Editing 1250: Old Accounts

{{comic
| number    = 1250
| date      = August 12, 2013
| title     = Old Accounts
| image     = old accounts.png
| titletext = If you close an account while it's still friends with people, it contributes to database linkage accumulation slowdown, which is a major looming problem for web infrastructure and definitely not a thing I just made up.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|discussion items not resolved}}
[[Cueball]] is very slowly following the described process of removing himself from a {{w|Social networking service|social network}}. Such actions are not necessary on any well-designed website, and actively unfriending people individually could be perceived as rude or antisocial. At the point Cueball reaches in the comic, however, his friends' reactions suggest they think he is suicidal. [http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/suicide/basics/symptoms/con-20033954 Distancing oneself from social contact] is an early warning of suicide.

There are dozens of social media websites and forums (e.g. Orkut and Hi5) that have faded into obscurity, either because they have outlived their usefulness, or because no one uses them. But even though one may not have visited them for years, they are still sitting there, gathering one's "friends'" statuses. It is often surprising to receive an email from a forum or social media website one has not visited for years. The comic is saying that one should always unfriend everyone when leaving a group, so that one does not keep getting statuses for "friends" one no longer cares about. The reverse order is because one unfriends the people one has known for the shortest period first.

Alternate explanation: The ''reverse order'' to unfriend people could refer to the correct {{w|Memory management|memory allocation and deallocation}} processes in {{w|programming language|programming languages}} like {{w|C (programming language)|C}}. When allocating a memory block ''A'', the {{w|Pointer (computer programming)|pointer}} ''a->'' will save the starting address of this memory block. The next memory blocks ''B'', ''C'', and ''D'' may use pointers saved inside of block ''A''. If ones starts the deallocation process at Block ''A'', one loses all information about the other blocks and thus can not deallocate them. If the process repeats over and over, its memory usage will accumulate and will eventually result in an {{w|out of memory}} error.

The comic may alternately refer to {{w|database|databases}} and the query language {{w|SQL}}. Modern web sites are always saved in such databases by using references from one entity to another. A entity in this context is a thing in the modeled world; in this case, Cueball and his "friends". Using the {{w|Entity–relationship model|entity–relationship model}}, the ''friends'' will still have a relationship to the nonexistent user Cueball, and the links are orphaned.

In the title text, "database linkage accumulation slowdown" really is a thing that [[Randall]] just made up. This may be a satire of popular fears of made-up technological problems, often held by those who are not technologically savvy.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits at a desk, using a laptop.]
:The internet is filled with derelict accounts aggregating news about friends long forgotten.
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
: Uhh, is everything OK?
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
: Dude, what the hell?
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
:When you find yourself drifting away from a community, remember to clean up after yourself by slowly unfriending everyone, one by one, in the reverse order that you added them.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Social networking]]
@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-[[Cueball]] is very dramatically following the described process of removing himself from a {{w|Social networking service|social network}} by first unfriending each contact in reverse order that he friended them. Such actions are not necessary on any well-designed website. Actively unfriending people individually could be perceived as rude, antisocial, or in need of help.  On the other hand, if a user simply abandons his or her account without cleaning it up, then even years later, it will still be sitting there, gathering friends' statuses, opinions and comments.
+{{incomplete|discussion items not resolved}}
+[[Cueball]] is very slowly following the described process of removing himself from a {{w|Social networking service|social network}}. Such actions are not necessary on any well-designed website, and actively unfriending people individually could be perceived as rude or antisocial. At the point Cueball reaches in the comic, however, his friends' reactions suggest they think he is suicidal. [http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/suicide/basics/symptoms/con-20033954 Distancing oneself from social contact] is an early warning of suicide.
-The ''reverse order'' to unfriend people refers to practice of correct {{w|Resource management (computing)|resource management}} in computer programming.  Computer programs typically require access to many resources at a time, and some of those resources may only be available insofar as the program has access to other more basic resources.
+There are dozens of social media websites and forums (e.g. Orkut and Hi5) that have faded into obscurity, either because they have outlived their usefulness, or because no one uses them. But even though one may not have visited them for years, they are still sitting there, gathering one's "friends'" statuses. It is often surprising to receive an email from a forum or social media website one has not visited for years. The comic is saying that one should always unfriend everyone when leaving a group, so that one does not keep getting statuses for "friends" one no longer cares about. The reverse order is because one unfriends the people one has known for the shortest period first.
-For example, if you wanted to watch a movie from a rental service, you would first acquire a keep case with a disk inside of it, and then you would remove the {{w|DVD}} from the case in order to play it on a TV.  Once you had watched the movie, you would put the DVD back inside the case.  Then you would return the case to the store.  The process for "releasing" these two resources (the DVD and the keep case) follows the reverse order of how they were obtained: the case was retrieved from the store before the disk was removed, but the disk must be put back before you return the case.
+Alternate explanation: The ''reverse order'' to unfriend people could refer to the correct {{w|Memory management|memory allocation and deallocation}} processes in {{w|programming language|programming languages}} like {{w|C (programming language)|C}}. When allocating a memory block ''A'', the {{w|Pointer (computer programming)|pointer}} ''a->'' will save the starting address of this memory block. The next memory blocks ''B'', ''C'', and ''D'' may use pointers saved inside of block ''A''. If ones starts the deallocation process at Block ''A'', one loses all information about the other blocks and thus can not deallocate them. If the process repeats over and over, its memory usage will accumulate and will eventually result in an {{w|out of memory}} error.
-A computer program must release resources in a valid order, though it is often difficult for programmers to ensure this, due to the many paths of execution a program can follow.  If resources are released in the wrong order, then a newer resource may reference an older resource that has already been destroyed, and when attempting to use the remaining resource, a variety of bad things could happen if the program attempted to access the already lost resource.
+The comic may alternately refer to {{w|database|databases}} and the query language {{w|SQL}}. Modern web sites are always saved in such databases by using references from one entity to another. A entity in this context is a thing in the modeled world; in this case, Cueball and his "friends". Using the {{w|Entity–relationship model|entity–relationship model}}, the ''friends'' will still have a relationship to the nonexistent user Cueball, and the links are orphaned.
-While resources do not always need to be released in exactly the reverse order of how they were obtained, doing so ensures that, as each resource is released, none of the resources that existed when it was acquired (and thus which it could be dependent upon) will have been released yet.
+In the title text, "database linkage accumulation slowdown" really is a thing that [[Randall]] just made up. This may be a satire of popular fears of made-up technological problems, often held by those who are not technologically savvy.
-In the case of unfriending users on a social networking site, it is imagined that Cueball or any other user could have made newer friends through older friends, and as such, that the newer friend should not exist without the older friend and must therefore be released first.
-The title text appears to be referencing related issue affecting {{w|database|databases}} used on websites such as social networking sites. When an account is deactivated, the database entries for users that were friends with the account may maintain a link to it.  This would result in the database storing useless data, so a well-designed database might try to mitigate this.  A well-written program accessing the database would be able to recognize that this data should be ignored.  Since no user account would be directly dependent on the existence of another account, the accounts can safely be deleted without worrying about resource management as described earlier.
-Ultimately, the inefficiency of a database containing useless data about deleted accounts is negligible, and in fact it may not even be worthwhile to take the time to update all the entries compared to how little time it would save when performing lookups. "Database linkage accumulation slowdown" really is a thing that [[Randall]] just made up. This may be a satire of popular fears of made-up technological problems, often held by those who are not technologically savvy.
 ==Transcript==
-:[Caption above the frame:]
+:[Cueball sits at a desk, using a laptop.]
 :The internet is filled with derelict accounts aggregating news about friends long forgotten.
+:<nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
-:[Cueball sits at a desk, typing on a laptop.]
+: Uhh, is everything OK?
-:Cueball: <nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
+:<nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
-:Computer (friend): Uhh, is everything OK?
+: Dude, what the hell?
-:Cueball: <nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
+:<nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
-:Computer (another friend): Dude, what the hell?
-:Cueball: <nowiki>*</nowiki>Click*
-:[Caption below the frame:]
 :When you find yourself drifting away from a community, remember to clean up after yourself by slowly unfriending everyone, one by one, in the reverse order that you added them.