Talk:1806: Borrow Your Laptop

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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I can only imagine the mouse wheel. I use a free spinner, so it sounds fun... And something to get my machine to hate me 162.158.62.159 13:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)


One assumes this is a software development environment or similar

Statement Explanation
Oh, just hit both shift keys to change over to QWERTY. Likely has keyboard in DVORAK
Caps lock is control. And spacebar is capslock. Changing Caps Lock to a "more useful" key is common. However to change an even larger key to be capslock (Space) is odd
And two-finger scroll moves through time instead of space. Two finger scrolling is often used to move through a document or application on a mousepad or touchscreen device - this could be seen as moving through space (despite the cursor not actually being real). Randall is presumerably making a comment re: Space Time continuum or similar?
Once I've used a computer for a while no one else will ever use it again. It is unlikely that any user who tries using a computer configured like this would be expecting it and would find the workflow very hard - they are unlikely to ask again to use Cueball's computer

141.101.99.197 07:55, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Just a minor point QWERTY is not the standard "Roman" keyboard but "English" as "French" is AZERTY and German is something else. The other thing is that just the change from US to UK can really mess things up, $>£ is trivial as @ not only moves, but the symbol keys all seem to do different things. RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 08:58, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, in the UK I often have to use a Windows box misconfigured as US, where @ is in the wrong place. At work, one had a postit note explaining how to get the @ symbol, until I spent all of 5 seconds fixing it. Worse though is Apple, who insist on using US keyboard layout even in the UK. Cosmogoblin (talk) 09:24, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Have tried to change this. I have a keyboard that has qwerty at the top, but it is not English as we have letters not used in the English language (ÆØÅ) which moved all kinds of other keys around. So we can type on an English qwerty keyboard, but not find all the special keys. The layout is though still called qwerty, albeit the Danish version. --Kynde (talk) 09:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm surprised that no one has pointed out the impossibility of changing from DVORAK to QWERTY by pressing both shift keys, seeing as most laptops have hardware keyboards. unless he has somehow rigged a voltronesque keyboard or he has a touchscreen keyboard or an onscreen one. Dudeonyx (talk) 09:20, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Dvorak users typically just change the keymap. Since it's designed for touch typing,there's no real point to lettering on the keys Luckykaa (talk) 09:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
(Wrote this before Luckykaa posted but had an edit conflict with him so only replies to the first comment here:)
The keyboard is probably QWERTY but the keys assigned to these are in the dvorak layout. If Cueball can type ten fingered dvorak blindly then it is no concern for him that the keys would give a different letter than what is on the keys! See other dvorak comics as referenced in the explanation. --Kynde (talk) 09:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The part "The next point on the list makes little sense" is not exactly true. Swapping caps lock with ctrl is actually quite common (if extravagant), google it. Some do it because they are used to some old layout (probably either pre-PC era or from the Unix world, see some Sun keyboards from the 90s). Most do it because ctrl is useful but small (especially on laptops), while caps lock is a large, rarely used key. Opinions on the ergonomy of this vary, trending towards negative, although there certainly are avid supporters.

So, the line actually starts like something you may actually hear in real life (I know I have). And then you get to... SPACE?!? Why would you turn space into a caps lock?! That's where the joke hits. It's not that the whole point of the list makes little sense, it's that it takes an existing, somewhat justified but controversial idea and turns it on its head midway through. --162.158.102.76 09:29, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Is that not also what is made clear in the explanation now? It is not the only joke with the last being the scroll time travel. --Kynde (talk) 09:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Apple has a feature actually called time machine to go back to old file versions. Sebastian --162.158.88.62 12:00, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like my laptop. Because I primarily use the nipple as a pointer,and the trackpad is in a good position for the thumb, I changed the trackpad to be a scrollpad, so it doesn't move the cursor, it moves content. I have given up on trying to explain the setup, they always end up just scrolling around on the screen and tapping the trackpad like it was a mouse-button.162.158.114.70 15:03, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Any chance that "spacebar is caps lock" is a reference to 1172: Workflow? Tkil (talk) 16:38, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

NO.--Dgbrt (talk) 01:20, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Older computer users will recall that before the introduction of the (now standard) 101-key keyboard, it was quite common for the Ctrl key to be immediately to the left of the A key, where Caps Lock is now. Touch typists from the 70's or 80's had a hard time converting to the new placement; I personally rewired the first 101-key keyboard I got to put Ctrl back "where it belonged". (This was long before keyboard remapping software was a thing.) Mr. I (talk) 16:47, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Focus on this comic. There is no 70's or 80's keyboard.--Dgbrt (talk) 01:19, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
Cueball is NOT Randall

Randall writes comics -- not an autobiography! So unless there is a strong evidence Cueball is NOT Randall. Think about other comics and what Randall all must have been done. Or does anyone really have a proof??? --Dgbrt (talk) 01:16, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe any time the caption text is written in first-person it is assumed that Randall is talking about himself. In that case, Cueball here would be a stand-in for Randall, albeit taken to the extreme.--172.68.142.83 01:48, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Re: Information text "Everything is senseless -- who changes the keyboard layout without changing the keyboard itself? Typing blindly is just a guess but not shown in the comic." This is a bit harsh wording. There are many of us who routinely switch keyboard layouts without changing the keyboard. I am Swedish, living in Ireland so Irish/British keyboards are the norm. Now and then I need write text in Swedish. As I learned touch typing in Sweden, that layout is engrained in my spine so typing blindly is not a problem. I have many friends here who do the same when they need to write something in their native language, be it French, Russian, etc. / Sven Rosvall

I agree, first reaction I had to "who changes the keyboard layout without changing the keyboard itself?" was "I do". When I was doing maintenance for a company in Belgium I temporarily switched to the qwerty layout while using their azerty keyboards. And occasionally at home I switch between different qwerty layouts because some software doesn't work properly on US-international. Tharkon (talk) 14:08, 4 March 2017 (UTC)