https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=108.162.215.202&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T05:15:53ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2140:_Reinvent_the_Wheel&diff=172977Talk:2140: Reinvent the Wheel2019-04-22T20:03:37Z<p>108.162.215.202: </p>
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<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
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I took a screenshot of google image search at 2:24 PM ET on 4/22/2019, and a bicycle wheel is indeed the first result. I'm trying to figure out how to get my image into the wiki ;p [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.82|162.158.78.82]] 18:25, 22 April 2019 (UTC)<br />
: (same user) Man! I found an old account I made and logged in with it to upload a file, but it says I need special permission to do so! [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 18:33, 22 April 2019 (UTC)<br />
: If somebody with permission could upload this, it would be great: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/Qmf1a9NFFAcgWRUe45Ueg4FggXTUAd9BHMgEqWp23izchU [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 18:43, 22 April 2019 (UTC)<br />
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Looks like beret guy is working for an automotive startup, possibly one of the many software companies that are developing AI for self-driving cars? It is true that tires are made by outside suppliers (not by the auto companies) so in terms of software development tires could be called "external dependencies". However, tires are far from a semi-random selection as intimated here. A large amount of time and effort is spent developing special tires for each vehicle model to give the best possible compromise between many conflicting requirements such as: dry/wet/snow traction, noise, ride, wear, high speed durability (for high performance cars) and so on, the complete list has many more items. <br />
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If Randall is looking for new tires for his vehicle, I offer my standard recommendation: If you were fairly happy with the tires that came with the car, try and replace them with the closest possible equivalent to take advantage of the original development effort. This is not always possible, and of course if you are using the vehicle for a special purpose (mostly drive on dirt roads, use your car in weekend autocross competition, etc.), you may do better with something different.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.58|162.158.75.58]] 18:36, 22 April 2019 (UTC)<br />
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This comic could also be talking about coding, where reinventing the wheel is writing your own code from scratch, as there is other code which works perfectly well. This makes particular sense as the "external dependencies" could be in terms of code as well<br />
[[User:Gollum|Gollum]] ([[User talk:Gollum|talk]]) 18:45, 22 April 2019 (UTC)<br />
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I think the point is that their company is having to reinvent their cars to fit each dependency wheel, rather than develop a wheel that will fit their preexisting car. For cars, wheels are for the most part interchangeable, but external dependencies in software are very much not so. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.100|108.162.229.100]]<br />
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I suspect this is a comment on JavaScript (JS) coding for the web, specifically the NPM node.js package manager. I'm not a front-end Web developer, but apparently lots of web pages use NPM to pull down dependencies, bits of code to accomplish some task, rather than write it new (thus, avoid 'reinventing the wheel'). The problem is there's poor control over what those dependencies do and how they might get modified on you unexpectedly. See the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_(software)#Notable_breakages Wikipedia article] on NPM for some history of bad breakages that have occurred.<br />
: I second this comment as being the key to the explanation. Especially when your external dependencies are also hosted on sites that you don't control; any functionality that you depend on can be replaced at any time, analogous to swapping out a sedan's tire for a bicycle tire. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.202|108.162.215.202]] 20:03, 22 April 2019 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The point of the comic is likely that the term "Reinvent the Wheel" is not typically used in a literal sense to refer to actual wheels, as it is in this comic. Instead, it usually refers to exerting effort on something that adds no value over re-using something that already exists, whether it's a product's design or something intangible like an idea or study. We could probably provide a link to the Wikipedia article on the topic to help readers who are unfamiliar with the phrase. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 19:38, 22 April 2019 (UTC)</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2137:_Text_Entry&diff=1727002137: Text Entry2019-04-15T16:32:34Z<p>108.162.215.202: /* Explanation */ add more</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2137<br />
| date = April 15, 2019<br />
| title = Text Entry<br />
| image = text_entry.png<br />
| titletext = I like to think that somewhere out there, there's someone whose personal quest is lobbying TV providers to add an option to switch their on-screen keyboards to Dvorak.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
Randall is remarking on the "weirdest" things about the year 2019, the year that this comic was posted. One of the things is the presidency of Donald Trump, which he has discussed [[Sad comics|multiple times]] in the comics. However, another "weirdest" thing is the continued use of "picking letters" to type. This can be seen when doing searches in a TV guide menu or in menus for streaming options like Netflix or Hulu. Some of these mediums allow for voice searches, but the traditional method is still to select letters via a cursor.<br />
<br />
Randall references the "{{w|Score (game)|high score}}" in an arcade game. When achieving a high score in an arcade game, the user typically is able to enter his name or initials into the machine. These are entered by picking letters one by one, as the comic mentions.<br />
<br />
The title text mentions the keyboard system {{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}}, which is a keyboard layout patented by August Dvorak and William Dealey. As the Dvorak layout is optimized for more efficient typing, it would be pointless and overly confusing for users to use for TV selection menus.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Ponytail and Cueball are sitting on a couch, with Megan beside them. Cueball is pointing a remote at the a television.]<br />
:Television: O...U...R...SPACE...P...L...<br />
:Remote: Click Click Click<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:The weirdest thing about 2019 is obviously that Donald Trump is president, but I think the second weirdest is that you sometimes ''still'' have to type stuff in by picking letters on a screen one at a time with a cursor like you're entering a high score in a 1980s arcade game.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2137:_Text_Entry&diff=1726992137: Text Entry2019-04-15T16:31:30Z<p>108.162.215.202: /* Transcript */ ce</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2137<br />
| date = April 15, 2019<br />
| title = Text Entry<br />
| image = text_entry.png<br />
| titletext = I like to think that somewhere out there, there's someone whose personal quest is lobbying TV providers to add an option to switch their on-screen keyboards to Dvorak.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
Randall is remarking on the "weirdest" things about the year 2019, the year that this comic was posted. One of the things is the presidency of Donald Trump, which he has discussed [[Sad comics|multiple times]] in the comics. However, another "weirdest" thing is the continued use of "picking letters" to type. This can be seen when doing searches in a TV guide menu or in menus for streaming options like Netflix or Hulu.<br />
<br />
Randall references the "{{w|Score (game)|high score}}" in an arcade game. When achieving a high score in an arcade game, the user typically is able to enter his name or initials into the machine. These are entered by picking letters one by one, as the comic mentions.<br />
<br />
The title text mentions the keyboard system {{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}}, which is a keyboard layout patented by August Dvorak and William Dealey. As the Dvorak layout is optimized for more efficient typing, it would be pointless and overly confusing for users to use for TV selection menus.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Ponytail and Cueball are sitting on a couch, with Megan beside them. Cueball is pointing a remote at the a television.]<br />
:Television: O...U...R...SPACE...P...L...<br />
:Remote: Click Click Click<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:The weirdest thing about 2019 is obviously that Donald Trump is president, but I think the second weirdest is that you sometimes ''still'' have to type stuff in by picking letters on a screen one at a time with a cursor like you're entering a high score in a 1980s arcade game.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2137:_Text_Entry&diff=1726982137: Text Entry2019-04-15T16:30:52Z<p>108.162.215.202: /* Transcript */ format</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2137<br />
| date = April 15, 2019<br />
| title = Text Entry<br />
| image = text_entry.png<br />
| titletext = I like to think that somewhere out there, there's someone whose personal quest is lobbying TV providers to add an option to switch their on-screen keyboards to Dvorak.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
Randall is remarking on the "weirdest" things about the year 2019, the year that this comic was posted. One of the things is the presidency of Donald Trump, which he has discussed [[Sad comics|multiple times]] in the comics. However, another "weirdest" thing is the continued use of "picking letters" to type. This can be seen when doing searches in a TV guide menu or in menus for streaming options like Netflix or Hulu.<br />
<br />
Randall references the "{{w|Score (game)|high score}}" in an arcade game. When achieving a high score in an arcade game, the user typically is able to enter his name or initials into the machine. These are entered by picking letters one by one, as the comic mentions.<br />
<br />
The title text mentions the keyboard system {{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}}, which is a keyboard layout patented by August Dvorak and William Dealey. As the Dvorak layout is optimized for more efficient typing, it would be pointless and overly confusing for users to use for TV selection menus.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Ponytail and Cueball are sitting on a couch, with Megan beside them. Cueball is pointing a remote at the a television.]<br />
:Television: O...U...R...SPACE...P...L...<br />
:Remote: Click Click Click<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:The weirdest thing about 2019 is obviously that Donald Trump is president, but I think the second weirdest is that you sometimes ''still'' have to type stuff in by picking letters on a screen one at a time like you're entering a high score in a 1980s arcade game.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2137:_Text_Entry&diff=1726972137: Text Entry2019-04-15T16:29:14Z<p>108.162.215.202: introductory explanation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2137<br />
| date = April 15, 2019<br />
| title = Text Entry<br />
| image = text_entry.png<br />
| titletext = I like to think that somewhere out there, there's someone whose personal quest is lobbying TV providers to add an option to switch their on-screen keyboards to Dvorak.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
Randall is remarking on the "weirdest" things about the year 2019, the year that this comic was posted. One of the things is the presidency of Donald Trump, which he has discussed [[Sad comics|multiple times]] in the comics. However, another "weirdest" thing is the continued use of "picking letters" to type. This can be seen when doing searches in a TV guide menu or in menus for streaming options like Netflix or Hulu.<br />
<br />
Randall references the "{{w|Score (game)|high score}}" in an arcade game. When achieving a high score in an arcade game, the user typically is able to enter his name or initials into the machine. These are entered by picking letters one by one, as the comic mentions.<br />
<br />
The title text mentions the keyboard system {{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}}, which is a keyboard layout patented by August Dvorak and William Dealey. As the Dvorak layout is optimized for more efficient typing, it would be pointless and overly confusing for users to use for TV selection menus.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Ponytail and Cueball are sitting on a couch, with Megan beside them. Cueball is pointing a remote at the a television.]<br />
:Television: O...U...R...SPACE...P...L...<br />
:Remote: Click Click Click<br />
:Caption: The weirdest thing about 2019 is obviously that Donald Trump is president, but I think the second weirdest is that you sometimes ''still'' have to type stuff in by picking letters on a screen one at a time like you're entering a high score in a 1980s arcade game.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2137:_Text_Entry&diff=1726932137: Text Entry2019-04-15T16:17:49Z<p>108.162.215.202: /* Transcript */ add categories</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2137<br />
| date = April 15, 2019<br />
| title = Text Entry<br />
| image = text_entry.png<br />
| titletext = I like to think that somewhere out there, there's someone whose personal quest is lobbying TV providers to add an option to switch their on-screen keyboards to Dvorak.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Ponytail and Cueball are sitting on a couch, with Megan beside them. Cueball is pointing a remote at the a television.]<br />
:Television: O...U...R...SPACE...P...L...<br />
:Remote: Click Click Click<br />
:Caption: The weirdest thing about 2019 is obviously that Donald Trump is president, but I think the second weirdest is that you sometimes ''still'' have to type stuff in by picking letters on a screen one at a time like you're entering a high score in a 1980s arcade game.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2113:_Physics_Suppression&diff=1697982113: Physics Suppression2019-02-18T17:28:05Z<p>108.162.215.202: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2113<br />
| date = February 18, 2019<br />
| title = Physics Suppression<br />
| image = physics_suppression.png<br />
| titletext = If physics had a mafia, I'm pretty sure the BICEP2 mess would have ended in bloodshed.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by the Physics Mafia. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[White Hat]] is mad at physicists in general and directs his fury at [[Megan]], a physicist. He has a theory and blames physicists for suppressing it. He believes that no one takes it seriously because his theory would disrupt the standard model in physics. He believes they do this because his theory would be inconvenient to accept, causing them to have to change their current models. <br />
<br />
Megan is not taking him seriously (or is she?) and instead states that she did not know that physicists had a Mafia that was able to suppress anyone from publishing annoying results. She continues that if such a group were there to do so, then why were they not there to stop the people who published results about dark energy? <br />
<br />
Although she must admit that they (physicists) later gave them a {{w|Nobel Prize}} (in {{w|List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics#Laureates|2011}}), she's still mad at them for the "trouble" this new concept caused for other physicists, including her.<br />
<br />
{{w|Dark energy}} is an unknown form of energy which is hypothesized to permeate all of space, tending to accelerate the expansion of the universe. Even though "dark energy" is a direct consequence of {{w|Albert Einstein|Albert Einstein's}} "{{w|cosmological constant}}" in the field equations of {{w|general relativity}}, its actual discovery was still seen as a surprise within the physics community. Einstein, calling not noticing dark energy his "greatest blunder"{{Citation needed}}. In the comic, Megan says that if scientists were able to suppress inconvenient ideas, dark energy would likely have been such a case.<br />
<br />
She also indirectly says to White Hat that if he actually had some results, not just a theory that contradicts known physics, then the results would not have been suppressed. The reason the "dark energy people" got a nobel prize is that the experiments and measurements show that they were onto something real. It seems like White Hat currently only has a model, and not data, to back his theory up. This is the real joke.<br />
<br />
The title text mentions {{w|BICEP2}} (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) which was part of a series of instruments used to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). On 17 March 2014, it was announced, to much fanfare, that BICEP2 had detected B-modes from gravitational waves in the early universe (called primordial gravitational waves). A few years later, this announcement had to be backtracked as it was found that most, if not all, of the reported signal was actually due to interstellar dust within the Milky Way.{{Citation needed}}<br />
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The title text notes that if there had been a physics mafia, then those results would have ended in bloodshed due to the controversy they caused.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[White Hat, with his hands balled into fist and held up above him, is talking with Megan.]<br />
:White Hat: You physicists are suppressing my theory because it's inconvenient for your models!<br />
:Megan: Wait, we have a mafia that can suppress annoying results?<br />
:Megan: ''Why didn't they do something about the dark energy people?!''<br />
:Megan: We gave them a Nobel prize but I'm still mad at them!<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1345:_Answers&diff=1694241345: Answers2019-02-10T16:30:57Z<p>108.162.215.202: Fixed the text regarding 203: Hallucinations</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1345<br />
| date = March 21, 2014<br />
| title = Answers<br />
| image = answers.png<br />
| titletext = Stanford sleep researcher William Dement said that after 50 years of studying sleep, the only really solid explanation he knows for why we do it is 'because we get sleepy'.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
[[Cueball]] claims that humans are driven by their curiosity, which is never-ending. [[Megan]] responds by noting that everyone spends approximately eight hours per day in an unconscious state of {{w|sleep}}, but no one has yet pinned down the biological purpose of sleep. Despite this obvious mystery, most people aren't "losing sleep over it." This implies that Cueball's observed curiosity has a perceptible and proximate limit.<br />
<br />
This is not to suggest that scientists ''aren't'' researching sleep; scientists frequently conduct {{w|Sleep study|sleep studies}} — we just haven't found any satisfactory answers yet. Some popular hypotheses are to allow the brain a period to consolidate memories and to give the body a chance to repair itself.<br />
<br />
The title text quotes {{w|William Dement}}: people sleep "because we get sleepy." ([http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/05/sleep/max-text Secrets of sleep]). This of course is dodging the underlying issue. That this non-explanation is the best answer that a leading sleep researcher can provide, shows how little anyone knows about the subject. This may be an oblique reference to the French playwright Molière [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dormitive_principle dormitive principle], who created a satirical character who claimed to have discovered the answer to a popular question: The reason opium makes someone sleepy, said the character, a doctor, was that it contained a "dormitive principle" (i.e., something that makes someone sleepy).<br />
<br />
In [[203|203: Hallucinations]], Randall expressed similar surprise at the lack of interest in the nature of sleep.<br />
<br />
The phrase "and nobody knows why" is commonly appended to urban legends, as in [http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/duckecho.asp A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why]. The implication is that something mysterious is going on and scientists are puzzled. [[1186: Bumblebees]] is another "nobody knows why" example.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Cueball and Megan are talking.]<br />
:Cueball: Humans are defined by our curiosity, our hunger for answers.<br />
:Megan: We all spend a third of our lives lying down with our eyes closed and '''''NOBODY KNOWS WHY.'''''<br />
:Cueball: Touché.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>108.162.215.202https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1728:_Cron_Mail&diff=1261071728: Cron Mail2016-09-02T23:07:07Z<p>108.162.215.202: /* minor text fixes */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1728<br />
| date = September 2, 2016<br />
| title = Cron Mail<br />
| image = cron_mail.png<br />
| titletext = Take THAT, piece of 1980s-era infrastructure I've inexplicably maintained on my systems for 15 years despite never really learning how it works.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Format information, the bottom two paragraphs should be at the top. Also shorten and simplify explanation.}}<br />
On {{W|Unix}}-like systems, {{W|Cron|cron}} is a system program running in background which allows one to schedule jobs to run at well-defined time slots. It is conceptually the same software which has been used since, at least, the 1980s and is still heavily used in modern operating systems, for example in several {{w|Linux}} distributions. Many administrative tasks on servers can be automated with cron, like monitoring or updates. Most people administrating a server-like system with a UNIX-like operating system will therefore know it, at least the basics.<br />
<br />
When one of these jobs produces output, that output is sent as an email to the user, using the {{w|Sendmail|sendmail}} program. A common situation on many Unix-like systems is that sendmail (or another email program) is not configured to send email to the actual email address of the person behind the user account that configured the cron job, and writes the mail in question to the file <code>/var/mail/username</code> (in {{w|Mbox|mbox}} format) instead. Most shells will check that file, and produce a message "You have new mail" when its timestamps have changed; however, if a person doesn't know how to check their mail they will likely end up just ignoring that message.<br />
<br />
The "/etc" directory is used for configuration files on UNIX-systems; therefore "/etc/crontab" is the main configuration file of cron and is expected to contain lines such as the following:<br />
<br />
#m h dom mon dow user command<br />
17 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly<br />
<br />
Comment lines are designated by a # and are ignored, as are blank lines. On a non-comment non-blank line, the first 5 parameters tell it exactly when that line is supposed to run (in this case every hour on the 17th minute of the hour), the next part is what user the command is supposed to run as (root in this case), and the rest is the actual command that is supposed to run (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly). The 5 time parameters, in order are minutes, hours, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week. A * means everything matches. So something could run as frequently as every minute (* * * * *) or as infrequently as once a year (i.e. January 2nd at 10:20am is 20 10 2 1 *). If a line that doesn't follow the correct format is added to /etc/crontab, it may cause the entire crontab file to be ignored, even those entries that are otherwise valid.<br />
<br />
When a cron job runs, it is expected to do something with all text that might normally go to the screen -- a lot of times a command will redirect it to a log file of its own, or deliberately make it go nowhere (/dev/null). If anything does end up "on the screen", cron captures it and sends it as an email to the user, assuming it's data the user wants to view and be aware of. If local email is not configured to go somewhere the user actually knows to check, it usually ends up tacked on to the end of a file in /var/mail/username where it will sit forever, or until the user actually does something with it (either configures a local email program, sets up a forward to an email account they actually check, or deletes the file). Ponytail's suggestion to "fix the cron" means figure out why the cron job is outputting data to the screen, which is thus generating an email, and instead having the cron job handle its own messages in a better way. Once the cron jobs are no longer "talking" all the time, her further suggestion to point the MAILTO= to somewhere else would help Cueball be immediately aware if something goes wrong with a cron job that is normally quiet, so he can address the problem immediately instead of it going on for years undetected.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]] is not aware of all of the above, and expresses surprise at the repeated messages. [[Ponytail]] tells him to check <code>/var/mail/cueball</code> which contains a lot of messages from cron from all those 15 years he used cron without properly understanding how it works.<br />
<br />
When he realizes what has happened, he configures the mail system so that it writes all mail for his user to the <code>/etc/crontab</code> file, which is the main configuration file of cron (the <code>{{W|/etc}}</code> directory is used for configuration files on Unix-like systems), most probably breaking it. Of course, none of the jobs normally scheduled to run will run anymore either, so he will likely be surprised when other things that used to work no longer work. There are a number of system cron jobs that are usually present on Linux and Unix-like systems that one would not want to disable, including checking for updates, rotating log files including deleting old logs files, backups, etc.<br />
<br />
In the worst case, cron might actually see the junk that [[Cueball]] is now directing into its configuration as valid configuration data and produce even more mail – resulting in a feedback situation that would eventually fill up the disk partition. It's unclear (especially to [[Cueball]]) whether this is actually possible – but it's certainly a risk.<br />
<br />
The Title Text shows that Cueball is somewhat aware of what cron does, including the fact that it's existed pretty much unchanged for several decades, but he hasn't bothered to really get into understanding it, treating it more as a foe to vanquish rather than as a tool to understand and use.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Cueball is sitting at a table in an office chair working on his laptop. Ponytail walks up to him.]<br />
:Cueball: I've been getting these "You have new mail" UNIX notifications for like 15 years, but I've never bothered to figure out what it's talking about.<br />
<br />
:[Ponytail has stopped behind Cueball who is typing on his laptop. When Ponytail (and later Cueball) mentions code, the text uses both small and capital letters (as opposed to only capital letters in all other text).]<br />
:Ponytail: Look in /var/mail?<br />
:Cueball: OK...<br />
:Cueball: Oh, wow, there's like a gigabyte of stuff from Cron in here.<br />
<br />
:[In a frame-less panel Ponytail is facepalming. Cueball is replying from off-panel with a starburst indicating his position.]<br />
:Ponytail: *Sigh*<br />
:Ponytail: You should fix your Cron, then point "MAILTO=" somewhere you actually see-<br />
:Cueball (off-panel): Better idea:<br />
<br />
:[Same setting as panel 2 but Cueball is visibly typing on the laptop as shown with three small curved lines over his hands on the keyboard.]<br />
:Cueball: export MAILTO=/etc/crontab<br />
:Cueball: There. Your move, Cron.<br />
:Ponytail: Wow. Hardball.<br />
:Cueball: Let's see how important it thinks that mail really is.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
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[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Computers]]</div>108.162.215.202