251: CD Tray Fight
| CD Tray Fight |
 Title text: This is silly, of course. The enemy will be born in the network. |
Explanation
This comic refers to the behavior of a tray loading optical disc drive of a desktop computer. When the tray is opened and the user is reaching for the disc, a process or task on the computer can, at that exact inopportune time, request that the disc drive close its tray. Alternatively, accidentally bumping the open tray may engage the auto-close feature, resulting in the same scenario.
This results in a sort of "tug of war" between the user who is trying to remove the disc and the CD drive trying to retract.
With a reasonable amount of force by the user, most drives will detect the resistance and give up trying to close as a safety feature, ejecting the disc again.
A Robot War is a recurring theme in science fiction where humans develop robots that become self aware and start a war against humanity. A well known example of this theme is found in the Terminator franchise where, as the title text suggests, a military computer network (Skynet) becomes self aware and starts a world war to kill all humans. This event is also parodied in 1046: Skynet.
Transcript
- [Cueball is standing, holding a CD tray which is half-in his computer. There are other CDs on the floor.]
- Cueball: Hey. Hey! Stop retracting my CD!
- I feel uncomfortable when my computer physically struggles with me. Sure, I can overpower it now, but it feels like a few short steps from here to the robot war.
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This may be a reference to a bug in certain old versions of FUSE that causes the CD tray to load almost immediately after being ejected. 162.72.40.137 13:18, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Incomplete because there is a missing Terminator reference or something???--Dgbrt (talk) 21:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Reference to Skynet? I don't know enough about Terminator to be sure. 173.245.52.211 20:15, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
The opposite of this kept happening to me, when I tried to burn Ubuntu to a disc Windows kept opening the disc drive whenever I clicked on Burn, then informed me that the disc drive was open. 141.101.98.246 19:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Also, it must be noted that this may damage the device. 108.162.212.199 23:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I do the reverse with dollar bills in vending machines. Greyson (talk) 14:27, 20 December 2013 (UTC) Added the title text so maybe this will stop it from being flagged as incomplete 173.245.52.219 15:13, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
I wonder if zoomers and Generation Alpha will understand this joke. GreatWyrmGold (talk) 13:31, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
A similar issue (but a bit too complicated to integrate into the flow of the explanation) is when having opened the (empty) CD tray to put a disc in, but the close happens as you're dropping it into the 'recess' and it you end up with ths disc half-seated. Never had the closing drawer damage the CD (noticably, and the most I'd expect would be non-obvious abrasions), but you may instinctively fight the closing whilst trying desperately to nudge the media into its seating, so you can let it go in as originally intended. (Yes, GWG, this is a bit of a problem from yesteryear. And laptop optical drive trays – if indeed there is such a thing on your more modern device – generally have no power-function at all to the tray itself, except the 'catch release' that holds the sprung tray closed.) 172.71.26.52 21:11, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
