637: Scribblenauts

2014-05-10T04:58:55Z

Logo: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number =637
| date =September 16, 2009
| title =Scribblenauts
| image =scribblenauts.png
| titletext =Let me look away and type 'guy who's just jealous that I beat all his MarioKart times' and turn back, and... yup, there you are again!
}}

==Explanation==
''{{w|Scribblenauts}}'' is a game for Nintendo DS in which the player controls a character named Maxwell, whose goal is to get a "Starite" in each level. The player has the ability to summon over 22,000 different objects into the game by typing them on the touchscreen using the DS's stylus device. Those items are then ostensibly used to help Maxwell collect the Starite (for example, typing "ladder" to help him reach a Starite that's inside a tree), but the player can decide to forgo the objective and just type in random things for fun.

The {{w|Large Hadron Collider}} is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, and has excited the imagination of writers and journalists in popular culture, some of whom posit the theory that a catastrophic accident at the LHC could destroy the world. One of those ideas concerned the LHC creating a black hole that would proceed to suck in all the surrounding matter.

Megan discovers that the LHC can be summoned in ''Scribblenauts,'' and has a fun time creating black holes with it. Cueball's snide comment is an unfortunately rather common reaction among adults towards entertainment geared for children, and the fact that ''Scribblenauts'' is a portable game just gives him another stick to beat it with. Irritated, Megan types in the phrase "pretentious asshole", and then pretends that Cueball has suddenly appeared right there in front of her, as though summoned in the game. Note that, in reality, ''Scribblenauts'' doesn't respond to profanity.

In the title text, she types "guy who's just jealous that I beat all his ''{{w|Mario Kart}}'' times" and once again, Cueball "appears" right in front of her. ''Mario Kart'' is another video-game series geared towards children, and there's a version of it for the DS, which implies that Cueball's just being snooty about ''Scribblenauts'' because Megan has so thoroughly dominated him in another "DS kids game".

==Transcript==
:[Megan is sitting on bed.]
:[In Scribblenauts word input format.]
:LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
:''Click''
:Megan: Wow, Scribblenauts even lets you summon the LHC.

:[Cueball is sitting at a computer. Megan talks from off-panel.]
:''Fwoosh''
:Megan: And it makes a black hole! This game rules.
:Cueball: I guess it's okay, for a DS kids game.

:[In Scribblenauts word input format.]
:PRETENTIOUS ASSHOLE
:''Click''
:[Megan looks up.]
:Megan: Oh, hi! It worked!

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Mario Kart]]

Talk:1185: Ineffective Sorts

2014-05-09T10:47:11Z

Logo:

I loved the "runs in O(n log n)" part. [[Special:Contributions/76.106.251.87|76.106.251.87]] 00:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I lost it on //portability. It's a sad state where I've actually more or less come across 3 of these. [[Special:Contributions/203.126.136.142|203.126.136.142]] 00:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Audiovisual aid circa 1981, eh: '''http://youtube.com/watch?v=gv0JUEqaAXo#t=236s''' [[Special:Contributions/98.111.152.198|98.111.152.198]] 01:35, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

One of xkcd's best in a quite a while, imo. [[User:Alpha|Alpha]] ([[User talk:Alpha|talk]]) 03:39, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Saying "bogosorts actually run in O(n*n!) time and may never finish" is a contradiction. Not the runtime is in O(n*n!), but the ''expected'' runtime. [[User:BKA|BKA]] ([[User talk:BKA|talk]]) 08:19, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
:Not necessarily. O(n*n!) is the expected runtime, but unlike other sorts, there is no max runtime which is what it is trying to say.[[Special:Contributions/206.181.86.98|206.181.86.98]] 03:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Didn't the author of the halfhearted merge sort give up on the sort part of the merge sort? 'cause merging is done in the return[a,b] part as far is see it...[[Special:Contributions/193.175.223.10|193.175.223.10]] 18:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
[[Special:Contributions/206.181.86.98|206.181.86.98]] 03:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Well return[a,b] merges them in exactly the original order. So I think you are right. It recursively cuts the list into tiny bits and returns the uncut back to the previous call. [[Special:Contributions/206.181.86.98|206.181.86.98]] 03:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
:The list is sorted when the already sorted sublists are merged. This is an efficient way to sort because only the lowest values in each sublist need to be compared so fewer comparisons are required. The author of the halfhearted merge sort did not write a proper merge (or any merge) and instead returns the sublists in the original order. Sublists of length one are known to be in the correct order which is why the list is recursively cut into units of length one.[[Special:Contributions/24.60.69.41|24.60.69.41]] 22:44, 17 March 2013 (

Did nobody notice that the POSIX/UNIX commands are uppercase, when they are supposed to be case-sensitive lowercase? If you actually call system() with those arguments (in Linux), you don't delete anything and just get the "command not found" error. --[[Special:Contributions/138.67.185.73|138.67.185.73]] 01:41, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
: It's possible they ''are'' meant to be lowercase, as parts of this comic appear to be written in <span style="font-variant:small-caps">Mixed-case Small Caps</span>. Look at the top lines of each program, for example. --[[User:Aaron of Mpls|Aaron of Mpls]] ([[User talk:Aaron of Mpls|talk]]) 06:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Did anyone see this hint on the about page (http://xkcd.com/about/):

"Which sorting algorithms should I use? They taught me so many.

This is tricky. Most of what they teach you in school is just as an example of how to think about algorithms; 99% of the time you shouldn't worry about optimizing your sorts. Just learn to implement Quicksort (which is very good) and use that without fretting about it too much. People overfocus on efficiency over clarity and simplicity. And most of the time the environment you're coding in will have an efficient sort function built-in anyway.

Note: If you're interviewing for a company for a position with a focus on algorithms, the above is not an excuse not to know your stuff."

--[[User:RagnarDa|RagnarDa]] ([[User talk:RagnarDa|talk]]) 20:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

For the PanicSort, is the second "Return list:" intentionally having a : at the end? If yes, what does it do? [[User:Logo|Logo]] ([[User talk:Logo|talk]]) 10:47, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

637: Scribblenauts

Talk:1185: Ineffective Sorts