2013-10-16T04:40:34Z

BruceJohnJennerLawso:

Actually, in the UK "gneiss" is pronounced exactly "nice", so it fits even better there.
:If Wikipedia's phonetic guide is any authority, it's also said that way in the US (hover-text: 'n' as in 'nigh', long 'i' in 'bide', 's' as in 'sigh')... it doesn't make any distinctions between regions. -- [[User:IronyChef|IronyChef]] ([[User talk:IronyChef|talk]]) 04:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
::Indeed. American geologists also pronounce it "nice" [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]] ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 18:06, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
:::According to my geologist father, 'gneiss' is pronounced as "nice" and 'butte' as "beaut." He also says that buttes are almost never gneiss: gneiss is a metamorphic rock, and buttes are almost always formed from sedimentary rocks. (Gneiss can form bornhardts, which are also bumps of rock, but form by a different process and don't look very similar.)[[User:Sapphie| Variables won't, constants aren't. (Osborn's Law)]] ([[User talk:Sapphie|talk]]) 00:58, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
Rather impressive to see an erotic geology joke that doesn't even need to bring up cleavage, lol. One of my favourites.
:Oops, my mistake, they did mention cleavage, but still not bad anyways.

Talk:1082: Geology

2013-10-16T04:20:08Z

BruceJohnJennerLawso:

239: Blagofaire

2013-10-10T21:44:10Z

BruceJohnJennerLawso: The previous explanation seemed to imply that xkcd readers were spontaneously generated by the comic... Minor grammar fix basically.

{{comic
| number = 239
| date = March 23, 2007
| title = Blagofaire
| image = blagofaire.png
| titletext = Things were better before the Structuring and the Levels.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Where is the Blagofaire...}}
Facts become distorted as time moves forward. What do we know about the Elizabethan times? They spoke strange English. What will 400 years from now think of the first twenty years of the Internet? Crazy people said crazy things online. Will we even say "online" 400 years from now? Won't the internet be everywhere, and everyone on it all the time in their retinal implants that being "offline" will seem absurd?

While {{w|Cory Doctorow}} is not in this comic, the character is {{w|cosplay}}ing him. This comic inspired several xkcd readers to give Cory Doctorow a red cape and goggles when he won the 2007 EFF Pioneer Award.

==Transcript==
:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: Hey, it worked!
:Cueball: What? Who are you?
:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: I'm from the distant future.
:Cueball: Wow. Hi!

:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: Are you a blogger? I play one of you at our festivals!
:Cueball: Huh?
:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: Like the ren faires of your time — I do reenactments.

:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: We relive the days when the internet was new and free. The days of risky sharing, slashdot, the myspace music renaissance. The generation's finest minds meeting on comment threads, battling roving bands of trolls, and holding the great dialogues of the age!
:Cueball: Is that how you—
:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: We're fuzzy on some details. Did bloggers really wear red capes and goggles and blog from high-altitude balloons?
:Cueball: No!
:Cueball: Well, Cory Doctorow does. But nobody else.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

378: Real Programmers

2013-10-10T20:49:48Z

BruceJohnJennerLawso: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 378
| date = February 1, 2008
| title = Real Programmers
| image = real_programmers.png
| titletext = Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic satirises the mythical {{w|Real Programmer}}. To quote Wikipedia, "the term Real Programmer is computer programmers' folklore to describe the archetypical "hardcore" programmer who eschews the modern languages and tools of the day in favour of more direct and efficient solutions". {{w|Gnu nano}} is a text editor - a program often used to edit the source code of other programs. {{w|Emacs}}, {{w|Vim (text editor)|Vim}} and {{w|ed (text editor)|ed}} are all progressively more "hard core" editors. {{w|cat (Unix)|cat}} is a Unix program that concatenates and lists files. Things get steadily more ridiculous from here. Using a magnetised needle to flip bits on a hard drive requires nanometer precision and binary mastery, but in the early days of programming people did use needles sometimes to fix bugs on {{w|Punched card|Punched cards}}. The use of a magnetized needle may also be a reference to the Apollo AGC guidance computer, whose instructions were physically written as patterns of wires looped around or through cylindrical magnets in order to record binary code.

The final character suggests the utterly surreal idea of using butterflies, he is just using the {{w|Butterfly effect in popular culture|Butterfly effect}}, a "phenomenon whereby a minor change in circumstances can cause a large change in outcome". Emacs is known for having a large number of add-ons to perform all sorts of functions beyond simple text editing. These commands are usually referred to by the key sequence required to activate them, such as "C-x M-c"(Control-x Meta/Esc/Alt-c, though this exact key sequence is a bit different from most Emacs commands and could be a joke or typo). The macro referenced is a pun on the play/movie titled "{{w|M. Butterfly}}". Later versions of Emacs actually added a "M-x butterfly" command as an Easter-egg [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQtxhuX6ano youtube demo], [http://www.screenr.com/a2s screenr demo].

To cap this the title text suggests manipulating the universal constants to get the required data onto the disk.

==Transcript==
:[A man sits at a computer, programming. Another man behind him looks over his shoulder.]
:Man: nano? REAL programmers use Emacs.

:[A dark haired woman appears behind him.]
:Woman: Hey. REAL programmers use Vim.

:[Another man appears behind her.]
:Man: Well, REAL programmers use ed.

:[Another man appears behind him.]
:Man: No, REAL programmers use cat.

:[A woman with a bun appears behind him.]
:Woman: REAL programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

:[A man enters, facing them all.]
:Man: Excuse me, but REAL programmers use butterflies.

:[Holding out a butterfly in front of the computer.]
:Man: They open their hands and let the delicate wings flap once.

:Man: The disturbances ripple outward, changing the flow of the Eddy currents in the upper atmosphere.
:[Diagrams of flowing currents.]
:Man: These cause momentary pockets of higher-pressure air to form,

:Man: Which act as lenses that deflect incoming cosmic rays, focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit.

:Emacs User: Nice. 'Course, there's an Emacs command to do that.
:Cat User: Oh yeah! Good ol' C-x M-c M-butterfly...
:[Butterfly man slaps forehead.]
:Butterfly man: Dammit, Emacs.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Programming]]