Editing 676: Abstraction

{{comic
| number    = 676
| date      = December 16, 2009
| title     = Abstraction
| image     = abstraction.png
| titletext = If I'm such a god, why isn't Maru *my* cat?
}}

==Explanation==
The comics points out the large number of levels of abstraction working together at any given time in today's computers.

Programs on current computers do not run "directly on hardware". Instead, the hardware (in this case, a {{w|Central processing unit|processor}} of the {{w|x86-64}} architecture) is controlled by the {{w|operating system}} {{w|Kernel (computing)|kernel}} (in this specific case, {{w|XNU}} is the kernel used in Apple-branded devices). Many operating systems offer a standardized {{w|Interface (computing)|interface}} called {{w|POSIX}}, which wraps the services offered by the different operating systems so that applications do not need to cope with the differences between the operating systems. {{w|Darwin (operating system)|Darwin}} is the name of the core set of components on which the Apple's {{w|OS X}} operating system runs. And using this operating system, the user runs the {{w|Firefox}} web browser. However, the browser itself contains further abstraction layers: {{w|Gecko (layout engine)|Gecko}} is the engine handling the display of web pages on the screen, but in this case, it only allows a separate software, {{w|Adobe Flash Player}}, to render a video requested by the user.

And all of this work is, in this case, done only because the user wanted to watch a funny cat Flash video on the Internet; which makes the user feel like he is a god.

The title text refers to {{w|Maru (cat)|Maru the cat}}, a cat who became very popular on YouTube. Cueball questions his god-like capabilities by wondering why can't he own Maru.

Flash was an early way to make fluid media (such as games and animations) online that didn't require transmitting much data in a time where internet speeds averaged about 300KB/s. One of its uses was for video playing in a time where many browsers did not natively support playing media. It is now superseded by {{w|HTML5}} technologies [[2405: Flash Gatsby|and discontinued at the very beginning of 2021]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting at a computer.]
:An x64 processor is screaming along at billions of cycles per second to run the XNU kernel, which is frantically working through all the POSIX-specified abstraction to create the Darwin system underlying OS X, which in  turn is straining itself to run Firefox and its Gecko renderer, which creates a Flash object which renders dozens of video frames every second

:because I wanted to see a cat jump into a box and fall over.

:I am a god.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computers]]