2949: Network Configuration

2024-06-24T12:11:45Z

Czarkoff: Undo revision 344939 by 172.69.43.245 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2949
| date = June 21, 2024
| title = Network Configuration
| image = network_configuration_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x272px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you repeatedly rerun the development of technological civilization, it turns out that for some reason the only constant is that there is always a networking utility called 'netcat', though it does a different thing in each one.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a NETCAT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Cueball]] takes an uncommon networking bug (needing to establish a fresh connection for each {{w|Network_packet|packet}} sent) to the extreme. Instead of merely redoing the appropriate handshakes for data transfer, he is reconstructing the entire {{w|Human_history|history of human civilization}} each time.

As this originally took multiple millennia, doing it for every network packet would make communication ''extremely'' slow; in modern networking, we send and receive thousands of packets every second.

In the final frame, Cueball looks shaggy and dirty, with a {{w|Hoe_(tool)|grub hoe}} behind him, as though he had been performing these tasks in real life just to get his network working again.He says the network packet was stuck in the {{w|Neolithic}} era, the final period of the Stone Age that marked the transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. Apparently Cueball had to go through the effort of inventing farming, one of the developments of the {{w|Neolithic Revolution}}, to keep communicating with [[Ponytail]]. He has also had to build himself a new wooden chair (and possibly desk), and apparently hasn't yet got to the point of developing a notebook computer, so is using a PC under the desk, connected to a chunky monitor. Presumably his previous equipment and furniture were lost in resetting to the Neolithic, though this seems to have been a localised effect, since Ponytail appears unaffected.

Randall Munroe is familiar with the popular creative nonfiction topic of what it takes to rebuild civilization, the subject of a book he blurbed on its cover, [https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/ How to Invent Everything], by Ryan North, fellow cartoonist.

The title text discusses {{w|netcat}}, a simple utility to make a tcp connection which comes in annoyingly incompatible [https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/netcat-traditional/nc.1.en.html nc.traditional] and [https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/netcat-openbsd/nc.1.en.html nc.openbsd] varieties. This may be a reference to the {{w|The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy|Hitchhiker's Guide}} series which states that 85% of civilizations developed a drink that sounds like "Jynnan Tonnyx" ({{w|Gin and tonic}}) before inventing interstellar flight. The drinks are only related by their name and have nothing else in common.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Ponytail is sitting on an office chair at her computer with a headset on. A zigzag line indicates what is shown on the computer screen]
:Ponytail (typing): Ugh, your connection is so laggy.
:Computer: Yeah, sorry.

:[Cueball is sitting on an office chair at his laptop]
:Cueball (typing): It's because I messed up my network configuration and now I have to rebuild a separate civilization from scratch for each packet.

:[Ponytail at her computer]
:Ponytail (typing): Huh?
:Ponytail (typing): What are you talking about?
:Ponytail (typing): ...Hello?

:[Beat panel]

:[Cueball, with dirt on his head and around him, is at an old computer setup with an agricultural tool resting on his now non-office chair]
:Cueball (typing): Sorry, got stuck in the Neolithic that time.
:Cueball (typing): Inventing farming takes '''''forever'''''.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Cueball Computer Problems]]

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2949: Network Configuration