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

Here Cueball is speaking with a fictitious example of artificially intelligent software similar to the type popularized in the 1980s when personal computers had just become mainstream. Although modern computing platforms might still be backwards-compatible with 8-bit era software, it is more likely that the old applications will need to be run within an emulator that can simulate the necessary hardware components required by the application.

In this case the "8-bit AI" is having a conversation with Cueball as it carries out tasks common to the era, specifically asking the user to insert a floppy disk into drive "A:" (A: traditionally being the first floppy drive on IBM-compatible PCs). At the time internal storage like a hard disk was an expensive luxury item and most applications were stored on removable media. An application that could not fit on a single floppy disk would be programmed to prompt the user to insert successive floppies which held the required data. 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. Sometimes the software would even incorporate feedback mechanisms like loading screens to let the user know the program was proceeding as intended and had not crashed.

When software operating under an emulator such as DOSBox makes a request to access disc storage, the emulator will often map the command to a file or file system on the enveloping computing environment which can now contain hundreds or thousands of gigabytes of storage. Depending on the configuration, this may require a user action to complete the virtual operation (Cueball's click). The speed of modern hardware allows the data to be transferred at speeds several orders of magnitude higher than what was possible in the past. The 8-bit AI notices this and makes a comment about the transfer speed. Software may indeed have sometimes been designed to track the accessible rate of data, to give a rough estimate of the total loading time (or know how long it may need to animate a "while you are waiting..." display) no matter what the speed of the hardware is. This becomes less important once splash-screens or "spinnng cursors" aren't (usually) expected to stay on screen for many minutes without any obvious signs of practical completion.

Here we begin to see the consequences of emulation upon the anthropomorphized software application. Because the emulator is constructing the application's entire reality, the 8-bit AI has no reason to believe it is anywhere other than a 1980s' computing platform for which it was designed. While the application does notice the abnormally fast load time, 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 is it Memorex?"—tying into the comic's theme of unawareness that something is being digitally duplicated.

To compound the problem, computers of the era often lacked a real-time clock or would have an inability to process dates beyond 1999, and therefore the software application in this comic still believes that it is running at the time of its creation - the 1980s. To this end the program casually asks how President Reagan is doing, as 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. This has been a theme in science fiction such as The Matrix, which has been referenced several 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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