If you get this, you're a geek
Category: Humor
Posted on: August 29, 2006 1:51 PM, by PZ Myers
It's the second day of fall classes. I must be a little punch-drunk, what with all the obscure humor going up today, so forgive me.
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Comments
Yea, I saw that earlier and didn't get it...
I demand an explanation!!
Posted by: Peter Z. | August 29, 2006 1:57 PM
man sudo
noob
Posted by: eric | August 29, 2006 2:02 PM
Peter:
Google "sudo"
Posted by: Gaurav | August 29, 2006 2:02 PM
Yes, please explain :-)
Posted by: flame821 | August 29, 2006 2:03 PM
In my new workplace we are a lot of geeks, but they are - gasp - microsoft geeks!
We can laugh at the lunch table over stuff like 24 Hours Ip addresses (starting with 292), but if I showed them this cartoon tomorrow no one will understand!
One of my coworkers was talking about how he mostly use keyboard shortcuts, to avoid damages to his shoulder, and I replied, that it was a curse with all these point and click interfaces. All you relly need is a Bourne again shell, and vi
Oh and an explanation for the joke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo
Posted by: Soren Kongstad | August 29, 2006 2:03 PM
Explaining it wouldn't make it funny to a non-geek, because both the content and the style is geek humor, but wikipedia for those that are curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo
Posted by: Diogenes | August 29, 2006 2:04 PM
google:
Sudo (superuser do) allows a system administrator to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands
ahhhh, now it makes sense, thank you
Posted by: flame821 | August 29, 2006 2:04 PM
push(@traits, "geeky")
Posted by: gregonomic | August 29, 2006 2:17 PM
I partly got it. That what happens when expiement with Linux on a vitural machine.
There is hope for me...
Posted by: Babbler | August 29, 2006 2:19 PM
What, no password authentication?
I wouldn't want this guy on my mac.
But it would have been uber geeky if the guy said:
Posted by: Pete | August 29, 2006 2:29 PM
And why do you call this brilliantly funny cartoon "obscure?"
It was intelligently designed, obviously.
Posted by: Doc Bill | August 29, 2006 2:33 PM
the drawing sucks, but joke is great !!
Posted by: Ijon Tichy | August 29, 2006 2:42 PM
OH NO!
Aughh!
Posted by: Warren | August 29, 2006 2:43 PM
Pete - maybe you can submit that as a patch to the toon's original author?
(Hee. No rule. Hee.)
Posted by: sammy | August 29, 2006 2:43 PM
Speaking as a geek, I'm not sure it's all that funny. "Make it yourself" really botches the whole metaphor. It should be more along the lines of "You don't have permission to make a sandwich." If you could make it yourself, you wouldn't need sudo.
Posted by: PaulC | August 29, 2006 2:44 PM
Hmm thinking more about it, isn't this a theistic joke?
It depends on the existence of a superuser, with unrestricted priviliges?
Posted by: Soren Kongstad | August 29, 2006 2:59 PM
Left: "make me a sandwich"
Right: "NO"
Left: sudo / make me a sandwich
Right: "OK. YOU ARE A SANDWICH".
Suitably translated for TTX, that
was a geek kneeslapper in the 60s!
Posted by: 60sGeek | August 29, 2006 3:05 PM
I'm not that much of a geek but having had to use 'terminal' a time or two even I got this one.
Posted by: CJ | August 29, 2006 3:10 PM
make: *** No rule to make target `me'. Stop.
And just as a note, sudo on many configurations will not require a password if you have used the command recently and already put in a password.
Posted by: plunge | August 29, 2006 3:14 PM
It should be pointed out, both for proper attribution purposes and 'isn't that frackin' cool' purposes, that the creator of the cartoon, Randall Munroe, is the same guy who did the 'Science. It just works, bitches" cartoon that PZ linked to awhile back as well.
My own personal favorite, though, is this one (http://xkcd.com/c91.html):
Welcome to text-only Counterstrike.
You are in a dark, outdoor map.
> GO NORTH
You have been pwned by a grue.
Posted by: David Wintheiser | August 29, 2006 3:39 PM
$ cat ~/me.txt
#!/bin/bash
echo "Geek"
exit 0
Posted by: Heliologue | August 29, 2006 3:42 PM
ha ha. I get it. It IS funny.
Posted by: JM | August 29, 2006 3:49 PM
Is that StickmanStickman? Is he writing again, or is that from the archives?
Posted by: Carlie | August 29, 2006 3:55 PM
Okay, I didn't know what "sudo" meant when I first saw the cartoon, but now I do, and still I don't really get it. Sudo gives someone executive privleges, right? It doesn't force people to do things they don't want to do. I agree with PaulC
Posted by: Comstock | August 29, 2006 3:55 PM
sudo gedit /home/iamageek.ouch
Posted by: Gon | August 29, 2006 4:03 PM
LOL! Very Funny!
Comstock, if you try to do anything important without sudo the system says "NO", but if you use sudo you can do whatever you want in the system, I think it's a great joke
Posted by: VeryGood | August 29, 2006 4:23 PM
Would have been funnier as "sudo !!".
Posted by: todd. | August 29, 2006 4:39 PM
I don't know anything about web-stuff, working mostly with a baby. I took the cartoon as an expression of the way you talk to an infant. "Come back here" and "Molly, come back here" are two separate expressions to a baby, and while it wasn't really funny it was awfully familiar.
Posted by: NickM | August 29, 2006 4:39 PM
I don't get it, which would be a cause for celebration, except I fear the reverse isn't true -- just because I don't get it doesn't mean I'm not a geek.
But it is a cause for cautious optimism. :-)
Posted by: George Cauldron![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
|
August 29, 2006 4:48 PM
Reminds me to work when the CEO asks for something.
Posted by: Sebastian | August 29, 2006 5:09 PM
rtfm
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | August 29, 2006 5:27 PM
My favorite geek joke on a T shirt was:
rm -rf /bin/lauden
Posted by: jim | August 29, 2006 5:28 PM
[bookmarks this thread under TEH Funny]
Posted by: JackGoff | August 29, 2006 6:31 PM
Wow, I actually get that one. I'm going to go try it on my husband now. He'll get a kick out of that. :-)
Posted by: Cassandra | August 29, 2006 6:59 PM
Hey, I'm also a Microsoft geek (shame on me), but I got it.
Posted by: MartÃn Pereyra | August 29, 2006 8:52 PM
My favourite geek joke shibboleth (if you get it, you're a geek) is this joke:
I guess that dates me to back when computers were steam-powered!
Posted by: Monado | August 29, 2006 9:15 PM
Well... since we are celebrating our geekiness, I will go off topic and report that I received my Darwin bobblehead from the SIUC folks today and it ROCKS!! By far the highest quality bobblehead I have ever seen. I placed him on the front table during my Principles of Biology lecture. He bobbled positively when I was looking for reinforcement on some of the important points I was making. The students learned like CRAZY! It was a great morning.
Uncle Don
Posted by: Don Culberson | August 29, 2006 10:42 PM
Totally hilarious! BTW, blogging in bed. :)
Posted by: Geeky Mom | August 29, 2006 10:43 PM
> stop laughing
Ahahahahahaha!
> sudo stop laughing
Ah... that's better. And the coffee missed my PowerBook, thank goodness :-D I don't fancy taking it apart again like when I accidentally spilt Ribena all over it...
Posted by: Peter Barber | August 29, 2006 11:56 PM
Are you pretending to understand this PZ?
Where's the password request?
Biologists!
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | August 30, 2006 1:34 AM
Pete showed himself as the only geek true here. Except on the One True Unix it goes:
It was the GNU hackers (remember, Gnu's Not Unix) who changed it to "No rule to make target..." -- the humorless louts.Posted by: idlemind | August 30, 2006 8:43 AM
I use sudo all the time -- I run my own server, my laptop is unix-based. I even worked for 3 years as system administrator for a VAX 11/750, back in the late 80s, so I do have a little bit of techie geek cred.
Is BSD unique? When I type sudo the first time, it asks a password; for the next 5 minutes, it won't ask again (unless I override that with sudoers and the passwd_timeout parameter).
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
|
August 30, 2006 8:58 AM
If you understand this as a joke, you are a communist.
Posted by: Lolman | August 30, 2006 9:17 AM
The 5 minute timeout is standard on all *nix flavors I've worked on. There's also "NOPASSWD: ALL" if you're really lazy.
Posted by: eric | August 30, 2006 9:36 AM
I guess I'm the only one who got a laugh out of the comic and had the premise wrong the whole time. I thought it was some play on the popularity of Sudoku puzzles, so the stick figure being told to make a sammich was thus convinced on the second go-around based on an addiction to said puzzles.
Perhaps that was very obtuse of me to come up with that, but only glancing at it quickly, that's what I processed. =/
Posted by: BlueIndependent | August 30, 2006 10:11 AM
> Sudo gives someone executive privleges, right? It doesn't force people to do things they don't want to do. I agree with PaulC
No, that's a misunderstanding of sudo; the joke works excellently. sudo doesn't give your user more permissions than it had before, it makes the SUperuser DO the command you'd typed, using their uid rather than yours. At that point, it makes perfect sense to use a metaphor of the user making the sandwich changing from the unprivileged to privileged user.
- Chris.
Posted by: Chris | August 30, 2006 12:23 PM
I login to Maria my wife (and my Mac which is named Cooper) as root/superuser all the time when I want to get something done.... Unfortunately, Maria is always changing the password and kicking me out :) I play nice and get it back from time to time, but I really wish I could just load her up with a "Media Edition", I'd love to have a remote control with a mute button. You other guy geeks know what I mean :)
Dichosa
Posted by: dichosa | August 30, 2006 4:34 PM
"You other guy geeks know what I mean :)"
No, you lost them at "my wife."
Posted by: Jordan | August 30, 2006 5:19 PM
So I'm a geek now?! When in the hell did that happen!? :)
Posted by: mGee | August 30, 2006 8:37 PM
George Cauldron: Quite true. It doesn't say "if and only if you get this, you're a geek."
Monado: That one is amazing. I consider it one of the best science jokes ever.
"Wife, media edition"? That sounds awfully sexist, unless of course you volunteer to become HusbandDOS and limit yourself to short filenames or something.
Posted by: Keith Douglas | August 30, 2006 8:48 PM
Got mole problems?
Call Avogadro: 602-21415
Posted by: Graculus | August 30, 2006 9:12 PM
Yep, I'm a geek.
Posted by: Flarn | August 30, 2006 9:35 PM
Shouldn't that be more like:
"Configure me a sandwhich"
"You have the stuff to make a sandwich."
"Make me a sandwhich."
Posted by: cooper | August 30, 2006 10:06 PM
$ configure me a sandwich
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking target system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... HELL NO!
error: user cannot tell computer from kitchen
Posted by: Rick @ shrimp and grits | August 30, 2006 10:24 PM
Favorite geek joke:
"There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't."
Posted by: Virge | August 31, 2006 1:18 AM
A great example of why you do not want everyone to have sudo rights!
Posted by: Lynoure | August 31, 2006 1:41 AM
The cartoon is from xkcd.com.
Do you have permission to post it here?
Posted by: copyright | August 31, 2006 9:49 AM
@ copyright
The xkcd.com page has this at the bottom:
"This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). "
So I would say that by not including the attribution he is violating the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License by posting it here. Simple remedy is to post the attribution above with the comic.
Posted by: Chris | August 31, 2006 2:06 PM
thanks. that was the best laugh I've had this week. 10/10
Posted by: Chris | August 31, 2006 7:14 PM
You all know about thinkgeek.com already, right? Great place for presents of all kinds.
Posted by: Carlie | August 31, 2006 8:05 PM
REALLY good. I and my friends had a great time laughing at it.
Posted by: Quettaheru | September 7, 2006 6:09 AM
The SU is not Super User it is Subsitute User. And SUDO can be configured to not ask for a password. Nothing wrong with the mechanics of the joke. And it's fun too!
Posted by: UrbanSage | September 11, 2006 12:55 PM
That should be:
push @{$self->{traits}}, 'geeky';
Posted by: Mushuweasel | September 11, 2006 1:39 PM
You can allways make a sandwich, but you need to sudo in order to eat it.
Oh, and take a look at this:
http://nixpub.com/?p=30
Posted by: Gerard | September 12, 2006 3:38 AM
Hello! i am a begginer and my english is bad.
I have a question. How can i suscribe to comments?, i know the metod for suscribe posts and new histories but i don't know how alert me when a new comment is publicated in this blog.
thanks and sorry for my bad english.
Posted by: L1 mediated gene breaking | January 31, 2007 2:00 PM
I think, and find a really smart team to work with.
Posted by: Porno | January 17, 2008 8:56 PM