explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1167: Star Trek into Darkness

2017-07-15T02:13:56Z

162.158.63.58:

{{comic
| number = 1167
| date = January 30, 2013
| title = Star Trek into Darkness
| image = star_trek_into_darkness.png
| titletext = Of course, factions immediately sprang up in favor of '~*~sTaR tReK iNtO dArKnEsS~*~', 'xX_StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNess_Xx', and 'Star Trek lnto Darkness' (that's a lowercase 'L').
}}

==Explanation==

The talk page of a Wikipedia article is used to discuss changes to the article. An {{w|Wikipedia:Edit warring|edit war}} is a dispute about a specific edit to an article, manifesting as a series of edits alternating between making and reverting the change, and usually accompanied by a more-or-less heated debate on the talk page.

Here, [[Randall]] is referring to a dispute on the Wikipedia article about ''{{w|Star Trek Into Darkness|Star Trek lnto Darkness}}'' (an upcoming {{w|Star Trek}} film at the time of the comic's posting). On the day before the comic was published, the article name had a lowercase "into", and the talk page looked [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Star_Trek_Into_Darkness&oldid=535542349 like this] (rounded off in a friendly way, with the posting of {{w|User:Frungi/Star Trek Into Darkness capitalization|a summary of the arguments}}, and an exchange of virtual hugs). In summary, the debate centers around whether "Into Darkness" should be treated as a prepositional phrase or an unpunctuated subtitle (as in "Star Trek: Into Darkness"), whether compound prepositions like "into" should be capitalized in titles, and whether the capitalization of the title in the movie's official promotional material is relevant. The intensity and multiple facets of a debate over one tiny letter is apparently entertaining to Randall.

[[Cueball]] changes the title so that every other letter is capitalized, and adds framing tildes and asterisks (a common, but childish and ugly way of emphasizing titles online). This will probably not go over well.

[[Megan|Megan's]] line of "They should have sent a poet." is a quote from the film ''{{w|Contact (film)|Contact}}''. The quote is also featured in [[482: Height]]. In the movie, the line was meant to convey that only a poet could adequately capture the beauty seen; here, it indicates that prose is insufficient to capture the ironic beauty of the edit war.

The title text indicates Randall's belief that such arguments are perpetual and will always arise. He suggests that the edit to the Wikipedia page will result in a dispute over variants of Cueballs "compromise". Because the lowercase "L" and the capital "I" appear similar in many fonts, he also puts forth the potential argument that the character in the movie's title is a lowercase "L".

The old "favorite edit war" might be the one referenced in the title text of [[878: Model Rail]] or the one resulting from the addition of the [[739: Malamanteau]] article to Wikipedia

==Transcript==
:[Cueball staring at computer screen.]
:Cueball: Oh, wow. Look at Wikipedia's Talk page for Star Trek into Darkness. I have a new favorite edit war.
:Megan (off-panel): Oh?

:Cueball: Forty ''thousand'' words of debate over whether to capitalize "into" in the movie's title. Still no consensus.
:Megan: That's ''magnificent''.
:Cueball: It's breathtaking.
:Megan: They should have sent a poet.

:Cueball: Well, I'm making an executive decision. I hope both sides accept this as a fair compromise.

:[A Wikipedia page titled "~*~ StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs ~*~"]

==Trivia==
After the publication of the comic, the debate continued with full force, complete with {{w|Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness/Archive 5#xkcd Mention|a section of xkcd-inspired suggestions}}. The article itself was soon protected, so that only administrators could edit it. A day later, the title was changed to one including a capital "Into" by the administrator {{w|User:Mackensen|Mackensen}}. (The debate continued on {{w|User talk:Mackensen/Archive20#Star Trek into Darkness move|his talk page}}.) Currently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/~*~_StAr_TrEk_InTo_DaRkNeSs_~*~ is a valid link and it redirects to the correct page, but this redirect was {{w|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 January 25#~*~ StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs ~*~|nominated for deletion}} and kept in 2015.

{{w|The Independent}} published an article about the "[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/trekkies-take-on-wikis-in-a-grammatical-tizzy-over-star-trek-into-darkness-8475705.html grammatical tizzy]", and the affair as a whole was added to Wikipedia's humorous list of the {{w|WP:Lamest edit wars|lamest edit wars}}.

{{comic discussion 1167}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Compromise]]

1167: Star Trek into Darkness

2017-07-15T02:12:52Z

162.158.63.58:

{{comic
| number = 1167
| date = January 30, 2013
| title = Star Trek into Darkness
| image = star_trek_into_darkness.png
| titletext = Of course, factions immediately sprang up in favor of '~*~sTaR tReK iNtO dArKnEsS~*~', 'xX_StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNess_Xx', and 'Star Trek lnto Darkness' (that's a lowercase 'L').
}}

==Explanation==

The talk page of a Wikipedia article is used to discuss changes to the article. An {{w|Wikipedia:Edit warring|edit war}} is a dispute about a specific edit to an article, manifesting as a series of edits alternating between making and reverting the change, and usually accompanied by a more-or-less heated debate on the talk page.

Here, [[Randall]] is referring to a dispute on the Wikipedia article about ''{{w|Star Trek Into Darkness|Star Trek lnto Darkness}}'' (an upcoming {{w|Star Trek}} film at the time of the comic's posting). On the day before the comic was published, the article name had a lowercase "into", and the talk page looked [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Star_Trek_Into_Darkness&oldid=535542349 like this] (rounded off in a friendly way, with the posting of {{w|User:Frungi/Star Trek Into Darkness capitalization|a summary of the arguments}}, and an exchange of virtual hugs). In summary, the debate centers around whether "Into Darkness" should be treated as a prepositional phrase or an unpunctuated subtitle (as in "Star Trek: Into Darkness"), whether compound prepositions like "into" should be capitalized in titles, and whether the capitalization of the title in the movie's official promotional material is relevant. The intensity and multiple facets of a debate over one tiny letter is apparently entertaining to Randall.

[[Cueball]] changes the title so that every other letter is capitalized, and adds framing tildes and asterisks (a common, childish way of emphasizing titles online). This will probably not go over well.

[[Megan|Megan's]] line of "They should have sent a poet." is a quote from the film ''{{w|Contact (film)|Contact}}''. The quote is also featured in [[482: Height]]. In the movie, the line was meant to convey that only a poet could adequately capture the beauty seen; here, it indicates that prose is insufficient to capture the ironic beauty of the edit war.

The title text indicates Randall's belief that such arguments are perpetual and will always arise. He suggests that the edit to the Wikipedia page will result in a dispute over variants of Cueballs "compromise". Because the lowercase "L" and the capital "I" appear similar in many fonts, he also puts forth the potential argument that the character in the movie's title is a lowercase "L".

The old "favorite edit war" might be the one referenced in the title text of [[878: Model Rail]] or the one resulting from the addition of the [[739: Malamanteau]] article to Wikipedia

==Transcript==
:[Cueball staring at computer screen.]
:Cueball: Oh, wow. Look at Wikipedia's Talk page for Star Trek into Darkness. I have a new favorite edit war.
:Megan (off-panel): Oh?

:Cueball: Forty ''thousand'' words of debate over whether to capitalize "into" in the movie's title. Still no consensus.
:Megan: That's ''magnificent''.
:Cueball: It's breathtaking.
:Megan: They should have sent a poet.

:Cueball: Well, I'm making an executive decision. I hope both sides accept this as a fair compromise.

:[A Wikipedia page titled "~*~ StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs ~*~"]

==Trivia==
After the publication of the comic, the debate continued with full force, complete with {{w|Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness/Archive 5#xkcd Mention|a section of xkcd-inspired suggestions}}. The article itself was soon protected, so that only administrators could edit it. A day later, the title was changed to one including a capital "Into" by the administrator {{w|User:Mackensen|Mackensen}}. (The debate continued on {{w|User talk:Mackensen/Archive20#Star Trek into Darkness move|his talk page}}.) Currently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/~*~_StAr_TrEk_InTo_DaRkNeSs_~*~ is a valid link and it redirects to the correct page, but this redirect was {{w|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 January 25#~*~ StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs ~*~|nominated for deletion}} and kept in 2015.

{{w|The Independent}} published an article about the "[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/trekkies-take-on-wikis-in-a-grammatical-tizzy-over-star-trek-into-darkness-8475705.html grammatical tizzy]", and the affair as a whole was added to Wikipedia's humorous list of the {{w|WP:Lamest edit wars|lamest edit wars}}.

{{comic discussion 1167}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Compromise]]

1863: Screenshots

2017-07-14T22:38:56Z

162.158.63.58:

{{comic
| number = 1863
| date = July 14, 2017
| title = Screenshots
| image = screenshots.png
| titletext = For the final exam, you take a screenshot showing off all the work you've done in the class, and it has to survive being uploaded, thumbnailed, and re-screenshotted through a chain of social media sites.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Let's add a detailed bullet list explaining every point on the syllabus.}}

The comic shows a syllabus of an introductory course on {{w|Screenshot|screenshots}}. Screenshots have become a common way of spreading and sharing content on social media like Tumblr and Twitter, particularly excerpts of text such as seen in the cartoon. This in turn has developed into a common language with unwritten rules; the comic imagines a world where such rules have become codified into best practices, able to be taught in classes.

The image on the left shows an image of screenshots of text, along with what seems like annotations describing various ratios and dos and don'ts about making such screenshots. The right side shows the main points of the course, touching on topics that are relevant for making and publishing screenshots. Some of these guidelines are violated on a regular basis by people sharing screenshots on the internet, leading to impaired readability and the degradation of digital quality (see [[1683: Digital Data]]).

The punchline of the comic describes a high attendance in the course (presumably many people are interested in how to take high-quality screenshots), however the digital textbook only sold one copy, implying that the only attendee that bought the book was adept enough to distribute screenshots of the textbook content to the others, because of the information gathered from the class itself. In essence, the writer of the textbook has taught its students how to pirate his material, effectively putting himself out of a job.

Detailed explanation of the headings on the right:

{| class=wikitable
! Heading
! Explanation

|-
| Highlighting: What & How much?
| This refers to highlighting text of particular interest in screenshots, as depicted on the left.

|-
| Aspect ratios
| Again, depicted on the left. If a screenshot is too wide, it might be difficult to read, and/or it will not fit into thumbnails and social networking feeds. This leads to the screenshot being scaled down too much to be readable (see bottom left). An {{w|aspect ratio}} that is too tall would have similar effects, so in general it is better to stick to near-square aspect ratios (see bottom right of the left section).

|-
| Cropping: Pre- and Post-
| This refers to {{w|cropping}} the image, that is cutting away the irrelevant or unnecessary parts, leaving just the content one needs to communicate.

|-
| Whitespace
| This section presumably deals with how to handle large blocks that lack content (or {{w|White space (visual arts)|whitespace}}, though not necessarily white).

|-
| Screenshots vs Links
| For the most part it is recommended that one links to the original content, rather than publishing a screenshot of said content. In some situations it is advisable to opt for using screenshots, such as trying to catch attention on social media, or if the content in question has been removed from the original source, and one still wants to communicate the fact that it was published there.

|-
| Catching the right GIF frame
| {{w|GIFs}} are short looping animations on the internet. They often employ a low {{w|frame rate}}, so that one might notice a funny or interesting frame during playback. Pressing the screenshot button at the right time is still a challenge however, even with the low frame rate of GIFs.

|-
| Snapchat and trust
| {{w|Snapchat}} is a popular social networking application for mobile devices primarily used for sharing images and short videos. One of the main selling points is the transience of content posted. The idea is that as soon as one opens an image or video, a timer starts, and once it has expired the content is no longer accessible on the device. This has led to people sending sensitive content to their friends, thinking that they wouldn't be able to cause much harm, as the content is non-permanent. An obvious flaw in this model is the capability of modern mobile devices to take screenshots (usually available from shortcut keys), and thus permanently save the images to the phones memory. Saving embarrassing images of ones friends, that they themselves meant as a transient joke is a serious breach of trust, hence the heading.

|-
| Embarrassing background tabs
| A common error when publishing screenshots is not checking thoroughly enough, and leaving content visible, that might be embarrassing. One such example is {{w|browser tab}}, which might feature content that the creator of the screenshot does not want others to see, such as {{w|pornography}}. Since tabs are small and disconnected from the main content, it is easy to miss such occurrences, which lead to situations such as [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/10/lawmaker-mistakenly-hands-out-document-with-porn-references.html this one], where a politician handed out a document with background tabs to pornography websites.

|-
| Spellcheck's red underlines
| {{w|Spell checkers}} are designed to notify the writer of a document of spelling and grammatical mistakes in the text. This is usually done through the editor marking text it thinks is incorrect with an underline (usually red, but other colors may indicate different kinds of mistakes). Sometimes these mistakes are not relevant to the writer, such as when editing {{w|source code}} or using a spellchecker that is set to another language. Even if the corrections are relevant however, one would not want the ugly red underlines on a screenshot. This section presumably deals with this problem.

|-
| Security: Beware of URL tokens
| {{w|Query string|URL tokens}} are pieces of code embedded in the {{w|URL}} of a website. If implemented well, these help identify a particular document or search query, and do not carry any sensitive security information. Insecure web-apps however may encode authentication information (such as {{w|Session_ID|session IDs}}, or even worse: usernames and passwords) in the URL, leading to a massive security risk on the part of someone whose screen might be visible to others. Screenshots allow anyone to easily read off these parameters, and possibly successfully impersonate the creator of the screenshot on a website. This is especially hard to notice to less technically inclined users, who might not know that, say a session id (a seemingly random jumble of characters), might be used to impersonate them.

|-
| Redacting personal info
| Somewhat related to the previous point: Screenshots might include personal information, such as indications of institutions one might work for, e-mail addresses and alike, that one might not want to share with the world. This section presumably deals with ways of obscuring such information on screenshots.

|-
| Useful browser modes
| Using the {{w|Privacy mode|private browsing mode}} offered by most browsers helps with the previous point of keeping your personal information out of the screenshots because websites see you as logged out. Another helpful mode is the full screen browsing mode (usually F11) that will maximize the content to cover the whole screen, keeping the browser UI chrome out of the screenshots. This also helps with privacy, as it will keep the bookmarks on your browser toolbar from being visible, as well as your username if you're logged in Chrome, without having to crop the screenshots manually. Counterpointing with the final bullet on spotting fakes, the inspect element browser mode allows you to live edit the HTML source of the webpage, allowing you to create more convincing fakes if that is your goal.

|-
| Tradeoffs: PNG vs JPG
| {{w|Portable Network Graphics|PNG}} and {{w|JPG}} are file formats with different {{w|image compression|image compression algorithms}}. JPG is widely used for encoding photographs, as it compresses real-world images to a fraction of their normal size without losing much quality. On artificial images with lots of sharp changes in contrast (such as text) however, JPG produces visible {{w|compression artifacts}} due to its {{w|lossy compression}}. For these PNG is usually used, as it compresses large blocks of a single color, and repeating patterns efficiently, and due to it having a lossless option is able to encode text without artifacts, improving readability. PNG is usually superior for screenshots, as these are artificial images, but if the screenshot is of an actual photo (or a frame of a GIF or movie), JPG might yield lower file sizes at comparable quality. This tradeoff is presumably discussed under the heading.

|-
| Watermark ethics
| Many users and websites add {{w|watermarks}} to their original content (or even worse: their screenshots) to indicate where it came from. As depicted in [[1683: Digital Data]] this can lead to degradation of quality as watermarks are stacked on top of each other. It is generally considered okay to put a single unobtrusive watermark on ones own original work, anything other than that would be considered unethical.

|-
| Spotting fakes
| It is relatively easy to fake a screenshot in an image editing program such as {{w|GIMP}} or just editing the page source, making it seem like another organization or person is the original source of the content, possibly damaging their reputation. Some of these techniques are easily detectable by looking at the images {{w|metadata}} or correlating the contents of the screenshot with other sources.

|}

The title text once again refers to the continual re-screenshotting of data as seen in [[1683: Digital Data]], where the final examination consists of the students taking a screenshot good enough that it is still recognizable (and hopefully readable) after being re-compressed, re-screenshotted and re-uploaded to various social networking sites, deteriorating its quality. This is quite a difficult task, considering the student only has control over the first screenshot, and subsequent screenshots could degrade the quality to any level. Hopefully the professor is aware of this and plans to perform the test under controlled conditions, as well as grade on a curve.

Previously screenshots were explored by Randall in [[1373: Screenshot]] and [[1815: Flag]]. This comic is one of a small set of comics with the same or almost the same title as another comic (only plural form of word screenshot being difference).

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:<big>Intro to Screenshots</big>

:[The left side of the panel shows three images. The largest image is a screenshot of text with the middle section highlighted and margins and top and bottom rows marked with red lines and arrows. The two smaller images below are cropped versions of the first image: the left image has an incorrect "squashed" aspect ratio and a red X on it, while the right image has a correct aspect ratio and a green check mark.]

:[The right side of the panel:]

::<u>Syllabus</u>
:*Highlighting: What & how much
:*Aspect ratios
:*Cropping: Pre- and post-
:*Whitespace
:*Screenshots vs links
:*Catching the right GIF frame
:*Snapchat and trust
:*Embarrassing backround tabs
:*Spellcheck's red outlines
:*Security: Beware URL tokens
:*Redacting personal info
:*Useful browser modes
:*Tradeoffs: PNG vs JPG
:*Watermark ethics
:*Spotting fakes

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My class on screenshots was a big hit, although for some reason I only ever sold one copy of the digital textbook.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics sharing name|Screenshot02]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

1787: Voice Commands

2017-06-29T07:31:05Z

162.158.63.58: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1787
| date = January 18, 2017
| title = Voice Commands
| image = voice_commands.png
| titletext = Dvorak words may sound hard to pronounce, but studies show they actually put less stress on the vocal cords.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic [[Cueball]] has shown [[Ponytail]] something relevant to her on his smartphone and she asks if he can send it to her. He agrees but then says something completely incomprehensible to Ponytail, but obviously his phone understands and sends the message with a beep.

The caption explains that he was speaking using the {{w|Dvorak encoding}}. This is a simple encoding when using a {{w|QWERTY}} keyboard layout and writing as it was a {{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard}} or vice versa. Cueball can be sure that nobody else will be able to use voice commands on his phone.

The sentence Cueball tells his phone translates to "Okay Google send a text" -- he says it as if he were typing the sentence on a Dvorak layout with the keyboard set to a QWERTY layout. How such words would be pronounced is a mystery, as the letters in the words are merely substituted with others with no regard to phonetics; without standardized pronunciations, a speech-to-text program would be useless. To add to the confusion, one of the words in Cueball's sentence includes a semi-colon as one of its letters despite the fact that semi-colons are punctuation rather than phonemes, which only complicates the pronunciation further.

The title text is a reference to the fact that many users of Dvorak keyboards claim they may be hard to learn, but they are more movement efficient and put less stress on your fingers due to less movement. This makes little sense in the scenario set up by the comic, as speaking gibberish using oddly placed vowels would be equally difficult, if not in fact harder, on the vocal cords.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is looking at Cueball facing her, and he looks down at the smartphone he is holding in his hand.]
:Ponytail: Can you text it to me?
:Cueball: Sure!
:Cueball: ''Svat ussupd ;dlh a kdbk''
:Ponytail: ...What?
:Phone: ''*Beep*''

:[Caption under the panel:]
:Setting my phone's speech recognition to Dvorak was a pain at first, but it's more efficient in the long run.

==Trivia==
*Dvorak was also mentioned in [[977: Map Projections]], and it seems likely that Randall took a look at that comic before making [[1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize]] which where released the week before this comic.
*So it is realistic that the reason this comic came out now, was because Randall was thus reminded about his aversion to people advocating for Dvorak enabling people to type faster than on QWERTY.
*Using a Dvorak keyboard layout on a smartphone (for actual typing, not voice commands) is possible, but the very features that make it desirable in a physical touch-typing environment are drawbacks on a swipe-enabled keyboard. A placement designed to alternate a typist's left and right hands requires the finger of a swipist to travel back and forth across the keyboard more often. Fitting commonly-used letters onto the typist's home row reduces finger movement but makes many words the swipist enters indistinguishable. On a QWERTY swipe keyboard, four English words can be entered by swiping right to left from P to T: "pot", "pit", "put", and "pout"; however, setting the layout to Dvorak causes this to happen with many more common sets of words.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]
[[Category:Dvorak]]

1787: Voice Commands

2017-06-29T07:30:02Z

162.158.63.58:

{{comic
| number = 1787
| date = January 18, 2017
| title = Voice Commands
| image = voice_commands.png
| titletext = Dvorak words may sound hard to pronounce, but studies show they actually put less stress on the vocal cords.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic [[Cueball]] has shown [[Ponytail]] something relevant to her on his smartphone and she asks if he can send it to her. He agrees but then says something completely incomprehensible to Ponytail, but obviously his phone understands and sends the message with a beep.

The caption explains that he was speaking using the {{w|Dvorak encoding}}. This is a simple encoding when using a {{w|QWERTY}} keyboard layout and writing as it was a {{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard}} or vice versa. Cueball can be sure that nobody else will be able to use voice commands on his phone.

The sentence Cueball tells his phone translates to "Okay Google send a text" -- he says it as if he were typing the sentence on a Dvorak layout with the keyboard set to a QWERTY layout. How such words would be pronounced is a mystery, as the letters in the words are merely substituted with others with no regard to phonetics; without standardized pronunciations, a speech-to-text program would be useless. To add to the confusion, one of the words in Cueball's sentence includes a semi-colon as one of its letters despite the fact that semi-colons are punctuation rather than phonemes, so how it would be pronounced is a mystery.

The title text is a reference to the fact that many users of Dvorak keyboards claim they may be hard to learn, but they are more movement efficient and put less stress on your fingers due to less movement. This makes little sense in the scenario set up by the comic, as speaking gibberish using oddly placed vowels would be equally difficult, if not in fact harder, on the vocal cords.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is looking at Cueball facing her, and he looks down at the smartphone he is holding in his hand.]
:Ponytail: Can you text it to me?
:Cueball: Sure!
:Cueball: ''Svat ussupd ;dlh a kdbk''
:Ponytail: ...What?
:Phone: ''*Beep*''

:[Caption under the panel:]
:Setting my phone's speech recognition to Dvorak was a pain at first, but it's more efficient in the long run.

==Trivia==
*Dvorak was also mentioned in [[977: Map Projections]], and it seems likely that Randall took a look at that comic before making [[1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize]] which where released the week before this comic.
*So it is realistic that the reason this comic came out now, was because Randall was thus reminded about his aversion to people advocating for Dvorak enabling people to type faster than on QWERTY.
*Using a Dvorak keyboard layout on a smartphone (for actual typing, not voice commands) is possible, but the very features that make it desirable in a physical touch-typing environment are drawbacks on a swipe-enabled keyboard. A placement designed to alternate a typist's left and right hands requires the finger of a swipist to travel back and forth across the keyboard more often. Fitting commonly-used letters onto the typist's home row reduces finger movement but makes many words the swipist enters indistinguishable. On a QWERTY swipe keyboard, four English words can be entered by swiping right to left from P to T: "pot", "pit", "put", and "pout"; however, setting the layout to Dvorak causes this to happen with many more common sets of words.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]
[[Category:Dvorak]]

583: CNR

2017-04-28T21:34:14Z

162.158.63.58:

{{comic
| number = 583
| date = May 13, 2009
| title = CNR
| image = cnr.png
| titletext = Can't and shouldn't.
}}

==Explanation==
"Could not reproduce" (CNR as per the title) is used here as a {{w|double entendre}}. Because the reported bug is that speech recognition failed on a young child's voice, the programmers attempt to reproduce (biologically) in order to have a child to use as a test subject to understand and fix the bug, starting by reproducing it (the bug). However the attempt fails, as shown by the negative pregnancy test, and therefore the bug report is closed with the reason being "could not reproduce": they could not reproduce the bug because they could not reproduce biologically. This reason also shows up in comic [[937: TornadoGuard]].

The secondary joke is that Megan has chosen a ridiculous method of obtaining a child for the relatively simple task of testing the software. The obvious solution is to find a pre-existing child to use; giving birth to (and, presumably, raising) a child would burden the programmers with serious expenses and responsibilities, and it would take years before the child would be able to speak clearly enough to use the program.

The title-text "Can't and shouldn't" qualifies the bug report, meaning that the programmers not only could not reproduce, they also should not reproduce, as their reasons for doing so shows they have exceedingly bad judgment. (They also have poor child-rearing skills, as demonstrated in comic [[674: Natural Parenting]].)

==Transcript==
:[Megan is sitting at a computer.]
:Computer: Speech2Text Commander
:Computer: Bug #167801
:Computer: Speech recognition fails on young child voices.
:Megan: Hmm.

:[The view enlarges to show a man sitting at another desk.]
:Megan: Hey, can you do me without a condom? We need a young child for something.
:Cueball: Okay.

:[A pregnancy test is displayed. The label indicates not pregnant.]
:Pregnant
:Not pregnant

:[Megan is typing on the computer.]
:Megan typing: Bug #167801
:Megan typing: Status: Closed
:Megan typing: Reason: Could not reproduce.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Sex]]
[[Category:Language]]

1044: Romney Quiz

2017-04-26T21:21:51Z

162.158.63.58:

{{comic
| number = 1044
| date = April 18, 2012
| title = Romney Quiz
| image = Romney quiz.png
| titletext = Charlie actually delivered the Medicare line almost verbatim in the 1971 movie's Fizzy Lifting Drink scene, but it was ultimately cut from the final release.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic satirizes "either/or" quizzes seen on websites such as mentalfloss.com. These quizzes normally have an element of challenge by presenting tonally similar quotes, such as "Who Said It: Ted Nugent or Cartman from ''South Park''?". The two people are generally chosen carefully to fulfill a particular role, for example:
*Polar opposites - Republican vs Democrat, Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice, Christian vs Atheist
*Real vs fictional
*Politician/Celebrity vs villain - George Bush vs Hitler, Nigel Farage vs Ku Klux Klan, Obama vs Lucifer

In each case the idea is usually to surprise the reader with the fact that the quotes are difficult to tell apart, with the implied "conclusion" that person A is essentially indistinguishable from person B. In some cases the quizzes may be used as a tool to portray a particular person or group in a certain way, or alternatively may be light-hearted jest.

Mitt Romney was the {{w|Republican Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2012|Republican candidate for President of the United States}} (officially declared presumptive nominee on April 25, 2012, one week after this comic) during the {{w|United States presidential election, 2012|2012 US presidential election}} and, as it says above, the former Governor of Massachusetts. During the election, Mad Magazine published a popular article which compared quotes from Romney with quotes from the ''{{w|The Simpsons|Simpsons}}'' villain {{w|Montgomery Burns}}, the implication being that like Burns, Romney was a corrupt out-of-touch plutocrat and had similar views and affectations. In this comic, Burns is substituted with Charlie Bucket, the main character of the 1964 {{w|Roald Dahl}} children's novel, ''{{w|Charlie and the Chocolate Factory}},'' adapted to film in 1971 as ''Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.''

The joke here is that the two categories of quotes are not at all similar, and thus are very easy to attribute. Where the question "Is there even a difference?" usually implies some kind of political satire, in this case the point of the quiz appears to be lost, leading to a situation of bewilderment for the reader.

In 1965, Congress created Medicare under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide health insurance to people age 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history. So, the quote being used in a movie in 1971 (which is obviously not true) is still feasible.

==Transcript==
:[One long panel, with a large headline at the top, flanked by two small pictures on each side: a portrait of Mitt Romney on the left, and a child running with a golden ticket in his hand on the left. Below is a list numbered 1 - 12 down the left. The answers on the bottom are written upside down.]
:QUIZ: Who said it - former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, or Wonka contest winner Charlie Bucket?
:''Is there even a difference?''

:1. ———— "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country."
:2. ———— "Returning Medicare to solid footing represents our greatest entitlement challenge."
:3. ———— "Look, everyone, look, I've got it! The fifth golden ticket is mine!"
:4. ———— We have lost faith in government. Not in just one party, not in just one house, but in government."
:5. ———— "This banana's fantastic! It tastes so real."
:6. ———— "Grandpa... on the way home today, I ran into Mr. Slugworth."
:7. ———— "I'm not happy exporting jobs, but we must move ahead in technology and patents."
:8. ———— "Hey, the room is getting smaller."
:9. ———— "It would be impossible to reach unanimity on every aspect of our budget."
:10. ——— "Grandpa, look over there across the river! They're little men!"
:11. ——— "I'm... going too high! Hey, Grandpa, I can't get down! Help! Grandpa, the fan!"
:12. ——— "Barack Obama has failed America."

:˙ƖƖ '0Ɩ '8 '9 'ϛ 'Ɛ :ʇǝʞɔnq ǝᴉlɹɐɥƆ ;ᄅƖ '6 'ㄥ 'ㄣ 'ᄅ 'Ɩ :ʎǝuɯoɹ ʇʇᴉW :sɹǝʍsu∀ (Flipped and reversed: Answers: Mitt Romney: 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 12; Charlie Bucket: 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11.)

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

Talk:903: Extended Mind

2017-04-12T19:33:42Z

162.158.63.58:

Title text is true - unless you happen to stumble upon any one of: {{w|Fact}}, {{w|Proof (truth)}}, {{w|Evidence}}, or {{w|Truth}}. Then you'll be stranded in an eternal loop.
:What do you mean? {{w|Fact}} works fine, you get there in 7 steps. Proof gets you there in 6 - you go to {{w|Necessity and Sufficiency}} not {{w|Evidence}}. Same for {{w|Evidence}}. {{w|Truth}} leads you to {{w|Fact}}. So all of your examples actually work.
--[[User:T0IVI|T0IVI]] ([[User talk:T0IVI|talk]]) 09:27, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
:Also, I add another rule to my wikiwalks: No purple links. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.101|108.162.218.101]] 21:05, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
:'''Logic''' leads you to '''reason''', which leads you to '''consciousness''', which leads you to '''quality''', which leads you to '''propery''', which takes you back to logic.
[[User:Mulan15262|Mulan15262]] ([[User talk:Mulan15262|talk]]) 23:33, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[[User:Mulan15262|Mulan15262]]

Yeah, I hit a loop on the page Community. Went right from National community to Community again. {{unsigned|69.91.105.111}}

These infinite loops seem to be 'fixed', I went through fact and other stuff right to philosophy.{{unsigned|141.35.48.11}}

Another loop is "England". It goes right to "Countries of the United Kingdom" which returns immediately to England.

Found one! Logic now seems to go to arguments and right back. 6/3/2016 in case it changes. {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.70}}

Changed arguments goes to philosophy [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.58|162.158.63.58]] 19:33, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Finally we all end up in {{w|Reality}}. [[Special:Contributions/85.178.28.173|85.178.28.173]] 21:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I do have to say that the best loop that doesn't feed to Philosophy is {{w|Sand Fence}} and {{w|Snow Fence}}. The first sentence of each article is identical except for switching the instances of sand and snow. --[[Special:Contributions/68.97.21.122|68.97.21.122]] 05:17, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

:actually sand fence leads to fence, which leads eventually to fortification, military, lethal force, human being, and that obviously that leads up to philosophy. what made you think that a fence would let you escape this trap that is philosophy.[[User:TheJonyMyster|TheJonyMyster]] ([[User talk:TheJonyMyster|talk]]) 03:07, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

:: The Sand Fence <--> Snow Fence loop used to exist, but the articles have now been substantially updated. Like you've noted, Sand Fence now reaches Philosophy, and thus so does Snow Fence (which still links to Sand Fence). --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 08:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

::: I get stuck in the Sand Fence <--> Snow Fence loop! Except you hit the cleanup link in the cleanup-banner. But how did you get to Sand Fence in the first place ? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.253.144|108.162.253.144]] 00:22, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Saying that everything ends up in "philosophy" is simply choosing from a long list of possible entries to suit an argument. I found it much more interesting, having gotten to philosophy, to keep going through the loop, then to see where certain pages drop you into said loop. The loop currenty is reality, existence, world, human, hominini, tribe, biology, natural science, sciences, knowledge, fact, proof, necessity and sufficiency, logic, reason, consciousness, quality (philosophy), property (philosophy), modern philosophy, then finally philosophy. It's as if we've stumbled upon a new classification of knowledge. If only we could look recursively at ALL the things that lead into a certain topic in the loop. For example, goat drops you into the loop at biology, which makes perfect sense, but Volvo drops you in at natural sciences from a very convoluted path which includes physics, time, dimension, list of time periods, and scandinavia. In other words, it's the journey not the destination that I find interesting. - naginalf [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.40|108.162.216.40]] 15:39, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Randall is either mistaken or intentionally misinformative (or rather, politically correct) in his IQ estimates. What's a car hyperbole aside, the cluelessness, sentence length, and spelling of the outage-messages remind of a person in their low 90s-high 80s, if not lower, and Randall is clearly more than 120, (conservative) average for physics majors as it might be. [[Special:Contributions/178.42.101.38|178.42.101.38]] 20:08, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

;What can we learn?
I've learned that memorizing facts is so yesteryear. Over next few years facts will be even easier to find, understand, use, reference and forget. When in school we should concentrate not on memorizing facts we can look up later, but rather new methods to think outside the box full of facts others placed inside it. (Thank you Mr. XKCD) - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 13:42, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
: That is true, but the overhead for looking something up versus remembering it is usually great enough that memorizing some things (multiplication tables come to mind) can increase the speed we can arrive at conclusions, or can give us other options (correlation between spark plug gapping and engine performance) that might not have come to mind otherwise. Outside of that, even though we forget much of it, having a vague sense of things (dates, locations/countries, etc) allow us to start out knowing at least something (order of things that occurred, Egypt being in Africa, Pythagorean theorem). This is just my opinion, and I may be biased, since I like facts. [[User:Tryc|Tryc]] ([[User talk:Tryc|talk]]) 13:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

You can't teach everyone to think outside the box, that would spoil my advantage over the common man. [[Special:Contributions/184.66.160.91|184.66.160.91]] 03:03, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikiloop: (noun) A loop that results in wikipedia articles from clicking the first link not in brackets or italics over and over again.
Here is the most commonly encountered wikiloop. (Reality is also the first link in Philosophy) --[[User:ParadoX|ParadoX]] ([[User talk:ParadoX|talk]]) 09:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Reality
Existence
World
Human
Primate
Mammal
Clade
Tree of life (biology)
Metaphor
Figure of speech
Word
Linguistics
Science
Knowledge
Fact
Reality

...
:I just tried and today the article ''Humans'' have been changed so the first word is no longer primate but Hominini. And from there you can get back to Philosophy. So you still enter a loop (of 24 steps) from when you start from Philosophy, but you end up back at Philosophy, so the rule now also applies to Philosophy. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:35, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

...

Another one is Coffee. It goes Coffee-Coffee Preparation - Coffee. {{unsigned ip|108.162.218.185}}

:The route is:
:Starting point:
:''Philosophy''
#Reality
#Existence
#World
#Human
#'''Hominini'''
#Tribe (biology)
#Biology
#Natural science
#Science
#Knowledge
#Fact
#Experience
#Experiment
#Hypothesis
#Explanation
#Set (mathematics)
#Mathematics
#Quantity
#Property (philosophy)
#Logic
#Reason
#Consciousness
#Quality (philosophy)
#''Philosophy''

:Just tried the philosophy test from {{w|The Lion King}} movie, (20 years anniversary - [[891: Movie Ages |it makes you feel old]]) and it of course also worked from there ;-) [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:35, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

;wikipedia outages

There was a major outage in 2005 when a power failure hit their database servers http://cyberbrahma.com/power-corrupts-power-failure-corrupts-absolutely/. I also remember countless minor outages over the years (though not recently). -- plugwash
:And just after I wrote the above wikipedia went down....... -- plugwash {{unsigned}}

::Yeah, a link like {{w|Sand Fence}} should be work like {{w|Sand fence}}, but it doesn't right now. So some outages for the "Extended Mind"... --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 00:10, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

...

I found another loop - start with any President of the United States, and it'll end up looping between "United States Constitution" and "Supremacy Clause." [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.70|173.245.54.70]] 14:08, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't work for my favorite sport for the time. There is a loop between "Decathlon" and "Combined track and field events"... {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.63}}

Talk:107: Snakes on a Plane! 2

2016-12-15T21:29:59Z

162.158.63.58:

I think he's also implying that it was a bad film and the sequel will be much worse

[[User:OmiWan|OmiWan]] ([[User talk:OmiWan|talk]]) 23:06, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I like proposing the parody of "Snakes On The ISS" because one, everything is cooler in space, two, I'm obsessed with the ISS, three, we can imagine the snakes destroy the Soyuz docked and now we have snakes flailing around unthreateningly in microg. XD [[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 04:17, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Maybe he's saying planes as in planes of reality, as well as airplanes. 21:29, 15 December 2016 (UTC)~