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Episode 587: Xkcd is awesome

It's a clumsy Monday and we're all tired, but one thing's for certain: those xkcd comics rule.

Molly Wood Former Executive Editor
Molly Wood was an executive editor at CNET, author of the Molly Rants blog, and host of the tech show, Always On. When she's not enraging fanboys of all stripes, she can be found offering tech opinions on CBS and elsewhere, and offering opinions on everything else to anyone who will listen.
Molly Wood
4 min read
It's Monday, we're tired, and we can barely keep it together to get through today's morasse of Zune news, Toshiba-box 360 rumors, AT&T downloads you don't want, and weird European copyright-crossover claims. But one fact emerges triumphant from the rubble: those xkcd comics? Those rule.

--Molly


Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 587

TODAY'S LINKS:


TODAY'S VOICE MAIL:
Zander in Canada
How we do music reviews in Canada.

Silas
Why I now love PE.

Tommy from Kingston
Let me tell you about .LA.



TODAY'S E-MAIL:
Vinyl CD
Yes, there is a vinyl CD, it's been around for a long time.
P.S. I am a Russian listener, and I want to be the official Russian listener, the nomer odin (number one).
Tokman

Your listener base
I wonder if it has ever occurred to anybody all the cool people who listen to your podcast, and respond. You have the rocket scientist, doctor (former med student), phycologist, the angry Comcast employee who I am sure called in to say he is no longer going to listen to your show that I'm sure you didn't play, the Microsoft employee who most certainly called in saying that he now hates CNET who again you didn't play, and I'm sure Steve Jobs called in at least once challenging Molly to a duel, which, once again you didn't play because that would be giving him free publicity; two points to him for knowing how to use a sword though.
Anyway, keep up the good work, still the greatest podcast in the history of time even beating out the relatively unknown mole-people podcasts dating back to the dinosaurs (they are now at Web 5,000,000.0, using HTMLFM 400,000.1 (Hyper Text Markup Language For Moles), on Moledows Vista and Mole OS X and of course Molebuntu).
Ian

BOL Air and Space Command!
Rockets, satellites, and piloted/robot-planes = BOL Air and Space Command!?!
We have the know-how in the listener community (Tim the rocket scientist, Eric the satellite guy, Wayne the astronomer, myself, Vic the pilot/rancher/Net neutrality advocate, etc., etc.)--but what would we use it for? Hmmmm.
Best,
Shalin

Jonathan Coulton, Issa and more
Hi there T, M, & J--
Love the show. You're all rock stars.
Following your recent pimpage of the fabulous Jonathan Coulton, I thought you might like to read an interview I did with him this month, which touched on Creative Commons, DRM, and the like. Smart, interesting fella, as you all know. You also asked for other examples of forward-thinking artists who've been giving new distribution models a go, while the rest of the establishment argues amongst itself.
Check out Canadian songstress Issa (formerly Jane Siberry), who has had a lot of success with her 'pay what you like/can' model.
Keep up the good work sounds awfully patronising, but do. Your insights and humour are priceless. :-)
Best,
Venessa Paech
Melbourne, Australia

City domains
Agreed, .la as a city domain is pretty sucky. But the basic idea of city domains as such isn't half bad, as long as you don't have too many of them. Why not use the airport codes? Then there would be no disagreement about the codes because they're already internationally established and only a city big enough to have a commercial airport would have a domain. So LA would be .lax (as in laxative?); Cologne Germany would be .cgn; cities like London with multiple airports could choose between several (.lhr, .lgw or even .stn for the cognoscenti). Of course, some bureaucratic moron might insist that it be combined with the national domain, which would end up with idiotic domains like .lgw.co.uk but we'd just have to live with that--like with hip yuppie women with double- barreled names, but actually we only have to live with them if we marry them and who would do that if it meant like ending up with a name like Kingston-Smythe-Hogsbotham-Wendelmere (assuming that both partners had double-barrelled names to start with)?
Of course I love the show, you morons; why would I be taking the trouble to write to you if I didn't?
And Jason's fans here are the Hownds.
Greets,
Khoji