705: Devotion to Duty - Revision history

Lettherebedarklight: /* Trivia */ add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

2025-12-15T08:57:48Z

‎Trivia: add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

162.218.182.23: /* Explanation */ Misplaced comma

2025-11-04T18:37:06Z

‎Explanation: Misplaced comma

CalibansCreations: /* Explanation */

2025-03-25T12:36:15Z

‎Explanation

Elektrizikekswerk: /* Explanation */ wiki links added

2024-06-06T14:14:44Z

‎Explanation: wiki links added

Mushrooms: rewrote it to have less weird parentheses and actually talk about die hard

2024-04-26T10:25:03Z

rewrote it to have less weird parentheses and actually talk about die hard

172.69.59.177: im so tired why am I awake

2023-12-27T05:27:51Z

im so tired why am I awake

172.68.174.82 at 00:59, 11 December 2023

2023-12-11T00:59:28Z

FaviFake: /* Trivia */ Updated xkcd store link with Web archive link

2023-09-01T10:43:00Z

‎Trivia: Updated xkcd store link with Web archive link

172.69.65.3: /* Explanation */

2023-07-06T13:30:50Z

‎Explanation

172.70.127.79: /* Transcript */

2023-07-04T22:41:43Z

‎Transcript

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:57, 15 December 2025
Line 37:		Line 37:
	[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]		[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]
	[[Category:Sysadmins]]		[[Category:Sysadmins]]
		+	[[Category:Comics with a Spanish translation]]

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 This comic is a reference to the 1988 movie {{w|Die Hard}}, where several supposed terrorists have taken hostages inside the fictional building Nakatomi Plaza. They take over the building, and cut all communication to prevent anyone communicating with the outside world. The goatee that the man has is a reference to {{w|Hans Gruber}}, the main antagonist in Die Hard. In the original movie, {{w|New York City Police Department|NYPD}} detective {{w|John McClane}} (who was in the building at the time) famously climbs through ventilation ducts and walks across broken glass. A major plot point is that the antagonists communicate through radio, just like this comic. In the original movie, he kills many of the antagonists and manages to rescue most of the hostages, foiling their plan in the process.
-However, in this comic, instead of freeing the hostages, the individual mentioned instead reconnected the servers to the outside world. The person on the other end of the phone, immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a sysadmin (short for {{w|system administrator}}), and he is concerned that his servers are losing uptime, or time spent running or connected to the internet. This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started.
+However, in this comic, instead of freeing the hostages, the individual mentioned instead reconnected the servers to the outside world. The person on the other end of the phone immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a sysadmin (short for {{w|system administrator}}), and he is concerned that his servers are losing uptime, or time spent running or connected to the internet. This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started.
 The title text is a simple joke about the fact that the sysadmin will crawl through broken glass and defeat criminals/terrorists just so a cat blog (where owners write about their cats) can stay up. This creates a humorous contrast between the seriousness with which large websites treat issues like uptime and business continuity and the often mundane and banal uses people actually have for them.

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-This comic is a reference to the 1988 movie {{w|Die Hard}}, where several supposed terrorists have taken hostages inside the fictional building Nakatomi Plaza. They take over the building, and cut all communication to prevent anyone communicating with the outside world. The goatee that the man has is a reference to Hans Gruber, the main antagonist in Die Hard. In the original movie, {{w|New York City Police Department|NYPD}} detective John McClane (who was in the building at the time) famously climbs through ventilation ducts and walks across broken glass. A major plot point is that the antagonists communicate through radio, just like this comic. In the original movie, he kills many of the antagonists and manages to rescue most of the hostages, foiling their plan in the process.
+This comic is a reference to the 1988 movie {{w|Die Hard}}, where several supposed terrorists have taken hostages inside the fictional building Nakatomi Plaza. They take over the building, and cut all communication to prevent anyone communicating with the outside world. The goatee that the man has is a reference to {{w|Hans Gruber}}, the main antagonist in Die Hard. In the original movie, {{w|New York City Police Department|NYPD}} detective {{w|John McClane}} (who was in the building at the time) famously climbs through ventilation ducts and walks across broken glass. A major plot point is that the antagonists communicate through radio, just like this comic. In the original movie, he kills many of the antagonists and manages to rescue most of the hostages, foiling their plan in the process.
 However, in this comic, instead of freeing the hostages, the individual mentioned instead reconnected the servers to the outside world. The person on the other end of the phone, immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a sysadmin (short for {{w|system administrator}}), and he is concerned that his servers are losing uptime, or time spent running or connected to the internet. This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started.

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-This comic is a reference to the 1988 movie Die Hard, where several supposed terrorists have taken hostages inside the fictional building Nakatomi Plaza. They take over the building, and cut all communication to prevent anyone communicating with the outside world. The goatee that the man has is a reference to Hans Gruber, the main antagonist in Die Hard. In the original movie, NYPD detective John McClane (who was in the building at the time) famously climbs through ventilation ducts and walks across broken glass. A major plot point is that the antagonists communicate through radio, just like this comic. In the original movie, he kills many of the antagonists and manages to rescue most of the hostages, foiling their plan in the process.
+This comic is a reference to the 1988 movie {{w|Die Hard}}, where several supposed terrorists have taken hostages inside the fictional building Nakatomi Plaza. They take over the building, and cut all communication to prevent anyone communicating with the outside world. The goatee that the man has is a reference to Hans Gruber, the main antagonist in Die Hard. In the original movie, {{w|New York City Police Department|NYPD}} detective John McClane (who was in the building at the time) famously climbs through ventilation ducts and walks across broken glass. A major plot point is that the antagonists communicate through radio, just like this comic. In the original movie, he kills many of the antagonists and manages to rescue most of the hostages, foiling their plan in the process.
 However, in this comic, instead of freeing the hostages, the individual mentioned instead reconnected the servers to the outside world. The person on the other end of the phone, immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a sysadmin (short for {{w|system administrator}}), and he is concerned that his servers are losing uptime, or time spent running or connected to the internet. This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started.

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-In this comic, we see a man talking on a phone. We are unsure of his aims (terrorism, robbery, etc.) but he has taken hostages and cut all links to the outside world, in order to control the situation and prevent the police from observing the interior of the building (as popularly depicted in film and television). Initially, the villains seem to have everything under their control, but then the hostage-taker explains on the phone that someone has entered the building, climbed the air vents to bypass their cordon, effortlessly killing other hostage-takers (who are likely hardened killers with weaponry) on his way to the server room and then ignored the hostages, preferring instead to reconnect the servers to the outside world. The hostage-taker is evidently puzzled by this and explains it to the person on the other end of the phone, who immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a sysadmin (short for {{w|system administrator}}), and he is concerned that his servers are losing uptime (time spent running or connected to the internet). This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started.
+This comic is a reference to the 1988 movie Die Hard, where several supposed terrorists have taken hostages inside the fictional building Nakatomi Plaza. They take over the building, and cut all communication to prevent anyone communicating with the outside world. The goatee that the man has is a reference to Hans Gruber, the main antagonist in Die Hard. In the original movie, NYPD detective John McClane (who was in the building at the time) famously climbs through ventilation ducts and walks across broken glass. A major plot point is that the antagonists communicate through radio, just like this comic. In the original movie, he kills many of the antagonists and manages to rescue most of the hostages, foiling their plan in the process.
-This comic is a reference to one of two things (or both): the Hollywood depiction of heroes able to perform superhuman feats in tricky situations (such as John McClane in ''{{w|Die Hard}}'', which the first two panels are a deliberate reference to), or the duty that people impose upon themselves to go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that they carry out their work (in this case a dutiful sysadmin, concerned for those trying to use his server).
+However, in this comic, instead of freeing the hostages, the individual mentioned instead reconnected the servers to the outside world. The person on the other end of the phone, immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a sysadmin (short for {{w|system administrator}}), and he is concerned that his servers are losing uptime, or time spent running or connected to the internet. This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started.
 The title text is a simple joke about the fact that the sysadmin will crawl through broken glass and defeat criminals/terrorists just so a cat blog (where owners write about their cats) can stay up. This creates a humorous contrast between the seriousness with which large websites treat issues like uptime and business continuity and the often mundane and banal uses people actually have for them.

← Older revision		Revision as of 00:59, 11 December 2023
Line 36:		Line 36:
	[[Category:Computers]]		[[Category:Computers]]
	[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]		[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]
		+	[[Category:Sysadmins]]

@@ Line 30: / Line 30: @@
 ==Trivia==
-This comic was made into [http://store.xkcd.com/collections/apparel/products/sysadmin a shirt] in the xkcd store, which includes a new illustration on the back.
+This comic used to be [https://web.archive.org/web/20211218202946/http://store.xkcd.com/collections/apparel/products/sysadmin available as a T-shirt] in the xkcd store before it was [[Store|shut down]].
 {{comic discussion}}

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 This comic is a reference to one of two things (or both): the Hollywood depiction of heroes able to perform superhuman feats in tricky situations (such as John McClane in ''{{w|Die Hard}}'', which the first two panels are a deliberate reference to), or the duty that people impose upon themselves to go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that they carry out their work (in this case a dutiful sysadmin, concerned for those trying to use his server).
-The title text is a simple joke about the fact that the sysadmin will crawl through broken glass and defeat criminals/terrorists (forces of darkness) just so a cat blog (where owners write about their cats) can stay up. This creates a humorous contrast between the seriousness with which large websites treat issues like uptime and business continuity and the often mundane and banal uses people actually have for them.
+The title text is a simple joke about the fact that the sysadmin will crawl through broken glass and defeat criminals/terrorists just so a cat blog (where owners write about their cats) can stay up. This creates a humorous contrast between the seriousness with which large websites treat issues like uptime and business continuity and the often mundane and banal uses people actually have for them.
 A sysadmin is also mentioned in the title text of [[309: Shopping Teams]] and in [[1305: Undocumented Feature]].

@@ Line 23: / Line 23: @@
 :[Still talking on the phone, waving gun around in the air animatedly.]
 :Criminal: But then this guy climbed up the ventilation ducts and walked across broken glass, killing anyone we sent to stop him.
 :Phone: And he rescued the hostages?