Editing Talk:1360: Old Files

I notice backup and recovery files.  I once had a folder on my father's computer that housed everything I did.  When the drive crashed, I managed to recover it and store it to a CD-ROM (this was before thumb drives).  I copied everything onto my first computer within my main folder (I don't use My Documents), and I continue to move my main folder into a new main folder each time I migrate between computers.  I have so many nested memories.  I, too, have incomplete fan-fiction and instant message logs.  Oh, and a dream.txt.  [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.218|108.162.237.218]] 04:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't have as much of a problem with the "old files room", because I keep nearly all of my files on my laptop, but my hard drive is almost full. Another hard drive replace the CD drive, but this computer won't last much longer (bye cd drive workaround). I'll have to build an "old files room" sooner or later. [[User:Z|Z]] ([[User talk:Z|talk]]) 05:07, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Back in the... early '90s, I think it was... I recall there being someone like a buddhist monk (or someone ''claiming'' to be someone like a buddhist monk, and the religion could have been something else) who set up an internet site (not necessarily a website) as a temple for "all lost data".  The files you had accidentally deleted, the floppies that got damaged or otherwise corrupted, forgotten formats on old drives that you'd lost the wherewithall to access them.  Between this and the "hoarder" behaviour exhibitted in the above XKCD folder we encompass ''all'' long-term computer users.  At the same time.  I know I regret the dead USB sticks (with irreplacable content) and yet I stare in hopelessness at the folders "GStick" and "FStick" within My Documents, that really need looking at again.  (No, they don't contain the lost material.  Datestamped at 2009.)  But they're two of fifty-three separate subfolders (and a helluva lot of loose files) in that level.  "WebRedo"?  I remember that.  That site hasn't even been ''active'' for about a decade. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.224|141.101.89.224]] 06:50, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

;Explanation
I think the point of the comic doesn't come across in the explanation. It's not just that he's sifting through files, but that he's finding files nested deeply in his folder structure that just came to pass because he always copied contents of an old computer to some folder on the next computer and then ignored its contents.

I.e. in his "Documents" folder, there is the "Old Desktop" folder from a previous computer, which contains the "Recovered from drive crash" folder from another previous system, which has another "Mu Documents" folder within, ... etc.
--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.57|108.162.229.57]] 09:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

The shape of the panel is vaguely reminiscent of a hard drive, this may be intentional, being emphasized by the increasing size of the individual layers.  In which case there might be some metaphor construed by the placement of the two characters based on their location in the structure of the hard-drive perhaps involving the catalog index. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.35}}


It should be pointed out that the AYB folder is directly referencing https://xkcd.com/286/ {{unsigned ip|108.162.238.211}}

I have done this before on my hard drive(s) and I always find my old qbasic programs. Anyone knows of an emulator for qbasic so I could see my old programs running again? [[User:Bigfatbernie|Bigfatbernie]] ([[User talk:Bigfatbernie|talk]]) 13:56, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

:DOSBox will run QBasic programs if you grab the QBasic 1.1 interpreter from either an old copy of Windows 98 that still has it in its dos utilities folder, or just download it from here: http://www.qbasic.net/en/qbasic-downloads/compiler/qbasic-interpreter.htm [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.42|108.162.219.42]] 17:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

:Also, there's this: http://www.qb64.net/ [[User:Runefurb|Runefurb]] ([[User talk:Runefurb|talk]]) 06:14, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Qbasic was "hardwired" in IBM PC's and/or PC/AT's. If the PC did not find some bootable device, 
it would start Qbasic from a chip. {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.55}}

:Close but not quite correct. You're thinking of IBM / Microsoft BASIC, which was only really part of the BIOS on the original "5150" PCs (and possibly XTs), whose memory size and processing power was rather more akin to that of mid-to-high-end 8-bit systems than anything we'd recognise as a "PC" today, and indeed whose data storage options were limited to 5.25" single-density floppy drives ... or audio cassettes, which are a media far more suited to ROM BASIC than most others, and vice versa. All later models had a more simplistic boot ROM - along the lines of the Amiga Kickstart - that just looked for a floppy or HDD bootsector (e.g. for CP/M or the rapidly ubiquitous MS-DOS) and threw an error if they couldn't find one. Later BASICs like QBASIC or the intermediate GWBASIC were all disc based, running as programs under DOS. Heck, without the DOS command interpreter and file handling system running in the background, you've got no hope of loading anything into or saving anything from QBASIC, other than maybe a write-only Quine that outputs to a serial port... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.150|141.101.98.150]] 13:19, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Anybody know what Citadel is? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.42|108.162.219.42]] 16:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Citadel is historically a BBS package. Today it is an open source groupware system, but some people are still using it as a BBS. Google "Uncensored! BBS" to find a well known one. [[User:IGnatius T Foobar|IGnatius T Foobar]] ([[User talk:IGnatius T Foobar|talk]]) 03:19, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

;Can we get some instructions on how to edit the page?

It makes no sense to me whatsoever, and it's unlike every other page on the wiki. I can find the list we use in the transcript, but I can't figure out how to add the explainations [[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.204|199.27.130.204]] 18:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

:I did remove that templates from this page, the explain is still very bad — but now you should be able to post your adds. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:23, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
: I am the person who added the templates. I figured that on a xkcd wiki of all wikis one should feel free to use some more advanced Mediawiki features, to keep from redundancy (here, repetition of data between the explanation and the transcript)... Oh well. Apparently the definition of "to make sense" is "to make sense to others". Also, semicolons are used for definition lists, not for headers. {{unsigned ip|141.101.89.217}}
:: By the way, the current transcript is wrong. The items listed under "No header" headers belong to the "named" headers on the parallel side. There is no dichotomy like that. If you insist on reflecting the visual layout of the comic in the transcript, I suggest something like this (uncapitalised, unsorted, and unformatted, because it is just a quick illustration):

<nowiki>
<table class='wikitable'>
<tr>
<td>
&nbsp;
<th>
documents <hr> 
Megan: <br> "You OK <br> down there?"
<td>
&nbsp;

<tr>
<td>
* misc.txt
<th>
old desktop
<td>
* video projects

<tr>
<td>
* facebook pics
<th>
recovered from <br> drive flash
<td>
* pics from <br> other camera
* temp
* misc pdfs
* mp3

<tr>
<td>
* temp
<th>
my documents
<td>
* work misc
* audiobooks

<tr>
<td>
* downloads
* ayb
* ev override
* angband
* kazaa shared
* gigs
<th>
high school <br> zip disk
<td>
* fight club.wmv
* aim direct <br> connect files
* elasto mania
* 4chan
* icq logs

<tr>
<td>
* lovenote.txt
* gorilla.bas
* aol
** citadel
* nyet
* jokes.txt
<th>
aaafiles
<td>
* korn midi
* photos3
** prom
* dream.txt
* james.txt
* qbasic

<tr>
<td>
&nbsp;
<th>
txt <hr> 
Cueball: <br> "Oh my God. <br> I wrote poetry."
<td>
&nbsp;
</table>
</nowiki>
:{{unsigned ip|141.101.89.217}}
::i am so sorry but for some ungodly reason your table breaks the sidebar on the modern skin completely. i've wrapped it in a nowiki tag so it won't actually show up formatted, but i can't do much else since i don't know how to use html tables. [[User:Certified_nqh|Me]]{{citation needed}} 05:26, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
:::Looking at it, it's ''horribly'' broken table-tagging (mix of HTML tags and non-table wikimarkup for bullets and 'enforced' newlines.
:::It doesn't break anything for me, so my browser (which also isn't trying to run your custom personal CSS, which might be what reacts badly in your case) is "failing nicely". And I believe it looks very like the original poster intended, probably how they saw it.
:::(For reference, though, where you see a <nowiki><td>-tag, you'd ideally want a closing</td> before the open-<th>. Ditto a close-</th> at the end of the <th> and before the next <td>. Then wrap off each <td> with a </td> ''and'' </tr> before the next opening <tr> (or the final </table>). Or just use actual wikitable markup with {| || |} stuff and let the back-end sort out the HTML tag-enclosure.  ...the (unclosed) <hr> and <br>s are 'fine', though I'd have put <hr/> and <br/> out of habit (and because of best/better practice) if it was me using them.</nowiki>) <= Probably easier to fix than explain, but I only bothered to 'explain'!
:::It'd be interesting to see ''how'' it breaks the skin that you use. But I really think it's more a problem with your skin (refactoring some table formatting how it needn't, or not adding a 'catch all' to close off a special case of something you specially tweaked), even if the above could in fact be 'fixed' or just made not quite so peculiar. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.94.68|172.71.94.68]] 11:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
::::it still happened after i signed out, so it's probably not my CSS. also, by "breaks completely" i mean the sidebar moves all the way down to below the page content. [[User:Certified_nqh|Me]]{{citation needed}} 17:21, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
:::::No sign of that at my end (using both Chrome and Firefox), it's pretty much the same for historic edits. And, as long as the brower accepts an implicit table-data/table-header close when seeing the next (they ''can't'' directly nest, so no confusion possible), an implicit table-row close when seeing another (ditto) and both close when the tag outside ends (implicit, as before, or explicit on seeing the table end), there's no reason why any modern browser can't fall back on the accepted DTD. Better to be written correctly, of course! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.111|172.70.85.111]] 18:04, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

:Done '''[[User:Davidy22|<u>{{Color|#707|David}}<font color=#070 size=3>y</font></u><font color=#508 size=4>²²</font>]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 21:07, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
:: Thank you! In fact, I just noticed that rows didn't reflect one filesystem level! They should be moved one level up. I will fix that (and capitalise and sort the labels.) {{unsigned ip|‎141.101.89.212}}
::: Done. {{unsigned ip|‎141.101.89.212, too--I really don't like this insistence on signing}}
::::The unsigned template contains instructions on how to properly sign your posts. If you are against signing for privacy reasons, at least use five tildes (<nowiki>~~~~~</nowiki>) to mark off each of your messages as distinct comments. Your IP is logged anyways by Mediawiki, but casual observers will not see your IP. '''[[User:Davidy22|<u>{{Color|#707|David}}<font color=#070 size=3>y</font></u><font color=#508 size=4>²²</font>]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 21:41, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
::::Uh, little question. I just read the source, and the html for your table contains no closing tags. Do you have something against them or something? Also, I removed the bullet points when I added the table to the transcript because strictly speaking, the comic doesn't actually contain any bullet points, so we're adding punctuation that isn't present in the comic. '''[[User:Davidy22|<u>{{Color|#707|David}}<font color=#070 size=3>y</font></u><font color=#508 size=4>²²</font>]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 21:54, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

;Unsigned IP's producing a great chaos here. No READER does UNDERSTAND. Please keep it simple as possible, NO new template for a single comic. I will bring back some edits I've done, respecting edits have done later. But right now I can't see there is any proper attempt to do an explain other could understand. 
:Please focus FIRST on the readers here, then focus on possible editors (don't understand), and then tell a new IP how to behave here. It's not my invention, but please try to keep this page at a basis on some standards. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:22, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the "AIM Direct Connect" is in reference to the file sharing system that the AOL Instant Messenger used to use. A quick Google would have found that. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.32|108.162.221.32]] 22:20, 26 April 2014 (UTC)Slacker

:First thanks for your hint, but please add comments at the bottom here. I did update many items and I'm not perfect. I will enhance this after this post. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:34, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
::I can't figure it out, maybe you have a better hint. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:42, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
:::Whup, sorry about that! I'll remember that in the future. For better reference on AIM Direct Connect: https://adium.im/help/pgs/AdvancedFeatures-AIM-DirectConnect.html I'll see if I can add a better explanation to that above! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.32|108.162.221.32]] 00:05, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Slacker

Gorilla.bas is a qbasic game distributed with DOS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.129|173.245.53.129]] 22:29, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

:Thanks for your hint, why do you not add this by yourself? --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:34, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
::Done. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:42, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I would like to know more as to why it would be awkward to find ANIMORPHS-NOVEL.txt, and why you would delete that from the archives... I was not alive during that time so i dont have a clue as to what it is... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.212|108.162.250.212]] 12:55, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
:''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animorphs Animorphs]'' was a series of young adult books whose publication was apparently contemporary with Cueball's high school years.  Many people later find the interests, opinions, etc that they had as teenagers to be embarrassing.  This is especially true of fanfiction, which combines the above (in all its earnest, blind infatuation with the subject) with early, inexperienced attempts at writing.  As with the poetry found in the very bottom layer, Cueball would probably prefer to pretend he was never so invested in (''Animorphs'') fandom, never wrote something so juvenile/amateurish/terrible, and almost certainly would not wish to share it with any of his adult friends. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.202|108.162.246.202]] 06:28, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Last night I added the comments about geological rock strata & how files are buried in the way sedimentary layers are. It was my first contribution to explain xkcd so I wasn't sure what the protocol was but adding a comment here. - J. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.44|173.245.54.44]] 03:08, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

This is a perfect example of why *nix filesystems are superior to DOS filesystems. {{unsigned ip|108.162.212.200}}
:Why would that be? Do they somehow magically prevent cascading, decades-long file hoarding as you move from system to system? Or is it that the continual recompiling of the kernel dissuades you from regarding any data store or its content as a permanent entity?[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.150|141.101.98.150]] 13:19, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Are the concentric circles to scale? The 94MB looks roughing 10x bigger than the 9.4MB, but after that the bubbles start going off the panel and I'm not sure. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.179|173.245.54.179]] 20:38, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
:Doubt it, unless it's logarithmic - it might just be a concept-only "this thing is bigger than the other thing, and also contains it entirely". Then again, as it's an area rather than a line, it miiiiight be possible. If the outer segment was 10x taller and 10x wider than the inner one, then that would suggest it's about 9.4GB (vs 94mb for the zipdisk). Is the 9.4mb "AAAFILES" folder about 3.2x smaller in each dimension than the zipdisk? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.150|141.101.98.150]] 13:19, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
:: (UPDATE: the outer circle says "47GB", ie it's from a storage volume 500x larger than that original Zipdisk, although it is itself not that large a space any more and may well be a USB thumbdrive, microSD card, or the internal storage on a smartphone/tablet/ultraportable laptop with a 64 or 128GB SSD as its primary "disc" drive... or an old rediscovered pocket hard disc or dusty old desktop PC. Even so, the square root of 500 is approx 22.4 ... and it just doesn't look 22x bigger to my eyes, so I'm going to go with "nonlinear, unless the parts hidden off-frame extend a lot further below and to the side than you'd otherwise expect") [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.150|141.101.98.150]] 13:26, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

;Grammar?

"Still need work, grammar."

The grammar looks very good to me, and I'm pretty fussy.  Maybe it has been taken care of, but not removed from the needs list?  

I will go back and correct "a image" to "an image";

The first sentence ''...original Andy Warhol artwork, created in 1985 on an Amiga 1000, was recovered from recently found floppy disks''

"might" be improved by removing "was" or add "which" so it reads "which was"

Your thoughts on Grammar? 

[[User:WardXmodem|WardXmodem]] ([[User talk:WardXmodem|talk]]) 23:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

lovenote.txt might be a reference to [http://xkcd.com/340/ 340] --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.223|108.162.231.223]] 09:00, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

;My Documents

The "My Documents" folder no longer exists in Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10 -- it's been renamed to "Documents". Noting the time period when the items within the "My Documents" folder (e.g., KaZaA, Fight Club, AIM, etc.) were popular, Windows XP fits this description the best because it was widely used within the same time period these items were popular AND has the "My Documents" folder. Therefore, simply writing "Microsoft Windows" is both vague and inaccurate; due to the relative disorganization of other directories, it is likely that Cueball took the path of least resistance and used the folder already created for him (My Documents from Windows XP) rather than make his own "My Documents" in Windows Vista or newer (when there's already a Documents folder available). In addition, note the size of the My Documents folder: It's measured in megabytes, not gigabytes, due to the compact software used back then (definitely not Vista). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.97|108.162.216.97]] 00:16, 31 March 2015 (UTC) << Actually 98.23.195.75; explainxkcd got it wrong + I have a dynamic address
:Do not include the 9x versions of Windows along with Windows XP unless Cueball's computer can travel forward in time. Kazaa was invented in 2001. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.107|108.162.216.107]] 04:52, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with pretty much every point of the following:

<blockquote>misc.txt: A miscellaneous text file of unknown and unknowable content. It appears unreasonably large for a txt file, so it may be a large encrypted volume with an intentionally misleading name. It is the only non-video file in the topmost layer - the implication is that Cueball encrypts all his current documents. Alternatively, it may represent a folder containing zillions of individual text files.</blockquote>

* There is no indication that the file is "unreasonably large". It's not clear how the visual size of the "files" correlates to file size in the comic.
* There is nothing to suggest that it is an encrypted volume.
* We don't know if it's the only non-video file in the top layer. The lower layers clearly show that we're only seeing a narrow slice of large concentric rings; there could be many more files offscreen.
* There's nothing to imply that Cueball encrypts his documents.
* There's nothing that suggests this .txt file is a misleadingly-named directory.

I'm pretty sure it's just a miscellaneous text file. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 15:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
: +1 if you do the edit I support it ;) --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 18:50, 12 March 2019 (UTC)