explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:336: Priorities

2013-11-01T12:33:59Z

Church:

By the way, 'Word Building' is 'Etymology,' or again, studying how words are formed. (School of Tomorrow is very thorough on teaching people the power of words...) [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 20:18, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Somehow our county (and many neighboring ones) uses A-E, no F. It's probably one of those watering-down things about how failure crushes self-esteem. Everything else is the same. --[[User:Quicksilver|Quicksilver]] ([[User talk:Quicksilver|talk]]) 19:29, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Don't sonic games additionally have an S grade?--[[User:Church|Church]] ([[User talk:Church|talk]]) 12:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

740: The Tell-Tale Beat

2013-10-30T11:54:50Z

Church: /* Explanation */ corrected an innacurate statement

{{comic
| number = 740
| date = May 14, 2010
| title = The Tell-tale Beat
| image = the_tell_tale_beat.png
| titletext = You fancy me mad. Could a madman have outsmarted the greatest electronica/techno artists of our era? Next to fall will be Roderick Usher's house/trance band.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Daft Punk}} is a French electronic music group. The beat used in electronic music can be vocalized or spelled as "unn-tss". '{{w|The Tell-Tale Heart}}' is a short story by {{w|Edgar Allan Poe}}, in which the narrator tries to appear sane while describing how he killed a man and hid his body in the floorboards. Eventually, he imagines he hears the dead man's heartbeat through the floorboards.

[[Cueball]] narrates that he killed Daft Punk and hid their bodies under the floorboards, as the narrator of 'The Tell-Tale Heart' did. (Having to outsmart a band named [[wiktionary:daft|Daft]] Punk is quite ironic.) He says he has been haunted by the sound of the band's beats.

In the title text, the narrator continues trying to assert his sanity. He then insinuates that he will kill Roderick Usher's band; however, Roderick Usher was only a character in '{{w|Fall of the House of Usher}}', another story by Edgar Allan Poe, making a pun on 'house', a genre of electronic music.

==Transcript==
:The three panels show portions of a single scene. Although the characters are still stick figures, the artwork style is heavily crosshatched and shaded.))
:[In the first panel there is a desk with monitor on it, and a painting of a woman above that. Next to it is a bookshelf.]
:Ever since I murdered Daft Punk

:[There is a fireplace, with no fire. A rug lies before it. At the left end of the mantelpiece are two bottles, one tall, one round. Another photograph of a woman is in a frame at the right end. The bookshelf continues from the previous panel.]
:And hid their bodies beneath the floorboards, I've been haunted

:[The narrator is clutching his head and leaning forward. A grandfather clock is behind him, next to a doorway. Above the doorway is a pallid bust of Pallas.]
:By this ''pounding''.
:[White text on black.]
:Unn-Tss
:Unn-Tss
:Unn-Tss

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Music]]

612: Estimation

2013-10-29T11:25:48Z

Church: /* Explanation */ Fixed Typo

{{comic
| number = 612
| date = July 20, 2009
| title = Estimation
| image = estimation.png
| titletext = They could say "the connection is probably lost," but it's more fun to do naive time-averaging to give you hope that if you wait around for 1,163 hours, it will finally finish.
}}

==Explanation==
When moving or copying files using the {{w|File Explorer|Windows Explorer}}, a dialog box opens to inform the user of how many of the files being moved have been moved with an estimate of how long the rest of the files should take. However, this estimate is often subject to seemingly random and extreme changes from a time measured in seconds or minutes to one measured in hours or days. This is caused by variations in file transfer speed (for instance, transfers of many small files are generally slower than transfers of a few large files, because of per-file overhead). A brief slowdown may cause the system to display that the transfer will take a long time (based on the total amount of data yet be transferred and the current low speed), and then revert to a more accurate estimate when the bottleneck is cleared.

The joke in the comic is the idea that this feature was actually purposefully implemented and that the person who did so actually talks like that. He tells some friends on the phone how long it will take for him to arrive at their meeting point. However, like with Windows's estimation feature, he quickly changes his estimate multiple times from the extremes of days to seconds.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: I'm just outside town, so I should be there in fifteen minutes.
:Cueball: Actually, it's looking more like six days.
:Cueball: No, wait, thirty seconds.

:The author of the Windows file copy dialog visits some friends.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]