explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

311: Action Movies

2015-05-16T19:26:18Z

AndyWikier:

{{comic
| number = 311
| date = September 3, 2007
| title = Action Movies
| image = action_movies.png
| titletext = By my count, only 48 of the 158 minutes in Live Free or Die Hard have action. That's pathetic, guys. Crank is better, but needs a bigger budget and more Summer Glau.
}}

==Explanation==

A common complaint about {{w|Action film|action films}} is that they are light on plot and heavy on pointless violence and special effects. {{w|Live Free or Die Hard}} and {{w|Crank (film)}} are both typical action films in this respect.

[[Cueball]] reverses this complaint, stating that proportional to the run-time of the movie, there could be much ''more'' action and much ''less'' plot. [[Megan]] adds that a pre-existing character could further eliminate the need for exposition and provide more time for action. "River Tam Beats Up Everyone" is a hypothetical title for such a film, and also a complete plot summary. {{w|River Tam}} is a character (played by {{w|Summer Glau}}) from the short-lived TV series {{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}}, a character who could plausibly beat up a large number of people in an entertaining way.

The movie poster appears to use the font {{w|Papyrus (typeface)|Papyrus}}, which was also used in the 2009 blockbuster {{w|Avatar (2009_film)|Avatar}} and was heavily criticised for it. This might not mean much, as the comic was made in 2007.

The title text suggests that [[Randall]] did not find too much action in the contemporary "Live Free or Die Hard" compared with the rest of the film.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are talking together as they walk away from a cinema.]
:Cueball: Another summer gone without a mindless big-budget action movie.
:Megan: Huh? Die Hard was nothing BUT action!
:Cueball: No, it was too talky.
:Megan: What? Too talky?
:Cueball: I tallied it minute-by-minute. It's at least 60% people walking and talking. ALL those movies are.
:Cueball: Just once, I want a real action movie. 30 seconds of exposition followed by a perfect 90-minute action scene. One with a huge budget, a good choreographer, and a great director.
:Megan: And they should center it around some character we already know, someone we never get tired of watching.
:Cueball: I think we've got something here...
:[A movie poster is shown.]
: Coming this summer
: River Tam
: Beats up EVERYONE
:[The movie shows a line of houses, there are people beat up and lying in doorways, out of windows, and on the sidewalk. River Tam is doing a flying kick into someone's face.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Summer Glau]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Firefly]]

1514: PermaCal

2015-04-20T12:39:18Z

AndyWikier:

{{comic
| number = 1514
| date = April 19, 2015
| title = PermaCal
| image = permacal.png
| titletext = The flood of PermaCalNTP leap-second notifications was bad enough, but when people started asking for millisecond resolution, the resulting DDOS brought down the internet.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic proposes a new calendar system. This is similar to comic [[1061: EST]]. In this new calendar system, the date stays constant, and only changes with {{w|February 29|leap days}}. PermaCal is a portmanteau of the words "permanent" and "calendar".

In the comic, the date is the same as the day before the comic was released, the 19th of April, 2015.

Leap days in the {{w|Gregorian calendar}} are days added to the end of {{w|February}} every year that is a multiple of 4, but not by 100, unless it's also a multiple of 400. The purpose is to sync the calendar with Earth's orbit without having a partial day each year.

NTP servers are used to keep local computer time from drifting. {{w|Leap second|Leap seconds}} normally account for the differences in the length of our 24 hour day and a solar day (the time taken for Earth to rotate so the same point points towards the sun), and are announced several months before hand, but in the context of this comic probably refer to a system with constant time, and the time is adjusted by an NTP call every second. The title text refers to the bandwidth used by correcting the time every millisecond, resulting in a {{w|DDoS}}, and is probably a reference to other retail consumer products that have {{w|Denial-of-service_attack#Unintentional_denial-of-service|unintentionally}} caused DDoS attacks because of a flaw in implementation. See here an example of a real-life unintentional [http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.operators.swinog/10055 DDOS attack].

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are in the panel. Cueball appears to be holding a phone, tapping.]
:Megan: What day is it?
:Cueball: Sunday the 19<sup>th</sup>.
:Megan: But you said it was the 19<sup>th</sup> yesterday.
:Cueball: It changed ''again''? Crap, better add another leap day.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:My simplified calendar system assumes the date never changes, then corrects any drift via leap days.

==Trivia==
*The "H" in Megan's version of "19TH" is missing the upper part of the left bar, making it look like an mirrored "h". This must be unintended, since the H in "19TH" is written correctly when Cueball says it. Also only capital letters are used in the comics (except in special cases).

{{comic discussion}}


[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball‏]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan‏]]
[[Category:Time management]]
[[Category:Portmanteau]]

1507: Metaball

2015-04-03T14:55:42Z

AndyWikier:

{{comic
| number = 1507
| date = April 3, 2015
| title = Metaball
| image = metaball.png
| titletext = Shoot, it landed in the golf course. Gonna be hard to get it down the--oh, never mind, it rolled onto the ice hazard. Face-off!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete | Explanation is unfinished.}}
The name "Metaball" is the combination of the prefix "{{w|meta|meta-}}" and the word "{{w|ball}}".

The gang is playing a {{w|ball game}} that incorporates the rules of many {{w|List of ball games|games that use a ball}}. Similar to [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/05/27 Calvinball] from the comic strip ''{{w|Calvin and Hobbes}}'', the rules seem to be based on the location of the players and the ball. Ponytail is holding a map which divides the area into zones. Each time the ball enters a new zone, the rules change to the become the rules of the ball game represented in that zone.

[[Cueball]] is out according to the rules of baseball because the ball (initially in the {{w|Association football|soccer}} zone where he made a {{w|Shooting (association football)|shot}}), en route to the {{w|basketball}} hoop, clipped the corner of the baseball zone and [[Ponytail]] invoked the {{w|infield fly rule}}. In baseball the infield fly rule can be invoked by the {{w|umpire}}, Ponytail in this case, to prevent an {{w|infielder}} from intentionally dropping a fair ball when runners are on multiple bases, forcing the runners on base to advance and allowing the infielder's team to quickly perform a double or triple play by throwing the ball to where the runners are trying to get and performing force out on their base. The infield fly rule, once called out by the umpire, forces the batter to be out whether the infielder tries to get the batter out.

The title text presumably happens sometime later in the game. It is implied that the ball enters the {{w|golf}} section of the game, meaning that the players would have to try to hit a ball into a hole. Given that the ball is much larger than a standard golf ball, this would prove difficult. However before this situation occurs the ball rolls into a separate portion of the field, an ice {{w|Hazard (golf)|hazard}} section. This area in the field is where {{w|ice hockey}} is played, switching the rules to hockey rules and causing there to be a {{w|face-off}} (a skirmish between two players of opposing teams to restart the game).

==Transcript==
:[Megan kicks a soccer ball. Cueball leaps to dunk the ball through (or block it from going in) a basketball hoop.]

:[Ponytail (Offscreen):] Out!

:[Cueball (Offscreen):] What do you ''mean'', out?!
:[Ponytail, consulting the rules/a map:] The ball clipped the corner of the baseball zone. Infield fly rule.
:[Cueball (Offscreen):] Aw, ''maaan''...
{{comic discussion}}


[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]

1506: xkcloud

2015-04-01T16:50:22Z

AndyWikier:

{{comic
| number = 1506
| date = April 1, 2015
| title = xkcloud
| image = xkcloud.png
| titletext =
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This is one of those complicated interactive entries, more like reviewing a video game than explaining a normal comic.}}
In this interactive April Fools comic [[Cueball]], presumably representing Randall, admits to the readers he built a flimsy cloud services company using spare computers and parts. After providing his services to various companies (facebook, Twitter, etc.), his setup failed and portions caught fire, causing him to lose data he was required to preserve as part of his service. He requests the readers help him recover, make up and reimagine the lost data by pressing the large red button at the bottom of the comic.

Pressing the button links to one of two interactive survey pages. One asks the reader to indicate which of several line-drawings best matches a given caption, or the reader can create their own drawing in a simple web-based "paint"-style app. The other asks the reader to indicate which of several captions best matches a given drawing, or the reader can create their own caption. The content of the "surveys" appear to come from reader submissions, and are different upon every click.

Below the "survey", the reader is presented with a listing similar to a Facebook news feed, listing several "posts" of the line-drawings apparently tagged with the captions as paired up by the survey results. The posts are made by apparently fictional randomly-named readers. These posts are accompanied by a button similar to Facebook's "Like" button which is labelled either Covet, Crave, Hanker, Thirst or Yearn. All of these are synonyms of "want". After completing the survey, the page refreshes with new "posts".

It is not immediately clear if the reader-created drawings or captions are, in fact, being cycled into the surveys and feeds, or if the displayed items were all created by Randall and the reader-created content is simply discarded.

Included in the cloud hardware are (from left to right) a Macintosh Classic, several old laptops, an Alienware tower, a Nintendo VirtualBoy, something else, and an Atari Pong Console.

==Trivia==
*It's the first comic without a title text.
*Since being originally posted the words "CLICK HERE" have been added in large text to the top of the red button followed by the word "to" being added to the beginning of the existing text.
*From time to time, instead of the interactive page there is a page with three dots only. This might be due to access problems while xkcd fans all over the world try to submit graphics and text.
*[[908: The Cloud]] also related to cloud computing.

==Transcript==
:[This transcript only transcribes what can be seen in the first picture shown at the top of the explanation here. For more see link below]

:[One large frame with a five part comic and a large red button at the bottom.]
:[Cueball sitting behind a desk.]
:Cueball: We've made a huge mistake.
:Desk: XKCD.COM

:[Cueball points at a bunch of computers]
:Cueball: I figured starting a cloud services company would be easy.
:Cueball: After all, I've got ''tons'' of computers!

:[A zoomed view on Cueballs head.]
:Cueball: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr— they all struggle to protect privacy and user data...
:Cueball: And ''we'' offered a solution.
:Cueball: I forget what it was, though.

:[Cueball is standing with his arms up.]
:Cueball: Anyway, long story short, we screwed up ''immediately'' and lost ''tons'' of their data.
:Cueball: Also a bunch of stuff is literally on fire?

:[Cueball standing behind a desk.]
:Cueball: We can fix this.
:Cueball: But we need your help.
:Desk: XKCD.COM

:[Below the above is a large red rectangular clickable button, that will take the reader on to the interactive part of the comic. On the button it says in large white letters:]
:'''CLICK HERE'''
:To help us recover user data
:before Facebook & Co notice we lost it.

:[The standard text for the next possible pages can be seen on the link to the '''[[1506: xkcloud/Transcript|continued transcript]]'''. Also here will be a list (which may not be possible to make complete) with possible text for the lost data.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:April fool's comics]]
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]
[[Category:Interactive comics]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computers]]