Talk:1578: Squirrelphone

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 03:34, 17 September 2015 by 173.245.54.91 (talk)
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Could it be a reference to this? http://web.media.mit.edu/~stefanm/phd/cellularsquirrel/ ‎108.162.216.68 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I think it might be a reference to this: ‘Vampire squirrel’ caught on camera for the first time ever – Washington Post. --141.101.104.234 07:35, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
agreed: [1] 108.162.221.8 10:25, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


What about the old "Bananaphone" pun? 188.114.106.131 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)


Sometimes I wonder if the joke is to make ExplainXKCD squirm. 108.162.221.150 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

^ Not really. Those like me who used SquirrelMail had a laugh. Mostly every XKCD joke is incomprehensible to people not familiar with the subject of the joke. 108.162.229.135 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"a living squirrel being not an appropiate creature to mantain a phone call. "... well, duh. Everyone knows that a squid would make MUCH more sense! 108.162.250.161 05:16, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

A puppy... www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0tiNwOpZ68 108.162.229.182 14:11, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
I doubt this is supposed to be about SquirrelMail; it's much more likely to just be "Bananaphone" with a squirrel. 108.162.237.193 05:33, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Maybe a _dead_ squirrel would work better. At least it wouldn't bite... Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:16, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

"chomp" is also a command on unixoid operating systems that removes characters which carry no information (leading, trailing white spaces, newlines etc) from strings. Seems like the squirrelphone removed every bit of non-information, essentially cutting the call to nothing. 162.158.92.167 07:10, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Whoever put that [needs citation] in there deserves a medal XD Apbarratt (talk) 08:34, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Summary of POTS should be present tense - POTS is still active. 108.162.215.179 16:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

The tone played at the end is likely a howler tone, not fast busy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-hook_tone -- Trenin (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Do we really need an explanation of every noise landline phones make? Only two really apply here, ringing and howling. Since even cellphones have ringtones, I don't think ringing would need to be explained in the detail that it is, just something like "These phones would make a series of rings on receiving a call (as shown in the first panel) and would automatically stop ringing and answer when picked up." I must admit I'm young enough that my first impulse for a squirrelphone beeping was "Oh, it must be one of those wireless home phone recievers and it's low on battery." I suppose squirrelphones must still be wired, though, though it doesn't look like it. 173.245.50.142 17:39, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Seems like we do need the explanation for the ring tones. Sine this is a real squirrel imitating a phone, it is of course not wired. It just pretends making the appropriate sounds. --Kynde (talk) 19:38, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

How do we know it's not a phone pretending to be a squirrel? Mikemk (talk) 23:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

What if the squirrel swallowed a phone? Like in Jurassic Park, when the spinosaurus swallows the satellite phone? 108.162.219.91 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Just to let you know, there is nothing currently up on the wiki page that explains this comic.