[Alt: dpkg: error processing package (--purge):subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit 163: OH_GOD_THEYRE_INSIDE_MY_CLOTHES]
The joke is that the man has tricked other people into being attacked by insects. It doesn't really make sense, in that as far as I know, no amount of computer programming can make actual insects fly out of your computer, but what do I know? i'm probably one of them goddamn liberal artists. Anyway, since this comic is not in any way possible, I guess it's just supposed to be completely wacky and also make fans of debian pee themselves in joy.
Also, any random-insect enthusiasts will pee themselves in joy, just like they did with this comic!
Of course, enthusiasts of computers-spewing-things are probably disappointed if they compare this to Abstruse Goose #81.
this comic brings a totally new meaning to "debugging," no? Ha!
======
I see the search bar is back up on xkcd.com, but it's using Google, not OhNoRobot. I wonder what happened? OhNoRobot wasn't working well for him (though it works for everyone else...). New search seems to be better than the old one, so that's nice.
======
Do you remember that everything is going to change with my big announcement at comic 800? it is. I guess I'll have to connect my announcement to the comic, somehow. That might be tricky.
Well that was a bag of arse wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteCarl and Randall are moving into an apartment together; this blog and XKCD will both be replaced by a website with live feed of 4 cameras situated strategically around the area. Wackiness ensues.
ReplyDeleteIf only this comic included humor. :(
ReplyDeleteBut what you don't point out is that this actually appeals to people who know Debian rather than "dumbing it down" as you accuse him of so frequently.
ReplyDeleteBy picking one of the most tested OS's, and saying he snuck it in as a dependency?
ReplyDeleteRandall made the same joke before (the debian-openssl one), and did a much better job, because it was actually topical. If this is topical I missed the topic, because it just seems stupid.
ReplyDeleteIt's funnier to sneak a flaw into a well-tested operating system than into, say, Windows ME.
ReplyDeleteApparently LOLcusts are as old as 2007 :)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/002279.html
I find 427 very amusing on its own.
ReplyDelete@8:07
ReplyDeleteexcept it DOESN'T appeal to people who know Debian, as evidenced by all the people in the last thread who were angry because it doesn't make sense.
In a nutshell, "dependencies" are things your computer needs to run the program. The program doesn't actually create the dependencies. So the joke doesn't even appeal to it's intended audience. fail.
HEY EVERYONE! DID YOU KNOW THAT SOME PHRASES ARE MORE COMMON THAN OTHER PHRASES? ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS?
ReplyDeleteBut that isn't part of it at all. In fact, it's been set up so that how common a phrase is has no impact on the results.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I like the newest one, because I found the data interesting and now there's this handy list so I don't have to check for myself. Also, checking this may not have occurred to me.
So yeah, my life is made better for its existence, thus it's a pretty decent comic, I suppose.
9:40 : What Scott said.
ReplyDeleteSomething for the Pictoblog supporters, I suppose. It's interesting, but not really... funny.
Does anyone else find the use of " as shit" in a good context weird? I wouldn't want to be "sexy as shit," unless it's said by a coprophile, and even then, I'm not sure I want a coprophile checking me out.
There's a handy list available full of data that it probably would not have occurred to you to check before the existence of the 'comic'...
ReplyDeletesounds useful...
Bookmark that one, scottmctony!
and, as with all of these, it is now basically meaningless because all the cuddlefish will now use the phrase "fucking peristeronic" as often as they can.
ReplyDeleteWhy does he use the natural log instead of the base 10 log. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to interpret if the scale was 1/100000,1/1000000 etc. instead of 1/e^5, 1/e^6, 1/e^7 etc.?
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, there's nothing structurally wrong with the newest comic. I can even see it evoking laughs from a younger me. It's definitely more pictoblog material, but at least it's fresh and self-reliant and makes a language joke without denigrating liberal arts majors.
ReplyDeleteBut since I'm a dick I'm going to degrade him anyway: his relative recorded frequencies are inaccurate as shit.
How can it not be set up that how common a phrase is has no effect on the results? The whole point is that something like "piquant as shit" is not as common as "sexy as shit."
ReplyDelete@10:20
ReplyDeleteThe results are not relative to eachother, since each result is only relative to itself. Within the comic, "Evanescent as shit" and "Bemused as shit" are not necessarily equal, and "Fucking delicious" might be much more common than "Fucking annoying."
The points on the graphic are not "frequency relative to eachother" but rather "frequency relative to how often that word is used."
I rather enjoy these little infographs based on google searches, though I do believe they belong more in a pictoblog.
To parrot everyone else: latest comic IS rather amusing and is definitely pictoblog material.
ReplyDeleteSPIDERS ARE NOT INSECTS
ReplyDeleterandall is a professional wikipedia reader and google searcher
ReplyDeleteand also completely unfunny
Okay, I'm no cuddlefish, but the new comic made me laugh out loud. Maybe it's the fact that's it's 3 in the morning, but the phrase "these commodities are fucking fungible" is damn funny.
ReplyDeleteAlso literally lol'd.
ReplyDeleteyou guys, just when i thought i had successfully cut xkcd out of my life, i remembered i was in the computer science department
ReplyDeleteand there was an advertisement for our cs undergrad association, which used a giant blown up xkcd comic.
and then someone posted in one of my course newsgroups an "obligatory xkcd reference."
NO. NO. NO.
new one is interesting, fairly clearly-displayed, and the little blurbs filling up empty space are harmlessly entertaining in a small way. i'd like to see it fleshed out in a picto-blog, and maybe he could try to use alternate search engines and discuss ways to make the datamining more robust. still, mildly amusing non-jokes and data mining are better than abrasively awful non-jokes and data mining that isn't even amusing.
ReplyDeleteanyway i'm fine with him using ln instead of log, since log is for innumerate buttmunches like carl z. wheeler.
Amanda, you cannot escape.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I give the previous week to xkcd - I laughed more at it than at the xkcdsucks posts.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Randall comes back from the weekend with an incredibly mediocre graph joke.
Meh, I've kinda lost faith in these xkcdsucks posts. It's just all "bashbashsarcasmbashhate EOL". I.e. boring.
ReplyDeleteNext one has to be an angriest rant so it can be called "that fucking fucking shit shit"
ReplyDeleteIs xkcdsucks going the same way as xkcd? Carl, you don't need to be a slave to the same update schedule as Randall. That and his desire to keep going no matter how shitty his output is has ruined his site, it doesn't need to ruin this one too.
ReplyDeleteThree gripes with 798:
ReplyDelete1) As someone already said here, it's retarded as shit (see what I did there?) to use natural logarithm here. "We're" comparing a magnitude of two numbers here, it's much better to use a base 10 logarithm. I guess log() is for liberal arts only and technicians always use ln().
2) This is a prime example of Sophisticated As Hell done wrong. Plus I get the feeling that we're supposed to get chuckles out of the words "fucking" and "shit" alone.
3) YOU'VE ALREADY DONE THIS BEFORE, RANDALL!
Forgive me if my maths are wrong, but wouldn't the difference between using LN and LOG not make a difference on the graph visually? The boundaries would change from [-17,-5] to [-7,-2] but if stretched to the same width the graph would look the exact same.
ReplyDeleteIt seems kind of arbitrary to say that using LN is "retarded as shit" when it has absolutely no effect on the visual nature of the comic. LN is probably just the first that came to mind, or the easiest to use. LOG10 might be easier to mentally calculate the ratios, but that is not necessary to enjoy the strip (anyone who would do that might also be the kind of person to personally go to google and search for the same terms anyway)
I'm all for calling Randy out when he's done something wrong or stupid, but come on.
I dunno Andrew, when I look at a graph I kinda want to be able to tell how much of stuff there actually is without having to use a calculator. Just, you know, in general.
ReplyDeleteThe new one is fine. Genuinely quite amusing, genuinely quite well-executed and genuinely quite likely not to be an(other) Abstruse Goose ripoff. So yeah, pass marks.
ReplyDeleteI can get that in most cases, but in this case the numbers are not what is important (and they're too small to really conceive of anyway, as fractions tend to go from "1/2" to "1/4" to "1/10" to "1/100" to "really fucking small". All you need to know is that it's a logarithmic progression (so the farther left you go, the faster the ratio shrinks).
ReplyDeleteOne thing that bugs me about these Google comics in general is that the number of hits for a phrase will change over time. So to really be "scientific" Randy should give the date and perhaps even time he searched; o by adding something like "Google hits as of 11:55 pm, September 26, 2010". I dunno, maybe this isn't a big deal, but I think that xkcd fans are oftentimes fucking pedantic as shit and would likely complain about such a detail if it were done by anyone other than their messiah.
ReplyDeleteThe complaint I have about this comic is that there is a stray mark near the point for "disgusting as shit" which had me looking for a nonexistent footnote. It really shouldn't be that difficult to keep the art in this comic clean...
"and they're too small to really conceive of anyway, as fractions tend to go from "1/2" to "1/4" to "1/10" to "1/100" to "really fucking small""
ReplyDeletemaybe if you're retarded or something
@5:58
ReplyDeleteActually it's a pretty well known fact that the bigger and smaller you get, the less you actually grasp how large or small a number is.
Penn Jillette does a pretty good demonstration of what I'm talking about.
But if you're not convinced, try drawing a circle on a piece of paper, and then dividing it in half. Now try drawing a circle, and then drawing a 1/3 wedge in it (like a piece of pie was cut out). Now try doing it with 1/10th. Now try doing it with 1/100th. Now 1/1000th.
Even if you had drawn circles large enough that 1/1000th of the circle was big enough to outline, you still wouldn't be able to visualize it accurately without measuring.
comic bait as shit
ReplyDelete*fucking POSTER
ReplyDelete"Google hits as of 11:55 pm, September 26, 2010"
ReplyDeleteYou mean 2010-09-27T03:55Z ?
798: Why is there a line between "never" and "rarely"? If either (or both) phrases yielded absolutely no results, don't they belong to the same "horizontal position" (not sure how to say that in english) anyway? It appears he has drawn them like that too. Why not put the line right there to mark "never" exactly? (Or only extend the graph as far left as "never" is, which makes even more sense.)
Besides, yeah, pretty good picto-blog stuff.
Quote http://xkcd.com/about/
"xkcd.com updates without fail every Monday, Wednesday and Friday."
And exactly that might be everything that's wrong with xkcd.
Carl's illiterate post about 797: When you have a ball pit in your flat, everything is possible. You liberal arts people can't even imagine.
Your pun about debugging (or bugs generally) would have been a much better story for this image, even in a Debian context. Like, it might have been funny and make sense somewhat.
Why do my comments always get longer than I intend?
ReplyDelete@Amanda
ReplyDeleteThere are two xkcd comics on the post-it board in the hallway where my office is. One of them is 793, and I forgot what the other is.
Code may not be able to cause insects to fly out of your screen, but it can certainly cause demons to fly out of your nose!
ReplyDeleteWTF
ReplyDeleteGTFO
Maybe if there was an actual joke here you could say the joke still works even if you don't know exactly what those numbers are. But there isn't, so you can't.
ReplyDeleteJoren: grrrr, you beat me to it.
ReplyDelete(For anyone who doesn't get it, google "nasal demons")
This was a sad and short post, Carl. So, to entertain myself(something you utterly failed to do), I'll make my own review of this comic(or, rather, panel+caption combo).
ReplyDeleteSo, the main flaw with it is that it lacks internal logic. Many times it's acceptable for humor to tear down the boundaries of logic in the name of funny, as many realistic situations would be actually boring if played just as they are(for the same reason action and sci-fi movies do so as well), but even then they must follow an inner logic, otherwise they become the epitome of unfunny, the "RANDOM LOL" "joke".
In short: DEPENDENCIES DON'T WORK THAT WAY! Dependencies are things a task needs to be completed, not something that will happen due to its completion! I.e., the locusts shouldn't appear because the package is installed, they should be there before! Dependencies don't work that way, and any nerd/geek/dork/whatever with an inklet of self-respect should feel offended that Randall can't even get that right!
But can this be saved? Maybe. Here are two alternatives I propose(disregard shitty art and complete premise fail)
1) Make the comic longer and show the stick man bringing a box or receiving it from mail, then opening and letting the locusts out. The caption wouldn't work, instead there should be some line like "goddamn locusts! This package better be worth it!" or something. But the core of the idea is: the person actually obtains the locusts so he can install the package.
2) Change the subject from dependencies and Debian to EULA, and the caption to something like "I wondered how many people would notice the 'Plague of Locusts Clause' in my software EULA. I wasn't surprised". Sure, old "No one reads EULA" joke, but at least it makes sense, because the locusts would be a consequence described in the contract.
(To be continued, cause Blogger sucks)
But in the end this is a comic pandering to Debian users, and even then it fails. Not only it makes no sense(I can tolerate pandering if it makes a good joke), but it also fails even worse for implying the over-zealous repository maintainers from Debian would let something as simple as an absurd dependency pass. As many people commented before me, Debian is probably the most tested and reviewed Linux distribution ever, so the whole scenario falls down. Inner logic fails HARD.
ReplyDeleteAnd the alt-text! It makes even less sense. Why would the package manager spew a "OH_GOD_THEYRE_INSIDE_MY_CLOTHES" error message? Computers wear no clothes! Software wear no clothes! NO DAMN SENSE!
Finalizing, this is of course too similar to the referred "import bacon" Abstruse Goose, which is definitely based off the old XKCD comic about python being so great(which ended with "import antigravity" as the explanation for the characters sudden flight). Which means this is a rehash of a rehash. Sure, Randall, thanks for valuing your fanbase and respecting their intellects with effort! Also, I'm being sarcastic, damn it!
There. Now I'll probably realize Randall did a shitty job even having the whole weekend to work on today's comic, so expect further RAGE when I come back.
Hamba kahle,
Mole
Joren & Daniel: TOYFM (Tired of your fucking memes)
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reason why Randall does graph jokes is that no one's interested enough to fact-check.
ReplyDelete(Sorry for my bad English, it's not my first language.)
Yaknow, I started reading this blog with the opinion that the comic was still pretty funny. The older stuff was a lot funnier, yes, but I thought the newer stuff was good enough. So when I first found this blog and started reading it, of course I thought most of what you said was crap, which of course made me want to read more of it to justify your crappiness to myself.
ReplyDeleteExcept what ended up happening was I realized you made a lot of valid points when breaking down some of the comics. Some. Other comics I still thought were fine but you were being nitpicky, which is expected (and acceptable) for someone who thinks the comic is this bad.
So I guess what I'm saying is that while I still disagree with a lot of the stuff you say (if only in the manner in which you say it; sometimes you act like Randy tried to chop off your manhood and now he must pay for it), I (now) agree the comic has gone downhill quite a bit. I don't know if you suggested it or someone else, but maybe limiting updates to twice a week or something would improve the comic a lot.
TL;DR this blog has shown me how live a virtuous and holy life. Carl is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Cheers!
"In short: DEPENDENCIES DON'T WORK THAT WAY! Dependencies are things a task needs to be completed, not something that will happen due to its completion! I.e., the locusts shouldn't appear because the package is installed, they should be there before! Dependencies don't work that way, and any nerd/geek/dork/whatever with an inklet of self-respect should feel offended that Randall can't even get that right!"
ReplyDeleteBut with apt-get, the package system used on Debian, the dependencies that are required are downloaded, or in other words are fetched; I in fact assume thats why he chose Debian.
The joke in the comic is that the package requires locusts - they haven't been materialized by the machine but "summoned" because the app requires them, and I imagine they entered the room through an open window or something like that.
Oh god damn it your stupid comment form ate my response while I was still writing it! I hate you, Carl! And you too Rob! Get some sleep you ugly idiots! (Luckily I remembered all of it. heheheheheehehehehehh)
ReplyDeleteYour point on apt-get might be good, but consider what I previously said about the comic: Wouldn't some Debian contributor check for the dependencies? (They even check compilers and such!) Why would that particular contributor want to make locusts install automatically? (Maybe he's just inherently something of an asshole! You could plug in the only defined xkcd character nicely there.) Are the locusts free software? How do you modify and distribute them freely? Ain't insects a scarce resource? (Not sure about the whole free software shtick here - do the DFSG apply to debian-main?)
"and I imagine they entered the room through an open window or something like that."
Why not show a door or an open window, and show how the swarm emerges from it? Maybe a literal packet - sort of a visual pun on "packet manager" (it's the sort of packets that "hard"ware needs to be send in). Have a mail man carry a packet that bursts open with locusts or something, _then_ make him lament as punchline how apt-get now ships physical bugs? Whatever - I think there was more potential in this one, and reasoning that you have to "imagine they entered the room through an open window or something" to make sense of the comic doesn't satisfy me.
Mole also made a good point about the alt-text (although, of course, we all knew that already): It doesn't make any sense! There are no errors that explicitly refer to a user's statement. How do you explain that away?
Sh: "TL;DR this blog has shown me how live a virtuous and holy life. Carl is the greatest thing since sliced bread."
Oh STFU anyone fucking hates Carl. Even he himself! Ask him!
Or just make "locusts" actually be a program that makes your sound system emit a specific sound that somehow attracts locusts - that isn't nearly as absurd as "summoning" locusts magically as you proposed.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think the locusts are being imported from the environment into the computer, not emanating from the computer. The comic makes way more sense that way. Too bad Randall isn't isn't a good enough artist to convey the direction the locusts are moving (it shouldn't be hard; just make the locust swarm roughly conical, with the narrow end not quite touching the computer screen).
ReplyDelete*gasp* Spiders are not insects!!!!!
ReplyDelete@Evln,
ReplyDeleteyou can't extend the graph as far back as 'never' because 'never' is -infinity on a logarithmic scale
I fucking hate these graph comics because like a faggot randall draws them by hand.
ReplyDeleteAll this squiggly line shit everywhere looks unprofessional as shit and means I can't actually read the graphs.
I understand it's his 'style' but frankly I don't give a shit.
If he's going to do 'informative' shit like this then he can get his act together and use a fucking ruler;
if he's gonna try to be the funny guy then stop making google graphs fuck's sake.
the current halfway house irritates me beyond words
Evln (6:36) - there's a line between "never" and "rarely" because log(0) is not defined, I guess, so it needs a new scale.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree that log10 would've made more sense than the ln. However, it's not like that was the only thing that made the graph difficult to comprehend.
I mean, he's not even actually using a logarithmic scale here. He calculates the log of his values and then plots *that* on a completely ordinary scale. Which is just totally confusing (usually in SCIENCE, you make the scale logarithmic, but keep the numbers the same as they are, i.e. 10^-10 etc.).
Then, he says that his scale was "log(hits of intensified phrase over hits for single adjective)". That would actually mean that the scale is *different* for each phrase in question, and that the distance between two marks is the same as the total value of that log, or something, I'm not quite sure.
Don't know about you, but it took me a while (filled with utter confusion) till I got that he simply chose the most complicated way of presenting his information and THEN also mixed up "scale" with "how I calculated the value".
Anon: "you can't extend the graph as far back as 'never' because 'never' is -infinity on a logarithmic scale"
ReplyDeleteYeah whatever. Just move the line marking the "never" area where the search entries that did not show up are set. I mean, it doesn't really matter whether it makes sense to mark a "never" there: this is where Randy made the entries for things that didn't show up so it better be "never" there. (It actually is, but it just is confusing to have the "never" area extend farther to the right than these entries.)
David: What.
Sepia: Pretty much. Though I think having some door/gate/window/whatever where the swarm originates would clearly communicate that it comes out of the opening, even if the swarm would be drawn exactly like now.
Hum? I was saying exactly the same thing as anon. I only thought you were asking why he drew a line there at all. However, apparently the problem is that the line is there because it's a cut in the scale, not because it's the line that marks "never".
ReplyDeleteAlso, as someone noted on the xkcd forums, "evanescent as shit" has exactly one hit and "fucking evanescent" has 5 hits (without the ones from xkcd forums) compared to over 1 million hits for "evanescent", so he really screwed those up - they should be to the very left. ("evanescent as shit" should actually be in "never" since that was pretty obviously a typo by someone ranting about the band).
ReplyDeleteThe point of the comic is not to be accurate. The point is to use funny words (such as evanescent) in conjunction with swear words, superimposed over a graph or chart with made-up but accurate sounding statistics to make it look scientific. Supposedly this is funny.
ReplyDelete(Substitute "memes" for "funny words", and between the two you have the basis for every graphkcd ever made.)
Fucking memes.
ReplyDeleteEvln: I'm not sure if I'm supposed to fault you for not understanding logarithms or fault Randy for doing something people don't understand.
ReplyDeleteI have to default to the prior, however, because XKCD is a comic related to maths, and has delved into far more obscure things in its infancy (and was much better when doing so, I think).
I was looking for xkcd stuff and saw this near the top of the list, so I guess RAAAAAAAAGE RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE. Really, you're pissed at it because you don't get it? lolololololololol. You could always ignore it.
ReplyDeleteObvious troll, 3/10. Try harder next time.
ReplyDeleteAnon 5:56, you should stop trolling until you learn how to do it better.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had anything to say about xkcd for a while because they've all been bad.
Counter-troll is counter. Troll.
ReplyDeleteDammit.
man the latest fucking comic is sure lame as shit, amirite?
ReplyDeleteBefore you're a parent, you like to have the house clean, to have time to sleep, to be able to out on a Friday, &c. Once you have a baby, you're just happy when the baby manages to vomit on tile instead of carpet. Standards drop catastrophically.
ReplyDeleteThat's what it's like with xkcd. When I normally read a comic, I like to get a chuckle out of it, and I expect the art to be halfway decent and the dialogue to be well thought-out. When xkcd updates, I think, "Well, there are no Firefly references and there's a modicum of tightly controlled, less-derivative-than-usual wackiness. I guess this is a good xkcd."
So I guess this is a good xkcd.
You guys are crazy, seriously, I love it when Randall does the google searches. Probably because I often do the same thing just to see how many responses I get..hahah, I didn't know other people did it too tho, that's probably why I like it so much. I just don't understand why everyone on this site bashes poor Randall so hard, he's really pretty creative..I mean, there's quite a bit of emotion in something as simple as a stick figure. I dunno, I think it's pretty impressive.
ReplyDeleteThe new comic is terrible; I don't know why people here seem to like it.
ReplyDelete"HEY here's ANOTHER chart based off of useless information from a Google search and I included swear words (GET IT? SWEAR WORDS=COMEDY GOLD) and then I included some fairly uncommon words to show how smart I am and other people who know what those words mean will also feel smart! WIN."
How come nobody every pays me a bunch of money for doing random Google searches and then making a badly drawn chart out of the results? Because I could totally do that 3 times per week.
IN A WORLD WHERE COMIC 800
ReplyDeleteEVERYTHING CHANGES
"Because I could totally do that 3 times per week."
ReplyDeleteYou people keep saying this, but I have yet to see any of you with your own webcomic. Hell, I've yet to see you even suggest a "better" version of xkcd that wasn't terrible.
http://explosm.net/comics/2183/
ReplyDeleterelevant?
4:01, if you meant that as a serious question, you could check out the huge amounts of "improved xkcd" comics by fans and creators of this blog (don't know the link, someone has it i'm sure" or goatkcd. You could also read the essay "If you know humor so well, where's your webcomic, smart guy?", which rob wrote JUST FOR YOU!!! :D
ReplyDeleteI don't remember, did Randall ever do a chart on the frequency of "FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU" by the number of Fs and Us? It's kinda interesting to know what is the canonical way to spell it.
ReplyDeleteDear Chaos,
ReplyDelete"How come nobody every pays me a bunch of money for doing random Google searches and then making a badly drawn chart out of the results? Because I could totally do that 3 times per week."
Rob's brilliant essay does not cover your back on this one, my friend. You didn't say: "this comic is bad and I'm going to explain you why", you said "It's so easy, I could do the same." Well, if you want to make money out of drawing stupid things, do it; i mean, what else can we adorable cuddlefish respond to something like that?
You're like people saying in front of an abstract painting: "my 6 year old could have painted that!" You're not saying anything on the quality of the painting, you're just saying it was easy.
Is art good because it's hard to do? No.
There are ideas for jokes that are extremely simple, but someone had to find it. of course, when you see it or hear it, you're bitter, because it was easy and you didn't think about it.
I had the idea for facebook like in 1998. but now, Zuckerberg swims in a pool of 100dollar bills and I live with my mom in a tree under a bridge.
This is SO UNFAIR!
I wonder how much money Carl could earn by selling "XKCD sucks" t-shirts with his angriest rants printed on them.
ReplyDeleteWait, I think I have an idea what the big revelation for comic 800 might be!
Anon 5:32: Agreed. I was somewhat into math back in high school (or our equivalent school form) but now I'm only interested in what appears practical to me - i.e. what I can imagine to be useful in a program. Although that generally covers a lot I'm more interested in actual software development than kinda "just knowing" about math things. (Does that exclude me from "nerd culture"?)
ReplyDeleteAlthough some logarithms (2, sometimes 10) are often useful, logarithmus naturalis isn't as often. I only ever used simple calculus stuff in any program too. (Now whether that says something about me as a programmer is open for debate.)
I don't think delving into niche things really was what made the early xkcd better: true, he did it a lot, but it was mostly (as far as I understand them, anyway) somehow connected to an interesting observation or a joke in a way that made sense. Now, he's just making interchangeable (!) references to memes/concepts and/or draws something wacky and/or types wacky phrases into Google. (Most of the memes now are common internet denominator too.)
Anon 4:01: No way, you're missing Chaos's point. (Also Anon 5:27 saying there are improved xkcds. You are stupid and missed the point too.) She said that about making badly drawn charts of random Google results. That is neither the same as making a better xkcd, nor is it (exactly) copying xkcd. I think most would even agree it would not be a webcomic. Don't quote out of context, and learn to troll.
Adorable: Are you stupid? First and foremost, why didn't you invent Facebook when you had the time too? Second, you say "There are ideas for jokes that are extremely simple". I fail too see how googling random phrases then putting that in chart form makes a joke. It doesn't. (Not intrinsically, you pedants.)
ReplyDeleteTHE FUCK HAPPENED TO MY LONGER POST. Ah luckily here it is again:
ReplyDeleteAnon 5:32: Agreed. I was somewhat into math back in high school (or our equivalent school form) but now I'm only interested in what appears practical to me - i.e. what I can imagine to be useful in a program. Although that generally covers a lot I'm more interested in actual software development than kinda "just knowing" about math things. (Does that exclude me from "nerd culture"?)
Although some logarithms (2, sometimes 10) are often useful, logarithmus naturalis isn't as often. I only ever used simple calculus stuff in any program too. (Now whether that says something about me as a programmer is open for debate.)
I don't think delving into niche things really was what made the early xkcd better: true, he did it a lot, but it was mostly (as far as I understand them, anyway) somehow connected to an interesting observation or a joke in a way that made sense. Now, he's just making interchangeable (!) references to memes/concepts and/or draws something wacky and/or types wacky phrases into Google. (Most of the memes now are common internet denominator too.)
Anon 4:01: No way, you're missing Chaos's point. (Also Anon 5:27 saying there are improved xkcds. You are stupid and missed the point too.) She said that about making badly drawn charts of random Google results. That is neither the same as making a better xkcd, nor is it (exactly) copying xkcd. I think most would even agree it would not be a webcomic. Don't quote out of context, and learn to troll.
The fuck. Why can't I post 2 times in a row? It always eats one of the comments. (First the older one, now the newer one?)
ReplyDeleteSo here's my older longer post for the third time. If Carl's dumb-ass blog will let it pass this time.
ReplyDeleteAnon 5:32: Agreed. I was somewhat into math back in high school (or our equivalent school form) but now I'm only interested in what appears practical to me - i.e. what I can imagine to be useful in a program. Although that generally covers a lot I'm more interested in actual software development than kinda "just knowing" about math things. (Does that exclude me from "nerd culture"?)
Although some logarithms (2, sometimes 10) are often useful, logarithmus naturalis isn't as often. I only ever used simple calculus stuff in any program too. (Now whether that says something about me as a programmer is open for debate.)
I don't think delving into niche things really was what made the early xkcd better: true, he did it a lot, but it was mostly (as far as I understand them, anyway) somehow connected to an interesting observation or a joke in a way that made sense. Now, he's just making interchangeable (!) references to memes/concepts and/or draws something wacky and/or types wacky phrases into Google. (Most of the memes now are common internet denominator too.)
Anon 4:01: No way, you're missing Chaos's point. (Also Anon 5:27 saying there are improved xkcds. You are stupid and missed the point too.) She said that about making badly drawn charts of random Google results. That is neither the same as making a better xkcd, nor is it (exactly) copying xkcd. I think most would even agree it would not be a webcomic. Don't quote out of context, and learn to troll.
Okay posting this in parts now to try getting past Carl's dumb-ass censoring blog or whatever it is. (Maybe I'm just spamming the place with this. But I looked for my comments several times now and this sucks.)
ReplyDeleteAnon 4:01: No way, you're missing Chaos's point. (Also Anon 5:27 saying there are improved xkcds. You are stupid and missed the point too.) She said that about making badly drawn charts of random Google results. That is neither the same as making a better xkcd, nor is it (exactly) copying xkcd. I think most would even agree it would not be a webcomic. Don't quote out of context, and learn to troll.
carl has actually previously asked if xkcdsucks tshirts would be viable
ReplyDeleteanother reason to hate him!
seriously though carl, please don't
Anon 5:32: Agreed. I was somewhat into math back in high school (or our equivalent school form) but now I'm only interested in what appears practical to me - i.e. what I can imagine to be useful in a program. Although that generally covers a lot I'm more interested in actual software development than kinda "just knowing" about math things. (Does that exclude me from "nerd culture"?)
ReplyDeleteAlthough some logarithms (2, sometimes 10) are often useful, logarithmus naturalis isn't as often. I only ever used simple calculus stuff in any program too. (Now whether that says something about me as a programmer is open for debate.)
I don't think delving into niche things really was what made the early xkcd better: true, he did it a lot, but it was mostly (as far as I understand them, anyway) somehow connected to an interesting observation or a joke in a way that made sense. Now, he's just making interchangeable (!) references to memes/concepts and/or draws something wacky and/or types wacky phrases into Google. (Most of the memes now are common internet denominator too.)
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/002279.html
ReplyDeletehttp://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1762
ReplyDeletehaha questionable content and xkcd are merging.
it's like some terrible maths and relationship-based episode of power rangers.
I'm not sure if some of the adjectives in the latest comic even work grammatically in the construction Randall is using. You wouldn't say "very peristrionic" or "very stochastic", either, because it's not the sort of quality that can be graded. Either something pertains to pigeons or it doesn't, just as you can't be "a little bit pregnant" or "incredibly blue-eyed".
ReplyDeleteSorry, linguistics is a liberal art!
"just as you can't be..."incredibly blue-eyed"."
ReplyDeleteYou clearly haven't read a lot of adjective writing in your time.
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1458.html
ReplyDeletehttp://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1640.html
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2058.html
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2317.html
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2635.html
parodies of xkcd
Someone who's been pregnant for a month is "a little bit pregnant." Someone who's been pregnant for eight months is not.
ReplyDeleteanon those are hilarious, in ways the author probably didn't intend.
ReplyDeleteIrregular webcomic is mostly a long series of cheap jokes, usually devolving to one of its many running gags or a pun. That fourth one is just a statement about how ridiculously awesome wolverine is.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it would be interesting to see someone here do another review like the one about QC. May I recommend Sluggy Freelance.
@Anon 12:37: Math is a liberal art, too. The liberal arts are the fields of study which are not technical, vocational, or professional, e.g. law and engineering are not liberal arts, but biology and mathematics are.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you can't just apply your own intuition about language and declare it to be the truth. It's all well and good to say, "Well, [I believe that] pregnancy and stochasticism are decidedly not continua, and are in fact discrete states!" But in linguistics—real linguistics, not armchair grammarianism—you have to support hypotheses with experimental data and studies and whatnot, or else it's just meaningless hypothesizing.
Anon 7:13
ReplyDeleteIsn't that only if you're a descriptivist?
If you're a prescrip[tivist then surely certain words occupy discrite binary states just because that's the way the grammar works?
Like if you held a poll and 99% of the public thought 3+3=89 doesn't mean that fact becomes true.
I donno- just a question
First of all, prescriptivists are stupid because they are essentially creating a disconnect between language and communication.
ReplyDeleteSecond, 12:37 wasn't talking about what is correct, they were talking about what people would say, and seeing as people would add intensifiers to words with literal definitions that refer to dichotomies (a little bit pregnant), that's stupid. It is double stupid because even in the case of the scaler ones, it's just as semantically incorrect. "bored as shit"? Shit is inanimate, it can't be bored!
oh okay gotcha
ReplyDeleteHey guys, can you please help me?
ReplyDeleteI don't get the newest SMBC.
Yes, I understand, you never installed Debian.
ReplyDelete