Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 December 26

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December 26

A Captain the Head of Guinea?

How did a Captain, a mere junior military officer, become the interim head of state of Guinea during the 2008 Guinean coup d'état? Why not a General? Acceptable (talk) 00:25, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

It's possible he's just a figurehead - the public face of the coup while the generals remain as the "power behind the throne". Exxolon (talk) 00:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's the rank per se, but rather means, motive, and opportunity. Although the Wikipedia article on Samuel Doe doesn't mention his rank, he was a master sergeant when he helped overthrow Liberian president William R. Tolbert, Jr., in 1980. Doe remained in power till 1990. --- OtherDave (talk) 03:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

He's not the only one, Muammar al-Gaddafi was a captain and only got the promotion after the coup. Jerry Rawlings was a Flight Lieutenant and Gamal Abdel Nasser wasn't a general either but his group made one president. It may be that there non-general officers have less to lose in a coup. Though it would also depend on their being able to pursade their fellow officers and involve the major part of the countries armed forces. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 12:21, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The other obvious factor is that the people in government often have some say in the appointment of generals and in general who controls the armed forces. They may therefore choose people loyal to them and unlikely to stage coups whereas those who may stage coups are kept at relatively low ranks for precisely that reason Nil Einne (talk) 12:26, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

My understanding was that the coup was basically staged by a cadre of 'junior military officers' - which would explain why one is the leader of the resulting junta. 161.181.153.10 (talk) 21:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

As a rule of thumb, promotion to low and mid officer ranks is based on ability; promotion to high officer ranks is based on politics. --Carnildo (talk) 00:47, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Subtitles

Why do subtitles sometimes show words that are already on the screen? For example, when the words "Joanne Buck: Director" are on the screen, why are they also in subtitles? 60.230.124.64 (talk) 02:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

An educated guess: because those subtitles can also be used to provide the source text for translation into other languages, so that the translation may be performed without the translator actually watching the TV show or movie in question. So in order to translate text that appears on the screen that may be vital to understanding the plot it must also be included in the source text. Then nobody bothers to go back and remove the unnecessary text strings from the original transcript. (There may well be other reasons as well, but my personal experience with localization work has included many instances of comparable situations.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 03:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, at the time of creating the subtitles, it is commonly not known exactly where on screen they will be. That means there is a chance that they will obscure the original "Joanne Buck: Director", and thus it is safer to include it as well. /85.194.44.18 (talk) 10:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

There may also be weird contractual/union rules about credits. I know that in the computer games industry, the rules for presentation of credits are long, complicated and (on occasion) bizarre. SteveBaker (talk) 01:24, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the original poster was referring to credits, but rather a situation where there's a sign that says "Joanne Buck: Director" somewhere on screen. (You're absolutely right about the games industry, though; I just finally got around to completing Crysis a day or two ago, and the list of credits at the end is utterly ridiculous. As it happens, I also decided to wallow in nostalgia tonight and played through Half-Life: Blue Shift for the first time in, what, about eight years, and I was struck by the contrast: the in-game credits on that one included the names of maybe fifteen people and five companies. None of them were even credited with any kinds of titles. I very much doubt you'd see that in any modern game.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 02:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Crysis is a rather special case because it's not just a game - but also a 'game engine' that other games (some from other companies) will use as the core of their operations in the future. Their development team is especially large. They have more engineers working on graphics software alone than comprised the entire game team at my previous job - and more (by far) than the company I'm working on now. Crysis is an impressive achievement - but it cost them dearly to make it - and unless they can make a ton of money from selling the engine - they'll lose money no matter how many copies of the game they ultimately sell.

But as for the credits - I think it's plausible that someone at some time negotiated a rule that accreditation has to be in subtitles as well as 'on screen' for some obscure reason - probably relating to subtitles used in the context of providing translations - and that rule being applied mindlessly in the case of subtitles for the deaf. I don't know for sure though. SteveBaker (talk) 15:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I know -- I wasn't so much referring to the number of people who worked on Crysis; rather, I meant the endless litany of people whose actual connection with the project would've been peripheral at best. I mean, they list the marketing and PR people for literally thirty countries, among other people. But that's EA for you.

...anyway, I'm not sure if I'm being unclear or if I'm just misreading you, but the point I'm making is that I don't think the "Joanne Buck: Director" text mentioned by the original poster refers to the director of the movie, but rather something -- perhaps a sign on someone's desk or something -- that appears in the movie itself. So I don't think accreditation has much to do with it. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:33, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Video Card RAM

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing#Video Card RAM Nil Einne (talk) 10:21, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

foreign born in the US

can anyone tell me in which US city, there is the most conentration of i) indian americans ii) chinese americans iii) japanese americans iv) african americans —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.50.137.154 (talk) 11:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't a European (white) American be foreign born too? Nil Einne (talk) 12:23, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd say they want to know about people born in India, China, Japan, and Africa who are now living in the US. And yes, people born in Europe and now living in the US are also foreign born, but that's not what they were asking about. StuRat (talk) 15:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you asking about people who were born in Africa and live in the U.S. or "African Americans" whose African ancestor were brought to the U.S. as slaves before such importation became illegal in 1808? And do you want the cities with the largest number or the largest percentage of such people? Some small communities have a small population but 100% composed of one such group. Edison (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

i)New York City seems to have the largest number of immigrants from India per [1] . Edison (talk) 19:13, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

i want the largest percentage of the above mentioned groups please tell me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.50.132.53 (talk) 17:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

In general, see Lists of U.S. cities with large ethnic populations or do your own search at the U.S. Census database. 1) We have no article List of U.S. cities with large Indian American populations, but see Millbourne, Pennsylvania which has about 63% Indian American population. 2) See List of U.S. cities with large Chinese American populations and see List of U.S. communities with Asian American majority populations .3)We have no article List of U.S. cities with large Japanese American populations 4) See List of U.S. cities with large African American populations says Detroit is 83.73% African-American. There are some all smaller communities with much larger African-American majorities, as shown at List of U.S. communities with African American majority populations. For instance McMullen, Alabama (population 66) is 100% African American, as is Birdsong, Arkansas (population 40). It is unlikely that any of the inhabitants were born in Africa in the two small communities, but some might have been. Edison (talk) 22:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Missing storage

When one buys, for example, a 4 GB USB drive and plugs it into the computer, there is not actually 4 GB of memory available. Instead, it is always several hundred MB's smaller. The larger the marketed storage capacity, the larger the difference between this marketed value and the actual value. Why does this happen? Is there a name for this phenomenon? Should there not be laws regarding this practice? Acceptable (talk) 18:21, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

There is some disagreement as to how big a GB is. Binary prefix seems to be the most relevant Wikipedia article. Algebraist 18:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's a combination of a couple of factors. One of them is the difference between definitions - see Binary prefix. As far as your computer is concerned, a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, and a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes. But in some contexts (including, conveniently, hard-drive marketing) you use powers of ten instead, so there are 1000 bytes in a kilobyte and 1000 kilobytes in a megabyte. Hence, a binary megabyte ends up being a fairly significant fraction larger than a decimal megabyte. As they're smaller, it entirely makes business sense to sell hard drives in 1000-multiple bytes instead.

The other factor is simply the directory file - when you format it, a hard drive needs to use a certain fraction of itself to store information on where everything else on it is stored. This can be 5% or so of the total capacity - so the larger the hard drive, the larger in absolute terms this file will be. Hence, even once you've figured out the binary/decimal difference in a hard drive's size, you may still find yourself losing several gigabytes in every hundred to the directory file. ~ mazca ^t|c 18:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Then there's also the possibility of bad sectors, although this is more likely on older devices. StuRat (talk) 19:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

And in FAT/FAT32/VFAT formatted flash drives, the file allocation table itself requires some space to be put into, Tohd8BohaithuGh1 (t·c·r) 01:29, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

wiki codes about Sociology,Islamit, international Relations,Journalism

Respected sir i need the best wiki codes of these subjects for Educational purposes. Kindly inform me the exact location of wiki codes Thanx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Awan 2008 (talk • contribs) 18:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by 'wiki codes'? Algebraist 18:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Sociology, Islamit, international Relations, Journalism ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 18:34, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Question: least talked about state

What is the least popular talked about United State? 60.230.124.64 (talk) 22:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

You could try Google. "north dakota" (in quotes) gets 70,900,000 hits, which is the lowest I can find, but I didn't try all of them. Also try Google Trends[2]. That could be taken as the least talked about online, but what do you mean "least talked about"? On TV? Usenet? In person? Radio? Newspapers? In the USA? In the world? --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 23:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

We're wise to your game, buster: If we talk about it enough here, it won't be the least-talked-about. Nice try. Who's the least interesting person on earth? Doesn't the fact that he is the least interesting make him interesting? --Milkbreath (talk) 23:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, you just scored one for the inclusionists! The least notable are now notable! Off to rewrite WP:NOTE. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

@ Milkbreath due to bumped post (naughty sluzz): According to this, you've just given him a nice start,  ;) Julia Rossi (talk) 00:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I just did search on all the state names in Google and got the following counts. Google counts sometimes display weird variations and I think the very low count for Louisiana must be some sort of anomaly, not a meaningful result. And of course the high counts for New York and Washington are because many of the hits on those two will really be for the cities of the same names; similarly Kansas and Oklahoma for the same reason, and Georgia because of the country, and maybe some others. But just for fun, here are the numbers:

    1. "New York"       1,190,000,000   (see note above)
    2.  Washington        703,000,000   (see note above)
    3.  California        618,000,000
    4.  Texas             479,000,000
    5.  Florida           431,000,000
    6.  Georgia           369,000,000   (see note above)
    7.  Virginia          279,000,000
    8.  Ohio              265,000,000
    9.  Michigan          255,000,000
   10.  Illinois          241,000,000
   11.  Colorado          219,000,000
   12.  Arizona           213,000,000
   13.  Hawaii            207,000,000
   14.  Pennsylvania      206,000,000
   15.  Indiana           199,000,000
   16.  Oregon            195,000,000
   17. "New Jersey"       191,000,000
   18.  Massachusetts     187,000,000
   19.  Kansas            185,000,000   (see note above)
   20.  Wisconsin         183,000,000
   21.  Minnesota         179,000,000
   22.  Alaska            176,000,000
   23.  Maryland          172,000,000
   24.  Missouri          162,000,000
   25.  Tennessee         161,000,000
   26. "North Carolina"   160,000,000
   27.  Alabama           158,000,000
   28.  Maine             156,000,000
   29.  Montana           154,000,000
   30.  Oklahoma          153,000,000   (see note above)
   31.  Iowa              153,000,000
   32.  Kentucky          148,000,000
   33.  Utah              145,000,000
   34.  Nevada            139,000,000
   35.  Connecticut       139,000,000
   36.  Mississippi       135,000,000
   37.  Arkansas          129,000,000
   38.  Idaho             124,000,000
   39.  Nebraska          115,000,000
   40. "South Carolina"   114,000,000
   41.  Delaware          111,000,000
   42.  Vermont           108,000,000
   43. "New Mexico"       106,000,000
   44. "New Hampshire"    102,000,000
   45.  Wyoming            96,800,000
   46. "West Virginia"     88,500,000
   47. "Rhode Island"      85,100,000
   48. "South Dakota"      79,400,000
   49. "North Dakota"      76,100,000
   50.  Louisiana          15,800,000   (see note above)

--Anonymous, 01:17 UTC, December 27, 2008.

You must be right about the anomaly, Louisiana gives me 133 million hits at the moment for me. Either that or you spelt it wrong when searching. North Dakota gives me about 80 mill and South 83 mill Nil Einne (talk) 08:41, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Virginia will include West Virginia ... etc. Kittybrewster ☎ 21:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry 'bout this but this thread prompts me to wonder: who is the most recognizable RD'er (Lc and myself excluded)? -hydnjo talk 23:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 00:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes - you've received 100% of the responses! hydnjo talk 00:07, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Some of the best questions are born in caves, and to continue the fun, here's another table. To exclude the ambiguity of Virginia, New York, or Washington, I googled "State of Virginia" and so forth. The table below shows California on top, while New York and Washington moved down three ranks. The ranking in parentheses is from Anonymous' list above with the exception of Louisiana which gets rank 36th, bumping all lower-ranked States down by one rank. Delaware and Connecticut move up more than twenty ranks, Minnesota and Missouri move up more than ten ranks. As predicted, Virginia drops quite a bit, over twenty ranks, but so do Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Anyway, the bottom three ranks are identical on both lists: Rhode Island, South Dakota, and the overall winner of least talked about about States is North Dakota. Maltelauridsbrigge's intuition had it right from the beginning!

Rank	(Rank for name alone)	"State of ..."	Hits on google
1	(3)	California	6,520,000
2	(4)	Texas	4,630,000
3	(5)	Florida	4,260,000
4	(1)	New York	2,990,000
5	(2)	Washington	2'550'000
6	(10)	Illinois	2,370,000
7	(9)	Michigan	2,170,000
8	(8)	Ohio	2,070,000
9	(21)	Minnesota	1,810,000
10	(6)	Georgia	1,590,000
11	(24)	Missouri	1,530,000
12	(17)	New Jersey	1,410,000
13	(22)	Alaska	1,370,000
14	(35)	Connecticut	1,340,000
15	(12)	Arizona	1,270,000
15	(20)	Wisconsin	1,270,000
17	(16)	Oregon	1,220,000
18	(11)	Colorado	1,160,000
19	(28)	Maine	1,130,000
19	(30)	Oklahoma	1,130,000
21	(42)	Delaware	1,080,000
22	(26)	North Carolina	1,050,000
23	(23)	Georgia	1,030,000
24	(13)	Hawaii	1,020,000
25	(15)	Indiana	1,010,000
26	(34)	Nevada	956,000
27	(25)	Tennessee	947,000
28	(7)	Virginia	939,000
29	(31)	Iowa	910,000
30	(46)	Wyoming	894,000
31	(36)	Louisiana	856,000
32	(27)	Alabama	835,000
33	(40)	Nebraska	828,000
34	(33)	Utah	822,000
35	(29)	Montana	774,000
36	(47)	West Virginia	735,000
37	(14)	Pennsylvania	733,000
38	(37)	Mississippi	718,000
39	(38)	Kansas	657,000
40	(45)	New Hampshire	624,000
41	(38)	Arkansas	619,000
42	(43)	Vermont	614,000
43	(44)	New Mexico	582,000
44	(41)	South Carolina	571,000
45	(18)	Massachusetts	564,000
46	(39)	Idaho	558,000
47	(32)	Kentucky	550,000
48	(48)	Rhode Island	461,000
49	(49)	South Dakota	352,000
50	(50)	North Dakota	242,000

---Sluzzelin talk 00:36, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Sluzzelin, did you write a program or did you do it the "old-fashioned" way? hydnjo talk 00:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I do everything the old fashioned way. I haven't written a program in over fifteen years! I also forgot to mention, that I'm of course aware that googling "state of ..." is not necessarily a better approximation of "least talked about". It's just another angle, and it seems to confirm North Dakota's notability for being non-notable. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:46, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Talk about dedication, now that's impressive OR indeed - Geesh! hydnjo talk 01:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

What can I say? I tested a couple of states and found the results sufficiently interesting to turn it into refdesk-spam. I had fun, did it while listening to the radio, and it didn't take as long as it seems (35 minutes). ---Sluzzelin talk 01:47, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll have some of what you're listening to, 35 minutes is quite a bit. "Some of the best questions are born in caves" is one of the best quotes I've seen lately - thanks for your insight and personal dedication to accuracy :) hydnjo talk 02:08, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Alireza Eftekhari on IranianRadio.com - Traditional (iTunes). Great for humming numbers into your short-time memory while jumping from window to another. Sacrilegious. :-) ---Sluzzelin talk 02:36, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

And so it seems that after all of this conversation, North Dakota takes top honors - congratulations North Dakodians, you've gotten top honors in this quirky survey. Hey, someone had to win :) hydnjo talk 02:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

To be fair, the significant drop by Massachusetts and Pennsylvania that Sluzzelin mentions above is probably due to the fact that they're not "states", they're officially commonwealths. At the moment, I get 2,680,000 GHits for "Commonwealth of Massachusetts". jeffjon (talk) 14:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)