explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1814: Color Pattern

2017-03-23T18:08:39Z

Todor:

This link, note 1, may help whomever is going to be editing the comic explanation, I don't have time this morning. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern] [[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 13:40, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Did a quick google and copy/pasted from the Wikipedia page on Moiré patterns. [[User:Xseo|Xseo]] ([[User talk:Xseo|talk]]) 13:51, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
:This is a copyright infringement. The contents of Wikipedia are not in the {{w|public domain}}. When using text from Wikipedia anywhere, you must indicate the license (CC-BY-SA 3.0).--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.150.82|162.158.150.82]] 13:58, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
::This is fine. Wikipedia text is licensed for re-use by anybody, provided the original is referenced; Xseo referenced the source material in his comment above, and an explicit link is given in the article; furthermore, this entire website is CC-BY-SA 3.0, as indicated in the footer on every page. [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 15:16, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I can't be the only one for whom the note emoji are not showing up.
:I don't see them either. I'm running Chrome 48 Portable. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.225|162.158.62.225]] 14:18, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
::Running Chrome 57, Chromium 53, and Firefox 52; the note emoji doesn't work on any of these (Linux Mint 17.3 64-bit). I wonder why? [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 15:19, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
::: Works for me, Firefox 52. Bring up the menu bar (Alt or F10), "View > Text Encoding > Unicode". If you still don't see the notes, it may be an issue with the font settings. You could try to fiddle with "Tools > Options > Content > Default Font". Instead of using the menu, you can bring up "Options" by entering "about:preferences" in the address bar. If that doesn't work, you need professional help. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.106|162.158.114.106]] 06:23, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
::Chrome 56 for Android, they display for me. [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 10:24, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK moiree patterns would not show up on an image that have been *properly* sampled, such moiree patterns are IIRC a byproduct of poorly sampled digital images. See WP for "aliasing" and "digital sampling" for reference. My two cents... [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:31, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
:Good Lord. 24 hours! If any of you guys are actual engineers you should be ashamed of yourselves! I am not an engineer, but I do know a a tiny bit about signal theory, hence the tip. But then again this just shows how cheap shit chinese gizmos proliferate. Quality just cost too much, haha! Just need the looks, not the brainz! Only the zombies loves them BRAINZZZZZ! hurr hurr. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 19:17, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
::What are you trying to say with 24 hours. At this moment the comic has been up for 6 hours... If you think the explanation could be improved this is luckily a wiki, so you could just improve instead of rant ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 19:55, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
::Did I say that too early? Well it certainly is 24+ hours now and you guys still don't know where the dart target is. :D The comic suggests some matches of geometry in the digital age are highly prone to distortions. That's interesting in it's own, but feel free to ignore it. As I hinted the real issue here relates to digital sampling and aliasing problems related to this. There are more than one way to fix artifacts in images, but one method involves oversampling at about twice the nyquist frequency and running the signal through a band-pass filter. That's fairly common, but I think that will only solve aliasing related to sampling not moiree patterns occurring naturally due to geometry. I suspect a digital photo of a digital screen might be one such case, of "naturally" occurring distortion patterns. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 18:08, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

The Dean Martin version, which likely is the only version anyone younger than I has heard goes like this- When the moon hits your eye -
like a bigga pizza pie -
That's amore - -
When the world seems to shine -
like you've had too much wine -
That's amore [[User:ExternalMonolog|ExternalMonolog]] ([[User talk:ExternalMonolog|talk]]) 04:25, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
: At first I thought Russell was alluding to [[wikipedia:Tom Lehrer|Tom Lehrer's]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7VQFfusQJk "That's Mathematics"]. :D [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.106|162.158.114.106]] 06:23, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

"Amore" is pronounces as /aˈmɔːrɛ/ in Italian. The initial vowel is a clean open "a" and there's no final "ei" but rather a clean open "e". Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_Italian (Not counting I am Italian myself!)

Sorry, I can't help myself, but... If it's swimming in the sea and it's long and slippery, that's a moray [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.150|141.101.107.150]] 07:54, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
: "When you try write a song, but the rhythm is wrong, that's a pity... (but still witty)" ^_^ [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.180|141.101.107.180]] 10:28, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
: When it's sometimes quite slow but on average it goes, that's amor...tized
: If your alphabet soup is tied up like a sloop, that's a mored A
: (This nonsense definitely not by [[User:Quantum7|Quantum7]] ([[User talk:Quantum7|talk]]) 10:23, 23 March 2017 (UTC))
: If a diet's your wish, but you can't avoid the dish, that's a moreish [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.150|141.101.107.150]] 12:10, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Does anybody else think that the title text may just as well refer to "amore" as to "a moire"? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.209|162.158.91.209]] 15:40, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Talk:1814: Color Pattern

2017-03-22T19:17:35Z

Todor:

Talk:1814: Color Pattern

2017-03-22T14:31:59Z

Todor: aliasing and sampling

1754: Tornado Safety Tips

2016-11-02T15:13:01Z

Todor: Flash floods

{{comic
| number = 1754
| date = November 2, 2016
| title = Tornado Safety Tips
| image = tornado_safety_tips.png
| titletext = It's a myth that you can never cross mountains safely, but be sure you understand how the climatic situation there will affect your parent thunderstorm.
}}
==Explanation==
There is a Public Safety Advisory (PSA) poster with safety tips with regards to {{w|tornadoes}}. At first glance, you would think it contains information about how to stay safe in tornadoes, but since [[Black Hat]] has made the poster you should take a better look.

It turns out that is is actually written for tornadoes themselves on how to stay safe, i.e. continue to exist.
The joke is that just as, for example, a "climber safety" poster is directed at climbers, the "tornado safety" poster is directed at tornadoes.

It is thus in no way helpful for people who actually live in an area that experience tornadoes. It is not possible to follow most of the guidelines, as they are intended for tornadoes. But the advice a human could follow would only take you towards places which can sustain tornadoes.

The title text simply adds more tornado advice.

===Table of tips===
{{incomplete|Fill out explanations}}
{|class="wikitable"
! Tornado Safety Tips
! Explanation
|-
|Avoid low-lying cool air ||
|-
|Keep your downdrafts and updrafts from mixing ||
|-
|Seek out warm and humid surface air layers ||
|-
|Don't let rain-cooled air choke off your circulation ||
|-
|Avoid letting your supercell merge with a squall line ||
|-
|'''Title text''': It's a myth that you can never cross mountains safely, but be sure you understand how the climatic situation there will affect your parent thunderstorm. || Tornadoes have difficulty crossing mountains, but the title text assures this is a problem to the storm, not the tornado. (For humans it may actually be true that you can never be sure to be safe crossing a mountain, some parts of the world are prone to the phenomenon {{w|Flash flood|flash floods}} which occurs with heavy rain and ground that has low absorption, these can be dangerous)
|}

==Transcript==
:[Beneath a large caption there are two pictures above each other to the left and a bullet list with five points to the right of the pictures. The top picture shows a black tornado beneath a white cloud. It is wreaking something on the ground. To the right of the debris is a house and to the left some trees. The picture below shows Black Hat from the waist and up.]
:<big>'''Tornado Safety Tips'''</big>
:* Avoid low-lying cool air
:* Keep your downdrafts and updrafts from mixing
:* Seek out warm and humid surface air layers
:* Don't let rain-cooled air choke off your circulation
:* Avoid letting your supercell merge with a squall line

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Tornadoes]]

Talk:1706: Genetic Testing

2016-07-14T00:42:06Z

Todor:

Regarding the title text, elbow dysplasia is something that genetic testing might find a susceptibility to in dogs, but parvo (canine parvovirus) is a viral infection and heartworms and mange are both parasites. I'm only beginning my veterinary studies so it's possible I'm speaking in ignorance but I've never heard of any genetic factors that make one dog more or less susceptible to any of the latter three than another dog. Generally speaking, all dog owners are advised to get their dogs vaccinated against parvo and kept on a heartworm preventive treatment such as ivermectin (Heartgard and other brands). Ie., these are blanket prevention strategies recommended for all dogs and no attempt is typically made to ascertain susceptibility level before recommending these treatments.

Of course, Randall is writing a comic intended for mass consumption and it's possible he wanted to include some canine ailments that would be more commonly recognized rather than just strictly listing congenital ailments of dogs like entropion or brachycephalic syndrome, which might have caused confusion and ruined the joke. --(I don't have an account yet) {{unsigned ip|108.162.210.178}}

Now I really wonder if anyone has actually done this before. It would be fun to see the actual results of this. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.104|141.101.104.104]] 08:00, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Just because a disease is infectious doesn't mean there can't be breed dispositions. For example, parvo in GSDs. I tend to see lots of demodectic mange in bull breeds too. This can be due to factors, such as genetic immune deficiency or particular types of skin/hair which can be inherited

Interestingly 5% seems to be the common shared DNA between humans and dogs: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1207_051207_dog_genome.html
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.87.35|162.158.87.35]] 11:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

:I was the editor that made the original explanation. I never intended my word to be the final say; if anything, I was expecting the opposite, since I'm not educated at all in those fields. Regarding the link in parvo, I found this study, which starts that Spaniels are the most susceptible to parvo-enteritis. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3003015 [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.74|173.245.52.74]] 14:57, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

:That effectively puts Pierre Paul Broca in the wrong, from a genetic POV. More specifically his theory that the main difference between humans and primates stem from their understanding of language, something that also relates to Wernickes and Brocas areas of the brain. Obviously animals have language albeit simpler. As for testing the difference between human and animal... with blood tests this is simple, because human blood contains some unique factors. But when it comes to DNA there may be no obvious telltale signs, which would mean only a computer would be able to spot the difference. If that's true it would explain why the lab doesn't run such a test. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 00:42, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

When I came here, I was rather hoping to see a comment on how legitimate these ancestry services really are. Anyone? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.133|108.162.241.133]] 21:10, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1696: AI Research

2016-06-20T18:00:12Z

Todor: chatbots R not AI

I'm Australian an I don't know about the "updog" Thing, just sayin' [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.139|162.158.2.139]] 05:15, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

:"What's up, Doc?" made me think of Bugs Bunny cartoons. [[User:Ehusmark|EHusmark]] ([[User talk:Ehusmark|talk]]) 07:19, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

:I'm British and I haven't heard of "updog" either. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.18|141.101.98.18]] 08:29, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

:Never heard of that in the two years that I lived in England and South Wales. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.93.49|141.101.93.49]] 09:06, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

:Saw "updoc" (same joke) on an episode of Scrubs once. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.137|141.101.98.137]] 11:34, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Ok. Added a note about how developed AI tech. is nowadays. That one needs a citation. Also I believe a paragraph about the difference between AI and how computers generally work is called for. AI is built on neural networks to mimic the way human brains work. Computers have a more simplistic design, although it works wonders for number crunching and following programs. This contrasted with AI, which can figure out things on its own (learn) and not having to be told everything. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 17:17, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

:Those stupid chatbots that have existed for decades now are *not real* AI. But you could train those to respond in certain ways. It is quite possible this comic makes fun of this. It is also perceivable that an actual AI without sufficient higher-order reasoning would also easily be fooled, although by trial-and-error learning (that is characteristic for AI) it ought to *eventually* figure out that you are bullshitting it, and adjust its behaviour accordingly. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 18:00, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1696: AI Research

2016-06-20T17:17:36Z

Todor:

1696: AI Research

2016-06-20T17:08:39Z

Todor: Mention the degree to which AI is developed. But it needs improvement and citations.

{{comic
| number = 1696
| date = June 20, 2016
| title = AI Research
| image = ai_research.png
| titletext = Lambda calculus? More like SHAMbda calculus, amirite?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Extremely basic summary. Fact-checking and serious cleanup needed.}}
Developing {{w|Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence}} (AI) has been a challenge for a long time. Even to develop one with the intelligence of a six-year-old child would be a great milestone, and presumably a stepping stone on the path to making one with the intelligence of an adult human. As I understand it AI technology at the time of writing can at best produce something with the intelligence akin to a mouse, maybe less. In other words beings without much developed higher-order reasoning like that of humans or even some primates [citation needed].

In this comic, Randall jokingly suggests that in order to accomplish this goal, one can give him an AI that's already as smart as an adult, and let him teach it childish and stupid things. He is shown teaching it dumb jokes, much like the ones a sassy six-year-old would make. The humour in that he is essentially taking the AI, which is already at full human intelligence, and making it dumber, just by talking to it. This is not unlike the old joke, "The easiest way to make a small fortune on Wall Street [or similar] is to start with a large one."

The specific situation may also be a reference to {{w|Tay (bot)|Tay}}, a Microsoft chatbot that was taught to {{w|internet troll|troll}} within hours of its exposure to the public.

("Updog" refers to a [joke? prank? minor prank?] often done to or by small children and occasionally teenagers, in which the perpetrator tells the victim "Hey, you've got some 'updog' on your shirt/pants." The victim, unrealizing, is supposed to reply with "What's 'updog'?", which is taken as the casual greeting "What's up, dog?". Usually, the perpetrator then replies "Not much, you?", and the victim then realizes the joke and feels stupid.)
[Updog maybe just in America? Not other English-speaking countries? Please confirm. U.K. Confirmed as not common but has Variants.]

==Transcript==
:[Cueball (Or Randall) is standing in front of a computer with AI, he is attempting to teach the computer to say things.]
:Cueball: Then you say "More like FARTificial intelligence!"
:Computer: Understood.
:Cueball: Great! Now let me teach you about "updog".

:[Caption below the panel:]
:AI Tip: To develop a computer with the intelligence of a six-year-old child, start with one as smart as an adult and let me teach it stuff.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]

1692: Man Page

2016-06-12T07:14:42Z

Todor: /* Table of flags */

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows a {{w|Unix}} manual page, i.e. a ''{{w|man page}}'' (hence the title), for a fictional program called "[http://da.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blerp blerp]". Unix man pages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not extended explanations with tutorials as may be found in many hardcopy product manuals. Unfortunately, some Unix commands tend to be very bloated and include lots of optional behavior that is often irrelevant to the original intent of the command and can be done much more easily using shell features like piping and redirection, and thus the manpage grows to explain all of the features. This example exaggerates the obscurity and terseness found in many man pages, making fun of the typical style of the genre.

It follows the prescribed format for a man page, with the following sections:
* Command Name: self-explanatory
* Synopsis: a synopsis of the valid command line formats
* Description: a summary of the purpose and operation of the command
* Options: detailed description of all the available command line arguments
* See Also: references to other man pages with relevance
* Bug Reports: contact details for the support group (if any)
* Copyright: details of the ownership and rights status of the man page (not the program)

However most the contents of these sections are not very meaningful, or even obey the correct syntax.

The Synopsis section is supposed to be in a {{w|Regular Expression|regex}}-like language called {{w|Wirth Syntax Notation}}, with structures like

* {<list of valid alternatives>}, e.g. blerp {A,B,C}
* [<optional element>], e.g. blerp [-o [<output file>]]
* <something> ... meaning repeat <something> as many times as you need

But the two Synopsis lines given do not have valid Wirth syntax; they randomly mix objects and syntactic characters, and the brackets and braces are not properly nested or paired.

The Description section provides a somewhat unhelpful summary that could apply to almost any Unix command. Processing input files (or output of other commands in a pipeline) is a generic function for Unix shell tools, as is specifying their behaviour with command line arguments, environment variables and flags.

The options are in alphabetical order (putting lower case before upper case and with an em-dash inserted between b and c the only exception to this order).

{{w|Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options}}, also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

For a walkthrough of all possible flags see the '''[[#Table of flags|table of flags]]''' below.

Below the flags there is a ''see also'' list with other stupid program names. Apart from two more blerbs there is also blirb, [http://da.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blarb blarb] and [http://da.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blorp blorp], with chapter references. The last blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a man page, it is however a slightly covert reference to {{w|501(c)_organization#501.28c.29.283.29|501(c)(3)}} which is an organization that is {{w|Tax exemption|tax-exempt}}.

Then follows a bug report site. www.inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and the exact address given, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. {{w|Hemiptera}} is the order classifying ''true bugs'', making it a good place to report any biological bugs discovered while running a program (such as certain insects that got into certain early computers, causing the computers to malfunction and giving the name "bug" to computer malfunctions).

Finally there is a "{{w|copyright}}" line which references several variously open-source content licenses which is also a recurring theme on xkcd (see [[225: Open Source]]). For instance, GPL references {{w|GNU General Public License}} and the (2) and (3+) refers to {{w|GNU_General_Public_License#Version_2|GPL 2}} and {{w|GNU_General_Public_License#Version_3|GPL 3 or higher}}. ''CC'' refers to {{w|creative commons}} where ''BY'' is the {{w|Creative_Commons_license#Types_of_licenses|type of license}}, ''5.0'' refers to the attribution and ''RV 41.0'' refers to revision 41.0. However there were no higher attribution than [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode 4.0] at the time of this comic's release. xkcd is released under [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ CC BY-NC 2.5] as can be seen at the bottom of the {{xkcd}}  homepage. A few comics have been released under the [[:Category:CC-BY-SA comics|CC-BY-SA license]] or [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 3.0]. BSD refers to {{w|BSD licenses}} a [[:Category:BSD|recurring theme]] in xkcd. "Like Gecko" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed{{Citation needed}} to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were {{w|Gecko (software)|Gecko}} while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a {{w|user agent}} string.

"Or best offer" is a reference to a private sale, such as of a car parked outside a home, with a hand-made notice proclaiming the intent to sell to any passer-by who may be interested, usually with relevent details including a suggested price "or best offer", to indicate a willingness to be flexible for a quicker sale. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for ''blerp'' will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program. The owner could possibly revoke the other licenses though.

In the title text there is a list with even more info, again with crazy names like [http://blarbl.blogspot.dk/ blarbl] and [http://da.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=birb birb]. Again there are page references, but for the last the person writing this stops writing the reference and begins to laugh at whom ever still reads this man page and telling them that he is kidding and suggest that they ''just Google it like a normal person''. The writer of this text thus also stops finishing the brackets as the ending ")" for the last chapter is missing.

Man pages were part of the subject of [[293: RTFM]], [[912: Manual Override]] and [[1343: Manuals]] and were mentioned in [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]] and [[456: Cautionary]].

===Table of flags===
*There are 28 flags.
**Only these five letters are not used: l, m, w, x, z.
**j and k are used together as jk.
**The following seven capital letters are used: D, I, O, R, S, U, V.
***That makes it one capital letter for every lower case letter that is not used by itself.
**Finally the em dash "—" is used as the only non-letter character. Also the only that breaks the strict alphabetical sorting of the list, with lower case before upper case letters.
{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program. Possibly this is designed to break something?
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option. This is a word play, meaning either to suppress {{w|Bee|Bees}} (the insects) or the letter '''B'''. A possible implication is that running the program without this flag would somehow result in the user being attacked by bees. This is also a possible {{w|Discworld}} reference, as the ''{{W|Hex_(Discworld)#Structure_and_technology|long-term storage}}'' of the only recurring computer in the series, ''{{w|Hex (Discworld)|Hex}}'', is composed of a beehive. (Note that the actual computer runs on ants.) Another explanation is that there will be smoke, which is used by beekeepers to suppress bees.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use {{w|Hyphen|hyphens}} (short horizontal lines largely used within words). {{w|Dash#Em_dash|Em dashes}} (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't always be easily typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from hyphens to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.

This may be a play on how a lot of commands accept both single-dash options, like -h for help, as well as double-dash options like --help also for help. In word processors, a double-dash (--) is often replaced with the longer em dash (—), making them kind of synonymous.

Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||{{w|DEBUG.EXE}} is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the {{w|GNU Debugger}} (GDB). A debugger is usually called by calling the debugger with the program (or script) to be debugged as parameter.
{{w|Pipeline (Unix)|Piping}} in Unix means that the output of one program serves as input for another program.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options usually get removed. (However, given the nature of this comic, it's likely that -D has always stood for "deprecated".)
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague. Also a possible pun on a kill-switch.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous, given some of the other options. See under -O.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but it is possible it is telling the user to use Google to find out what this tag does. Or, the program might actually use a google functionality (e.g. a code library online) or even simply the search mask to achieve the filtering it is supposed to do.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the {{w|Halting problem}} which is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running or continue to run forever. {{w|Alan Turing}} proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist. Halting problem also featured in the comic [[1266: Halting Problem]].

Note that most commands reserve -h for help, so using it for a different function is non-standard. Such is common for many Unix and Linux commands.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with the next flag "-I". Note that using this may make it ignore the difference for flags like -i and -I...
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||See above. Also possible that all text is converted to upper case, or that upper-case requirements only are ignored
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym for [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jk Just Kidding], not a program flag. Also note that standard behavior of Unix command line options is that a single "-" can be followed by multiple one-letter options, making -jk equivalent to -j -k.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.(Possible debug/unstable feature flag)
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output.May work strangely with -d.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, possibly means that all other flags (or maybe even including this one!) have the opposite effects - if so, a lot of strange things would happen. (Especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O...). This may be a reference to the SpongeBob SquarePants episode [http://spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Opposite_Day "Opposite Day"].
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a {{w|Western_Schism|historical schism}} in the {{w|Catholic Church}}. In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avignon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pope who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as "PISA", a third Pope, should also be an option. It is the second time this week that Popes have been mentioned, last time was two comics before in [[1690: Time-Tracking Software]] regarding the Popes sexual activity.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program. "STDOUT" is short for "standard output".
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every (unsecured) webpage on the internet, or on each page recursively. What it might do in order to make this valid is also ominous.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||A {{w|symbolic link}} is a filesystem feature that allows the creation of "fake" files which when accessed redirect to another file path. Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links and operate on the actual file rather than the fake pointer; this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a, in that it sounds more like an option for some kind of robot.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these]. Many clothing items are marked "do not tumble dry" in the care instructions, but this would be extremely difficult to make relevant to a program. Given the other flags, this may be less nonsensical than it would first appear..
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||{{w|ANSEL}} is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange and largely incompatible with most modern systems. On the other hand, UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q, blerp does something non-standard by default. The problem with using different modes (where the original was also UTF-8) is shown in the title text of [[1683: Digital Data]].
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook, sourcing an update form Facebook, or updating Facebook itself.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q - instead of silencing output, it makes it more specific, usually to help with debugging. Instead, this flag gets replaced with a command that prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead. Version number should only be changed when the program is updated (because it's used for distinguishing which edition of a program you have), so manually changing the version number like this is strange and a little dangerous.
|-
| -y||YIKES||[[wiktionary:yikes|yikes]] is an interjection which can express fear or empathy with unpleasant or undesirable circumstances. It is unclear how this would influence the program.
|}

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
<div style="background-color:black;color:white;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:monospace;padding: 0 2em;max-width:50em;">
;NAME
:blerp
;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}
;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.
;OPTIONS
:-a ATTACK MODE
:-b SUPPRESS BEES
:-— FLAGS USE EM DASHES
:-c COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
:-d PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
:-D DEPRECATED
:-e EXECUTE SOMETHING
:-f FUN MODE
:-g USE GOOGLE
:-h CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
:-i IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
:-I IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
:-jk KIDDING
:-n BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
:-o OVERWRITE
:-O OPPOSITE DAY
:-p SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
:-q QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
:-r RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
:-R RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
:-s FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
:-S STEALTH MODE
:-t TUMBLE DRY
:-u UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
:-U UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
:-v VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
:-V SET VERSION NUMBER
:-y YIKES
;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)
;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>
;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER
</div>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:BSD]]
[[Category:Animals]]

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T09:19:59Z

Todor: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The two synopsis lines has not been explained, including the fact that there seems to be missing ending "]" and "}" in both lines (although taken together as one line they actually have the correct amount of brackets, but that would not make sense - I guess?) Someone seems to think the explanation for the copyright is lacking and has left a [text in square bracket] above that explanation. Please imrpove of delete that text if explanation now OK. Needs fact-checking of the table etc.}}

This comic shows a {{w|Unix}} manual page, i.e. a ''{{w|man page}}'' (hence the title), for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are in alphabetical order (putting lower case before upper case and with an em-dash inserted between b and c the only exception to this order).

Unix man pages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional man page seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many man pages have.

{{w|Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options}}, also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

For a walk through of all possible flags see the [[#Table|table]] below.

Below the flags there are a ''see also'' list with other stupid program names. Appart from two more blerbs there is also blirb, blarb and blorb, with chapter references. The last blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a man page, it is however a slightly covert reference to {{w|501(c)_organization|501(c)(3)}} which is an organization that is tax-exempt.

Then follows a bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, which isn't a currently active webpage. inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. {{w|Hemiptera}} is the order classifying True Bugs, making it the perfect place to report any new bug you have discovered...

[Copyright is a mishmash, "or best offer" is humourous, needs better explanation of individual parts.]

Finnaly there is a "{{w|copyright}}" line which references several variously open-source content licenses; For instance {{w|GNU General Public License}} like {{w|GNU_General_Public_License#Version_2|GPL 2}} and {{w|GNU_General_Public_License#Version_3|GPL 3}}, {{w|creative commons}}, and {{w|BSD licenses}} are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were {{w|Gecko (software)|Gecko}} while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.

In the title text there is a list with even more info, again with crazy names like blarbl and birb. Again there are page references, but for the last the person writing this stops writing the reference and begins to laugh at who ever still reads this man page and telling them that he is kidding and suggest that they ''just Google it like a normal person''. Seems like [[Randall]] do not believe much in man pages anymore... The writer of this text thus also stops finishing the brackets as the ending ")" for the last chapter is missing.

===Table===
{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program. Possibly this is designed to break something?
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option. This is a word play, meaning either to suppress [[wikipedia:Bee|Bee]]s (the insects) or the letter '''B'''. This is also a possible Discworld reference, as the long-term storage of the only recurring computer in the series is composed of bees
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use [[wikipedia:Hyphen|hyphens]] (short horizontal lines largely used within words). [[wikipedia:Dash#Em_dash|Em dashes]] (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from hyphens to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||[[wikipedia:DEBUG.EXE|DEBUG.EXE]] is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the [[wikipedia:GNU debugger|GNU debugger]] (GDB). A debugger is usually called by calling the debugger with the program (or script) to be debugged as parameter.
[[wikipedia:Pipeline (Unix)|Piping]] in Unix means that the output of one program serves as input for another program.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options usually get removed.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague. Also a possible pun on a kill-switch.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous, given some of the other options. See under -O.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but it is possible it is telling the user to use Google to find out what this tag does.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem. [Wikipedia link, short explanation of why needed]
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||See above. Also possible that all text is converted to upper case, or that upper-case requirements only are ignored
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag. Also note that standard behavior of Unix command line options is that a single "-" can be followed by multiple one-letter options, making -jk equivalent to -j -k.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.(Possible debug/unstable feature flag)
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output.May work strangely with -d.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, possibly means that all other flags (or maybe even including this one!) have the opposite effects - if so, a lot of strange things would happen. (Especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O...)
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avignon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as "PISA", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program. "STDOUT" is short for "standard output".
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet, or on each page recursively. What it might do in order to make this valid is also ominous.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a, in that it sounds more like an option for some kind of robot.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these]. Many clothing items are marked "do not tumble dry" in the care instructions, but this would be extremely difficult to make relevant to a program. Given the other flags, this may be less nonsensical than it would first appear..
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[[wikipedia:ANSEL|ANSEL]] is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange and largely incompatible with most modern systems. On the other hand, UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q, blerp does something non-standard by default.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook, sourcing an update form Facebook, or updating Facebook itself.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q - instead of silencing output, it makes it more specific, usually to help with debugging. Instead, this flag gets replaced with a command that prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.
|-
| -y||YIKES||[[wiktionary:yikes|yikes]] is an interjection which can express fear or empathy with unpleasant or undesirable circumstances. It is unclear how this would influence the program.
|}

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T08:41:42Z

Todor: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|As one of those comics, needs an explanation for each part. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program. Possibly this is designed to break something?
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option. This is a word play, meaning either to suppress [[wikipedia:Bee|Bee]]s (the insects) or the letter '''B'''. This is also a possible Discworld reference, as the long-term storage of the only recurring computer in the series is composed of bees
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use [[wikipedia:Hyphen|hyphens]] (short horizontal lines largely used within words). [[wikipedia:Dash#Em_dash|Em dashes]] (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from hyphens to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||[[wikipedia:DEBUG.EXE|DEBUG.EXE]] is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the [[wikipedia:GNU debugger|GNU debugger]] (GDB). A debugger is usually called by calling the debugger with the program (or script) to be debugged as parameter.
[[wikipedia:Pipeline (Unix)|Piping]] in Unix means that the output of one program serves as input for another program.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options usually get removed.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague. Also a possible pun on a kill-switch.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous, given some of the other options. See under -O.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but it is possible it is telling the user to use Google to find out what this tag does.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem. [Wikipedia link, short explanation of why needed]
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||See above. Also possible that all text is converted to upper case, or that upper-case requirements only are ignored
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag. Also note that standard behavior of Unix command line options is that a single "-" can be followed by multiple one-letter options, making -jk equivalent to -j -k.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.(Possible debug/unstable feature flag)
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output.May work strangely with -d.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, possibly means that all other flags (or maybe even including this one!) have the opposite effects - if so, a lot of strange things would happen. (Especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O...)
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avignon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as "PISA", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program. "STDOUT" is short for "standard output".
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet, or on each page recursively. Whaat it might do in order to make this valid is also ominous.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a, in that it sounds more like an option for some kind of robot.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these]. Many clothing items are marked "do not tumble dry" in the care instructions, but this would be extremely difficult to make relevant to a program. Given the other flags, this may be less nonsensical than it would first appear..
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[[wikipedia:ANSEL|ANSEL]] is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange and largely incompatible with most modern systems. On the other hand, UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q, blerp does something non-standard by default.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook, sourcing an update form Facebook, or updating Facebook itself.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q - instead of silencing output, it makes it more specific, usually to help with debugging. Instead, this flag gets replaced with a command that prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.
|-
| -y||YIKES||[[wiktionary:yikes|yikes]] is an interjection which can express fear or empathy with unpleasant or undesirable circumstances. It is unclear how this would influence the program.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage. inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.

blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.

[Copyright is a mishmash, "or best offer" is humourous, needs better explanation of individual parts.]

The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T08:29:13Z

Todor: -s option

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|As one of those comics, needs an explanation for each part. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program. Possibly this is designed to break something?
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option. This is a word play, meaning either to suppress [[wikipedia:Bee|Bee]]s (the insects) or the letter '''B'''. This is also a possible Discworld reference, as the long-term storage of the only recurring computer in the series is composed of bees
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use [[wikipedia:Hyphen|hyphens]] (short horizontal lines largely used within words). [[wikipedia:Dash#Em_dash|Em dashes]] (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from hyphens to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||[[wikipedia:DEBUG.EXE|DEBUG.EXE]] is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the [[wikipedia:GNU debugger|GNU debugger]] (GDB). A debugger is usually called by calling the debugger with the program (or script) to be debugged as parameter.
[[wikipedia:Pipeline (Unix)|Piping]] in Unix means that the output of one program serves as input for another program.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options usually get removed.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous, given some of the other options. See under -O.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but it is possible it is telling the user to use Google to find out what this tag does.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem. [Wikipedia link, short explanation of why needed]
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||See above. Also possible that all text is converted to upper case, or that upper-case requirements only are ignored
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag. Also note that standard behavior of Unix command line options is that a single "-" can be followed by multiple one-letter options, making -jk equivalent to -j -k.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.(Possible debug/unstable feature flag)
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output.May work strangely with -d.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, possibly means that all other flags (or maybe even including this one!) have the opposite effects - if so, a lot of strange things would happen. (Especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O...)
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avignon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as "PISA", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program. "STDOUT" is short for "standard output".
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet, or on each page recursively. Whaat it might do in order to make this valid is also ominous.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a, in that it sounds more like an option for some kind of robot.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these]. Many clothing items are marked "do not tumble dry" in the care instructions, but this would be extremely difficult to make relevant to a program. Given the other flags, this may be less nonsensical than it would first appear..
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[[wikipedia:ANSEL|ANSEL]] is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange and largely incompatible with most modern systems. On the other hand, UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q, blerp does something non-standard by default.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook, sourcing an update form Facebook, or updating Facebook itself.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q - instead of silencing output, it makes it more specific, usually to help with debugging. Instead, this flag gets replaced with a command that prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.
|-
| -y||YIKES||[[wiktionary:yikes|yikes]] is an interjection which can express fear or empathy with unpleasant or undesirable circumstances. It is unclear how this would influence the program.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage. inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.

blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.

[Copyright is a mishmash, "or best offer" is humourous, needs better explanation of individual parts.]

The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

Talk:1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T08:17:44Z

Todor:

I do not entirely understand how wikis work; however, I have attempted to add a transcript. I apologize if anything breaks. I also apologize if this is not how I should be apologizing.

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.135|108.162.241.135]] 04:27, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The Pope flag is referencing the time of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy Avignon Papacy] --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.243|108.162.237.243]] 04:56, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

:Would have frickin' loved Randall if he inserted a reference to Pope of Dope here. :D [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 08:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The horrible thing about this comic is that somebody is sure to have implemented this program by the end of the day... {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.140}}

:Found one on Github: https://github.com/iKevinY/blerp . It has a man page file, but the program itself just outputs "bleep blerp" and doesn't implement any of the flags (yet?). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.141|141.101.104.141]] 08:05, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

"Behavior Not Defined" might be a reference to undefined behavior, where a program is allowed to do anything including make demons fly out your nose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undefined_behavior [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.12|108.162.219.12]] 06:48, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

[[Special:Contributions/162.158.135.36|162.158.135.36]] 06:58, 10 June 2016 (UTC) Søren Mors

I thought Ansel was a deliberate misspelling of ANSI, the most common 8 bit codepage. {{unsigned ip|162.158.135.36}}

The commit "Revision as of 07:08, 10 June 2016" reverted an IMO good explanation for the debug option with a bad one. Consider changing it back. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 07:20, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
:I agree. The bad explanation also mixed up {{w|Pipeline (Unix)|piping}} with {{w|Redirection (computing)|redirection}} --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.76|141.101.104.76]] 07:41, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't think `blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"` is a valid call to blerp, because the syntax line syntax is utterly off. For example, the first line has an unclosed open [, whereas the second line – in addition to having the corresponding unmatched ] – plays with the fact that even though {} is usually used to list a set of required items, {} is also how `find` (which might do something similar to blerp, and is in fact mentioned in -v) denotes its results when passed to an exec. {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.30}}

Command line options do not normally use n-dashes; they use hyphens. Another problem with this option is that n-dashes and m-dashes cannot usually be displayed properly in the fixed-width fonts commonly used for command line terminals. The usual custom is to use two hyphens to represent a dash (which for proportional font display will often be converted to either an n-dash or m-dash).

While "check whether input halts" clearly alludes to the halting problem, it may not actually be impossible, depending on what blerp actually does and what sort of input it accepts. (It says nothing about actually ''reporting'' the result, and it makes no guarantees that it will itself halt.)

—[[User:PhantomLimbic|PhantomLimbic]] ([[User talk:PhantomLimbic|talk]]) 07:30, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

:Indeed. Turing's proof for the halting theorem says that there is no algorithm that can determine whether any possible program/input combination will halt. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that it's impossible to develop an algorithm that determines whether a particular, fixed program will halt on an arbitrary input. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.141|141.101.104.141]] 08:14, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Currently, there is no mention of the unmatched square brackets in the synopsis, or unmatched parenthesis in the title text. Presumably a reference to XKCD comic 859. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.77|141.101.98.77]] 07:51, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T07:20:31Z

Todor:

Talk:1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T07:10:28Z

Todor:

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T06:59:40Z

Todor: -u option

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||DEBUG.EXE is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the GNU debugger (GDB). Also I beleive any debugger would object to having random program output piped to it, this is not how debuggers are meant to be used.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||ANSEL is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default seems rather crazy. UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.
|-
| -y||YIKES||Jikes is a Java bytecode compiler originally developed by IBM. Will try to use anothere compiler and likely fail to find one.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, is a currently active webpage and inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs. [The 47744-Hemiptera link seems to point to the "Stink Bugs Family" in the Recent Observations section]

blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.

Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.

The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned.

"LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T06:56:23Z

Todor: -s option

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||DEBUG.EXE is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the GNU debugger (GDB). Also I beleive any debugger would object to having random program output piped to it, this is not how debuggers are meant to be used.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.
|-
| -y||YIKES||Jikes is a Java bytecode compiler originally developed by IBM. Will try to use anothere compiler and likely fail to find one.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, is a currently active webpage and inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs. [The 47744-Hemiptera link seems to point to the "Stink Bugs Family" in the Recent Observations section]

blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.

Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.

The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned.

"LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T06:50:13Z

Todor: -d option

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||DEBUG.EXE is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the GNU debugger (GDB). Also I beleive any debugger would object to having random program output piped to it, this is not how debuggers are meant to be used.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.
|-
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, is a currently active webpage and inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.

blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.

Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.

The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T06:34:32Z

Todor: -D option

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.
|-
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.

blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.

Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.

The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T06:10:17Z

Todor: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggest posting a status update to Facebook.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.
|-
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.

blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.

Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.

The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T05:42:16Z

Todor: manpages not restricted to GNU software

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||and -I Somewhat weird.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||A reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy Avignon Papacy], where 7 successive Catholic Popes resided in the French city of Avignon rather than Rome.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.
|-
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.

Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

1692: Man Page

2016-06-10T05:40:08Z

Todor: Improve explanation

{{comic
| number = 1692
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}
This comic shows a GNU man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.

Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.

[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]

{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||and -I Somewhat weird.
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||Controlling reality. [Explanation regarding Popes needed? This one confuses me.]
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.
|-
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.
|}

The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.

Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|
;NAME
:blerp

;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}

;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.

;OPTIONS
:{|
! scope="row" | -a
| ATTACK MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -b
| SUPPRESS BEES
|-
! scope="row" | -—
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES
|-
! scope="row" | -c
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -d
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
|-
! scope="row" | -D
| DEPRECATED
|-
! scope="row" | -e
| EXECUTE SOMETHING
|-
! scope="row" | -f
| FUN MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -g
| USE GOOGLE
|-
! scope="row" | -h
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
|-
! scope="row" | -i
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
|-
! scope="row" | -I
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
|-
! scope="row" | -jk
| KIDDING
|-
! scope="row" | -n
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
|-
! scope="row" | -o
| OVERWRITE
|-
! scope="row" | -O
| OPPOSITE DAY
|-
! scope="row" | -p
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
|-
! scope="row" | -q
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
|-
! scope="row" | -r
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
|-
! scope="row" | -R
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
|-
! scope="row" | -s
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
|-
! scope="row" | -S
| STEALTH MODE
|-
! scope="row" | -t
| TUMBLE DRY
|-
! scope="row" | -u
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
|-
! scope="row" | -U
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
|-
! scope="row" | -v
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
|-
! scope="row" | -V
| SET VERSION NUMBER
|-
! scope="row" | -y
| YIKES
|}

;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)

;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>

;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER

|}

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

Talk:368: Bass

2016-06-05T19:11:13Z

Todor:

Okay, I have to ask this, and this as good a place as any. Am I the only one who reads Black Hat (and Danish) with an affected English accent? Anonymous 21:04, 3 December 2013 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.91}}
:Talk to someone in Scotland, and then some Australian, South African and finally compare Texas with LA and NY, or the London suburbs. English is still not easy, especially for non native speakers. But Black Hat and Danish are quite sure talking at some American English slangs. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 23:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, is this destructive resonance thing actually possible for car speakers? (note: don't worry, I'm not going to try this myself, just wondering)... secondly, I hadn't thought about accents before. I'm English but all the characters have my own internal voice... maybe I should put some effort in and give them all different accents (wouldn't know which accents but the aforementioned affected-english for Black Hat doesn't work in my head, as good as that suggestion was). [[User:Squirreltape|Squirreltape]] ([[User talk:Squirreltape|talk]]) 14:38, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

:This is more of a theoretical scenario I guess. Fatal resonances usually builds up on a naturally repeating signal. Most music isn't that repetitive, but maybe the bass line is, which carries some momentum. If the loudspeaker elements are pushed close to their max, adding to their energy might be enough, but this energy doesn't get time to build up so it can't really be called resonance IMO. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 19:11, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I should clarify: I am American and, in my part at least, British accents are considered "snooty" and "superior", a trope Black Hat would gladly take advantage of, as would Danish, for they do consider themselves vastly superior the "commoners" and "plebs" around them (why else would they be so casually sadistic?) YMMV on the stereotypes, but that is the one I am familiar with and the one I assume they use. That said I, personally, do not think the British themselves are "snooty", but am guilty of affecting such an accent when feeling snootily sarcastic. Anonymous 08:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I didnt have an accent in my head for these stick figures, but now i have them talking like the people from "i love lucy," with black sounding like fred mertz.{{unsigned ip|173.245.54.167}}

Okej, he says to throw the switch labelled "Macarina", but it doesn't say that that's actually what it does. This is Black Hat we're talking about. I wouldn't trust his labeling if I were you.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.9|108.162.221.9]] 00:59, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

How would the machine work against the loud girlfriend/elliptical dish? It seems to me that creating a phase-shifted replica of her moans would be pretty much impossible. If it were, what would the resonance do, blow out the girlfriend's lungs? How would that feel to her? --[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.85|199.27.128.85]] 21:37, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

:Possibly for destroying the elliptical dish. The problem this machine would not resonate with the elliptical but the GF as you stated. Maybe he just uses it to play annoying songs at them. {{unsigned|Flewk}}

:It would also have to be positioned perfectly in the elliptical dish' focal point to even work reflecting sounds back to her. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 19:11, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

1687: World War III+

2016-05-30T09:51:42Z

Todor: Add source for quote to show it's accurate. Not sure how you guys want references formatted though.

{{comic
| number = 1687
| date = May 30, 2016
| title = World War III+
| image = world_war_iii.png
| titletext = I hate how the media only ever uses the first part of this quote, stripping it of its important context.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|There seems to be more to this comic than so far explained. Maybe a reference to all the Star Wars movies now planned...?}}
This comic takes a famous quote attributed to {{w|Albert Einstein}} [1], and expands upon it to absurd levels. The original quote is: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." The basic premise of this quote is that World War III will be so devastating to the world that there will be nothing more to fight ''with'' afterwards.

1) in an interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949)

This comic expands the original quote letting Einstein suggest what other weapons future World Wars will be fought with:
*V: Crossbows. Crossbows are type of bow that is easier to aim and fire than a regular longbow, but is much more difficult to load. Most often used in medieval eras.
*VI: Lasers. In science fiction, blasts of lasers are often used instead of conventional guns. This suggests that society would have managed to rebuild lasers by World War VI.
*VII: Blowguns. A blowgun is a small tube loaded with a small dart or other projectile, fired by blowing into one end. That lasers would have been replaced by them seems absurd.
*VIII-XI: Skipped over.
*XII: The same weapons as III, but in underground tunnels. This is a parody of saying that X is basically Y 'but in space/underwater/etc', and, if the quote's well-known meaning is accepted, this has terrifying implications for the state of the world. Also the fact that he did not know which weapons were used in III makes it weird that he knows the same weapons will be used again later...
*XIII is completely unmentioned. This makes some sense, considering that XIII corresponds to 13, a number considered unlucky in many Western cultures, though it may also be an error.
*Before Einstein can discuss World War XIV, the audience of his quote seems to be going away. Einstein claims to have 'a whole list', suggesting that he may know a lot about the future wars to come more so than he has already suggested.

In the title text [[Randall]] feigns annoyance about how media only uses the first part of a quote thus taking it out of context. He thus implies that this is actually a full quote by Einstein and that all other occurrences using only the "original" version of this quote. In this particular case it is a much stronger quote that the long version from the comic, but it is often the case that quotes taken out of context seems to have an entirely different meaning than originally intended.

==Transcript==
:[A quote with white text on black background:]
:{| class="wikitable"
|style="background-color:black;"|"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. World War V will be fought with crossbows, World War VI will be lasers, and World War VII will be blowguns. I don't know about World Wars VIII through XI. World War XII will use the same weapons as III, but will be fought entirely within underground tunnels. World War XIV will—Hey, come back! I have a whole list!"                   —''Albert Einstein''
|}

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T15:39:32Z

Todor:

IF the explanation of "Milkshake" being a coded message is correct, then I like how Melis plays with it. I always thought the more sexual way, Milkshake meaning shaking her milk bags. Sure, that brings boys to the yard.... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.151|141.101.104.151]]

It seems like a black hole of that "volume" would mean the earth "falls" into *it*, not the other way around.

It's not clear what exactly in the comic is a reference to the Big Lebowski movie. This needs clarification. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 06:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:In the Big Lebowski, The Dude's reasoning for wanting the rug replaced was that "It really tied the room together" [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.80|108.162.219.80]] 07:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

The event horizon of the black hole in the cartoon appears to be roughly an inch across, which using the formula linking Schwarzschild radius to mass (r = 2MG/c^2) gives a black hole of about 3 earth masses. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.138|162.158.34.138]] 08:06, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:OMG. That would mean it also excerts 3 times the gravitational force of earth. As a result people near (also as far away as earth orbits) would only be comfortable standing at a significant angle. Time may also appear to progress slower near the black hole due to the time dilation effect. But I am unsure how pronounced this effect will be from a black hole that size. Audible and visible effects of this would be people talking slower (but not lower as you have with the doppler effect, i beleive that to be a sci-fi misconception), and peoples movements seeming slower. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 08:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:That strong a pull would mean the hole would not only collect air and particles, but also pull furniture into it. Seing as both people are standing upright I'm guessing the pull can not be more than say one fifth of earths. Maybe it has a visible accretion disc? If you were to run the formula in reverse what diameter would that give you of the hole itself? [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 09:23, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

There's only 5 years between the Big Lebowski and Milkshake (1998 vs 2003) so while "more contemporary" is technically correct, I think it underestimates how old Milkshake is. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.21|141.101.98.21]] 08:15, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps this comic is in reference to [http://gizmodo.com/were-one-step-closer-to-better-tabletop-particle-accele-1775501374 this article referencing tabletop particle accelerators]? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.74|141.101.104.74]] 08:38, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I once read a short story about this situation where the hole kept feeding and eventually swallowed the whole Galaxy. I thought it was a Stephen King, but my Google Fu can't find it... [[User:Supachris28|Supachris28]] ([[User talk:Supachris28|talk]]) 09:22, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:It was one of the scare-stories surrounding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where a micro-black hole would form and end-of-the-world scenario would ensue. Apparently such a hole could form but would immediately destabilize. On a related note, this brings into question as to how stable the hole in the comic would be, since it seems rather small. If it were to destabilize it would have enough energy to blow the earth to pieces, despite its deceivingly innocent size. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 09:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

See also - Earth by David Brin in which a micro black hole falls into the core [[Special:Contributions/162.158.85.165|162.158.85.165]] 15:30, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Was I right to add a little about hawking radiation?[[User:Transuranium|Transuranium]] ([[User talk:Transuranium|talk]]) 10:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)Transuranium

: Hawking radiation from a black hole with "neutron bullet" mass (equivalent to the Empire State Building) would be ''vicious'', equivalent to .78 megatons of TNT per second. However, it could spew out increasingly intense radiation for ''96 years''. [http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/] A lunar mass black hole would be colder than interstellar space and could outlive most of the universe. [[User:.42|.42]] ([[User talk:.42|talk]]) 10:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

::As deduced above I guess the hole would not be strong enough to pull them in. But you're saying a black hole with a mass smaller than earth would essentially fry them both and set their house on fire IRL? And that would only be if it was stable enough not to destabilize and blow up. Some best-case scenario that is. :) [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 11:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nHBGFKLHZQ effects of a small black hole] the size of a coin, animation by "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell" [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.154|141.101.104.154]] 11:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

The article currently states that a black hole is "inconsistent with physics", this is inaccurate. If it doesn't violate any laws or break math, it is perfectly valid. Physics allow for seemingly weird stuff, as long as it is a theoretical possibility, makes mathematically sense and doesn't contradict accepted truths. And it remains valid until proven it is not. That is science in a nutshell. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 15:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

== Worst explanation ever ==

I came here for an explanation and I have so many questions.
*<s>What's 'The Dude's' rug in the film "The Big Lebowski"?</s> Answer below says it has no relationship to the comic.
*What about the song "Milkshake" by Kelis?
*What about the discrimination?
*What about "Neutron Bullet" chapter of the ''what if?'' book?
*What about Black Hole Moon in that book?

And related to the comic itself
*What's the mass of a miniature blackhole?
*What are its effects?

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.13|108.162.221.13]] 13:31, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
:What's an "explanation"? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.81|141.101.104.81]] 13:53, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:Well, the effects of the black hole is directly related to its size interestingly enough. That was recently added to the article. Explanations are never perfect on the first day, but it gets improved. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:37, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:Information about the "what if" book would belong in a trivia section if it is added.[[User:Lackadaisical|Lackadaisical]] ([[User talk:Lackadaisical|talk]]) 14:56, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

'''''The Big Lebowski'''''

I'll answer my own question. In ''The Big Lebowski'' the sentence is "That rug really tied the room together." [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu]. I assume that ''to '''bring''' something together'' means to make it more agreeable. I deleted the reference. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.13|108.162.221.13]] 13:40, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
:Why delete it? While it may not be an explanation, it is a perfectly valid pop-cultural reference and may indeed be the one used in the comic. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:37, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
:I think it is appropriate to delete it. It is a common enough phrase to simply be used without referencing anything. Stating that it was the author's intended reference is simply speculation.[[User:Lackadaisical|Lackadaisical]] ([[User talk:Lackadaisical|talk]]) 14:51, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T14:49:32Z

Todor: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1680
| date = May 13, 2016
| title = Black Hole
| image = black_hole.png
| titletext = It also brings all the boys, and everything else, to the yard.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|More details... What would happen if a black hole like this was in a living room.}}
[[Cueball]] is curious as to why [[Black Hat]] has a miniature {{w|black hole}} on his table; Black Hat responds that it "really brings the room together", making a pun on both the black hole aesthetically completing the room as well as it literally "bringing the room together" through its gravitational pull. Evidently the black hole is massive enough to bring the room together optically into visible {{w|Einstein ring}}s by {{w|gravitational lensing}}.

The expression that something "bring the room together" (135,000 results on Google) means that something gives unity to the room.

The title text makes a more contemporary cultural reference to a well-known song lyric from the song "{{w|Milkshake (song)|Milkshake}}" by {{w|Kelis}} (pending explanation); however, in this case, since {{w|gravity}} does not discriminate between which things it will attract{{Citation needed}} (according to the {{w|equivalence principle}}), it brings "the boys, and everything else", to Black Hat's yard.

[[Randall]] describes a similar scenario in the "Neutron Bullet" chapter of the [http://whatif.xkcd.com/book/ what if? book], and a black hole of similar dimensions in the [[what if?]] ''{{what if|129|Black Hole Moon}}''.

As depicted, the black hole is inconsistent with some aspect of physics:
* A large black hole would bring the room together... in less time than Cueball could converse with Black Hat. [It would have a much stronger gravitational pull, but as I understand it the time dilation effect would significantly slow down the time it would otherwise take for them to get sucked in.]
* A small black hole could have {{w|tidal force}}s weak enough to permit Cueball to stand near it. However, unlike the scenario in "Neutron Bullet", it would emit {{w|Hawking radiation}} powerful enough to tear the room apart.
* A neutrally charged black hole would fall through the coffee table and burrow to Earth's core.
* This black hole appears to be about the size of a marble. A marble size is approximately earth's {{w|Schwarzschild radius}}, suggesting this black hole to have earth-like mass. [Since Cueball and Black hat are able to stand upright, it suggests the gravitational pull is a fraction of earth's. Making the black hole's mass also a fraction of earth's. The black hole may appear visibly larger due to having a visible accretion disc.]

==Transcript==

:[Cueball is standing near a coffee table as Black Hat approaches. They are presumably in Black Hat's living room. The coffee table has a miniature black hole on top of it, resting on a small pedestal.]
:Cueball: Why do you have a miniature black hole on your coffee table?
:Black Hat: It really brings the room together.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T14:37:57Z

Todor: /* Worst explanation ever */

IF the explanation of "Milkshake" being a coded message is correct, then I like how Melis plays with it. I always thought the more sexual way, Milkshake meaning shaking her milk bags. Sure, that brings boys to the yard.... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.151|141.101.104.151]]

It's not clear what exactly in the comic is a reference to the Big Lebowski movie. This needs clarification. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 06:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:In the Big Lebowski, The Dude's reasoning for wanting the rug replaced was that "It really tied the room together" [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.80|108.162.219.80]] 07:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

The event horizon of the black hole in the cartoon appears to be roughly an inch across, which using the formula linking Schwarzschild radius to mass (r = 2MG/c^2) gives a black hole of about 3 earth masses. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.138|162.158.34.138]] 08:06, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:OMG. That would mean it also excerts 3 times the gravitational force of earth. As a result people near (also as far away as earth orbits) would only be comfortable standing at a significant angle. Time may also appear to progress slower near the black hole due to the time dilation effect. But I am unsure how pronounced this effect will be from a black hole that size. Audible and visible effects of this would be people talking slower (but not lower as you have with the doppler effect, i beleive that to be a sci-fi misconception), and peoples movements seeming slower. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 08:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:That strong a pull would mean the hole would not only collect air and particles, but also pull furniture into it. Seing as both people are standing upright I'm guessing the pull can not be more than say one fifth of earths. Maybe it has a visible accretion disc? If you were to run the formula in reverse what diameter would that give you of the hole itself? [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 09:23, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

There's only 5 years between the Big Lebowski and Milkshake (1998 vs 2003) so while "more contemporary" is technically correct, I think it underestimates how old Milkshake is. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.21|141.101.98.21]] 08:15, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps this comic is in reference to [http://gizmodo.com/were-one-step-closer-to-better-tabletop-particle-accele-1775501374 this article referencing tabletop particle accelerators]? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.74|141.101.104.74]] 08:38, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I once read a short story about this situation where the hole kept feeding and eventually swallowed the whole Galaxy. I thought it was a Stephen King, but my Google Fu can't find it... [[User:Supachris28|Supachris28]] ([[User talk:Supachris28|talk]]) 09:22, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:It was one of the scare-stories surrounding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where a micro-black hole would form and end-of-the-world scenario would ensue. Apparently such a hole could form but would immediately destabilize. On a related note, this brings into question as to how stable the hole in the comic would be, since it seems rather small. If it were to destabilize it would have enough energy to blow the earth to pieces, despite its deceivingly innocent size. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 09:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Was I right to add a little about hawking radiation?[[User:Transuranium|Transuranium]] ([[User talk:Transuranium|talk]]) 10:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)Transuranium

: Hawking radiation from a black hole with "neutron bullet" mass (equivalent to the Empire State Building) would be ''vicious'', equivalent to .78 megatons of TNT per second. However, it could spew out increasingly intense radiation for ''96 years''. [http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/] A lunar mass black hole would be colder than interstellar space and could outlive most of the universe. [[User:.42|.42]] ([[User talk:.42|talk]]) 10:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

::As deduced above I guess the hole would not be strong enough to pull them in. But you're saying a black hole with a mass smaller than earth would essentially fry them both and set their house on fire IRL? And that would only be if it was stable enough not to destabilize and blow up. Some best-case scenario that is. :) [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 11:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nHBGFKLHZQ effects of a small black hole] the size of a coin, animation by "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell" [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.154|141.101.104.154]] 11:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

== Worst explanation ever ==

I came here for an explanation and I have so many questions.
*<s>What's 'The Dude's' rug in the film "The Big Lebowski"?</s> Answer below says it has no relationship to the comic.
*What about the song "Milkshake" by Kelis?
*What about the discrimination?
*What about "Neutron Bullet" chapter of the ''what if?'' book?
*What about Black Hole Moon in that book?

And related to the comic itself
*What's the mass of a miniature blackhole?
*What are its effects?

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.13|108.162.221.13]] 13:31, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
:What's an "explanation"? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.81|141.101.104.81]] 13:53, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

:Well, the effects of the black hole is directly related to its size interestingly enough. That was recently added to the article. Explanations are never perfect on the first day, but it gets improved. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:37, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

'''''The Big Lebowski'''''

I'll answer my own question. In ''The Big Lebowski'' the sentence is "That rug really tied the room together." [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu]. I assume that ''to '''bring''' something together'' means to make it more agreeable. I deleted the reference. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.13|108.162.221.13]] 13:40, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
:Why delete it? While it may not be an explanation, it is a perfectly valid pop-cultural reference and may indeed be the one used in the comic. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:37, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T12:35:50Z

Todor: Visible size is misleading. Gravity never lies.

{{comic
| number = 1680
| date = May 13, 2016
| title = Black Hole
| image = black_hole.png
| titletext = It also brings all the boys, and everything else, to the yard.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|More details... What would happen if a black hole like this was in a living room... It's not clear what exactly in the comic is a reference to the Big Lebowski movie. This needs clarification}}
[[Cueball]] is curious as to why [[Black Hat]] has a miniature {{w|black hole}} on his table; Black Hat responds that it "really brings the room together", making a pun on both the black hole aesthetically completing the room as well as it literally "bringing the room together" through its gravitational pull. Evidently the black hole is massive enough to bring the room together optically into visible {{w|Einstein ring}}s by {{w|gravitational lensing}}.

The comic references 'The Dude's' rug in the film "{{w|The Big Lebowski}}", whilst the title text makes a more contemporary cultural reference to a well-known song lyric from the song "{{w|Milkshake (song)|Milkshake}}" by {{w|Kelis}}; however, in this case, since {{w|gravity}} does not discriminate between which things it will attract{{Citation needed}} (according to the {{w|equivalence principle}}), it brings "the boys, and everything else", to Black Hat's yard.

[[Randall]] describes a similar scenario in the "Neutron Bullet" chapter of the [http://whatif.xkcd.com/book/ what if? book], and a black hole of similar dimensions in the [[what if?]] ''{{what if|129|Black Hole Moon}}''.

As depicted, the black hole is inconsistent with some aspect of physics:
* A large black hole would bring the room together... in less time than Cueball could converse with Black Hat.
* A small black hole could have {{w|tidal force}}s weak enough to permit Cueball to stand near it. However, unlike the scenario in "Neutron Bullet", it would emit {{w|Hawking radiation}} powerful enough to tear the room apart.
* A neutrally charged black hole would fall through the coffee table and burrow to Earth's core.
* This black hole appears to be about the size of a marble. A marble size is approximately earth's {{w|Schwarzschild radius}}, suggesting this black hole to have earth-like mass. [Since Cueball and Black hat are able to stand upright, it suggests the gravitational pull is a fraction of earth's. Making the black hole's mass also a fraction of earth's. The black hole may appear visibly larger due to having a visible accretion disc.]

==Transcript==

:[Cueball is standing near a coffee table as Black Hat approaches. They are presumably in Black Hat's living room. The coffee table has a miniature black hole on top of it, resting on a small pedestal.]
:Cueball: Why do you have a miniature black hole on your coffee table?
:Black Hat: It really brings the room together.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T11:07:41Z

Todor:

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T09:55:21Z

Todor: Big boom scenario :)

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T09:48:34Z

Todor: Sauce

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T09:23:12Z

Todor: Estimated size must be wrong

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T08:58:30Z

Todor:

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T08:50:52Z

Todor:

Talk:1680: Black Hole

2016-05-13T06:48:48Z

Todor:

1662: Jack and Jill

2016-04-02T22:46:09Z

Todor: Dirty nursery rhymes

{{comic
| number = 1662
| date = March 30, 2016
| title = Jack and Jill
| image = jack_and_jill.png
| titletext = Jill and Jack / began to frack. / The oil boosts their town. / But fractures make / the bedrock shake / and Jack came tumbling down.
}}

==Explanation==
"{{w|Jack and Jill (nursery rhyme)|Jack and Jill}}" is a traditional English nursery rhyme. The rhyme dates back at least to the 18th century, one version even with 15 stanzas.

The first and most commonly known verse is the one referenced by Jill in the comic as she says the first three lines:
:Jack and Jill
:went up the hill
:To fetch a {{w|wikt:pail|pail}} of water.
:Jack fell down
:and broke his crown,
:And Jill came tumbling after.

The comic makes fun of the counterintuitive idea that Jack and Jill go ''up'' a hill to fetch water, because natural water sources like rivers and streams flow downhill, making them usually found in valleys rather than on top of hills. Thus it shouldn't be necessary to have to go up a hill to get water. Similarly, if the water is coming from a well, then building a well at the top of a hill seems an odd choice to Megan. The groundwater table stays at about the same level over smaller areas, so building a well on a hill would require digging further.

However, Megan is probably not aware that since groundwater tends to flow in a similar direction to the slope of the land, it is often considered safer to dig a well uphill from potential sources of runoff, such as outhouses, fields, or septic systems. In times when populations were more predominantly rural, and probably when the poem was composed, "Always dig your well uphill from the outhouse" was a well-known maxim. Moreover, since it takes more energy to bring water uphill from a well (especially in a pail), there is a long-term advantage to having wells higher than main residential areas, as opposed to lower. (This principle explains why water towers are used, even in cities.) Finally, artesian wells deliver water from confined aquifers, which can sometimes be as close to the surface at higher elevations as at lower ones. As an urban dweller, Megan probably gets water from city plumbing, and is not familiar with the principles of well placement that Jack and Jill grew up with.

The title text is [[Randall]]'s own version, a parody of this first verse, where the names have been switched in the first and last line:
:Jill and Jack
:began to frack.
:The oil boosts their town.
:But fractures make
:the bedrock shake
:and Jack came tumbling down.

This version, which may explain why they went up the hill after water, connects the idea to {{w|hydraulic fracturing}} (colloquially "fracking") methods for oil and gas extraction. In these methods, highly pressurized liquids are forced into a given ground stratum (or layer). With enough pressure, the stratum starts to deform and crack. This allows potential gas and oil to flow more freely. The liquid used for fracturing usually also contains materials like sand or ceramics which, once the liquid is removed, will help to maintain the newly formed cracks so as to further allow the desired free movement of oil and gas.

A common {{w|Environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing|side effect of this method}} is that water levels and presence at the surface might be modified. In this comic, water can now be found at the top of the hill. This goes against the usual laws of hydraulics, themselves subject to the laws of gravity, which indicate that water should go down through ground cracks. Thus water is usually found at the bottom of valleys or hills. But in the comic, fracking at the bottom forces the water up, thus explaining why the kids go get water up the hill, which, as [[Megan]] points out, is messed-up {{w|hydrology}}. Also, fracking may cause {{w|induced seismicity}} in the form of {{w|micro-earthquake}}s, as alluded to in the title text, which is the cause for tumbling down in the title text version.

Seems Randall's version of Jack and Jill is also a "dirty nursery rhyme", as the word "fracking" is a common way to censor the word "fucking". This would not be the first time Jack and Jill is made into a dirty version. For instance, comedian Andrew Dice Clay have done so on many occasions.

This is the second Wednesday in a row that Randall uses two children to make a reference to an environmental issue, the first being [[1659: Tire Swing]], about {{w|tire recycling}}.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is watching as the two kids Jill with hair bun and a ponytail and Jack with spiky hair are walking by her. Jack has a pail in his hand.]
:Jill: Me and Jack are going up the hill to fetch a pail of water.

:[Megan, standing back alone, calls out after them.]
:Megan: Okay, have fun!

:[Beat panel.]

:[Megan suddenly realizes something while looking down on the ground.]
:Megan: ... Wait. What the ''heck'' is going on with the hydrology around here?

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-27T15:07:56Z

Todor: Anon was right it turns out

{{comic
| number = 1660
| date = March 25, 2016
| title = Captain Speaking
| image = captain_speaking.png
| titletext = Oh dang, you have to pay? Hey, has anyone else paid already? If so, can I borrow your phone for a sec?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Have tried to clear up some messy order in the explanation. Could probably do with a check up, especially from someone with knowledge about flights.}}
At periodic intervals on a commercial flight, the captain of the plane will address the passengers with information about the flight. Typically this will begin with "Good morning everyone, this is your captain speaking..." and go on to describe the progress of the flight, expected arrival time and so forth.

This comic takes this cliché and inverts it. Instead of the captain providing information, the captain tells the passengers that he has apparently forgotten everything about the flight, even down to what kind of plane he is supposed to be flying – although he does think it is a {{w|Boeing}}. He at least discovers the flight number and then he plan to use this on the consumer app {{w|Flightaware}} that is made for tracking flights. He thus hopes to be able to find out what the destination of “his” plane is. But Flightaware requires {{w|Wi-Fi}} access, so he goes on to ask the passengers if anyone know how to access the Wi-Fi.

This even gets worse in the title text where he realizes that you have to pay for using the on-board Wi-Fi , which means he is trying to access the same Wi-Fi that the passengers have access to instead of using the on-board Wi-Fi that must be in the cockpit (to which he is supposed to have free access). Instead of just paying he then asks the passengers if someone has already paid, because the he would like to borrow their smartphone so he can check the Flightaware app to find out where they are going…

Options for explaining this scenario are:
#The "captain" is not a genuine pilot, but has somehow found himself in the position of being in charge of an airplane.
#The captain has genuinely fallen asleep and has forgotten what plane he is on... But he has thus also forgotten how to navigate, determine his flight plan or communicate with air traffic control. In the USA (where xkcd cartoons are normally set), there is normally at least a co-pilot and a flight attendant on the plane to support the captain.
#The captain has been drugged and shanghaied onto the plane. He is now expected to fly and land it for his "employer", but he has chosen to disclaim this fact to his passengers in the least reassuring manner possible.
#After taking-off, the captain enters a dissociative fugue state losing his personal identity.

Seeing as how planes cannot take off on {{w|auto-pilot}} (nor can they taxi, but some can actually land), and require a skilled, awake human at the controls, it is unlikely that this captain was responsible for take-off; which must mean this auto-pilot is much more advanced than current models, likely a future model, or that his co-pilot took off and then went away. In the event a pilot fall asleep, on medium sized planes, ground- or proximity-, radar would set off an alarm waking the captain if they are on a collision course.

Whilst it is normal for the captain to sleep part of a long flight, this can only occur if there are multiple pilots on the plane. Most flights are on auto-pilot for hours at a time, and the pilots serve primarily for takeoff, landing, and emergencies. He is completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should. He would easily be able to get the information of where they are going by just asking any of the passengers though.

Seeing as this future auto-pilot is so smart it would seem [[Randall]] jokes that future pilots might forget how to fly altogether.

The fact that the captain is not sure of the flight number is not hard to imagine. Commercial pilots fly multiple flights per day and the numbers all run together after a while. Every radio communication starts with the flight number, but if the captain has been out of commission for some time, the flight number could easily be forgotten. However, he'd certainly know the aircraft type, as commercial pilots are type-rated for a specific aircraft type and with rare exceptions (e.g. Boeing 757/767) the type is specific to an airframe type.

==Transcript==
:[The text is written above a large commercial passenger airplane seen from below as it turns left. The text emanates from the cockpit.]
:Captain: This is your captain speaking.
:Captain: Gonna be honest-I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind?
:Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number here.
:Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going.
:Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi?

==Trivia==
Real World Parallels:
* This comic coincided with [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-man-goes-out-for-quiet-drink-in-essex-wakes-up-in-barcelona-a6951756.html a newspaper story] of British man, Alex Caviel, who after a night out had a vivid dream of being on an aeroplane only to wake up to find himself on a plane landing in Barcelona.
* The comic was also published shortly after the [https://www.rt.com/news/337113-flydubai-scandal-leaks-fatigue/ Flydubai scandal], in which many pilots and former pilots accused the airline of overworking its pilots and causing massive fatigue and stress, shortly after the crash of the flight FZ981. These claim were later waged against the Fly Emirates airline. The comic could portray a scenario in which one of the fatigued pilots wake up mid-flight, still suffering from lack of sleep.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-26T23:26:45Z

Todor:

Actually captain falling asleep wouldn't be unlikely or problem because there may still be two OTHER people in cabin. But yes, first method to find out where they are going would be to ask those other people in cabin. Next, you should be able to get something from the instruments in cabin - I suspect that modern planes DO have some sort of navigation map there. Failing that, asking tower for flight plan would be not only preferable to trying FlightAware, but you could likely do it without raising TOO much suspicious, pretending you just need some detail.
And, yes: captain (or pilot in general) is only needed for pre-flight checks, take-off, landing - and if something unexpected happens, including some extremely bad weather. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:53, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah it was badly phrased, pilots do fall asleep from time to time. Some long flights may even have two flight crews, so the pilots can get some shut-eye. It varies, but there is '''never''' only one person alone in the cabin as you say, if the co-pilot has to go to the toilet a flight attendant takes his place. As for positioning, older planes have instruments for that too, but they are far less sophisticated, might even require a map and a pencil :-) --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 15:59, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
:Not entirely true; I've been on many [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britten-Norman_Trislander short commercial flights] (20-30 minutes) with one crew. The seat next to the pilot is often a passenger seat - when I sat there, the pilot gave me biscuits... [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 19:04, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Just noting, the discussion shows up on main again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.56.5|162.158.56.5]] 16:00, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
:On the main comic page, or on the wiki's main page? It doesn't show up on the wiki's main page for me (and never did). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.191|162.158.180.191]] 14:59, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

On one of the few flights I got to sit in first class, the flight attendant started to welcome us passengers. She said "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to..." then stopped. I was sitting in 1B so she said to me, "can I see your ticket?" I gave it to her and she completed the announcement. After she finished, I said quietly "forgot our flight number and where we're going, right?" She kind of sheepishly nodded. :-) I don't blame her though. She doesn't care about the flight number or where we're headed, and with all the flights they have to make, I'd probably forget once in a while too. [[User:Gbisaga|Gbisaga]] ([[User talk:Gbisaga|talk]]) 19:16, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Maybe we ought to split scenario 2 into two parts? One with the futuristic auto-pilot handling everything, and a second explanation where the co-pilot took off? It occurred to me if the sleeping captain would not wake from the extreme acceleration, the radio-chatter during pre-flight and other cabin noises, he would be sleeping very heavily indeed. This might also help explain why he awakes in such a confused state. --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:55, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

The whole Alex Caviel story reminds me of ''Irony of Fate''. Well, of how it starts out, anyway. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.191|162.158.180.191]] 14:59, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

==FlyDubai crash and more==
:This comic may be in reference to the FlyDubai crash that happened on March 19th, 2016. The flight crew was supposedly severely fatigued. The aircraft that crashed also happened to be a Boeing aircraft similar to the one pictured. FlyDubai is a low cost carrier and they have been stretching their pilots as far as they can, and they apparently found the breaking point. In the US I know we have very strict duty periods for our pilots see FAR §121.473 (see below "Part 121 link"). So I wouldn't worry about flying in the US.
:As for each line of text after:
:The flight number is probably written down somewhere in the pilots flight notes, so i wouldn't be too hard for them to figure that out. After all they could end up doing multiple flights a day, it could be easy to forget the flight number normally. In Glass cockpits i would imagine the flight number is in the system.
:The line about FlightAware, is in reference to the Website/App that shows all aircraft IFR flight plans (unless they pay to hide it). Thus a commercial airliner would show up on the site. It is odd that they would even need FlightAware, because in any aircraft that is new enough to have WiFi there would be a glass cockpit. Glass cockpits are set up before each flight to have the whole route programmed into the system. Which would be generally the same information as on FlightAware, since FlightAware gets the same flight plan that the pilots file with Air traffic Control. The only reason it's not exactly the same is because the pilots could put whatever they want into the flight computer, and may be planning to ask ATC to cut some corners later-on in the flight (which is normal).
:Also on a side note: every Commercial Airline flight must be able to fly IFR (also in FAR Part 121 somewhere), which means the aircraft probably has GPS and at a minimum Radio Navigation systems (RNAV). This means that the pilots should always be able to find out where they are, but not where they are going. Also the pilot could just ask ATC or the Dispatcher who is assigned that flight#.
:In regards to capability of Autopilots, each aircraft can have a different level of auto pilot from one that can only hold a heading to one that can fly pretty much every minute of the flight. Auto pilots on some of the larger newer planes have an auto land feature usable on CATIII(a,b,c) approaches. However Auto pilots cant talk to ATC or avoid inclement weather (to my knowledge).
:Part 121 link: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=5da31e85f0917eb260f691f628d67096&mc=true&node=pt14.3.121&rgn=div5#se14.3.121_1473
:AJ (Airline Employee/Private pilot (not an expert)) 3/25/16 2005Z {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.27}}
::Yes the 777 is able to land on autopilot. Father was a 777 pilot and landed in foggy conditions with autopilot when he himself could not see the runway until the wheels touched. sidenote, I believe there is auto throttle for takeoff. {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.27}}
::Yeah as AJ mentioned but was somewhat vague about is that even the old 737's have the auto-land system (might have been retro-fitted to conform with newer regulations?), however ''not every airport'' support this system, meaning you can't land there on auto-pilot. Also since the auto-pilot, no matter how good, can't handle unforeseen incidents, you still very much need a human pilot. The comic suggests the auto-pilot handles just about everything including events not directly related to flight, which is not the case as of today. --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:15, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
::Huge comments like the above are why I added a "add topic" button to the discussion template. [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 07:01, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
:::I have made such a topic for this, and also moved the comment on 777 down beloe instead on in the mid of this huge comment. I also moved the comment below again down from being posted at the top after Mikemk's comment here above. Hope it will make it possible to read the comments as they are in order of posting.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:37, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
----
Maybe the captain is in a fugue state? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.64|173.245.54.64]]

Would explain the pilot's confused state, but someone would still have to take-off the plane anyway. It can't do so by itself. --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 23:26, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

== 4U9525 - Does Munroe have bad timing or bad taste? ==

Is it just coincidence that this comic was published one year and one day after co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed 4U9525 killing 150 people? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

I think Randall Munroe is usually to aware of such things to excuse this as just a mishap. This seems to be a tasteless joke on the lines of: "Lol, maybe the pilot was just hung over. Rofl" [[Special:Contributions/198.41.243.244|198.41.243.244]] 15:53, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-26T14:55:25Z

Todor: Maybe split explanation?

Actually captain falling asleep wouldn't be unlikely or problem because there may still be two OTHER people in cabin. But yes, first method to find out where they are going would be to ask those other people in cabin. Next, you should be able to get something from the instruments in cabin - I suspect that modern planes DO have some sort of navigation map there. Failing that, asking tower for flight plan would be not only preferable to trying FlightAware, but you could likely do it without raising TOO much suspicious, pretending you just need some detail.
And, yes: captain (or pilot in general) is only needed for pre-flight checks, take-off, landing - and if something unexpected happens, including some extremely bad weather. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:53, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah it was badly phrased, pilots do fall asleep from time to time. Some long flights may even have two flight crews, so the pilots can get some shut-eye. It varies, but there is '''never''' only one person alone in the cabin as you say, if the co-pilot has to go to the toilet a flight attendant takes his place. As for positioning, older planes have instruments for that too, but they are far less sophisticated, might even require a map and a pencil :-) --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 15:59, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
:Not entirely true; I've been on many [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britten-Norman_Trislander short commercial flights] (20-30 minutes) with one crew. The seat next to the pilot is often a passenger seat - when I sat there, the pilot gave me biscuits... [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 19:04, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Just noting, the discussion shows up on main again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.56.5|162.158.56.5]] 16:00, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

On one of the few flights I got to sit in first class, the flight attendant started to welcome us passengers. She said "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to..." then stopped. I was sitting in 1B so she said to me, "can I see your ticket?" I gave it to her and she completed the announcement. After she finished, I said quietly "forgot our flight number and where we're going, right?" She kind of sheepishly nodded. :-) I don't blame her though. She doesn't care about the flight number or where we're headed, and with all the flights they have to make, I'd probably forget once in a while too. [[User:Gbisaga|Gbisaga]] ([[User talk:Gbisaga|talk]]) 19:16, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Maybe we ought to split scenario 2 into two parts? One with the futuristic auto-pilot handling everything, and a second explanation where the co-pilot took off? It occurred to me if the sleeping captain would not wake from the extreme acceleration, the radio-chatter during pre-flight and other cabin noises, he would be sleeping very heavily indeed. This might also help explain why he awakes in such a confused state. --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:55, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

==FlyDubai crash and more==
:This comic may be in reference to the FlyDubai crash that happened on March 19th, 2016. The flight crew was supposedly severely fatigued. The aircraft that crashed also happened to be a Boeing aircraft similar to the one pictured. FlyDubai is a low cost carrier and they have been stretching their pilots as far as they can, and they apparently found the breaking point. In the US I know we have very strict duty periods for our pilots see FAR §121.473 (see below "Part 121 link"). So I wouldn't worry about flying in the US.
:As for each line of text after:
:The flight number is probably written down somewhere in the pilots flight notes, so i wouldn't be too hard for them to figure that out. After all they could end up doing multiple flights a day, it could be easy to forget the flight number normally. In Glass cockpits i would imagine the flight number is in the system.
:The line about FlightAware, is in reference to the Website/App that shows all aircraft IFR flight plans (unless they pay to hide it). Thus a commercial airliner would show up on the site. It is odd that they would even need FlightAware, because in any aircraft that is new enough to have WiFi there would be a glass cockpit. Glass cockpits are set up before each flight to have the whole route programmed into the system. Which would be generally the same information as on FlightAware, since FlightAware gets the same flight plan that the pilots file with Air traffic Control. The only reason it's not exactly the same is because the pilots could put whatever they want into the flight computer, and may be planning to ask ATC to cut some corners later-on in the flight (which is normal).
:Also on a side note: every Commercial Airline flight must be able to fly IFR (also in FAR Part 121 somewhere), which means the aircraft probably has GPS and at a minimum Radio Navigation systems (RNAV). This means that the pilots should always be able to find out where they are, but not where they are going. Also the pilot could just ask ATC or the Dispatcher who is assigned that flight#.
:In regards to capability of Autopilots, each aircraft can have a different level of auto pilot from one that can only hold a heading to one that can fly pretty much every minute of the flight. Auto pilots on some of the larger newer planes have an auto land feature usable on CATIII(a,b,c) approaches. However Auto pilots cant talk to ATC or avoid inclement weather (to my knowledge).
:Part 121 link: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=5da31e85f0917eb260f691f628d67096&mc=true&node=pt14.3.121&rgn=div5#se14.3.121_1473
:AJ (Airline Employee/Private pilot (not an expert)) 3/25/16 2005Z {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.27}}
::Yes the 777 is able to land on autopilot. Father was a 777 pilot and landed in foggy conditions with autopilot when he himself could not see the runway until the wheels touched. sidenote, I believe there is auto throttle for takeoff. {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.27}}
::Yeah as AJ mentioned but was somewhat vague about is that even the old 737's have the auto-land system (might have been retro-fitted to conform with newer regulations?), however ''not every airport'' support this system, meaning you can't land there on auto-pilot. Also since the auto-pilot, no matter how good, can't handle unforeseen incidents, you still very much need a human pilot. The comic suggests the auto-pilot handles just about everything including events not directly related to flight, which is not the case as of today. --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:15, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
::Huge comments like the above are why I added a "add topic" button to the discussion template. [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 07:01, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
:::I have made such a topic for this, and also moved the comment on 777 down beloe instead on in the mid of this huge comment. I also moved the comment below again down from being posted at the top after Mikemk's comment here above. Hope it will make it possible to read the comments as they are in order of posting.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:37, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
----
Maybe the captain is in a fugue state? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.64|173.245.54.64]]

Talk:1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-26T14:15:25Z

Todor: /* FlyDubai crash and more */

Actually captain falling asleep wouldn't be unlikely or problem because there may still be two OTHER people in cabin. But yes, first method to find out where they are going would be to ask those other people in cabin. Next, you should be able to get something from the instruments in cabin - I suspect that modern planes DO have some sort of navigation map there. Failing that, asking tower for flight plan would be not only preferable to trying FlightAware, but you could likely do it without raising TOO much suspicious, pretending you just need some detail.
And, yes: captain (or pilot in general) is only needed for pre-flight checks, take-off, landing - and if something unexpected happens, including some extremely bad weather. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:53, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah it was badly phrased, pilots do fall asleep from time to time. Some long flights may even have two flight crews, so the pilots can get some shut-eye. It varies, but there is '''never''' only one person alone in the cabin as you say, if the co-pilot has to go to the toilet a flight attendant takes his place. As for positioning, older planes have instruments for that too, but they are far less sophisticated, might even require a map and a pencil :-) --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 15:59, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
:Not entirely true; I've been on many [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britten-Norman_Trislander short commercial flights] (20-30 minutes) with one crew. The seat next to the pilot is often a passenger seat - when I sat there, the pilot gave me biscuits... [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 19:04, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Just noting, the discussion shows up on main again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.56.5|162.158.56.5]] 16:00, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

On one of the few flights I got to sit in first class, the flight attendant started to welcome us passengers. She said "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to..." then stopped. I was sitting in 1B so she said to me, "can I see your ticket?" I gave it to her and she completed the announcement. After she finished, I said quietly "forgot our flight number and where we're going, right?" She kind of sheepishly nodded. :-) I don't blame her though. She doesn't care about the flight number or where we're headed, and with all the flights they have to make, I'd probably forget once in a while too. [[User:Gbisaga|Gbisaga]] ([[User talk:Gbisaga|talk]]) 19:16, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

==FlyDubai crash and more==
:This comic may be in reference to the FlyDubai crash that happened on March 19th, 2016. The flight crew was supposedly severely fatigued. The aircraft that crashed also happened to be a Boeing aircraft similar to the one pictured. FlyDubai is a low cost carrier and they have been stretching their pilots as far as they can, and they apparently found the breaking point. In the US I know we have very strict duty periods for our pilots see FAR §121.473 (see below "Part 121 link"). So I wouldn't worry about flying in the US.
:As for each line of text after:
:The flight number is probably written down somewhere in the pilots flight notes, so i wouldn't be too hard for them to figure that out. After all they could end up doing multiple flights a day, it could be easy to forget the flight number normally. In Glass cockpits i would imagine the flight number is in the system.
:The line about FlightAware, is in reference to the Website/App that shows all aircraft IFR flight plans (unless they pay to hide it). Thus a commercial airliner would show up on the site. It is odd that they would even need FlightAware, because in any aircraft that is new enough to have WiFi there would be a glass cockpit. Glass cockpits are set up before each flight to have the whole route programmed into the system. Which would be generally the same information as on FlightAware, since FlightAware gets the same flight plan that the pilots file with Air traffic Control. The only reason it's not exactly the same is because the pilots could put whatever they want into the flight computer, and may be planning to ask ATC to cut some corners later-on in the flight (which is normal).
:Also on a side note: every Commercial Airline flight must be able to fly IFR (also in FAR Part 121 somewhere), which means the aircraft probably has GPS and at a minimum Radio Navigation systems (RNAV). This means that the pilots should always be able to find out where they are, but not where they are going. Also the pilot could just ask ATC or the Dispatcher who is assigned that flight#.
:In regards to capability of Autopilots, each aircraft can have a different level of auto pilot from one that can only hold a heading to one that can fly pretty much every minute of the flight. Auto pilots on some of the larger newer planes have an auto land feature usable on CATIII(a,b,c) approaches. However Auto pilots cant talk to ATC or avoid inclement weather (to my knowledge).
:Part 121 link: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=5da31e85f0917eb260f691f628d67096&mc=true&node=pt14.3.121&rgn=div5#se14.3.121_1473
:AJ (Airline Employee/Private pilot (not an expert)) 3/25/16 2005Z {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.27}}
::Yes the 777 is able to land on autopilot. Father was a 777 pilot and landed in foggy conditions with autopilot when he himself could not see the runway until the wheels touched. sidenote, I believe there is auto throttle for takeoff. {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.27}}
::Yeah as AJ mentioned but was somewhat vague about is that even the old 737's have the auto-land system (might have been retro-fitted to conform with newer regulations?), however ''not every airport'' support this system, meaning you can't land there on auto-pilot. Also since the auto-pilot, no matter how good, can't handle unforeseen incidents, you still very much need a human pilot. The comic suggests the auto-pilot handles just about everything including events not directly related to flight, which is not the case as of today. --[[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 14:15, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
::Huge comments like the above are why I added a "add topic" button to the discussion template. [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 07:01, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
:::I have made such a topic for this, and also moved the comment on 777 down beloe instead on in the mid of this huge comment. I also moved the comment below again down from being posted at the top after Mikemk's comment here above. Hope it will make it possible to read the comments as they are in order of posting.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:37, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
----
Maybe the captain is in a fugue state? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.64|173.245.54.64]]

1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-26T12:36:50Z

Todor: Strip info that became redundant, also stress the point of the futuristic auto-pilot.

{{comic
| number = 1660
| date = March 25, 2016
| title = Captain Speaking
| image = captain_speaking.png
| titletext = Oh dang, you have to pay? Hey, has anyone else paid already? If so, can I borrow your phone for a sec?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Below this first paragraph (written by someone else) is a very rough draft. I am not knowledgeable in commercial flight, so fact-checking and general cleanup is appreciated.}}

At periodic intervals on a commercial flight, the captain of the plane will address the passengers with information about the flight. Typically this will begin with "Good morning everyone, this is your captain speaking..." and go on to describe the progress of the flight, expected arrival time and so forth.

This comic takes this cliche and inverts it. Instead of the captain providing information, the captain has apparently forgotten everything about the flight and requests information from the passengers and a consumer app for tracking flights (Flightaware). Flightaware requires wi-fi, so he goes on to ask for wi-fi instructions and request borrowing a device from the passengers.

Options for explaining this scenario are:
* The captain has genuinely fallen asleep and has forgotten what plane he is on.

Also he has forgotten how to navigate, determine his flight plan or communicate with air traffic control. In the USA (where XKCD cartoons are normally set), there is normally at least a co-pilot and air stewards on the plane to support the captain.

Seeing as how planes cannot take off on auto-pilot (nor can they taxi), and require a skilled, awake human at the controls, it is unlikely that this captain was responsible for take-off; which must mean this auto-pilot is much more advanced than current models, likely a future model.

Whilst it is normal for the captain to sleep part of a long flight, this can only occur if there are multiple pilots on the plane. Most flights are on auto-pilot for hours at a time, and the pilots serve primarily for takeoff, landing, and emergencies. He is completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should.

Seeing as this future auto-pilot is so smart it would seem Randall jokes that future pilots might forget how to fly altogether.

* The "captain" is not a genuine pilot, but has somehow found himself in the position of being in charge of an airplane.

The fact that the captain is not sure of the flight number is not hard to imagine. Commercial pilots fly multiple flights per day and the numbers all run together after awhile. Every radio communication starts with the flight number, but if the captain has been out of commission for some time, the flight number could easily be forgotten. However, he'd certainly know the aircraft type, as commercial pilots are type-rated for a specific aircraft type and with rare exceptions (e.g. Boeing 757/767) the type is specific to an airframe type.

In most flights, the captain has not much to do in-flight because the the maneuvering can be controlled by an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics#Aircraft_avionics auto-pilot] keeping speed, altitude and direction. Most of the captain's attention is needed at the pre-flight checks, the take-off and the landing especially if there is adverse weather conditions like cross-winds. The joke may be in this weird situation where, in fact, there is nothing big to worry about since the flight could in theory be done without any human on board including the pilot. [Auto-pilots doesn't do take-offs <strike>and landings</strike> as of present, but you could in theory design such a system. In which case the joke is on the futuristic auto-pilot and the human "pilot" who is utterly clueless about how the plane's avionics works - hence his odd and unnecessary questions] In the event a pilot fall asleep, on medium sized planes, ground- or proximity-, radar would set off an alarm waking the captain if they are on a collission course.

==Real World Parallels==

This comic coincided with [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-man-goes-out-for-quiet-drink-in-essex-wakes-up-in-barcelona-a6951756.html a newspaper story] of British man, Alex Caviel, who after a night out had a vivid dream of being on an aeroplane only to wake up to find himself on a plane landing in Barcelona.

The comic was also published shortly after the Flydubai scandal([https://www.rt.com/news/337113-flydubai-scandal-leaks-fatigue/]), in which many pilots and former pilots accused the airline of overworking it's pilots and causing massive fatigue and stress, shortly after the crash of the flight FZ981. These claim were later waged against the Fly Emirates airline. The comic could portray a scenario in which one of the fatigued pilots wake up mid-flight, still suffering from lack of sleep.

==Transcript==
:[The text is written above a large commercial passenger airplane seen from below as it turns left. The text emanates from the cockpit.]
:Captain: This is your captain speaking.
:Captain: Gonna be honest-I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind?
:Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number here.
:Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going.
:Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi?

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-25T15:59:04Z

Todor:

1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-25T14:58:59Z

Todor: I like this joke explaination better TBH.

{{comic
| number = 1660
| date = March 25, 2016
| title = Captain Speaking
| image = captain_speaking.png
| titletext = Oh dang, you have to pay? Hey, has anyone else paid already? If so, can I borrow your phone for a sec?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Below this first paragraph (written by someone else) is a very rough draft. I am not knowledgeable in commercial flight, so fact-checking and general cleanup is appreciated.}}
(The captain of the plane has presumably slept through most of the flight, which has somehow managed to proceed smoothly up to that point. He is completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should.)

("This is your captain speaking" is a cliche phrase which this comic is named after.) It appears that this captain has perhaps fallen asleep a good length of time before takeoff since he doesn't even know what plane he is on, and has only just woken up mid-flight. Instead of checking with the other crew on the flight, (such as the copilot - citation needed?) the captain chooses to use a consumer app (FlightAware) in order to figure out where he is supposed to be going. To do this, he attempts to use the plane's WiFi network (add section about wifi on planes), however, the title text indicates that you have to pay to access it. He asks the passengers if one of them has already paid for it, and if he could borrow their phone; this entire situation is very irresponsible of the captain, who is responsible for the flight in the first place.

In most flights, the captain has not much to do in-flight because the the steering can be controlled by an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics#Aircraft_avionics auto-pilot] keeping speed, altitude and direction. Most of the captains attention is needed at the pre-flight checks, the take-off and the landing especially if there is adverse weather conditions like cross-winds. The joke may be in this weird situation where, in fact, there is nothing big to worry about since the flight could in theory be done without any human on board including the pilot. [Auto-pilots doesn't do take-offs and landings as of present, but you could in theory design such a system. In which case the joke is on the futuristic auto-pilot and the human "pilot" who is utterly clueless about how the plane's avionics works - hence his odd and unnecessary questions] Regulation for commercial passenger planes do however require there to be at least two (awake) people (one might be a flight attendant) present in the cabin at all times so a captain falling asleep is an unlikely situation. And even if it somehow did ground-radar would set off an alarm waking the captain.

This comic coincided with [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-man-goes-out-for-quiet-drink-in-essex-wakes-up-in-barcelona-a6951756.html a newspaper story] of British man, Alex Caviel, who after a night out had a vivid dream of being on an aeroplane only to wake up to find himself on a plane landing in Barcelona.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
Captain: This is your captain speaking. 
Captain: Gonna be honest- I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind? 
Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number right here. 
Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going. 
Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi? 
{{comic discussion}}

1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-25T14:38:33Z

Todor: Add link to aircraft avionics.

{{comic
| number = 1660
| date = March 25, 2016
| title = Captain Speaking
| image = captain_speaking.png
| titletext = Oh dang, you have to pay? Hey, has anyone else paid already? If so, can I borrow your phone for a sec?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Below this first paragraph (written by someone else) is a very rough draft. I am not knowledgeable in commercial flight, so fact-checking and general cleanup is appreciated.}}
(The captain of the plane has presumably slept through most of the flight, which has somehow managed to proceed smoothly up to that point. He is completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should.)

("This is your captain speaking" is a cliche phrase which this comic is named after.) It appears that this captain has perhaps fallen asleep a good length of time before takeoff since he doesn't even know what plane he is on, and has only just woken up mid-flight. Instead of checking with the other crew on the flight, (such as the copilot - citation needed?) the captain chooses to use a consumer app (FlightAware) in order to figure out where he is supposed to be going. To do this, he attempts to use the plane's WiFi network (add section about wifi on planes), however, the title text indicates that you have to pay to access it. He asks the passengers if one of them has already paid for it, and if he could borrow their phone; this entire situation is very irresponsible of the captain, who is responsible for the flight in the first place.

In most flights, the captain has not much to do in-flight because the the steering can be controlled by an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics#Aircraft_avionics auto-pilot] keeping speed, altitude and direction. Most of the captains attention is needed at the pre-flight checks, the take-off and the landing especially if there is adverse weather conditions like cross-winds. The joke may be in this weird situation where, in fact, there is nothing big to worry about since the flight could in theory be done without any human on board including the pilot. [Auto-pilots doesn't do take-offs and landings as of present, but you could in theory design such a system. In which case the joke is on the futuristic auto-pilot] Regulation for commercial passenger planes do however require there to be at least two (awake) people (one might be a flight attendant) present in the cabin at all times so a captain falling asleep is an unlikely situation. And even if it somehow did ground-radar would set off an alarm waking the captain.

This comic coincided with [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-man-goes-out-for-quiet-drink-in-essex-wakes-up-in-barcelona-a6951756.html a newspaper story] of British man, Alex Caviel, who after a night out had a vivid dream of being on an aeroplane only to wake up to find himself on a plane landing in Barcelona.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
Captain: This is your captain speaking. 
Captain: Gonna be honest- I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind? 
Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number right here. 
Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going. 
Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi? 
{{comic discussion}}

1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-25T14:09:45Z

Todor: Correct a wrong assumption about auto-pilots.

{{comic
| number = 1660
| date = March 25, 2016
| title = Captain Speaking
| image = captain_speaking.png
| titletext = Oh dang, you have to pay? Hey, has anyone else paid already? If so, can I borrow your phone for a sec?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Below this first paragraph (written by someone else) is a very rough draft. I am not knowledgeable in commercial flight, so fact-checking and general cleanup is appreciated.}}
(The captain of the plane has presumably slept through most of the flight, which has somehow managed to proceed smoothly up to that point. He is completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should.)

("This is your captain speaking" is a cliche phrase which this comic is named after.) It appears that this captain has perhaps fallen asleep a good length of time before takeoff since he doesn't even know what plane he is on, and has only just woken up mid-flight. Instead of checking with the other crew on the flight, (such as the copilot - citation needed?) the captain chooses to use a consumer app (FlightAware) in order to figure out where he is supposed to be going. To do this, he attempts to use the plane's WiFi network (add section about wifi on planes), however, the title text indicates that you have to pay to access it. He asks the passengers if one of them has already paid for it, and if he could borrow their phone; this entire situation is very irresponsible of the captain, who is responsible for the flight in the first place.

In most flights, the captain has not much to do in-flight because the the steering can be controlled by an auto-pilot keeping speed, altitude and direction. Most of the captains attention is needed at the pre-flight checks, the take-off and the landing especially if there is adverse weather conditions like cross-winds. The joke may be in this weird situation where, in fact, there is nothing big to worry about since the flight could in theory be done without any human on board including the pilot. [Auto-pilots doesn't do take-offs and landings as of present, but you could in theory design such a system. In which case the joke is on the futuristic auto-pilot] Regulation for commercial passenger planes do however require there to be at least two (awake) people (one might be a flight attendant) present in the cabin at all times so a captain falling asleep is an unlikely situation. And even if it somehow did ground-radar would set off an alarm waking the captain.

This comic coincided with [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-man-goes-out-for-quiet-drink-in-essex-wakes-up-in-barcelona-a6951756.html a newspaper story] of British man, Alex Caviel, who after a night out had a vivid dream of being on an aeroplane only to wake up to find himself on a plane landing in Barcelona.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
Captain: This is your captain speaking. 
Captain: Gonna be honest- I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind? 
Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number right here. 
Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going. 
Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi? 
{{comic discussion}}

1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-25T13:56:08Z

Todor: Added the clarification in the previous edit. On long flights one captain can take a nap in-flight, but there's always people in the cabin.

{{comic
| number = 1660
| date = March 25, 2016
| title = Captain Speaking
| image = captain_speaking.png
| titletext = Oh dang, you have to pay? Hey, has anyone else paid already? If so, can I borrow your phone for a sec?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Below this first paragraph (written by someone else) is a very rough draft. I am not knowledgeable in commercial flight, so fact-checking and general cleanup is appreciated.}}
(The captain of the plane has presumably slept through most of the flight, which has somehow managed to proceed smoothly up to that point. He is completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should.)

("This is your captain speaking" is a cliche phrase which this comic is named after.) It appears that this captain has perhaps fallen asleep a good length of time before takeoff since he doesn't even know what plane he is on, and has only just woken up mid-flight. Instead of checking with the other crew on the flight, (such as the copilot - citation needed?) the captain chooses to use a consumer app (FlightAware) in order to figure out where he is supposed to be going. To do this, he attempts to use the plane's WiFi network (add section about wifi on planes), however, the title text indicates that you have to pay to access it. He asks the passengers if one of them has already paid for it, and if he could borrow their phone; this entire situation is very irresponsible of the captain, who is responsible for the flight in the first place.

In most flights, the captain has not much to do in-flight because the the steering can be controlled by an auto-pilot keeping speed, altitude and direction. Most of the captains attention is needed at the pre-flight checks, the take-off and the landing especially if there is adverse weather conditions like cross-winds. The joke may be in this weird situation where, in fact, there is nothing big to worry about since the fly could actually be done without any human on board including the pilot. Regulation for commercial passenger planes do however require there to be at least two (awake) people (one might be a flight attendant) present in the cabin at all times so a captain falling asleep is an unlikely situation. And even if it somehow did ground-radar would set off an alarm waking the captain.

This comic coincided with [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-man-goes-out-for-quiet-drink-in-essex-wakes-up-in-barcelona-a6951756.html a newspaper story] of British man, Alex Caviel, who after a night out had a vivid dream of being on an aeroplane only to wake up to find himself on a plane landing in Barcelona.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
Captain: This is your captain speaking. 
Captain: Gonna be honest- I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind? 
Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number right here. 
Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going. 
Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi? 
{{comic discussion}}

1660: Captain Speaking

2016-03-25T13:36:01Z

Todor: Attempting to clarify a bit...

{{comic
| number = 1660
| date = March 25, 2016
| title = Captain Speaking
| image = captain_speaking.png
| titletext = Oh dang, you have to pay? Hey, has anyone else paid already? If so, can I borrow your phone for a sec?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Below this first paragraph (written by someone else) is a very rough draft. I am not knowledgeable in commercial flight, so fact-checking and general cleanup is appreciated.}}
(The captain of the plane has presumably slept through most of the flight, which has somehow managed to proceed smoothly up to that point. He is completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should.)

("This is your captain speaking" is a cliche phrase which this comic is named after.) On most consumer flights, the captain is wide awake and aware of to where and in what kind of plane he is flying.[citation needed] However, it appears that this captain has perhaps fallen asleep a good length of time before takeoff, and has only just woken up mid-flight. Instead of checking with the other crew on the flight, (such as the copilot - citation needed?) the captain chooses to use a consumer app (FlightAware) in order to figure out where he is supposed to be going. To do this, he attempts to use the plane's WiFi network (add section about wifi on planes), however, the title text indicates that you have to pay to access it. He asks the passengers if one of them has already paid for it, and if he could borrow their phone; this entire situation is very irresponsible of the captain, who is responsible for the flight in the first place.

In most flights, the captain has not much to do in-flight because the the steering can be controlled by an auto-pilot keeping speed, altitude and direction. Most of the captains attention is needed at the pre-flight checks, the take-off and the landing especially if there is adverse weather conditions like cross-winds. The joke may be in this weird situation where, in fact, there is nothing big to worry about since the fly could actually be done without any human on board including the pilot. Regulation for commercial passenger planes do however require there to be at least two (awake) people (one might be a flight attendant) present in the cabin at all times so a captain falling asleep is an unlikely situation. And even if it somehow did ground-radar would set off an alarm waking the captain.

This comic coincided with the newspaper story <ref name="Ind">[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-man-goes-out-for-quiet-drink-in-essex-wakes-up-in-barcelona-a6951756.html]</ref> of British man, Alex Caviel, who after a night out had a vivid dream of being on an aeroplane only to wake up to find himself on a plane landing in Barcelona.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
Captain: This is your captain speaking. 
Captain: Gonna be honest- I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind? 
Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number right here. 
Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going. 
Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi? 
{{comic discussion}}

References: <references/>

1630: Quadcopter

2016-01-15T19:55:04Z

Todor: Added a point you guys seem to miss.

{{comic
| number = 1630
| date = January 15, 2016
| title = Quadcopter
| image = quadcopter.png
| titletext = I always have to turn off nature documentaries when they show these scenes.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Wik links and references missing.}}

There is large controversy over {{w|Quadcopter|quadcopters}}, which are usually referred to as ''{{w|Unmanned aerial vehicles|drones}}''. People worry that they will spy on people and essentially interfere with their lives in places they do not want them.

Recently, since drones have become more common, companies have begun selling remote-controlled drones. [[Cueball]] is teaching a class on flying these, because it can be tricky. This comic takes people's worries to the extreme, suggesting that the drones become sentient and can cooperate together to grab a human being and fly off with him.

This happens to the Cueball teacher, while his students ([[Megan]], [[Ponytail]] and another Cueball-like guy) do nothing to help him. Afterwards they discuss if they should have done something, but then take the view that now that the drones are sentient, they have become a part of nature, and that you should not interfere but just "let nature take its course". This is a common comment in nature programs about wildlife, where the speaker tries to explain why the team that was there to film the poor animals dying did nothing to help them - because they will not interfere with nature.

This comic shows how hypocritical that comment is, because if a lion decides to kill and eat humans, that would be natural, but we would do anything in our power to kill this lion, and not just let it run off with our children or the old and weak people. So in such a case with Cueball being taken by wild quadcopters we would not just let nature takes its course.

Note that Cueball has a tame quadcopter as a pet on the ground behind him. This may be a reference to people who raise dangerous animals which are cute when just small fluffy pups (tigers or bears for instance) but suddenly they attack for no discernable reason when they become big enough (perhaps we just smell too tasty).

There is, perhaps, a more insidious interpretation of this comic: while the Cueball student never speaks, he does carry a remote control, and could be the one controlling the drones. Thus Ponytail's statement may be completely ironic in that the teacher's predicament is (both literally and figuratively) human-made, and the comic is mocking the human tendency to anthropomorphize (biopromorphize? biomorphize?) technology.

The title text refers back to the above as [[Randall]] confesses that he has to turn off any nature documentaries which show scenes of animals killing their prey, while the speaker tells that this would be part of nature. It seems that it is actually that sentence rather than the killing that puts him off. And this explains the comic's punch line about just letting people be taken away to be killed by animals or quadcopters.

Sentient quadcopters were part of the game in [[1608: Hoverboard]], where [http://xkcd.com/1608/950:-1084+s.png one quadcopter is speaking to the other] over the lava lake in the Mount Doom crater to the left.

How to solve the problem of too many drones was mentioned in [[1523: Microdrones]].

Just over a week before this comic was released another comic also had as subject a situation where our technological inventions begins to take control over us, see [[1626: Judgment Day]].

Finally, the US Federal Aviation Association is now requiring any "drone" (unmanned aerial vehicle) to be registered so that it can find out whose fault it might be that a quadcopter interfered with commercial aircraft--or carried off a citizen to be devoured.

A drone called MQ-1 Predator is used a lot by the CIA and USAF. Although it's not a quad-copter, I think the idea behind this comic was to take the name literally and give the drones predatory behavior.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball to the left talks to Megan, Ponytail and a Cueball-like guy, with a remote control. They are standing to the right. Behind Cueball, on the ground, there is a quadcopter.]
:Cueball: Welcome to Quadcopter flying school.

:[Cueball looks over his shoulder as three other quadcopters fly in towards him from above and left. The other three is in the same position.]
:Cueball: Today we'll be learning the basics of-
:Cueball: ...Uhh..

:[In this frameless image the three quadcopters all grabs hold of Cueball, two in each of his arms, one takes hold of his legs. And then they lift him up from the ground. He is thus hanging almost horizontally, with his head over Megan and his feet over the place where he stood before. The other three just stands there looking up at him.
:Cueball: Um

:[Cueball is carried off by quadcopters, his head has already exited the top right corner, only his legs and the last quadcopter still in the frame. The other three have turned around looking up and right after him.]

:[Megan looks down again and the other two turns towards Megan. Cueball is gone and has only left his "tame" quadcopter behind on the ground.]
:Megan: Should we have helped?
:Ponytail: No. It's cruel, but we have to let nature take its course.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Robots]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]