explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

910: Permanence

2016-12-01T14:44:05Z

141.101.104.68:

{{comic
| number = 910
| date = June 10, 2011
| title = Permanence
| image = permanence.png
| titletext = This hostname is going in dozens of remote config files. Changing a kid's name is comparatively easy!
}}

==Explanation==

Choosing a name for a server is both an important and non-trivial task.
It is non-trivial enough that there are official communications on how to choose a good name and why many ideas are bad, for example [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1178.txt RFC 1178 Name Your Computer].
It is important to pick a good name because changing it is costly once many reference to the existing name are widespread. For example, RFC 1178 states:

<blockquote>
if you later decide to change a name (to something
sensible like you should have chosen in the first place), you
are going to be amazed at the amount of pain awaiting you. No
matter how easy the manuals suggest it is to change a name, you
will find that lots of obscure software has rapidly accumulated
which refers to that computer using that now-ugly name. It all
has to be found and changed. (...)
</blockquote>

So [[Cueball]] wants to make sure that he chooses a great ''permanent'' name, that he can give to the server he is running.

When [[Megan]] quips on how quickly Cueball named their daughter Caroline (a living being - that is, the type of entity that would give the server purpose), Cueball retorts that he was under pressure at the time: Megan tried to name said daughter "Epidural" in honor of {{w|epidural|the painkiller drugs that were being injected into her spine at the time}}. Megan tries to justify this by explaining that those were very good drugs, but thus also confirms Cueball in that she was drugged, not in her right mind, and thus not making good decisions (despite epidurals working by stopping nerves in the spinal cord from transmitting signals, and would not have an affect on the brain seen in someone given an opiate or narcotic. She may, however, have been motivated purely by the fact that the drug stopped the pain of labor or a cesarean section).

In the title text Cueball mentions that he thinks that it is easier to change a person's name than to change the hostname of a server because of the number of changes that would need to be made to each of the machines that would have saved the old name of the server. It seems, however, that Cueball has never had to wait in line at the Social Security Administration office or at the Department of Motor Vehicles, as both of those events typically take excruciatingly long amounts of time. On the top panel is the sketch of a [[Debian Installer]] showing hostname dialog for its menu-driven frontend.

==Transcript==
:[A large panel the combined width of the four panels below it.]
:[A blue Linux terminal installer screen with a grey box that is labeled "[!]CONFIGURE THE NETWORK" in red. Below, in black, it reads "Please enter the hostname for the system." Below is an empty blue entry box with a cursor and dashed underscore, and below this it says "<GO BACK>".]

:[Cueball sits at his computer, Megan stands behind him.]
:Megan: You've been staring at that screen a while.
:Cueball: Picking a good server name is important.

:[Megan stares at him.]

:[She continues to stare.]

:[Cueball pushes his chair back, puts one elbow on the back of the chair and points with his other hand at the screen.]
:Megan: And yet you settled on "Caroline" for our daughter in like 15 seconds.
:Cueball: But this is a ''server!''
:Besides, I had to—you were trying to name her "epidural."
:Megan: Those ''were'' good drugs.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Linux]]

1593: Play-By-Play

2015-10-21T08:43:06Z

141.101.104.68: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1593
| date = October 21, 2015
| title = Play-By-Play
| image = play_by_play.png
| titletext = The thrower started hitting the bats too much, so the king of the game told him to leave and brought out another thrower from thrower jail.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|I don't have time to add much, someone fix.}}

[[Beret Guy]] gives {{w|Sports commentator|play by play commentary}} of a {{w|Baseball|baseball}} game with simple words and without baseball jargon, in his classic style.

{| class="wikitable"
! Text
! Explanation
|-
|"We're on part 5 of a hitting game."
|Part of baseball is hitting the ball with the {{w|Baseball bat|bat}}. A game is divided into 9 rounds, or {{w|Inning|innings}}.
|-
|"The next guy has a big bat, so he'll probably hit the ball real far."
|Every hitter uses a bat that fits his physique.
|-
|"Wait - he missed!" "Oh good, they're letting him try again."
|The {{w|Pitcher|pitcher}} tries to throw (or pitch) the ball in such a way as to make it hard for the hitter to hit the ball, but still have the ball go through the {{w|Strike zone|strike zone}}. A swing and a miss is counted as a strike, regardless of whether the ball passes the strike zone. A hitter is out when he accumulates three strikes (a {{w|Strikeout|strikeout}}); thus, swinging and missing will not get a hitter out if he has not accumulated two strikes already, and in this case he will be allowed to "try again".
|-
|"The people sitting on the chair shelves are yelling at this guy but he's ignoring them."
|Cheering and heckling is so commonplace that the players in the field are unlikely to react to it.
|-
|"This thrower is good! He keeps making people leave by throwing balls at them."
|The pitcher keeps striking out hitters.
|-
|"It's just him, though. None of his teammates are joining in."
|Only one pitcher pitches at a time.
|-
|"That guy just ran to the second pillow when no one was looking!!"
|Any {{w|Baserunning|baserunner}} (a player standing at a {{w|Baseball field|base}} waiting to run to the next base) can attempt to run to the next base when the pitcher is delivering a pitch (called {{w|Stolen base|stealing a base}}). The pitcher can throw the ball to a defense player to {{w|Tag out|tag out}} the runner before he reaches the next base. Thus, an attempt to steal a base is most successful if no one notices.
|-
|"Everyone's real mad but I guess they checked the rules and there's nothing that says he can't do that."
|Successfully stealing a base, an infrequent event, usually receives a lot of cheers, especially if the offensive team is the home team. This may be a reference to [[1552: Rulebook]].
|-
|Title text: "The thrower started hitting the bats too much, so the king of the game told him to leave and brought out another thrower from thrower jail."
|A pitcher throwing pitches that get hit too often is undesirable, and will be substituted by a {{w|Relief pitcher|relief pitcher}} who will come out of the {{w|Bullpen|bullpen}} (the area next to the playing field where relief pitchers warm up; the "thrower jail") to join the game. Substitution decisions are made by the manager of the team (the "king of the game", though this name wrongfully suggests that one "king" controls both teams).
|}

==Trivia==
* Even though Beret Guy speaks in simple words, his speech fails the [http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ Thing Explainer word checker] due to the words "bat", "shelves", "wow", "rude", "teammates", "pillow", "rules", "yikes", and "hopefully".

==Transcript==
:Beret Guy: For those just joining us, hi! We're on part 5 of a hitting game.

:Beret Guy: The next guy has a big bat, so he'll probably hit the ball real far.
:Beret Guy: Wait - he missed!
:Beret Guy: Oh good, they're letting him try again.

:Beret Guy: The people sitting on the chair shelves are yelling at this guy but he's ignoring them. Wow.
:Beret Guy: Rude.

:Beret Guy: This thrower is good! He keeps making people leave by throwing balls at them.
:Beret Guy: It's just him, though. None of his teammates are joining in.

:Beret Guy: ''That guy just ran to the second pillow when no one was looking!!''
:Beret Guy: Everyone's real mad but I guess they checked the rules and there's nothing that says he can't do that.
:Beret Guy: Yikes. Hopefully they can fix that once this game is over.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1412: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2014-08-25T08:08:38Z

141.101.104.68:

Looks like they renamed the Wikipedia article mentioned as "Maple Syrup Urine '''Syndrome'''" to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup_urine_disease Maple Syrup Urine '''Disease'''].[[User:Keavon|Keavon]] ([[User talk:Keavon|talk]]) 05:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

This rythmic sounding has to do with metrical foots, I think. Maybe someone more into it than I can explain...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_%28prosody%29 [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.164|108.162.229.164]] 05:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: It's just a 4-foot trochaic ("trochaic octameter"?) meter. ^- ^- ^- ^-. Also, I'm curious now, is "foots" the proper plural when discussing meter, or is that just a typo/misunderstandinh? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 06:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: This one is definitely related: http://xkcd.com/856/ --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.68|141.101.104.68]] 08:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Unless "Gloucester" is two syllables, Randall made a mistake/wanted to see if we're awake.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.224|108.162.246.224]] 06:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: Actually it is. Silly British accents. It's pronounced roughly "Glo-ster". [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 06:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

::In that case, I retract my previous statement and apologize.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.224|108.162.246.224]] 07:20, 25 August 2014 (UTC)