SOPA
by Jeff
Image text: In protest of SOPA, I'm currently getting totally blacked out.
This very serious comic about the current bills in Congress of the United States named SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and it's sister bill PIPA. The EFF links do such a better job explaining the bill that I can, so please use them below.
The only joke is in the image text which is a play on words about "blacked out". Blacked out could mean in the web sense of a website going totally dark and offline (like Wikipedia today) or could mean when someone attempts to drink so much alcohol that they "black out", not remembering what happened that day/night.
UPDATE: Andy makes a great find in the comments below:
"There is a message hidden in the background of the black picture. If you brighten the image the blackhatguy says: “A message from sysadmins everywhere: Seriously, don’t screw with DNS. If you break this Internet, we are NOT making you a new one.”"
I've recreated the links from xkcd below:
Learn more:
EFF: One-page guide to SOPA
reddit: A technical overview of the SOPA and PIPA bills
DYN: How these bills would break DNS
EFF: Free speech on the web
Wisdom of the Ancients
by Jeff
Image text: All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's what we've figured out so far ...'
This comic is pretty self-explanatory, as to the left of the frame is the feeling Cueball gets when he sees a thread on an online forum with the same error and no solution. Those type of hanging posts with no conclusion are majorly annoying, which is why you see Cueball standing up and shaking his monitor in the right frame.
This is why when I post about a problem on a forum, I always update it with the solution, even if it is a while later. Or, the proposed solution in the image text works as well.
The Important Field
by Jeff
Image text: I hear in some places, you need one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it by check. It's interesting who has what incentives to care about what mistakes.
This comic is a commentary on how serious websites take the email address form, in this case to the ridiculous, asking for your email address twice to prevent a mistype, but only asking for the missile target coordinates once. Lots of websites make you type your email address twice, because having your correct email address is very valuable to these companies so they can send you "exclusive offers" and other spam to get you to buy things.
I'm not sure whether or not the claim in the image text is correct, can any one verify?
Hotels
by Jeff
Image text: 'Rating: 1/5. Room filled to brim with semen, and when front desk clerk opened mouth to talk, bedbugs poured out.'
Alright, it is pretty clear what Black Hat is doing here. He is putting bad reviews on all the hotels he has stayed at and likes and wants to stay in again, which lowers demand. But, he claims it is not low enough to put them out of business. Which seems strange to me. He knows that his reviews lowers demand enough for the hotel to lower prices, but not enough to put them out of business. That seems like a very fine line there.
The tragedy of the commons," is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen."
I think Cueball is right and the tragedy of the commons does not apply here.
In the last frame, Black Hat references the invisible hand which is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. Black Hat appears to be taking advantage of this invisible hand by metaphorically stabbing it with a knife and eating it.
File Transfer
by Berg
Image Text: Every time you email a file to yourself so you can pull it up on your friend's laptop, Tim Berners-Lee sheds a single tear.
Hello, all! Berg here again. Jeff is... actually, I don't know why Jeff couldn't do today's post, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that it's because he's having a hemorrhoid removed. Now then, onto xkcd!
Today's post is poking fun at the inability of many people to share large files via the internet, despite the fact that the internet was arguably developed to ease the sharing of large files between geographically distant computer users. Granted, what constitutes a "large file" has changed significantly over the years (my family purchased a 250 MB external drive when I was a youth, and we fretted that we wouldn't ever need that much space. We were wrong), but still- the inherent irony in being unable to use the internet for the purpose the internet was developed for is the engine driving today's xkcd. Now then, let's dissect it, shall we?
Cueball, whom I presume is on the phone with Cutie (Black Hat shouldn't have a hard time with any of this stuff), is trying to help a friend help their cousin send them a 25 MB file. This exceeds most email programs' 20 MB attachment limit (note: Gmail increased their attachment limit to 25 MB in 2009, though many email programs still top out at 20 MB. If anybody knows a reason behind that number, let me know in the comments), and so simply attaching the file to an email is out of the question.
The next option is to upload the file to an FTP server (file transfer protocol, as opposed to HTTP, hypertext transfer protocol), used to transfer files between computers on a shared network, such as the internet. However, FTP servers are a touch more esoteric than a mere email attachment, and many internet users (myself included) don't have one of their own. Indeed, I've only even used FTPs a handful of times (unless FTP is automatically used every time you download a file. This is honestly much more of a Jeff "I do computers for a living and can afford to have my hemorrhoids removed" Roman field than an Alex "Barely making a living as a comedian so thankfully I don't have any hemorrhoids which I would have to pay to have removed like Jeff does" Berg field).
Web hosting is simply the ability to create a website and store all the data for said website on a server which is connected to the internet. If Cutie's cousin (CC?) had the ability to do that, sharing the file would be as easy as making a website for it, then having Cutie visit said website and download said file. But no, the adventure continues.
MegaUpload is one of many, many sites on the internet that recognizes most users' inability to host large files on their own, and so offers to host large files, sometimes for free, sometimes for a small fee. The payoff is that in order to make such a service profitable, many of these sites are cluttered with banner and pop up ads in a mad effort to squeeze as much ad revenue out of every page view as possible. It's not a dealbreaker for some, but Cueball seems to think it'll be too much for CC to handle.
AIM direct connect was a file sharing system on AOL Instant Messenger that I think was dying out in popularity even by the time I got to college in the fall of 2000. Clearly, Cueball is grasping at straws here- anybody desperate enough to invoke the name of AOL as a solution instead of a problem must be at their wits' end.
But then- the perfect solution arises: Dropbox. A simple, easy to use program with an intuitive GUI that will automate file sharing between two computers using the internet, just like the internet was designed to do. But alas, by the time Cueball arrives at a solution, CC has used a mix of old and new technology, namely the car and the USB drive, to physically transport the file to Cutie's house, thus circumventing the internet all together. It's not an elegant solution, but sometimes brute force is the easiest way to get something done.
...and this, this inability to use the internet for its intended purpose, is why Tim Berners-Lee, the arguable inventor of the internet (take a hike, Al Gore), sheds a tear: His creation cannot be appreciated by the masses it was intended for.
That's it for me! But before I go, I'd like to take this opportunity for a shameless plug that Jeff has in no way endorsed. I've started a blog called Berg and Bot where I do text-based improv with Cleverbot a (supposedly) advanced piece of AI chatting software. If you wanna check it out, head to BergAndBot.tumblr.com. If you don't, I understand.
Oversight
by Jeff
Image text: I felt so clever when I found a way to game the Fitocracy system by incorporating a set of easy but high-scoring activities into my regular schedule. Took me a bit to realize I'd been tricked into setting up a daily exercise routine.
Stick figures having sex! Against a wall! Over a couch! In some sort of high flying sex swing! Fitocracy is a web site that turns workouts into a social game by awarding points, badges, levels and all sorts of other gamification. However, according to this cartoon, Fitocracy does not consider sex to be an activity acceptable for its site, despite the high flying nature of Cueball and Megan's sexual workout.
TornadoGuard
by Jeff
Image text: The bug report was marked 'could not reproduce'.
This is a comic with a take on a mobile application store for iPhones or Android devices. (This may be an Android store because the creator of this app is "DroidCoder2187". Both stores take all the reviews and average the ratings for the overall star rating. In this comic, we see why this is a bad idea.
In this case, there are three 5 star reviews about the running, UI and location setting in the app, however, the one that says it actually does not work is given the same weight in the review.
The image text is funny because it is a note from the developer's bug report, which they could not reproduce the error. However, they only would have to have a tornado coming towards their area for it to work correctly, which is a fairly rare situation and especially rare in certain areas of the world.
Missed Connections
by Jeff
Image text: The Street View van isn't going to find out anything Google won't already know from reading my email.
Missed Connections is a page on Craigslist in which people who saw each other briefly and want to reconnect attempt to find each other again. If I was to hazard a guess, I would imagine it works .0001% of the time. In the case of missed connections, one person describes themselves "Me" and describes the other person "You" in order to try to reconnect.
The first one is a goofy joke as far as I can tell.
The second one is not a reference to anything I can find, anyone know?
The third one is a reference to networking. UDP stands for User Datagram Protcol. UDP packets don't use handshaking to verify they have contacted the correct host, so they can get lost or confused. The Cisco router location is just a reference to a block of IP addresses. Cisco is a company that makes networking equipment. This is a play on a missed connection for someone who was lost and asked for directions.
The fourth one seems to be a joke as well. For those outside of the US (or those inside as well), Nancy Pelosi is a member of the US House of Representatives. The (D-CA) is a common notation for politicians which notates party (D for Democrat) and state (CA for California).
The fifth seems to be a reference to Randall's upcoming nuptials?
The sixth is a reference to how the Google Street view van was not only recording photos of the street in 360 degrees, it was also collecting data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. The comic takes this to the next level, that the Google Street View van also scans what we have in our pockets and does a retinal scan. In this case, the social security number referenced is the most used SSN of all time.
The last suggested the Babe Ruth, the American baseball slugger of 1914-1935 is actually a Time Lord. Time Lord is a reference to the popular sci-fi series "Doctor Who" in which The Doctor, who is a Time Lord, uses a TARDIS, which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space to travel through time.
CIA
by Jeff
Image text: It was their main recruiting poster, hung up nearly ten feet up a wall! This means the hackers have LADDER technology! Are we headed for a future where everyone has to pay $50 for one of those locked plexiglass poster covers? More after the break ...
This comic is a reference to the recent attacks by a group briefly known as LulzSec, which was a splinter group from the internet community known as Anonymous. Anonymous has been a previous subject of xkcd comics. In the back of the news report in frame one is the logo that was used by LulzSec. The group was able to publicize several high profile attacks. They were able to briefly take down the CIA website using a DDoS attack. DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service in which the attacker uses many computers to send traffic to a host and render it incapable of answering requests from any other computer, effectively taking the site down.
This comic is pointing out the difference between what lay-people and the computer experts hear when seeing a story like this. It is comparing a website to a company's poster, which is much different and less harmful than the actual hacking of actual computers.
Days Of The Week
by Berg
Image text: Not pictured: The elongated Halley's-Comet-like orbit of every Rebecca Black lyric.
First off- sorry all for the late post. I went to a Fucked Up concert last night, got jump kicked in the face, and didn't have it in me to tackle this when I got home last night. Without any further ado, let's dive in, shall we?
Since today's post is in itself a kind of explanation of social trends one is able to uncover using Google, I'm going to focus more on how to read the graph, and delve into an insight or two one is able to glean from it. Also, the real image is ginormous, so click on the tiny image above to see the full-size one in all it's glory.
As explained in the image, the graph is a polar graph, charting the relative strengths by which certain phrases are associated with certain days of the week. The closer a phrase comes to the center of the graph, the less the phrase is associated with whatever day of the week that is. Conversely, the further out a phrase is, the more associated with that day of the week it is.
Perhaps the clearest example of this in the above graph is the ladies night line, which has such a strong peak on wednesday that it goes clear out of the bounds of the picture. Likewise, church is so strongly associated with sunday that it goes off the chart there. And, not pictured but mentioned in the image text are the lyrics to Rebecca Black's mind-numbingly poppy hit "Friday," which I can only assume peaks so far out that no perspective which would show it would be of any use to us.
Also of interest are the the less eccentric orbits, for instance "big day" and "so drunk." The fact that these don't clearly peak on any one day indicates that (according to Google, at least) big days are spread out fairly evenly throughout the week (with a minimum on mondays), and so drunk tends to peak on weekends, though it seems fairly evenly split between fridays and saturdays (except in my household, where it peaks on monday afternoons).
Is there a lot of stuff I've missed here? Yes, but that's intentional- the fun of this one is finding the correlations and trends on your own. Hopefully I've given you enough insight on how to read the graph to enable a satisfying level of exploration. Share whatever you find in the comments!