explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1168: tar

2013-02-01T10:14:11Z

59.167.191.93:

I thought the title text would be "tar --help"
[[Special:Contributions/123.202.19.132|123.202.19.132]] 06:59, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The comic is about the difficulty of the tar program options.

Even if his life depended on it and after years of usage, Bob/Randall could not come up with the right parameters without looking them up. So a situation is shown, where Bob's life depends on coming up with the right parameters:

* It shows an atomic warhead
* It has a user interface, which requests any valid tar command
* If it is not entered on the first try within 10s, the bomb is not disarmed and potentially explodes on the spot

Randall has come up with a situation, where the unix guy Bob can be the hero by knowing tar parameters. This is a pipe dream of a geek; nobody cares IRL, if you know tar parameters on the first try.

It is hilarious, that
* the bomb says in full detail the rules including that you should not cheat and it probably has no means to check whether you cheated. This is no game, but feels like one. In war and love every means is allowed - even cheating; it would also be self-defense for disarming the bomb; Bob and his colleagues are not even considering to cheat.
* the user has root access to the bomb, shown by the bomb as ~#, the tilde is the home directory, the # signifies super-user rights; even if the available programs prevent the bomb from being shutdown or disabled by a nonintended way, normally no root access is given for users of linux devices during normal usage; and disarming the bomb with official rules is normal usage of a bomb; a root prompt should not be necessary, if the bomb software is designed and configured well; possibly the unix prompt is a simulation for entering an answer
* Bob shurely needs more than 10s to come. So the bomb will have announced that questions, which require unix knowledge will follow - or has already asked other Unix questions; perhaps after 10s without entering anything a new question comes up
* this bomb can be disarmed with "common knowledge"

Small notes:
* The screen looks to be really grayscale (esp. the inverted "TEN") - not just because of the comic; it has at least 3 colors (black, white, tar gray); it could be that the "TEN" is updated dynamically and is thus inverted
* The comic is quite black: The screen and the bomb; Randall seldomly uses solid black areas; the bomb is a gloomy topic so it is black like "tar" (pun)

Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/178.26.121.97|178.26.121.97]] 07:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a visual double pun in this strip: the bomb disarmed by a tar command is a reference to the [[wikipedia:Tar (computing)#Tarbomb|tarbombs]], but it also looks like the [[wikipedia:File:Tsar Bomba Revised.jpg|Tsar Bomb(a)]]. --[[User:Koveras|Koveras]] ([[User talk:Koveras|talk]]) 08:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
: I don’t think it looks like Tsar Bomba. If anything, it is much more similar to [[wikipedia:Fat Man|Fat Man]]. --[[User:Mormegil|Mormegil]] ([[User talk:Mormegil|talk]]) 08:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I think another joke is in the fact that you don't know which Unix is running on the bomb so you don't actually know which parameter layout is supported. tar --help for example may or may not be valid since -- is a GNU extension.

tar -bvzx for a tar.bzip2 .... wait... no... argh... I've always just trusted my fingers.. --[[Special:Contributions/59.167.191.93|59.167.191.93]] 10:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1168: tar

2013-02-01T10:13:38Z

59.167.191.93:

Talk:1167: Star Trek into Darkness

2013-01-31T08:05:15Z

59.167.191.93:

There has been a considerable amount of debate as to whether the title of this movie should have a colon in it, which would have appeared as "Star Trek: Into Darkness." They eventually decided against the colon, and I wonder if this comic is poking fun at that debate.[[Special:Contributions/169.234.40.187|169.234.40.187]] 00:49, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I suspect an allusion to movie title spellings that can be seen on moviez sites, torrent sites etc. -- [[Special:Contributions/193.174.118.70|193.174.118.70]] 08:20, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The Associated Press style manual says to capitalize all prepositions that are four letters or more in titles, e.g. Into, Through, etc. --[[User:Prooffreader|Prooffreader]] ([[User talk:Prooffreader|talk]]) 09:54, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

This could also have to do with WP's MOS of capitalizing "The first word in a compound preposition (e.g. "Time Out of Mind", "Get Off of My Cloud")".

However, you cannot simply change the title of a page on WP. This requires actually moving the whole page. [[Special:Contributions/84.208.51.23|84.208.51.23]] 14:02, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a capitalization error in the comic. The second to last 's' should be capitalized in order to match the rest of the pattern in "xX_StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNess_Xx". Unless the author is trying to subtly troll us into arguing about that capitalization... [[User:Sayno2quat|Sayno2quat]] ([[User talk:Sayno2quat|talk]]) 14:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
:Non-sense, double consonants should never be capitalized! Unless of course you want to use them for structural purposes, like spacing or framing, obviously.--[[User:Pnariyoshi|Pnariyoshi]] ([[User talk:Pnariyoshi|talk]]) 15:05, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe Cueball's comment, "I have a new favorite edit war," is refering to the title text in this comic http://xkcd.com/878 about the great debate of HO vs. H0. [[Special:Contributions/206.39.12.245|206.39.12.245]] 15:23, 30 January 2013 (UTC)Pat

"Magnificient"?

The actual [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Star_Trek_into_Darkness#xkcd_Mention Talk Page] of the Wikipedia article in question has an item about this comic. --[[User:Prooffreader|Prooffreader]] ([[User talk:Prooffreader|talk]]) 16:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I spent a good portion of last night reading through Wikipedia's talk pages for that. Worth a good laugh. [[Special:Contributions/76.122.5.96|76.122.5.96]] 16:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Well it obviously should be capitalized. --[[User:Shine|Shine]] ([[User talk:Shine|talk]]) 17:43, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

:I tried to make a point on wikipedia that Wikipedia itself went out of its way to create a "lowercase first letter" template so that iPod and things of that nature could be capitalized the way the producer styled it, but there's really nowhere to point it as all discussions have closed and been ground to a halt. [[User:TheHYPO|TheHYPO]] ([[User talk:TheHYPO|talk]]) 19:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

But is it really an edit war? Have they been moving the page bach and forth? --[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 00:18, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I still feel the most retarded of discussions on Wikipedia is for the Hentai article, where a disturbing majority demand pornography. --[[Special:Contributions/59.167.191.93|59.167.191.93]] 08:05, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1167: Star Trek into Darkness

2013-01-31T08:04:18Z

59.167.191.93:

1161: Hand Sanitizer

2013-01-17T06:18:07Z

59.167.191.93: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1161
| date = January 16, 2013
| title = Hand Sanitizer
| image = hand sanitizer.png
| titletext = Hipster CDC Reports Flu Epidemic Peaked Years Ago
}}

==Explanation==
The number of germs that would be left after using the hand sanitizer is 200 million times 0.01%. 0.01% is equivalent to .0001 decimal, so the simple equation is 200000000 x .0001. That equals 20 thousand germs, which is still a surprisingly large number of germs.

Side note - Recently scientists have shown that it only takes 20 virus particles to infect someone [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2257098/Larry-projectile-vomiting-robot-helping-British-team-learn-stop-spread-norovirus.html] (with analyzed virus: not all germs are equally effective).

"Hipster CDC" is a combination of the acronym for the {{w|Centers for Disease Control and Prevention}}, an organization dedicated to studying infectious diseases and limiting their spread, with the label {{w|Hipster (contemporary subculture)|hipster}}. Hipsters form a cultural group associated with a distaste for popular culture; they stereotypically talk about how bands, authors, etc... were better before they went "mainstream" and proclaim that they liked a certain thing "before it was cool".

In this case, the period when the flu epidemic was "better" is probably 1918, when a {{w|1918 flu epidemic|world-wide flu epidemic}} killed tens of millions..

The humor (if a worldwide disaster can be said to be humorous) is in the dual use of the work "epidemic". The current mainstream news media is making a big thing of an up-surge in flu cases this season, sometimes calling it an "epidemic". The comic points out that, in reality, the worldwide flu epidemic is an on-going, multi-year thing, and the current seasonal up-surge is tiny and uninteresting in comparison to previous surges.

==Transcript==
:Poster: An invisible sneeze droplet can contain ''200 million'' germs!
:Product label: Our hand sanitizer kills 99.99% of germs!
:Cueball (thinking): 200 000 000 × 0.01% =
:Cueball: Ew.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Math]]