Server Problem
Server Problem
[Cueball at his computer calls out for Megan who comes walking in to the frame.] Cueball: I, um, messed up my server again. Megan: I'll take a look. You have the weirdest tech problems.
[Zoom in on only Megan who uses the root prompt on the computer.] ~# ls
[Megan stands next to the computer, Cueball sits behind her on his chair. The computer returns the following:] /usr/share/Adobe/doc/example/android_vm/root/sbin/ls.jar: Error: Device is not responding.
[Megan turns towards Cueball who lifts his hands with palm up.] Megan: What did you do!? Cueball: Maybe the device is busy. Should I try it later? Megan: You should shut down this system and wait for the Singularity.

Cueball has messed up his Linux server , apparently not for the first time . Megan offers to take a look at the PC, and she casually types in "ls" — a very basic command that lists the files in the current directory. The computer returns a bizarre error message — it trips over one of the simplest commands, indicating that Cueball's system is messed up. Really messed up.
The /usr/share path should indicate "architecture-independent shared data". Adobe is the software company that produces Acrobat and Photoshop. Android VM would be a virtual machine for Android. The .jar extension suggests a Java-language program. None of Adobe software, Android, or Java are needed to run "ls". All of the above have nothing to do with each other, with the exception that Android applications (but not core command line utilities, like ls) are written in Java. Also, basic system executables like "ls" would never be placed within /usr/share or within some "example" or "doc" directory. On Linux, executables don't have filename extensions like ".exe" or ".jar". Core executables such as "ls" are often shipped with the operating system as binaries, so the presence of "ls.jar" suggests Cueball was attempting to unorthodoxly replace the existing executable with his own Java implementation. Additionally, it would require the folder to be within $PATH . In other words, the error message implies that the server is in a very bad state.
In the last frame Megan is bewildered by this result and asks "what did you do?" . Cueball suggest a course of action which mimics a common error message: "______ is busy, please try again later." Obviously he has seen this type of message frequently enough to try it as a general cure in all similar cases (even scarier, there is a good possibility that his tech issues are so bizarre that it often works for him).
Megan then tells Cueball to "shut down the system and wait for the singularity ," referring to a hypothetical future event when superintelligence can be artificially created. Since future superintelligent humans/computers transcend our comprehension, we can't predict or even understand what will happen after the singularity. One interpretation is that Megan is telling Cueball that his system is such a mess that it will take a post-singularity superintelligence to fix it (or run it in its current state, as only an intelligence beyond present comprehension would be capable of doing). It also indicates that either 1782: Team Chat or 1668: Singularity could be the sequel to this comic.
The title text is yet another protip from Randall . Ray Kurzweil is an author and futurist who has talked and written much about a technological singularity . Presumably, mangling the jargon (by confusing the concept of the "singularity" with the science fiction term " cyberspace ") is something Kurzweil (as an expert) would find annoying. Also, as Randall later pointed out in 1573: Cyberintelligence , the word has not really been used for a decade...
[Cueball at his computer calls out for Megan who comes walking in to the frame.] Cueball: I, um, messed up my server again. Megan: I'll take a look. You have the weirdest tech problems.
[Zoom in on only Megan who uses the root prompt on the computer.] ~# ls
[Megan stands next to the computer, Cueball sits behind her on his chair. The computer returns the following:] /usr/share/Adobe/doc/example/android_vm/root/sbin/ls.jar: Error: Device is not responding.
[Megan turns towards Cueball who lifts his hands with palm up.] Megan: What did you do!? Cueball: Maybe the device is busy. Should I try it later? Megan: You should shut down this system and wait for the Singularity.
