Swimsuit Issue
by Jeff
Image text: Parents: talk to your kids about popup blockers. Also, at some point, sex. But crucial fundamentals first!
This one is pretty self-explanatory, but always practice safe browsing!
Infrastructures
by Jeff
Image text: The heartfelt tune it plays is CC licensed, and you can get it from my seed on JoinDiaspora.net whenever that project gets going.
This comic is a satire of the recent concerns regarding the ever popular social network Facebook and what Facebook is doing with the information, pictures and videos everyone shares with Facebook.
This comic is saying that some bearded (possible professor) has been concerned about proprietary software and has been (since 2003 or earlier) advocating for open source software.
Obviously saving your documents in a file type that only one software can open is different than giving all your information to a closed source for profit company, but they are similar. Both are proprietary shells held by a single for profit entity.
In the image text, CC licensed means Creative Commons license is a license from a non-profit organization that allows people to share their work. Diaspora is the new NYU student-created "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network".
Campfire
by Jeff
Image text: 100 years later, this story remains terrifying--not because it's the local network block, but because the killer is still on IPv4.
This is a take on the classic scary story "The killer was inside the house" or "The call is coming from inside the house". If their IP address is 192.168.xxx.xxx that means they are on your local network since that is the default IP addresses given out by DHCP on a home local network.
The image text references the change over from IPv4 which is IP addresses 192.168.xxx.xxx to IPv6 which look like this: 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf
Trade Expert
by Jeff
Image text: I mean, it's been almost twenty years. Now, it's possible you're simply embedding Windows directory paths in your URIs, but in that case you need more than just a short lecture.
This programmer sneaks on to the news show to tell the newscaster the different between backslash and forward slash. In a web address it is forward slash (or just simply "slash"). In a Windows folder structure, backslash is used.
A good way to tell the difference is the top of the slash. If the top is forward of the bottom, it is a forward slash. If the top is backwards from the bottom, it is a backwards slash.
Easy right?
In the image text, URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier.
Seismic Waves
by Jeff
Image text: The USGS operates a really neat email/SMS earthquake notification service (earthquake.usgs.gov/ens/) that allows fine-grained control of notifications.
This is a very relevant cartoon strip because of the earthquake that rocked northern Mexico and Southern California on Sunday afternoon. And this is certainly true as everyone takes to Twitter and Facebook to announce that they have gotten an earthquake.
Furtive
by Jeff
Image text: ... go go gadget video camera. Go go gadget cup.
This of course is a double reference. First, in the comic a reference to the cartoon Inspector Gadget, who only had to say "Go Go Gadget ___ " for that gadget to come flying out of his jacket. That is the same jacket depicted in the comic.
Second, in the image text is a reference to the infamous 2 girls 1 cup video that has spread wildly around the internet as a prank and somehow I have avoided seeing...quite deftly I might add.
And no, I am not approving/clicking on any comments with a hidden or tiny url in them!
Numbers
by Jeff
Image text: The typical internet user (who wants to share) has an IQ of 147 and a 9-inch penis. Well, better than the reverse, I guess.
Let's start at the top. The first search is from the song "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" in which every line is the same except the song starts at 99 and goes until the end at 1 bottle of beer on the wall.
The next six are self explanatory: number of boyfriends, grade level, penis size, bra cup size, age without having a boyfriend and number of glasses a day of water.
The next graph is a reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Captain Picard is tortured when asked how many lights are behind the interrogator. There are 4 lights, but Picard is tortured when he answers four. The torturer wants Picard to admit there are 5. This has turned into an internet meme, of course.
The next graph is a reference to the Jay-Z song "99 Problems" in which the chorus is: "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one".
The last graph is a graph of people googling what they consider their IQ number of google results for each IQ number. The image text references the high point on both the IQ and Penis graphs.
GeoIP
by Jeff
Image text: 'Meet hot young singles in your mom's basement today'? Man, screw you, GeoIP.
GeoIP does exactly what it sounds like it does, which is get your location based on your IP address, mostly to show trashy advertisments with your location thrown in at random. I'm not sure who those ads are fooling, but I'm sure it is someone.
Anyhow, the characters in the comic are in "low-earth orbit" in the International Space Station. So, the joke is, that is where GeoIP would pinpoint them in low-earth orbit instead of a city or state location.
The joke in the image text is a riff on the famous "blogger's live in their mother's basement" joke. Which, in the image text is apparently true, but because the "writer" of the image text is pissed that GeoIP got his location correct down to the fact that he lived in the basement. And of course, it is entirely untrue that blogger's live in their mother's basement!
But, now I smell some eggs and bacon coming from the kitchen upstairs! Gotta go!
Snow Tracking
by Jeff
Image text: I suppose that's more accurately a hare dryer.
Moose and Squirrel is a reference to the Rocky and Bullwinkle series of cartoons.
Longcat is a internet meme from pictures of cats all stretched out that make them look very tall (or long).
Mouse riding Bicycle is a reference to Ralph S. Mouse, a series of novels by Beverly Cleary.
The image text is a pun on the Rabbit with a hair dryer frame.
Legolas is a reference to the character by the same name in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of books and movies.
Knight is a chess reference as the tracks move just like the knight piece in chess.
The two "Kid with" frames are a reference to Calvin and Hobbes.
Prius is a reference to current events in which the car Toyota Prius's pedals have malfunctioned causing accidents.
The final frame is the Higgs Boson which is an elementary particle they are attempting to find evidence of in the Large Hadron Collider.
Anyone know what the Bobcat on a Pogo Stick is a reference to? That's the only one I can't get.
Retro Virus
by Jeff
Image text: He says this is the year of Linux on the desktop! The world of Windows will fade any moment now!
The image text is a continuation of the comic and an excerpt from Howard Dean's Friendster from 2003.
In the comic, when he says that he is cleaning viruses, the other characters in the comic list off other things from 2003, including Kazaa a P2P filesharing app that was the number 1 source of viruses because of the questionable sources of all of the files on Kazaa. Additionally, Howard Dean, was popular in 2003 when he was running for president in the Democratic primary before his unfortunate screaming speech which drove him down in the poles and out of the race. Lastly, there is Friendster, which was extremely popular in 2003 and is still around today, but I'm not sure anyone uses it.
If viruses are so 2003, spyware is so 2010.