explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

194: Penises

2022-12-04T20:35:41Z

172.70.178.64: Undo revision 300488 by Theusaf (talk) reverting vandalism

{{comic
| number = 194
| date = December 8, 2006
| title = Penises
| image = penises.png
| titletext = The penis varies in size when flaccid and is pretty consistently about yea big when erect. Anyway, back to the sitcom one-liners and the constant flow of spam.
}}
==Explanation==
The comic takes aim at what is considered by some to be the apparent societal obsession with the {{w|human penis|male sexual organ}} ("phallocentrism"), especially in regards to size. In general, depictions of an erect penis (also called {{w|phallus}}) represent male potency.

While present in every human civilization, the symbol of the penis is also prominently featured in modern mass media. Many films and television series make use of penis-related jokes. A very common trope is the male obsession with the idea that a larger penis is considered more desirable, and a smaller penis less manly or satisfying to women.

Megan criticizes this obsession by pointing out that most penises are about the same size, and normal variations in size are not worth getting worked up about.

The title text refers to the excessive advertisement for {{w|Sildenafil|potency pills}} and {{w|penis enlargement}} in {{w|Email spam|spam emails}}. The symbol of the phallus can be regarded by some as omnipresent in modern Western society (but not necessarily in other cultures){{Citation needed}}, with presumably every public toilet sporting at least one badly drawn depiction of a penis.

Please do note that this woman is very clearly mentally ill, and the fact that women do not care about penis size has been debunked by various peer reviewed studies and polls from multiple academic journals. Women DO in fact love large penises, and often brush away other men who might have other desirable traits solely on their small penises. In fact, there are certain types of large penises that tend to attract more attention from women than others. Despite the increasing popularity of large, spider penises with Asian women, there is one type of penis that still reigns supreme:
[[File:BBC_logo_(1997-2021).svg|1500px|center|thumb|Yeah, you saw it coming.]]

==Transcript==
:PENISES:
:Megan: They are about this big.
:[Holds her hands close together, about half a foot apart.]
:Now can we P<u>LEAS</u>E, as a culture, move on?

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan‏‎]]
[[Category:Penis]]

317: That Lovin' Feelin'

2022-11-14T17:05:32Z

172.70.178.64: cleanup

{{comic
| number =317
| date =September 17, 2007
| title =That Lovin' Feelin'
| image =that_lovin_feelin.png
| titletext =Maybe there's no tenderness in her fingertips either, but at least SHE puts out.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a parody of the popular song by {{w|The Righteous Brothers}}, "{{w|You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'}}." The singer is talking about the cooling of his relationship with his significant other, and how the joy of their romance has been missing lately, and asks what they have to do to get it back. The actual first verse and chorus are as follows:

:''You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips''
:''And there's no tenderness like before in your fingertips''
:''You're trying hard not to show it (baby)''
:''But baby, baby, I know it:''

:''You've lost that lovin' feelin'''
:''Ohh, that lovin' feelin'''
:''You've lost that lovin' feelin',''
:''Now it's gone, gone, gone, ohh-ohh.''

In this comic's parody of the song, [[Cueball]] decides that since his relationship with his ''current'' girlfriend is cooling, maybe he should try her sister instead. (And as mentioned in the title text, at least ''she'' will have sex with him.)

==Transcript==
:Cueball: You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips

:Cueball: And there's no tenderness like before in your fingertips.

:[Cueball thoughtfully places his hand on his chin.]
:Cueball: Maybe I should try your sister instead.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Songs]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Your sister]]

Talk:2697: Y2K and 2038

2022-11-13T08:02:48Z

172.70.178.64:

Y2K issues solved back in 1996. Even wrote a letter to the Board of Trustees.
2038 Problems are not-my-concern. Retired 9/30/2022.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.236|172.70.110.236]]
:Many of the people who helped solve the Y2K problem were pulled out of retirement. Lots of the issues were in old COBOL software, and there weren't enough active programmers who were competent in COBOL. So keep your resume ready. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:07, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

this is so weird I just finished a research assignment on the Y2038 problem [[Special:Contributions/172.71.166.223|172.71.166.223]] 18:27, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Somewhere there is an essay about the unexpected synergy between the Y2K bug and the burgeoning open source movement, which may or may not be useful for the explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.243|172.70.214.243]] 20:18, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
:https://www.livehistoryindia.com/story/eras/india-software-revolution-rooted-in-y2k is a fascinating essay too. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.151|172.70.214.151]] 21:03, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
:I wouldn't be surprised if there's such an essay, but I suspect it's more of a coincidence. The late 90's was also when the Internet was really taking off, and that may be more of a contributor. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:04, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
::All involved what epidemiologists call coordinated or mutually reinforcing causes, IMHO. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.158.231|172.71.158.231]] 01:41, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of which, what comes after Generation Z? Generation AA? ZA? Z.1? Help! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.243|172.70.214.243]] 07:24, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
:{{w|Generation Alpha}} [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.53|172.69.34.53]] 07:27, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
::[[1962|Zuckerbergs Army.]] --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 15:18, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

I've been unable to confirm this so I'm moving it here: A major problem had struck IBM mainframes on and after August 16, 1972 (9999 days before January 1, 2000) that caused magnetic tapes that were supposed to be marked "keep forever" instead be marked "may be recycled now."{{Actual citation needed}} [[Special:Contributions/172.71.158.231|172.71.158.231]] 07:37, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Does the arrow move over time? ... should it? (I think so!) It could be done server side and only regulars would [see, sic] that it changes over time. Then... perhaps we could see different versions of the strip cached on the Internet. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.166.158|172.71.166.158]] 08:30, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
It isn't, of course, but if it was a .GIF with ultralong replace-cycles then only those who ''kept the image active'' would see the arrow move in real-time. (It would reset to ''now's'' "now" upon each (re)loading, so it would have an even more exclusive audience, aside from those that cheat with image(-layer) editing. ;) ) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.57|172.70.162.57]] 13:32, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Should we mention anything about that it is that specific year in a specific calendar? As far as I know there was also {{w|Japanese_calendar_era_bug|fear of a similiar bug in Japan}} recently. However Wikipedia seems not to be up to date about it. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 15:18, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone know of an actual program or OS that stored the year as two characters instead of a single byte? I have (and had back then) serious doubts that any problems existed. Even the reported government computers had people born prior to 1900 entered, so they already had to have better precision than "just tack on 1900." Even using a single signed byte would still have been good for another 5 years from now. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 17:22, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
:In my experience (I lived and worked through the Y2K preparations) it wasn't so much "an actual program", or necessarily a fundemental limitation of an entire OS (though the roots of the problem effectively date back to key decisions surrounding the developmet of the IBM System/360 in the 1960s), but a matter of how data was held in human-readable but space-saving format. Someone in the '70s (or even up into into the '90s) may have decided their system could store some date as the six characters representing DDMMYY (or ay of the other orders) secure in the knowledge that the century digits were superfluus - and would have perhaps sent the footprint of a standard record over some handy packable length for the system, say 128 bytes. Which was a lot in those days.
:(If the year ''value'' had been recorded in 16bit binary, or even 2x7bit or doubled 6-bit, it could have been as good for the computer, but ''oh the fuss'' to convert to and from a human-orientated perspective. And it worked neatly enough, right?)
:And a useful implementaion might be used, in some form or other for a long time... Sometimes the storage system is upgraded (kilobytes? ha, we have megabytes of space now!) and the software to handle it might be ported and even rewritten, but at each stage the extra data has to match the old program, and the new program has to read and write the current data, however kludged it actually is. And it works, at least under the care of those who dabble in the dark arts of its operation. And not many others are bothered or even have any idea of what ;ies beneath the surface.
:Until somebody starts to audit the issue and asks everyone to poke around and check things... Thenthings get sorted in-situ ''or'' a much needed (YMV!) change of process is swapped in, in the place of old and (possibly) incorrect hacks. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.133|172.69.79.133]] 20:00, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
::Sometimes the "savings" of storing data in a compact form are exceeded by the "cost" of having to convert it between the convenient-to-use form and the compact form. I used to work on a system that used 32-bit words for all data types: characters, shorts, longs. When we started running out of space, we "manually" packed our data, stuffing multiple shorts and bytes into words. But in some cases, the additional code needed to pack/unpack would have taken more space than what we'd have saved in the data, without even looking at the processing time cost. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 05:52, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

1. Having done programming since 1966, I know that much data was stored on 80-character cards (and way before that year and the IBM System/360) and using 2 characters (2.5% of the card) to store the "19" was not acceptable. As processes moved into the tape and disk world, human nature tended to not expand the field to 4 characters (the future is a long way off until, suddenly, it isn't). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.65|172.70.178.65]] 07:57, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

2. I actually saw a Y2K failure. It occurred at the beginning of 1999 when a job scheduling program scheduled a job for the year 1900 because it was always keeping the schedule active a year in advance. The scheduling software had actually been fixed but the upgraded version had not been installed yet, so there was no significant outage. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.64|172.70.178.64]] 08:02, 13 November 2022 (UTC)