Editing 970: The Important Field

{{comic
| number    = 970
| date      = October 28, 2011
| title     = The Important Field
| image     = the important field.png
| titletext = I hear in some places, you need to fill one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it by check. It's interesting to see who has what incentives to care about what mistakes.
}}

==Explanation==
It is very common that online input forms demand that one's email address is typed twice, and also quite common that pasting into the second field is disabled, so that there is no escape. If a form asks for some information that is really much more crucial, and this standard routine thoughtlessly isn't used for those fields too, it would comically seem that the form-makers consider your email address to be ''hideously'' important. In the comic, the impression is that it is less important that the wrong city is not accidentally wiped out, than that the boss  knows who to blame afterwards.

The title text suggests a real world parallel to this. [[Randall]] ''has heard'' about differing priorities of identifying who is purchasing a firearm (the state/locality requires one form of identification) and ensuring the payment (the store requires two forms of ID, to properly document the person, in case the check is fake or is rejected by the bank). The point is that people often care a lot about money, but a gun in the wrong hands is a potential disaster bigger than a few hundred missing dollars.

This is the only comic so far to feature [[Green Hat]].

It appears that the green hat means that he is part of the military.

==Transcript==
:[Green Hat sitting at a computer.]
:Computer: Welcome to the missile launch interface!
:''Click''
:Computer: Enter the target's coordinates.
:''Type Type''
:Computer: Enter your email address for our records.
:''Type Type''
:Computer: Enter your email again, to ensure you typed it correctly.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Sarcasm]]
@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-In this comic, a person wearing a green cap with a black emblem on the front is using their computer to access an online web interface to launch a missile at a target. The joke is that even though the interface only asks them to enter the target coordinates once, it asks for their email address twice, even though the coordinates are by far the more important detail to get right, since launching the missile at the wrong target could result in a disastrous unintended loss of life or property damage.
+It is very common that online input forms demand that one's email address is typed twice, and also quite common that pasting into the second field is disabled, so that there is no escape. If a form asks for some information that is really much more crucial, and this standard routine thoughtlessly isn't used for those fields too, it would comically seem that the form-makers consider your email address to be ''hideously'' important. In the comic, the impression is that it is less important that the wrong city is not accidentally wiped out, than that the boss  knows who to blame afterwards.
-It is common for online interfaces to force users to type certain details twice, as a form of redundancy checking to ensure that the user really has entered the correct details and hasn't made an error. Some forms even go the extra step of preventing the user from copy-pasting into the second field, which would render it useless as a redundancy check.
+The title text suggests a real world parallel to this. [[Randall]] ''has heard'' about differing priorities of identifying who is purchasing a firearm (the state/locality requires one form of identification) and ensuring the payment (the store requires two forms of ID, to properly document the person, in case the check is fake or is rejected by the bank). The point is that people often care a lot about money, but a gun in the wrong hands is a potential disaster bigger than a few hundred missing dollars.
-This is usually done for email addresses and when creating new passwords, which are used to identify and authenticate users, and are therefore important to get right.
+This is the only comic so far to feature [[Green Hat]].
-In the title text, [[Randall]] suggests that the presence of redundancy checks can give you an interesting insight into what things people deem to be important. He gives a (supposed) real-life example of a merchant that requires only one form of ID in order to buy a gun, but two forms if you want to pay for it by check - suggesting that the seller is more worried about the safety of their money than the potential danger of giving a lethal weapon to someone untrustworthy.
+It appears that the green hat means that he is part of the military.
 ==Transcript==
-:[A soldier with a green military hat, with an black emblem on the front, is sitting in an office chair typing at his computer. Sounds are shown when he types, and the message he reads on the screen is shown above with a zigzag line coming from the computer screen. In the first panel he only uses one hand on the keyboard.]
+:[Green Hat sitting at a computer.]
-:Computer: Welcome to the missile launch web interface!
+:Computer: Welcome to the missile launch interface!
 :''Click''
-:[Same setting but the soldier types with both hands.]
 :Computer: Enter the target's coordinates.
 :''Type Type''
-:[Same setting as previous panel.]
 :Computer: Enter your email address for our records.
 :''Type Type''
-:[Same setting except the soldier has stopped typing.]
 :Computer: Enter your email again, to ensure you typed it correctly.
-==Trivia==
-*This is the only comic so far to feature a soldier using such a green Hat.
-**The green hat with the black emblem implies that he is part of the military. The color code of his hat is #123E0E.
-**Until realizing that the hat is green not black it could look like [[Black Hat]].
-***Although the hat seems in the first panel to only have a lie going towards the front of the cap, this changes in the later images, making it here look more like a Black Hat type of hat.
 {{comic discussion}}
 [[Category:Comics with color]]
-[[Category:Characters with hats]]
 [[Category:Sarcasm]]
-[[Category:Email]]
-[[Category:Computer security]]
-[[Category:Nuclear weapons]]