2221: Emulation

Emulation

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Title text: I laugh at the software as if I'm 100% confident that it's 2019.

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Explanation

This is one of 53 incomplete explanations: Created by RUNNING DOSBox ON WINDOWS 10. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

In this comic, software that Cueball is emulating is having a conversation with Cueball, who is bemused by the fact that the software still thinks that it is the 1980s.

The first personal computers in the 1970s didn't have internal hard drives, and indeed, even when it became common practice to include storage, it was often very limited for the everyday user's needs until the 2000s. Because of this, large programs such as games or specialized editors had much of their code reside on an external disk such as a floppy disk (traditionally drive A: on IBM-compatible PCs) or a CD-ROM (traditionally drive D: or E: on IBM-compatible PCs). However, the speed at which data could be loaded from such devices was very slow, requiring anywhere from ten seconds to ten minutes to load a level or an advanced dialog box. Software, for this reason, had to be built around these limitations, incorporating some feedback mechanism to let the user know the program was proceeding as intended. These included animations or minigames which were sometimes timed to the exact time the loading took, since external drives were fairly consistent across manufacturers.

Emulation is a method to allow programs designed for one computer to run on another. In some cases, emulation is used to recreate much older computing environments. When emulating programs that assume their information is stored on external drives, the emulator requests the user to specify where the file is located (Cueball's click). However, on a modern computer with hundreds or thousands of Gigabytes of space, users of emulators often just keep those files locally (often even in the same directory), which allows them to load near-instantaneously (although some emulators can slow down the drive speed to make it look like it's on the original system). This can lead to the loading feedback appearing to be comically sped up, so that in this case, the anthropomorphic program expresses surprise and remarks on the speed of the user's disk drive.

Cueball decides to not burst his anthropomorphized program's bubble and responds that the file loaded quickly because of a new floppy disk from Memorex, which was a well-known manufacturer of premium magnetic recording media in the 1980s. Memorex was also known for a famous series of commercials with the tagline, "Is it live? Or it Memorex?"—tying into the comic's theme of a lack of unawareness that something is being digitally duplicated.

Programmers of the era often assumed either that conditions of the time would last longer than they did (such as representing a year with two characters) or that the program wouldn't be used for long (such as a game portraying the president in the likeness of whoever was president at the time the program was made). In this case, the program casually asks how President Reagan is doing, further anthropomorphizing the program into a being that believes no time has passed since it was compiled (in contrast to 2189: Old Game Worlds).

Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States from 1981-1989, when early PCs were on the rise. He died in 2004, 15 years before the publication of the comic. This is why Cueball seems slightly uncomfortable with noncommittally telling the software Reagan is "fine."

In the title text, Cueball references the living in a simulation trope, mentioning that it is not fully clear that he is actually living in 2019. Such as in The Matrix, which has been referenced some times in xkcd. That we are living in a simulation was also the subject of the comic 505: A Bunch of Rocks.

Transcript

[Cueball sits in an office chair at a desk typing on a laptop computer. The computers response to his typing is shown emanating from a starburst on the screen with zigzag lines between different sentences.]

Laptop: Loading... please insert disk into drive A:

Cueball: *click* There you go.

Laptop: Thank you. Wow, this disk is incredibly fast!

Cueball: Yeah, uh, it's the new model from Memorex.

Laptop: Amazing. And how is President Reagan?

Cueball: He's... He's fine.

[Caption under the panel]

I feel weird using old software that doesn't know it's being emulated.

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Discussion

This reminds me of Miii's "world.execute(me)" song. 172.68.10.172 05:06, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Does everyone else also see adds in the middle of the explanation now? It is extremely annoying. :-( Ahh yes, they do, there is a section in the previous comics discussion. Take further grievances there --Kynde (talk) 10:40, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

My first time seeing it: Right under your comment, LOL! I closed it, wish I could explain that it's because this is a really inappropriate place for an ad. They used to appear unobtrusively on the side, as they should be. NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:56, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't see any adds anywhere. ( I also don't see any ads in the middle ;^) 162.158.78.160 11:34, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

There's an ad (for me, on this device, just before I came in to edit ((now gone - post-posting edit)) ) directly between Kynde's contribution and 162.158.78.160's. Nothing in the wikicode, but I haven't looked at the HTML source yet to see what was inserted post-wikimarkup. But that wasn't what I came here to edit in.

I was going to say that I've just bought a brand new mouse because my old wired optical mouse is flickering and failing, and I decided not to bother attacking it with a soldering iron (or at least seeing if I should). But I was disappointed to find no direct PS/2 replacement in any store, so this is USB instead. Going to try to dig up an inline USB-to-PS/2 dongle, though, and see if that works with this one's USB pinout, 'cos it's a total waste to put it through my actual USB hubstacks which are overoccupied with anything but HIDs, and asnlong as it passes the clicks and mickeys through I'd prefer my hardware to read it through that otherwise wasted venerable old port. (And if I can find a serial-to-PS/2 dongle, first, I think I have an even older device I can try, in the few days it'll take to get to the workshop where I know I'll find a proper replacement or three to try out..) So, yeah, old hardware too, was my point, somewhere in tht ramble. 162.158.158.127 16:42, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

I note that this comment section ends with a wiki tag (i.e. inside two sets of curly brackets) that says the comic's name and "/Ads", I suspect that means "Ads are allowed here in this section". Probably ExplainXKCD trying to make more revenue. As for your thing, that's what I've always hated about USB mice and keyboards, especially when they first came out. There used to be a dedicated place to plug in the mouse and keyboard, without needlessly using up a far more versatile and useful USB (the U standing for Universal, after all), and it's not like either is really optional. Though my current motherboard has USBs in that location, so I guess I can treat them as dedicated, but it doesn't feel the same. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:05, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Ad blocker? :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:24, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

SNES9x is one of the main emulators of SNES hardware; since plenty of people running it are younger than an SNES would be, it seems appropriate to be the "created by". Thank you to people making emulators everywhere for helping prolong our shared childhood. (Also thanks to Vimms lair for unrelated reasons) -- 162.158.123.175 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Actually, today's computers can take not just multiple floppy disks, but multiple CD-ROMs into RAM. Which itself is faster than it used to be. Talk about "near-instantaneously load" ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 19:26, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

172.68.63.5 20:18, 29 October 2019 (UTC) also related with these news https://www.c4isrnet.com/air/2019/10/17/the-us-nuclear-forces-dr-strangelove-era-messaging-system-finally-got-rid-of-its-floppy-disks/

Is the date on this comic accurate? A Tuesday release? 172.69.63.75

Not officially (the archive says 2019-10-28), but it did come out awfully late. The bot created the page at 11:04 pm on the 28th, but I don't which timezone. UTC. --Ycthiognass (talk) 14:39, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I fixed the release date in the comic header to reflect the actual Monday release instead of Tuesday. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 14:53, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I think the title text is just a feel-old joke and not a reference to science fiction or living in a simulation. 108.162.216.42 05:56, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Did anyone notice that the explanation says "tying into the comic's theme of a lack of unawareness that something is being digitally duplicated.", which is a double negative, which means that it does know that something is being digitally copied? Sarah the Pie(yes, the food) (talk) 23:15, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

SCP-079 if the researchers just gave it more memory --Öbc (talk) 21:38, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Google Ads
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