Extend, embrace
Embrace, extend, and extinguish
Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
111–120 of 198 posts
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#112Microsoft Comic Chat was my first introduction to IRC. I was just a kid poking around in system32 directory and found mschat.exe. It opened a whole new world. I still participate in IRC communities to this day. I regularly reference it. So it's a shame that microsoft is blocking non-corporate browsers from accessing this news release, "The request is blocked. 20260716T162640Z-r17d8486fc4rbjkdhC1CHI16pc00000008m000000…
URL works fine for me using Safari on a non-corporate Mac. You may have jumped to conclusions a little precipitously.
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#113Hi, I'm Robert Standefer, the guy who made this happen, with lots of support. I'm excited to see the enthusiasm about Comic Chat being open sourced. How this came to happen is a very interesting story that spans a six-year period with success that hinged upon being in the right place at the right time, literally. I want to point out that, while I (along with Scott Hanselman) made the Comic Chat open source release ha…
Open sourcing code is always welcome.
However it's kind of weird that you choose this very explicit 1996 Embrace, extend, and extinguish piece of software to showcase. In this case it was IRC. In other cases it was Java, the web, etc.
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#114There's an interesting easter egg in semantic.cpp, line 77: if (CheckWord(words, "OXio")) { Apparently, if your text contains the word "OXio", it triggers the following riddle: What's round on the ends and hi in the middle?
Awesome find. :)
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
As "Principal Program Manager, Copilot Acceleration Team" even. That's sad. It sounds like person in charge of "Hey do you want Copilot? How about now? How about now? And now?! Here's another popup! Do you want it now? Why not?! Have you tried Copilot?" Etc... (I know about title inflation, he's probably not in charge of all that much, but still)
It's a team (part of engineering, not sales) that helps companies that bought M365 Copilot and/or Copilot Studio use it well - http://aka.ms/whoiscat
Thanks for sharing the link. I built that site. :)
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#116Comic Chat is a piece of Internet history, but I remember that it was somewhat reviled when I first started being active on IRC. This was around 2002, so it was probably due to some cultural memory rather than anyone having actually used it in years. The issue, as I remember it, is that Comic Chat extended the IRC protocol with support for explicitly indicating the appearance and emoting of your comic character, rath…
Comic Chat inspired me to make multiplayer games with IRC as the lobby server. But I specifically did not do what Microsoft did and send the metadata through the public channel, because I too had gone through the public ridicule of using Comic Chat. Instead, I used DMs between users to perform the signaling (which would then open a socket to create a direct TCP connection between the players).
It was pretty easy to do. Had to have been, because I was a pretty terrible programmer at the time.
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#117[dead]
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#118> The early web was filled with experimentation. “What if chat rooms looked like comics?” That question sounds wonderfully unreasonable. And yet it was built, shipped, localized into 24 languages, and bundled with Windows 98.
This really resonated with me. Too much development work today feels like colouring in predefined boxes. Love to see some software that thought way out of the box and got institutional support.
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you! My only experience with Comic Chat is reading Jerk City comics. Always thought it was a neat concept but never used it
On occasion I meet one of the creators of that professionally. And then I always think of asking him about it. And then I don't do it.
You should (I assume it's Rands), he clearly does not want to be rembered as a Jerkcity guy now that he's a Serious Palantir Poobah.
Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source
#120Hi, I'm Robert Standefer, the guy who made this happen, with lots of support. I'm excited to see the enthusiasm about Comic Chat being open sourced. How this came to happen is a very interesting story that spans a six-year period with success that hinged upon being in the right place at the right time, literally. I want to point out that, while I (along with Scott Hanselman) made the Comic Chat open source release ha…
Amazing timing, Jerkcity hits 10,000 strips in like two weeks.