Comments on: Self-Description

By: Rick Op

Rick Op — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:21:04 +0000

AND the concept behind Comic #688 is now on a xkcd T-Shirt!
http://store.xkcd.com/xkcd/#SelfDescriptiveShirt

By: Rick Op

Rick Op — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:14:17 +0000

STOP
Planck Pixel time! (can’t print this)

By: Kos

Kos — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:53:07 +0000

I’d love to see an SVG with a few recursion levels, and a series of witty signs aking to give up zooming in immediately, embedded deep inside when the recursion ends.

By: Maria Rogers

Maria Rogers — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 06:32:33 +0000

aspirin has been time tested to relieve minor pains and inflammation and it is cheap too :’,

By: Molly Moore

Molly Moore — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:41:41 +0000

aspirin is one of the safest anti-inflammatories that you can use for lots of things`.,

By: Sticky

Sticky — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:40:37 +0000

Actually, an infinite loop would not generate infinite ink. Since each image gets infinitely smaller, the amount of ink would reach what is called a limit. That is like the argument that a ball thrown at a wall will never reach the wall, it will just get infinitely closer and closer. In reality, we know that the ball will hit the wall at a finite time depending on speed and distance.

However, that is all irrelevant, since this is a printed image. At some point the comic within the comic, etc will reach a single pixel in size. That pixel will be either black or white, thus ending the infinite loop for our purposes.

By: Sophie

Sophie — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 22:29:29 +0000

I know this is a late response, but…

Technically, the third frame is not and *cannot* be an infinite loop; if it was intended to be taken as such, then there would be an infinite amount of black ink used. Instead, the graph is made on the explicit assumption that the third panel is merely an approximation of what such a thing would look like.

By: Brody James

Brody James — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:58:25 +0000

my uncle got stomach ulcers because he took a lot of Aspirin to take care of his high blood pressure.’`~

By: homunq

homunq — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:41:41 +0000

No headache. It’s simple algebra. x = k + ax + bx + cx, where a, b, and c are constants for each frame. Basically, the white space around the graphs has to be proportional to the ink used for text and frames.

By: Shabs42

Shabs42 — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:10:40 +0000

The mouseover text is also self-descriptive as the “two hundred and forty-two characters” are all characters that help drive the count to 242.