343: 1337: Part 3

2013-05-25T17:34:46Z

71.197.67.191: /* Explanation */ Liar paradox doesn't include this

{{comic
| number = 343
| date = November 14, 2007
| title = 1337: Part 3
| image = 1337 part 3.png
| titletext = I once asked an NSA guy whether they'd broken RSA. And I know I can trust him, because I asked if he was lying to me and he said no.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Adrian Lamo}} is a hacker known for being a threat analyst and has penetrated many corporate networks. As far as we know, he has not penetrated any government networks, so helping Elaine physically break into the {{w|NSA}} would probably put him out.

{{w|RSA (algorithm)|RSA}} is an encryption algorithm that allows decryption using {{w|Public-key cryptography|public keys}}

{{w|Lawrence Lessig}} is a political activist, and a founding board member of {{w|Creative Commons}}.

{{w|Steve Jobs}} was the two-time {{w|CEO}} of {{w|Apple Inc.}} In partnership with {{w|Steve Wozniak}} he founded Apple. He oversaw Apple's return from near bankruptcy, the introduction of the original Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. But in the 90s, most of this had not happened yet.

The final panel is a pun on the Riot grrrls - from Wikipedia {{w|Riot grrrl}} is an underground feminist punk rock movement. This metamophises in the hands of Randal into Riot Prrl - who presumably prefer to code in {{w|Perl}}. The [http://c3northampton.org/?p=359 real Riot Prrl] are from {{w|Northampton}} and are into guerilla {{w|knitting}}.

All comics in "[[:Category:1337|1337]]" series:
* [[341: 1337: Part 1]]
* [[342: 1337: Part 2]]
* [[343: 1337: Part 3]]
* [[344: 1337: Part 4]]
* [[345: 1337: Part 5]]

This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.

==Transcript==
:[Outside, Adrian Lamo is helping Elaine Roberts over a barbed wire fence.]
:Narrator: It was the late 90's. Elaine crisscrossed the country with Adrian Lamo, the 'Homeless Hacker', learning to gain entry into systems both virtual and physical.
:Adrian Lamo: So you just throw a rug over the fence and ... say, what ''is'' this place anyway?
:Roberts: Nowhere special.
:Lamo: ...Elaine, is this NSA Headquarters?
:Roberts: ...Look, I just want to see if they've broken RSA.

:[Inside, Lawrence Lessig is sitting at a table, Roberts is standing across the table swinging a knife.]
:Narrator: She learned, from Lawrence Lessig, about the monstrosity that is U.S. Copyright Law.
:Roberts: So, how do we fix the system? Stab bad guys?
:Lessig: I'm starting something called "Creative Commons"
:<<Shink>>
:Elaine Roberts: I think we should stab bad guys...

:[Steve Jobs is lying up in his bed, Roberts is balancing while crouched on the foot of Jobs' bed.]
:Narrator: She met with Steve Jobs to discuss the future of Apple.
:Roberts: Compression and bandwidth are changing everything.
:Jobs: Who are you? It's 3:00AM!
:Roberts: Apple should make a portable music player.
:Jobs: I'm calling the police.
:Roberts: Hey, idea — integrate it with a cell phone!

:[Scene has two of Elaine's activities. In one she is drumming, in the other she has an electric guitar on her shoulders, one hand on the frets. The other hand is holding a laptop by the touchpad.]
:Narrator: She even, for a time, took up drumming, and helped start a movement among teen girls, a culture of self-taught female programmers and musicians, coding by day and rocking out by night—
:Roberts: Riot Prrl.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Elaine Roberts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Steve Jobs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:1337|03]]
[[Category:CC-BY-SA comics]]

1187: Aspect Ratio

2013-03-18T23:49:39Z

71.197.67.191: /* Explanation */ spellcheck

{{comic
| number = 1187
| date = March 18, 2013
| title = Aspect Ratio
| image = aspect ratio.png
| titletext = I'm always disappointed when 'Anamorphic Widescreen' doesn't refer to a widescreen Animorphs movie.
}}

==Explanation==
Aspect ratio is the relationship between the width and height of the image (and in this case, a video) and is denoted in a radio of <width>:<height> - usually either in lowest common denominator, or with a decimal width to a height of "1". Up until the 2000s, all televisions and most computer monitors (CRT tube and LCD) were in the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, called "fullscreen" (meaning the width is 4/3 or 1.33... times the height). When HDTV was developed, the standard for television screens changed to 16:9 (width being 16/9 or 1.77... times the height), called "widescreen" (although widescreen can also refer to a number of even wider ratios used in feature films). Computer monitors are now available in widescreen ratios, though fullscreen remains common as well.

Letterboxing is a process whereby an image which does not fully fill a screen is expanded to fill the screen by the addition of further material (mattews). Usually this is done with the addition of black bars in the empty space. One example of why this was necessary was widescreen films on VHS cassette. VHS could only record and play back 4:3 images. Thus, in order to display a widescreen film, the rest of the VHS's 4:3 image had to be filled with horizontal black bars at the top and bottom of the image. Those bars were part of the video information recorded on the cassette.

When DVDs were introduced, many DVDs also had letterbox bars on the DVD's full screen image. With the increased popularity of widescreen televisions, DVD players were improved to offer {{w|anamorphic widescreen}}, in which the full widescreen image is horizontally rescaled (shrunk) into a 4:3 size, which the player then was able to display stretched horizontally back to the proper widescreen aspect.

With the advent of Blu-Ray, video is generally encoded in whatever its proper aspect ratio is intended to be, and the player itself is left to appropriate matte the image.

The problem with letterboxed video (such as a 16:9 video letterboxed for 4:3) is that if one tries to watch the video on a 16:9 widescreen, where the image ''should'' fill the whole screen, instead the 4:3 letterboxed image fills part of the screen with further vertical mattes on the left and right of the image, thus producing an image with mattes on all four sizes which is much smaller than it needs to be. Some TVs or media players can zoom to help resolve the issue, although the video resolution usually suffers. By encoding only the video itself and allowing the player to do the matting, the video can be seen as large as possible on any given screen.

''{{w|Animorphs}}'' is a late-90's to early-00's young adult book series about shape-shifting teens who turn into animals to fight body-snatching aliens. Sony held the rights to create a film, but never made use of them, beyond creating URLs for a proposed movie on December 11th, 2012.

In this comic, Randall appears to be complaining about the issue of widescreen videos which have been rescaled to 4:3 by adding mattes to the top and bottom and uploaded on sites like YouTube. He is probably annoyed by the fact that on his widescreen monitor, TV or mobile device, the video (as noted above) does not fill the screen because of the letterboxing. In some cases, uploaders also take video and rescale it to the point where the image is improperly compressed horizontally or vertically, even without letterboxing. This is more akin to the car crushing Randall depicts in the comic.

==Transcript==
:[A car is crushed in a large black clamp.]
:Whenever someone uploads a letterboxed 16:9 video rescaled to 4:3, I do this to their car.

{{comic discussion}}

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

343: 1337: Part 3

1187: Aspect Ratio