>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.

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)

"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."

Well put.

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.

Instead, he decided to cash in. Seems reasonable to me.

Because it's illegal to keep it - if he knows who it belongs to he is legally compelled to return it to its owner.

Them pesky laws, always getting in the way of profit.

He didn't give it to the establishment he found it at. He didn't even contact the bar to see if the owner has been around to claim it.

He knew the full name and Facebook profile of the owner, based on the app on the phone before it was bricked. No attempt was made to contact this guy, despite the fact that he's dead simple to find on LinkedIn, Facebook (!), Twitter, etc.

He didn't turn it into any sort of law enforcement or other lost and found service.

What did he do? He called a few numbers where it's practically guaranteed people wouldn't believe he had a prototype iPhone. Any avenue where the phone had a reasonable chance of being actually returned was ignored. This looks highly suspicious. I would argue he is legally culpable for the phone's theft (but IANAL), but in either case I do not think this guy can claim that he tried to return the phone in good faith.

He had the owner's full name for God's sake. This isn't that hard.

Also, why didn't Apple use the "Find My iPhone" feature of MobileMe to track it down? Lots of things don't add up in this whole ordeal...

  just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook.
  And there, on the Facebook screen, was the Apple engineer,
  Gray Powell.

ah! i see why he chose option 5.

Or give it to the establishment where it was found, or give it to the police. You know, the obvious things that everybody else in the entire world has always done with lost and found items instead of taking them home.

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'.

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.

There is something cool about seeing a never-to-be-printed Dilbert strip, though.

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.

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.

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.

Apart from coming up with the funny punchline, that is.

That's all a lot of things need... Half his genius seems to be simply applying Wally to the right circumstances.

> 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.

Way too literal in the first place, should have made some kind of parallel.