1969: Not Available

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 01:03, 20 March 2018 by 172.68.58.35 (talk) (Added fact that Chrome's puzzle piece icon is gray)
Jump to: navigation, search
Not Available
If my country ever picks a new national flag, this is on my shortlist for designs to argue for, but I think in the end I'll go with the green puzzle piece or broken image thumbnail.
Title text: If my country ever picks a new national flag, this is on my shortlist for designs to argue for, but I think in the end I'll go with the green puzzle piece or broken image thumbnail.

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Update content a little bit further. Do not remove this tag too soon.
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

A very common, yet frustrating issue on the internet is finding a broken link, taking you to an "Error 404" page. The purpose of the page is to tell the user that the content they were looking for has been either moved, or deleted. Randall suggested replacing the standard "page not found" text, to "This content is not available in your country". This could fool the user into thinking the media they are looking for is actually there, but is region locked. Using a VPN and/or TOR to try and access the content from another country wouldn't work, because it isn't actually region locked; it is just an error 404 page, wasting even more time, most likely frustrating the user a great deal in the process.

The title text suggests setting the picture as a national flag. This would be very ironic, as it would suggest that the country's flag itself, something that is used to represent the country across the globe, is region locked. The country in the title text likely does not refer to the United States, but rather to the new country featured in 1815: Flag. The first flag of this country included a phone notification bar, so changing it to a "page not found" icon would continue with a trend of technology imagery. Instead he argues for a green puzzle piece, which is Firefox's and Chrome's "plugin is missing" icon. Although, Chrome's "plugin is missing" puzzle piece icon is gray. He also argues for an equally frustrating broken image icon (which is used in lieu of a photo that is either missing or incompatible with the browser).

Transcript

[A gray box shown on a black background says "This content is not available in your country."]
Caption: If you ever really want to make people mad, set this as your 404/"Not Found" page.


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

I think this should be set as explainxkcd.com's 404 page. 173.245.54.25 13:40, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

For a second I thought my government actually blocked a page. We "reelected" Putin today, so I thought it is somehow related. --108.162.241.208 18:35, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I think I'm the first to implement this? Blacksilver (talk) 17:12, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

This comment is not available in your country. 141.101.99.107 15:31, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

This is probably related to some websites adding this type of banner to support Net Neutrality. Miguel Piedrafita 15:35, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Not sure about the green, but old versions of macOS (and possibly other systems?) showed inproperly/nonexistent embedded images in websites as a blue puzzle piece with a “?” in it. I think this is what Randall’s referencing in the title text. Oddly a google image search is not finding any examples, so I may be misremembering the details somewhat. PotatoGod (talk) 16:22, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I think it refers to the general icon for a browser plugin which is often a green puzzle piece. 162.158.243.17 20:19, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
... which was used as a placeholder image in cases when user lacked the plugin necessary to play the content. -- Hkmaly (talk) 21:25, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I honestly thought for a moment that this comic is actually not available in my country, then I laughed.Boeing-787lover 18:19, 19 March 2018 (UTC) -- Xkcdreader52 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Maybe we should add the fact that, this is shown while the fact hit the news that the EU is forbidding Geolocking within the EU staring from the 1. April. .UserM 16:38, 20 March 2018 (UTC) 141.101.77.20 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

dgbrtBOT was not available

Sorry for that, the bot lost it's internet connection. I've changed the picture to the common normal size, when saving a comic picture from a browser you typically get the larger version (file_2x.png instead of file.png) but everything else looks fine thanks to RamenChef. The bot should do it's work again for the next comic. --Dgbrt (talk) 15:57, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I've added an explanation about the broken image icon. I found an example of two, I think Firefox's and possibly Chrome's, but on a cursory glance I can't see how to upload a picture to the wiki. Since the legality of doing so might be questionable, I'm not trying any harder. It's on a blog post about fixing a broken image issue on WordPress. The title picture offers two examples of the "broken image icon". NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:16, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

The explanation says that the error 451 references Fahrenheit 451. Is there proof? aaaaaaaaaaaoijgpisbHtejsykl7ekderhtsjk6r64os4kys\\\[]jsrtjgdrghtvgwrhtejyku5dli6;78t7l6rk5j4h|||||#Rty-----WWWWWWfflfllfllfllfeogk0q9wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww4-cv;c;;c;c[;]z\]d;v[\]????????OH GOD IT'S CRASIHNG MY PC����������������������������������������������� (talk) 07:24, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7725 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/22/ray-bradbury-internet-error-message-451 b? (talk) 23:22, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

of course the "forbidden because law" error is 451. of course. An user who has no account yet (talk) 18:48, 6 September 2023 (UTC)