Well, today's comic certainly wins the award for most obscure xkcd ever, I would say. From the forums and the rest of the internet I learn that apparently a form of encrypting messages (including internet content) used to be classified as a weapon for purposes of helping spies or something, and Randall is here saying that if it were still so classified than it would be legal under the terms of the second amendment.
I probably shouldn't even comment here because I don't know the subject matter at all, but for what it's worth, it strikes me as a pretty desperate joke on a pretty desperately obscure topic.
Reader ZZ points out that Jefferson had little to do with the Second amendment; he wrote the Declaration of Independence but was traipsing about in France when the Constitution was written. Nice try, alt-text, but your history is flawed!
Did any of you get the joke? If so, is it any good? On a related note, can anyone think of a more obscure xkcd? This and this strike me as close, but they were both very early ones, and probably drawn when he was in class learning about those topics.
I probably shouldn't even comment here because I don't know the subject matter at all, but for what it's worth, it strikes me as a pretty desperate joke on a pretty desperately obscure topic.
Reader ZZ points out that Jefferson had little to do with the Second amendment; he wrote the Declaration of Independence but was traipsing about in France when the Constitution was written. Nice try, alt-text, but your history is flawed!
Did any of you get the joke? If so, is it any good? On a related note, can anyone think of a more obscure xkcd? This and this strike me as close, but they were both very early ones, and probably drawn when he was in class learning about those topics.
I actually didn't find this one hugely obscure, but then again I still consider the old core xkcd audience (where the laughs sometimes came from "oh, hah, I know that but sometimes I forget that other people do") as the current core.
ReplyDeleteIt was actually all encryption that was restricted for export. 1995 saw Bernstein v. United States and '96 the Wassenaar Arrangement, limiting it to schemes over a certain key length. Now it's pretty much relaxed as all hell. I think this fact comes up in some classic computer geek movies and such... Sneakers, for one, I think.
And the joke? There uh isn't really one, in my opinion. I think it's a witty observation. It's amusing to think about, maybe. "Joke", though? Ehh
Maybe the joke is obscure, it wasn't for me though. My dad even has a t-shirt with RSA encryption on it and a big warning saying "This is a munition, do not export from the United States" I'm not sure if he ever tried to get it through US customs though.
ReplyDeletethis xkcd is like something i would have found funny my junior year in high school, after staying up for two nights in a row working. and even then, it's about as funny as 'why do we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway'.
ReplyDeleteit's also kind of irritating because things like cruise missiles and naval artillery are also export-controlled munitions, and oddly the people do not have a right to keep and bear those. so somehow i don't think your clever plan was thought through that well. this was the first thing i thought of after reading it too... followed by 'heh'.
Translate that, Spanish XKCD.
ReplyDeleteAll I got from this is the thought in my head, "does this have anything to do with the Australian government trying to censor the internet at an ISP-level?".
ReplyDeleteEven though everything else went straight over my head, I kinda hoped it was..
I live in Australia. :-( Hmm, I just realised that, before now, saying "I live in Australia" has only had happy associations.
I'm actually really scared.
I didn't find this at all obscure. It is a haha, things have weird legal positions joke. I thought it was better than a lot of the ones before it. I thought it was talking about PGP, which I remember reading about in Simon Singh's Code Book.
ReplyDeleteI'm almost positive it was directly Jefferson's influence that we have the Bill of Rights at all. Madison and the federalists didn't want to include anything of the sort and it was Jefferson's anti-federalist papers that convinced the need for a basic set of rights that ever citizen should have.
ReplyDeleteJefferson just wanted to have something to limit the power of the government. Madison promised to write a bill of rights if the constitution was ratified. It was so Madison drafted it, no amendments were specified by Jefferson.
ReplyDeleteJefferson wrote the basic concepts in the anti-federalist paper correspondents to Madison. Without Jefferson we would have a much stronger central government and no bill of rights.
ReplyDeletehttp://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0950.htm
Anywho.
I feel in the alt text he was not referencing Jefferson's part in the writing of the second amendment, but rather his unique nature as a functionalist/inventor.
ReplyDeleteNot very obscure to many of the people that xckd is "targeted" for. The history of RSA is well known among most "hackers."
ReplyDeleteHow do you know who xkcd is targeted for? And how do you know who knows about RSA? And how do you know that they understand all this right to bear arms stuff? I don't know if your story adds up.
ReplyDelete