explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:594: Period

2014-12-14T23:29:32Z

108.162.231.30: Created page with "...And angular velocity: 1.97 mHz ~~~~"

...And angular velocity: 1.97 mHz [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.30|108.162.231.30]] 23:29, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

903: Extended Mind

2013-12-04T15:58:47Z

108.162.231.30: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 903
| date = May 25, 2011
| title = Extended Mind
| image = extended mind.png
| titletext = Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".
}}

==Explanation==
When {{w|Wikipedia}} is down, everyone is considerably dumber as they lose their main source of information. This comic takes that to the extreme. The only Wikipedia outages that have occurred in the news are from March 2010 and the [[1005|SOPA protest outage]] of January 18, 2012.

The Extended Mind is a theory proposed by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers, which postulates that the mind isn't only in the skull, but also incorporates external things, like for example Wikipedia.

The text at the bottom of the comic "...my apparent IQ drops by 30 points." is just an other joke here. It's just saying that people like this are not able to use other resources than Wikipedia. They can't understand this old fashioned {{w|book|books}} and many more other ways to enhance their own skills.

The title text refers to an {{w|Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy|uncannily accurate observation}} of Wikipedia's page links, which likely arises from the fact that the first few links in any article tend to categorize the article into more abstract ideas that tend eventually towards philosophy.

==Transcript==
:[An IM window is open over a Chrome window with tabs for Spark Plug, Feeler Gauge, and Wikipedia.]
:Message with Mike1979
:Mike1979: I replaced my spark plugs and now my car is running weird.
:Me: The spark gap might be off.
:Me: You can check with a feeler gauge.
:Mike1979: What should the gap be?
:Me: Usually between 0.035" and 0.070".
:Me: But it depends on the engine.

:[An IM window is open over a Chrome window with a single Wikipedia tab, marked ERROR. The page says: "Wikipedia has a problem. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading (can't contact the database server: unknown error (10.0.0.242))]
:Message with Mike1979
:Mike1979: I replaced my spark plugs and now my car is running weird.
:Me: What is a spark plug??
:Me: Help
:Me: What is a car??

:When Wikipedia has a server outage, my apparent IQ drops by 30 points.

==Trivia==
* The error code shown in the right panel caused a [http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/236027 bit of a discussion] from the wiki techs.
Randall replied with:
::Randall: " I drew it based on an older error message where the IP was 10.0.0.243. I changed it to 242 (a) because I try not to get too specific with those things, and didn't want people poking the actual machine at .243 (if it was still there) -- I actually considered putting .276 and seeing how many people noticed, but figured they'd just think I made a dumb mistake. and (b) as part of this ancient inside joke involving the number 242 ... " "

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

14: Copyright

2013-11-21T13:15:54Z

108.162.231.30: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 14
| date = September 30, 2005
| title = Copyright
| image = copyright.jpg
| titletext = After reading Slashdot and BoingBoing, sometimes I have to go outside.
}}

==Explanation==
Following the {{w|copyright}} wars can be tiring and irritating; but faced with the beauty of nature, the importance of such matters withers away.

Copyright is a monopoly granted by governments to writers, artists, and performers to control the distribution, copying, and performance of their creative expression. Before the digital age, it allowed authors and publishers an opportunity to profit from their work without fear of someone making copies and selling them for their gain.

In the digital age, when the cost and difficulty of copying has been reduced to near zero, it hasn't worked so well, especially for publishers of music and video. Industry trade organizations like the {{w|RIAA}} and {{w|MPAA}} have fought to preserve their old business models, lobbying for new laws to protect their income streams in an age where anyone can copy an {{w|MP3}} file or a DVD quickly and cheaply. This has involved ordering web sites to take down "infringing" material (and many times material which wasn't infringing), media campaigns comparing file copiers to folks who commit murder on the high seas, and suing artists and writers who have used samples of music or movies in their own work. The {{w|RIAA}} have claimed that rampant illegal copying hurts the artists whose work is copied, as it cuts into the artists royalty payments; many artists, on the other hand, complain that the RIAA's accounting practices have denied them their fair royalties for decades anyway, and that increased copying leads to increased fans and money through direct sales and is actually better for them than the RIAA. It's a vicious war.

An early casualty in the copyright wars was {{w|Napster}}, a later casualty was the concept of {{w|DRM}} (Digital Rights Management) on recorded music. The wars have been going on since the early 1990s and show no sign of slowing down.

[http://slashdot.com Slashdot] and [http://boingboing.net Boing Boing] are two news aggregation websites which cover (among other things) the copyright wars in detail, usually biased against the RIAA, MPAA, and similar organizations.

==Transcript==
:[Colored drawing of a hilly grassy landscape, Cueball leaning against a tree.]
:Cueball: Sometimes I just can't get outraged over copyright law

==Trivia==
*This is the twelfth comic originally posted on livejournal. The previous was [[10: Pi Equals]]. The next was [[11: Barrel - Part 2]]. View archive [http://liveweb.archive.org/web/20070927001941/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/?skip=40 here].
*Original title: "Copyright Law"
*Original [[Randall]] quote: "I posted this to a Slashdot thread about copyrights, and without any moderation, over 600 people clicked on it."

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

Talk:1290: Syllable Planning

2013-11-13T08:42:41Z

108.162.231.30: effing insertion

I remember my father telling me when I was a teenager about a scholarly paper that described this exact topic, namely the rules governing where 'fucking' can be injected into multi-syllable words. I still remember discussing the options for "fantastic" and "government". Decades later I had a dream about words like "uninstallable" (which can either mean something that can be uninstalled or something that can't be uninstalled), and discovering that someone had written a paper about that very subject (http://www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/engsv/papers/vikn08b.pdf). [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.127|199.27.128.127]] 06:00, 13 November 2013 (UTC) Toby Ovod-Everett
: Think you mean "... can be uninstalled or .... can't be installed". --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.51.227|173.245.51.227]] 06:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Surely the question is which words benefit from the effing emphasis? Fan-effing-tastic is a natural, but with 'government' I wouldn't try...I'd just say 'effing government (what a bunch of wankers, bastards, mongrels, etc)'.[[User:Anff59|Anff59]] ([[User talk:Anff59|talk]]) 07:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

This immediately made me think about "Legen -wait for it- dary", one of the key phrases that 'Barney' uses in {{w|How I Met Your Mother}}. [[User:Kaa-ching|Kaa-ching]] ([[User talk:Kaa-ching|talk]]) 08:31, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

In case you want to go hunting for papers, it's actually got a name in linguistics: "fucking insertion". Not a good Google word unfortunately. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.30|108.162.231.30]] 08:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)