Editing 1193: Externalities
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| title = Externalities | | title = Externalities | ||
| image = externalities.png | | image = externalities.png | ||
| − | | titletext = Mouse over words and things to see where they come from. | + | | titletext = Mouse over words and things to see where they come from. |
}} | }} | ||
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
| − | + | This comic isn't a static image - even the title text changes depending on which part of the image you're hovering over. It presented a competition for students to see who could come closest to break a {{w|Skein (hash function)|Skein hash}} but also an aid appeal for the Wikimedia Foundation. | |
| − | + | There are quite a few references in the comic to {{w|Baidu}}. Baidu is a large Chinese Internet services company that employs thousands, whose shares are publicly traded on world stock exchanges. It's the predominant Internet search provider of China, and is sometimes called the "Google of China". It offers parallels for the Chinese market of many of the services that Google provides and offers its own encyclopedic wiki with a restricted edit policy to serve as a replacement for Wikipedia. Wikipedia reports that Baidu's search engine handled 56% of Chinese internet search queries in Q4 2010. and that in October 2012, Baidu ranked 5th overall in the Alexa Internet rankings. Given that explanation for the Baidu references in #1193 is still solicited for explainxkcd, Baidu apparently is not well known yet among savvy XKCD readers. | |
| + | Baidu Search results reputedly follow the censorship dictates of the Chinese authorities, causing it to return censored responses to searches for politically sensitive terms like "Tianamen Square massacre" or "Falun Gong" when executed by web browsers that are connected via Chinese ISPs. When you execute such searches via Baidu in the US, the top links returned for these topics do seem to reflect Chinese government sensibilities although the uncensored English language Wikipedia articles for these topics are listed high in the query results. Baidu's reputation for censorship provides background for Megan's reply "but nothing about Tianamen Square" in response to the "Come and find your future at Baidu" employment enticement of panel one and also provides the background to understand the "It takes great minds to stifle other great minds" slogan of the second panel. | ||
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| + | __TOC__ | ||
The blank regions in the above image are dynamically generated from various sources. | The blank regions in the above image are dynamically generated from various sources. | ||
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<pre>5b4da95f5fa08280fc9879df44f418c8f9f12ba424b7757de02bbdfbae0d4c4fdf9317c80cc5fe04c6429073466cf29706b8c25999ddd2f6540d4475cc977b87f4757be023f19b8f4035d7722886b78869826de916a79cf9c94cc79cd4347d24b567aa3e2390a573a373a48a5e676640c79cc70197e1c5e7f902fb53ca1858b6</pre> | <pre>5b4da95f5fa08280fc9879df44f418c8f9f12ba424b7757de02bbdfbae0d4c4fdf9317c80cc5fe04c6429073466cf29706b8c25999ddd2f6540d4475cc977b87f4757be023f19b8f4035d7722886b78869826de916a79cf9c94cc79cd4347d24b567aa3e2390a573a373a48a5e676640c79cc70197e1c5e7f902fb53ca1858b6</pre> | ||
| − | On this page, users were invited to enter "Your school's domain name" — presumably intended to be their college alma mater. (At least in the beginning, only a few top-level domains were accepted.) If the user entered an acceptable domain (by xkcd's rules, which apparently changed during the 48 hours of the competition), | + | On this page, users were invited to enter "Your school's domain name" — presumably intended to be their college alma mater. (At least in the beginning, only a few top-level domains were accepted.) If the user entered an acceptable domain (by xkcd's rules, which apparently changed during the 48 hours of the competition), he could then enter data values one at a time. For each data value entered, xkcd returned a hash value and the number of bits by which it differed from the target value. The object was to achieve the lowest possible number of differing bits, ideally zero. |
A ranking page showed the lowest value achieved for each domain name entered, but not the data that achieved it. The first name on the list was substituted in various panels, and the third-place school showed in panel five. No data values were reported by xkcd, but various results were posted by users of the xkcd forums and on other websites, leading to copycat submissions, so that occasionally large numbers of institutions would show the same moderately low value. | A ranking page showed the lowest value achieved for each domain name entered, but not the data that achieved it. The first name on the list was substituted in various panels, and the third-place school showed in panel five. No data values were reported by xkcd, but various results were posted by users of the xkcd forums and on other websites, leading to copycat submissions, so that occasionally large numbers of institutions would show the same moderately low value. | ||
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|pgp encrypted | |pgp encrypted | ||
|have you ever really looked at the fourier | |have you ever really looked at the fourier | ||
| − | |As an undergrad at MIT in 1948, Smoot was used to measure the Harvard Bridge during a fraternity prank. This led to the introduction of " | + | |As an undergrad at MIT in 1948, Smoot was used to measure the Harvard Bridge during a fraternity prank. This led to the introduction of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot "smoot"] as a non-standard unit of length. |
|- | |- | ||
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|SOUTH DETROIT | |SOUTH DETROIT | ||
|HUNT LIKE A WOLVERINE | |HUNT LIKE A WOLVERINE | ||
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|- | |- | ||
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|Forget it | |Forget it | ||
|Riding the L all night long | |Riding the L all night long | ||
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|- | |- | ||
| + | | | ||
|MY JOB NOW | |MY JOB NOW | ||
|@ | |@ | ||
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|- | |- | ||
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| − | :At [company], you'll have the | + | :At [company], you'll have the opportinity to work on cutting-edge projects. |
|- | |- | ||
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|} | |} | ||
| − | + | ==Title Text== | |
The title text documents the different sources of data in the comic. The different title texts are: | The title text documents the different sources of data in the comic. The different title texts are: | ||
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|Last three panels (only within a frame that would just fit around all three of them).||The dog gains a pound for every $10 donated to the wikimedia foundation via this link. Currently at [amount donated] (Amount = $51135.33 after competition). | |Last three panels (only within a frame that would just fit around all three of them).||The dog gains a pound for every $10 donated to the wikimedia foundation via this link. Currently at [amount donated] (Amount = $51135.33 after competition). | ||
|} | |} | ||
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==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
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:[The basic title text for the entire comic is: "This comic went up on April 1st, and the panels changed throughout the day in response to readers doing things like breaking hashes, edited a rapidly-shuffling set of target Wikipedia articles, and donating to Wikimedia Foundation. (The vandalism is over now and CMU won the hashing contest.)" The other three title text are only active over certain panels.] | :[The basic title text for the entire comic is: "This comic went up on April 1st, and the panels changed throughout the day in response to readers doing things like breaking hashes, edited a rapidly-shuffling set of target Wikipedia articles, and donating to Wikimedia Foundation. (The vandalism is over now and CMU won the hashing contest.)" The other three title text are only active over certain panels.] | ||
| − | :[The first panel with the caption and Megan below has | + | :[The first panel with the caption and Megan below has it's own title text. A part of that panel is a link, and in the section where this link is active there is no title text at all. The title text for the rest of the first panel is: "Happy April 1st, everyone!"] |
:[A panel with only text is above the first drawing. There is a link on the top part of the text to <nowiki>http://almamater.xkcd.com/</nowiki> (the link is now broken).] | :[A panel with only text is above the first drawing. There is a link on the top part of the text to <nowiki>http://almamater.xkcd.com/</nowiki> (the link is now broken).] | ||
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:Our recruiters are on the hunt for unaware CMU graduates | :Our recruiters are on the hunt for unaware CMU graduates | ||
| − | :[The fifth panel has | + | :[The fifth panel has it's own title text only active within (or very close to) the frame. It is: "uic has the third best hash. See the full standings at <nowiki>http://almamater.xkcd.com/best.csv</nowiki>" (The link is now broken)] |
:[There is a caption above a website application. There is three fields to be filled, with each their caption and text:] | :[There is a caption above a website application. There is three fields to be filled, with each their caption and text:] | ||
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[[Category:Science]] | [[Category:Science]] | ||
[[Category:Animals]] | [[Category:Animals]] | ||
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[[Category:Roomba]] | [[Category:Roomba]] | ||
[[Category:Butterfly net]] | [[Category:Butterfly net]] | ||
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