Having trouble seeing the images on the site, from the comic itself on down? If you're here reading this, then either you are, or you're just a compulsive clicker of hyperlinks, in which case you are beyond my help. On the first part, however, I've made this here little FAQ like thing that should straighten everything out for you. Q: Why do I see the URL for this FAQ instead of a Lattice related image? A: There are two basic possible reasons for this, and one leads into the other. The first possibility is that someone (possibly you, you naughty little person, you) is trying to link to one of the images from my site on their site. The problem with this is that Comic Genesis has an anti-hotlinking policy, so they've set up a system that will block outside folks from image-stealing. The second possible reason is that you are running Norton Firewall or Norton Internet Security. For some odd reason, Norton's brand of computer security trips off Comic Genesis' anti-hotlinking programming, causing it to think that you're trying to link to the images from somewhere other than the actual site. Crazy, huh? Q: What can I do about this? A: If you're trying to show one of my images on your own site, then you're going to have to actually download said image onto your computer and then upload it somewhere else to be shown from. I'd appreciate it if you kept this practice restricted solely to the banners, but we might be able to work something out about the other copyrighted materials if you ask me first. If you're just trying to view one of my images on someone else's website, there's very little you can do other than hope they take the previous bit of advice on their own, or you could get in touch with them and tell them what they need to do to set it right. If the problem is that you're running Norton Firewall, here's what I've been told ya gotta do: - Open Norton Personal Firewall, click Options, and select Personal Firewall. - Click the Web Content tab. - Click Add Site, type in *.comicgen.com, then click Ok. - Highlight *.comicgen.com in the list of sites and then uncheck Use Default Settings on the Information About Visited Sites section and set it to Permit. - Click Ok at the bottom to close the Norton Personal Firewall window. - Refresh your browser. The workaround for Norton Internet Security is a little different, but much simpler: - Open Norton Internet Security, then click Privacy Control. - Click Configure. - Click Custom. - Uncheck Enable Browser Privacy. - After closing out NIS, refresh your browser. If everything goes right, you should then be able to see all the images on any Comic Genesis site from now on without any problems. If it doesn't go right . . . I don't really know what to tell you. Switch to McAfee, maybe? Q: So what exactly is the problem between Norton and Comic Genesis? A: You got me. From what little I've heard, there's some old batch of code running in Norton Firewall that doesn't really get along to well with Comic Genesis' code. I believe that the folks who run Keen have actually contacted Norton about this (and I get the feeling they're not the only ones), but Norton hasn't expressed any interest in updating the code since it works just fine for them. Don't take my word on this, however . . . for all I know, the owners of Norton once tried to get a comic started on Comic Genesis but had it all deleted by the owners of Comic Genesis, and now they're out for bloody revenge. Q: If there's no hotlinking images from Comic Genesis, then why did I get the URL for this FAQ as an image? Shouldn't the anti-hotlinking block that image, too? A: It would, except that nosteal.jpg is the placeholder image specifically set aside to stand in the place of stolen images. The nosteal.jpg default image is a 1x1 pixel, but I thought it'd be better if everyone had some better inkling of what's going on with the missing images, so I replaced it with the URL thingie. Q: So why does Comic Genesis have the anti-hotlinking policy, anyway? A: Comic Genesis is a free service provided for us poor, starving comic artists, and as such they don't make a whole lotta money. Almost all of their cash comes in through advertisements (e.g., the ads you see at the top of every page on this site), but often it's only just enough to pay their bandwidth fees. If everyone was able to grab images from here and use them elsewhere, bandwidth use would skyrocket, as would their fees for it, and they'd start losing money and eventually have to shut down. This would be, as the young kids say nowadays, "not good". Q: Anything else I should know? A: Not to my knowledge. But if you think of any other questions concerning this that you'd like me to answer, just drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.