mailer. Or to bring it to the police. Seriously, his "only option" was to tell it to a gossip blog for thousands of dollars?
    - jrockway 16y ago
      So Apple loses this thing that's worth a lot to them. Critical "trade secrets". He tries to return it, they don't say anything. He could give the super-valuable thing he recovered back to him for free, but why should he? What obligation does he have to work for Apple for free? Instead, he decided to cash in. Seems reasonable to me.
ck2 16y ago
Kinda ruined it when he has to explain it. Way too literal in the first place, should have made some kind of parallel.
- bretpiatt 16y ago
  His stuff is often very literal, you just never worked for the company he was writing about (former Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T employee here).
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
More interesting than the comics (which came off a bit forced to me) is the following: >I worried that the story would become stale before my comics would work through the pipeline. I think the soonest I can get something published is in about a month, perhaps a bit sooner, but I've never tested it. A month to go from the final draft of a black-and-white, three-panel, line-drawn comic to publication in a daily newspaper. A month! And people wonder why newspapers are gradually becoming irrelevant.
- CWIZO 16y ago
  I think what he was trying to say is that he has a 1 month worth of comics done that are waiting to be published, and if he would sent a new one it would get it's turn in one month ...
  - allwein 16y ago
    No, he had it right. "I think the soonest I can get something published is in about a month ... it wasn't worth the extra friction to push them to the front of the line" So if he had made a big push, he could have gotten them published in a month. He goes on to say when it would be published if he submitted it at the end of his queue. "And it would be June 18th before they ran in their normal position, which seemed too far in the future."
- SamAtt 16y ago
  This is more a commentary on the inefficiency of his distributor than it is a commentary on newspapers themselves. It's not like it takes a month to get other things into a newspaper (since by definition 99% of stuff in the newspaper was written in the previous 24 hours).
- nash 16y ago
  It may be slow, but the process for comics and articles are quite different. Comics go through multiple layers of distribution (possibly translation, colouring, lettering and the like through multiple hands) before they are published, in many different newspapers simulatenosly. The process for getting comics published is focused on groups of comics as well, so rather then send one Dilbert comic a day, the distributor will take at least a weeks worth of strips, possibly a month's worth at once, and that bundle will be sent out. Editiorial cartoons are much faster (next day) but they tend to be done for a single publication, or at least a small family of publications. (edit: Add colouring, lettering)
noonespecial 16y ago
Take a moment to marvel at the fact that I didn't need to add anything to the story as it has been told in the media. All it really needed was Wally. That's all a lot of things need... Half his genius seems to be simply applying Wally to the right circumstances.
mcav 16y ago
I liked the following idea (from a commenter on the site) better than the originals: > Alternatively, it could be funny if Wally became a hero at work when he suddenly delivers an amazing 4G phone that finally makes the company successful - right up until the time it's discovered that he didn't actually develop it, but found it on the counter at the coffee shop.
thought_alarm 16y ago
Funniest Dilbert episodes I've read in a while.
iamwil 16y ago
So while the #2 link at the moment is HN 3 years ago and we say hey, those links were interesting back then. And over here at #1, we have 88 votes for a comic strip. With the top comment saying 'well put' I like Dilbert as much as anyone else. But ask yourself: did you learn anything? Long lasting interest doesn't come cheap. Some may say, 'hey, lighten up', but I'd say, 'hey, we already have reddit'.
- jrockway 16y ago
  Someday, you will learn that life is long enough to both learn and have fun.
  - iamwil 16y ago
    sigh yes. By stating something that no one's going to dispute--myself included (I mean, who doesn't want to learn and have fun at the same time?), it diminishes what I was getting at. In the case of dilbert comics, it was fun, but didn't learn much. That's what I'm against. Sure, there are other things that are also learning and fun, which is great. If fun is sugar and learning is fiber in cereal, all I'm saying is beware eating sugar-only cereal. If you want sugar-only, we've got reddit. Important thing is to have the fiber, regardless of sugar or not.
jrockway 16y ago
Excellent. The facial expressions and choice of characters are just perfect.
ismin 16y ago
I love Dilbert - this cartoons from the post are brilliant =)

211 points by alexitosrv 16y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't find it funny? Not because I don't think jokes should be made about the situation, but rather because I think those particular jokes aren't very good.

nw 16y ago
I think my chuckling might be disturbing my office mate.
hubb 16y ago
i found the punchline to the first one pretty amusing
flogic 16y ago
The last line of the blog post "Remember that I'm in the parody business and not the truth business." was the funniest part. Otherwise I got the same amount of boredom from the comic as I did from iPhone-gate.
mortenjorck 16y ago
It guess it just came off as strange to me because it's a stretch in terms of scope. For the comic's history, the jokes have generally implied that Dilbert's unnamed employer produces some kind of sprawling enterprise software, maybe with a consumer version, and to suddenly have them building next-gen smartphones is jarring enough to distract from the gag. There is something cool about seeing a never-to-be-printed Dilbert strip, though.
- allwein 16y ago
  I was always under the impression that Dilbert's company was some sort of sprawling conglomerate like G.E. that produces all sorts of products. Dilbert and his coworkers seem to bounce pretty freely between hardware and software products. Also, I don't think continuity is one of Scott's goals at all. In fact, I suddenly realized how absurd it was to be discussing what is and isn't Dilbert Canon.
  - hernan7 16y ago
    There's no Dilbert canon at all. Adams even draws Dilbert's mouth now and then.
andreyf 16y ago
Scott's sense of humor isn't really laugh-out-loud-funny, but more of a weird tickle deep inside your mind. It's more "eerily amusing" than "funny". I think if you read blog or comics often, it'll grow on you :)
ErrantX 16y ago
I thought the second one was stronger; the punchline of the first was very forced.
philk 16y ago
I thought the first one was better than the second one. Overall I've found Dilbert to be very hit and miss over time. There are some real gems out there but there's also quite a few which miss the mark. Of course, Scott Adams has been at this for years and having to come up with a new joke each day for that length of time would be rather challenging.
- chbarts 16y ago
  > Of course, Scott Adams has been at this for years and having to come up with a new joke each day for that length of time would be rather challenging. Definitely the case. This comedy degradation happened to Garfield and Peanuts as well, and it hit Peanuts especially hard because, well, it's Schultz. He was doing genius work in the 1950s-1960s, refining a lot of the medium traits we now take for granted. Both Garfield and Dilbert were a lot weirder in their early years, had larger casts, and more diverse settings. In one of the early Dilbert plotlines, he discovers dinosaurs hiding in his home after a computer model tells him they can't all be gone. Not exactly genius, but better than anything Adams is making now. The decline of Peanuts was especially sad. Schultz was a trouper and did the work until he physically and mentally couldn't anymore, and the decline showed painfully. Buying the huge Fantagraphics collection might be beyond your budget, but if you get a chance to flip through it by all means do so. The foregoing illustrates why The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes were ended early. It also illustrates just how resistant to change newspaper readers are: The reason strips are allowed to sit and fester for decades when TV shows are off the air in a few seasons is due entirely to the fact papers will lose circulation if they cut the wrong strip.
hernan7 16y ago
I think those were drafts. The Dilbert strips are created using some computer illustration software (Adams even has his own private font that he uses for lettering the strip). So changing the punchlines to something funny wouldn't have taken too much effort. Apart from coming up with the funny punchline, that is.

danieldon 16y ago

"That's a coincidence because I sell other people's belongings" Well put.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
endtime 16y ago
IIRC, the guy tried several times to return it to Apple, and they kept ignoring him. And he waited three weeks before selling it, giving them ample time to get in touch with him if it was really theirs. Since Apple remotely bricked it, he had no way of getting in touch with Gray or any of his friends/colleagues directly. So it really seems like the guy's options were to sell it to Gizmodo, or let it sit in a drawer forever. If the account above is accurate, then I don't think it's fair to imply the guy was acting in bad faith.
- jseifer 16y ago
  Then how did Gizmodo find out it was Gray's? Seems like someone knew that along the way and could have tried that avenue.
  - rimantas 16y ago
    just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook. And there, on the Facebook screen, was the Apple engineer, Gray Powell.
- iron_ball 16y ago
  Or to send it to Apple in a simple padded mailer. Or to bring it to the police. Seriously, his "only option" was to tell it to a gossip blog for thousands of dollars?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    So Apple loses this thing that's worth a lot to them. Critical "trade secrets". He tries to return it, they don't say anything. He could give the super-valuable thing he recovered back to him for free, but why should he? What obligation does he have to work for Apple for free? Instead, he decided to cash in. Seems reasonable to me.

ck2 16y ago

Kinda ruined it when he has to explain it. Way too literal in the first place, should have made some kind of parallel.

bretpiatt 16y ago
His stuff is often very literal, you just never worked for the company he was writing about (former Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T employee here).

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

More interesting than the comics (which came off a bit forced to me) is the following: >I worried that the story would become stale before my comics would work through the pipeline. I think the soonest I can get something published is in about a month, perhaps a bit sooner, but I've never tested it. A month to go from the final draft of a black-and-white, three-panel, line-drawn comic to publication in a daily newspaper. A month! And people wonder why newspapers are gradually becoming irrelevant.

CWIZO 16y ago
I think what he was trying to say is that he has a 1 month worth of comics done that are waiting to be published, and if he would sent a new one it would get it's turn in one month ...
- allwein 16y ago
  No, he had it right. "I think the soonest I can get something published is in about a month ... it wasn't worth the extra friction to push them to the front of the line" So if he had made a big push, he could have gotten them published in a month. He goes on to say when it would be published if he submitted it at the end of his queue. "And it would be June 18th before they ran in their normal position, which seemed too far in the future."
SamAtt 16y ago
This is more a commentary on the inefficiency of his distributor than it is a commentary on newspapers themselves. It's not like it takes a month to get other things into a newspaper (since by definition 99% of stuff in the newspaper was written in the previous 24 hours).
nash 16y ago
It may be slow, but the process for comics and articles are quite different. Comics go through multiple layers of distribution (possibly translation, colouring, lettering and the like through multiple hands) before they are published, in many different newspapers simulatenosly. The process for getting comics published is focused on groups of comics as well, so rather then send one Dilbert comic a day, the distributor will take at least a weeks worth of strips, possibly a month's worth at once, and that bundle will be sent out. Editiorial cartoons are much faster (next day) but they tend to be done for a single publication, or at least a small family of publications. (edit: Add colouring, lettering)

noonespecial 16y ago

Take a moment to marvel at the fact that I didn't need to add anything to the story as it has been told in the media. All it really needed was Wally. That's all a lot of things need... Half his genius seems to be simply applying Wally to the right circumstances.

mcav 16y ago

I liked the following idea (from a commenter on the site) better than the originals: > Alternatively, it could be funny if Wally became a hero at work when he suddenly delivers an amazing 4G phone that finally makes the company successful - right up until the time it's discovered that he didn't actually develop it, but found it on the counter at the coffee shop.

thought_alarm 16y ago

Funniest Dilbert episodes I've read in a while.

iamwil 16y ago

So while the #2 link at the moment is HN 3 years ago and we say hey, those links were interesting back then. And over here at #1, we have 88 votes for a comic strip. With the top comment saying 'well put' I like Dilbert as much as anyone else. But ask yourself: did you learn anything? Long lasting interest doesn't come cheap. Some may say, 'hey, lighten up', but I'd say, 'hey, we already have reddit'.

jrockway 16y ago
Someday, you will learn that life is long enough to both learn and have fun.
- iamwil 16y ago
  sigh yes. By stating something that no one's going to dispute--myself included (I mean, who doesn't want to learn and have fun at the same time?), it diminishes what I was getting at. In the case of dilbert comics, it was fun, but didn't learn much. That's what I'm against. Sure, there are other things that are also learning and fun, which is great. If fun is sugar and learning is fiber in cereal, all I'm saying is beware eating sugar-only cereal. If you want sugar-only, we've got reddit. Important thing is to have the fiber, regardless of sugar or not.

jrockway 16y ago

Excellent. The facial expressions and choice of characters are just perfect.

ismin 16y ago

I love Dilbert - this cartoons from the post are brilliant =)