Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 May 2

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May 2

Oldest BLP?

Other than supercentenarians notable solely because of their great age, who is currently the oldest subject of a BLP on Wikipedia? —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 05:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The oldest living person is notable, so the answer should always be at the top of List of living supercentenarians. Dismas|^(talk) 05:32, 2 May 2011 (UTC) Sorry, I misunderstood the question. So you're looking for someone who is old but not notable only for being old, right? Dismas|^(talk) 05:34, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I googled [oldest living actors 2011] and the answer for that profession, at least appears to be Frederica Sagor Maas, who's 110 going on 111. She's number 71 on List of living supercentenarians, of which only a few actually have articles, so the answer should be easy to determine. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:45, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Dismas, yes, I was wondering last night who was the oldest notable living person on Wikipedia was, then I realised that supercentenarians would automatically be notable, so decided to exclude them (unless they were notable for other reasons). Bugs - Freerica Dagor Maas is going to take some beating, thanks! Unless anyone can do better...

Incidentally, looking at category:2011 births, the youngest BLP is currently Princess Josephine of Denmark, by 26 minutes from her twin brother. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 05:55, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Given the list of the super-elderly, would it make sense to create an article with the "super-young", i.e. notable living individuals under some arbitrary age, such as 5 or 10? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:00, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Possibly there could be a list of children who are notable for their own achievements rather than just being born into the right family (i.e. notable from birth), such as Shirley Temple would have been if WP had been around in the early 1930s. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 06:11, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Mutya Orquia seems to be the youngest meeting that criteria at present. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 06:21, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

"...those criteria" or "...that criterion". Caesar's Daddy (talk) 06:57, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Oops, yes :-) —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 07:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Or "them criterions". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

^{As in "Them dang criterions have been diggin' up the lawn again"? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.208 (talk) 17:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)}

It appears the answer would be Leila Denmark, who's 113, and was co-developer of a whooping cough vaccine in the 1920s or so. Hence she might be notable for something besides just being old. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:57, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Is the Abbotabad compound on google earth?

Is the Abbotabad compound on google earth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.190.133 (talk) 12:00, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried looking for it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:13, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Just Google it![1] The satellite photo on Google Maps shows little detail beyond a rectangular compound.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:21, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

That rectangular thing apparently is the Military Academy. Precisely where the bin Laden compound was in relation to the PMA is currently unclear. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:08, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec)The PMA and Kakul Road show up on Google Maps fairly clearly. Not knowing exactly where the bin Laden refuge was in relation to that, it's hard to say. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:27, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

We had a map on the "Death of..." article last night. No idea where it's gone to now though. Dismas|^(talk) 19:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

This morning's news reports were saying the compound was "100 yards" from the Military Academy, although I would imagine that was 100 meters. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

BBC use Google here DuncanHill (talk) 21:45, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Using that BBC link and Google Maps, I was able to locate it quickly. There's a marker on it as well once you zoom in enough. Dismas|^(talk) 03:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, within the last 24 hours, the OBL hideout has been labeled. (I'm assuming it wasn't labeled previously. If it was, the "deathers" might have a point.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:44, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

And I was thinking that if that marker had been there all the time, why did it take 8 years of military intelligence when they could have just looked it up on Google maps? Astronaut (talk) 11:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't exactly jump out at you unless you know what you're looking for. And with OBL, the Pakistani secret service kept tipping him off when there was any risk, so although they knew about it for some time, making sure he was physically there and wouldn't get clued in was the tricky part. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Bugs, Citation Needed. My God, do you have any evidence for any of your assertions? While it's generally agreed that there are Al-Qaeda sympythisers in the Pakistani military, has there been any evidence that they ever knew where Bin-Laden was? I didn't think so. Buddy431 (talk) 17:20, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Try reading some of the coverage,[2] and otherwise try to confine your personal attacks to the talk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

What personal attacks? Buddy431 is quite correctly asking you to provide references for your assertions, because you hardly ever do so. If you see that as a personal attack, you need to stop being so defensive. One way is stop treating the ref desks as your own personal chat room with the rest of the world. You having a dozen or more bites at the cherry in a single thread is far from uncommon. Thread after thread after thread ..... If you had less to say about every damn topic under the sun, and nothing to say about the majority of them, you wouldn't expose yourself to the reactions you seem to thrive on. A couple of years ago I characterised your approach as "attention-seeking" and I've never had any reason to change my mind. And before you go off the deep end about that, it was not a personal attack; it was a label I applied to your behaviour. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Apparently you didn't see the stupid comment he made on my talk page, nor the citation I added to show y'all my source and which proves what a stupid comment it was - a source which, by the way, was pointed out to me by another wikipedia editor. And by the way, "stupid comment" isn't a personal attack, it's about behavior. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:02, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. But why would you bring issues from your talk page here? And why would I know what goes on there anyway? Believe it or not, not everybody craves checking out your talk page 50 times a day - or ever - no matter how much attention you might seek. So anyway, you now agree that Buddy431 did not personally attack you in this thread, as you claimed he did. A retraction might be in order. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't agree. Just that the comment on my talk page was worse than the one above. He attacked without any facts to back himself up, which is ironic given his gripes about citations. Oh, and one more thing, sir... stop already with the dime store psychological evaluations. You have no clue. And besides that, medical advice is against the rules here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the source Bugs, I appreciate it. I encourage you to provide more sources for your assertions in the future. In any case, which comment did you see as a personal attack: [3], [4], or [5]? I really didn't mean to offend you personally, and if I did, I'm sorry. Buddy431 (talk) 22:43, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

And I'm sorry for getting cross, and I will try and do better with sourcing. The thing is, oftentimes I'm stating summaries of different stuff I've read in different places, and it can be hard to go back and come up with the sources. It took me awhile to find the source I had bookmarked about the duplicity of the Pakistan security service. I should say the "alleged" duplicity. Anyway, I've got a hunch we're going to learn a lot more about that over time, as Pakistan's got some serious 'splainin' to do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Airplane

Can anyone tell me why we are told to switch off our cell phones in airplanes especially during take off and landing??? THANK YOU. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.197.236.129 (talk) 16:51, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

See mobile phones on aircraft. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I see it mentions social issues as a secondary reason. I suspect it's the primary reason. They don't want fistfights breaking out. Some airlines used to have in-flight phone service. You would slide your credit card into a slot and the phone would release. It cost like 2 dollars a minute, which tended to keep the calls short. I haven't seen one of those for awhile, though. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:00, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised that article doesn't mention interference with the cel network. An engineer with a cel-phone company told me that if you're in the air (or even in a boat in certain places) you have good line-of-sight reception to an unusually large number of cels. This inevitably means that you're within range of multiple cels working on the same frequencies, potentially causing interference and dropped calls.

I assume the guy knew what he was talking about, but this was years ago, perhaps the system works differently now. APL (talk) 18:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't heard of any prohibition on making calls from the top of a hill, so I'm sure the technology now automatically connects to the strongest signal (or the best one that has spare bandwidth). There might be a problem for the network with rapidly moving phones because of the reuse of the same channels in alternate cells, but then why isn't there a ban on phones in trains and fast cars? Planes with a picocell should have no restriction on phones. Dbfirs 18:33, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

My expereinces show that leaving your cell on is a bad idea because the plane is moving so fast your phone is finding a new cell tower every few seconds, and that drains the battery very quickly. Googlemeister (talk) 18:43, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm doubtful 'fast cars' are really as much of a problem to the network even on say the parts of the German Autobahnen without speed limits, as planes Nil Einne (talk) 20:33, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Find me a car that does mach .85 and I might agree with you. Besides, just because there is no speed limit on parts of the autobahn doesn't mean you can drive your car flat out. There is other traffic. And a long road trip at 60 mph will also drain your battery, just that the impact will be spread out over a 10x longer time frame. Googlemeister (talk) 20:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused by your statement. I pointed out that contrary to what Dbfirs said (and my statement was in reply to him/her hence the indenting) even on the parts of German Autobahnen's without speed limits it seems quite unlikely cars are as much as a problem to networks as planes. (I choose the parts of the German Autobahnen without speed limits because that's one of the places you're most likely to find very fast cars moving between mobile phone towers so one of the best places to address Dbfirs point. In a race track cars tend to go around in circles so don't tend to see so many towers and speed trials and record attempts like the Bonneville Salt Flats and Black Rock Desert there probably aren't many towers period. And in any case the number of vehicles involved races and speed trials tends to be miniscule.) And you seem to be saying the same thing. So I'm not really sure why you need more evidence to agree with me. But anyway since you do need more evidence the maximum recorded speed by any car in recent times on the German Autobahnen is around 330km/h [6] (I checked before posting but decided not to bother including as the speed was higher then I thought so the point wasn't as obvious) which is likely to be around 3 times lower then the ground speed of most commercial aircraft. And the average speed of cars even on the parts of the German Autobahnen without speed limits is as you pointed out likely to be much lower. Other then the differences in speeds, fast moving cars also don't have the clear line of sight planes have (sometime I forgot early and came back to add only to find the confusing response). Nil Einne (talk) 21:00, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen a commercial flight take off or land at anywhere near to the speed of sound, though I agree that the approach might, in some cases, be faster than Autobahn speed. Dbfirs 08:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Or a military flight either, but the take off and landing bits are a small portion of the total journey. Googlemeister (talk) 13:41, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, but the OP asked especially about take-off and landing. Dbfirs 06:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If you're trying to set a land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats, hopefully you're not going to be using your cellphone while you drive. :) Franamax (talk) 19:11, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

technological problems are an excuse, nothing more. Mobile phones are prohibited because someone in the Bush administration got paranoid that terrorists would use them to coordinate a 9/11 style attack. Since there's no actual teeth to the proscription (there's nothing that blocks cell phones, and terrorists are not likely to be cowed by the stewardess' firm request), it doesn't really do anything except inconvenience reasonable passengers. such is life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ludwigs2 (talk • contribs)

By my statement above, it is actually more inconvinient to have a dead battery after a short flight then to be denied the use of my phone during said short flight (cell reception at 7 miles up is far from great BTW) Googlemeister (talk) 19:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

true as stated, but phones are not banned because of short battery life, and the government did not pass this rule to keep your cell phone from dying. --Ludwigs2 19:16, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

"The government": you all talk as if Bush ruled the world. Dream on. They're also banned on Australian domestic flights, the international flights I've been on, and I would assume pretty much world-wide. The Mobile phones on aircraft article, apart from a token nod to other countries, is written as if the US was the only country that exists, or matters. It needs substantial improvement. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:22, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

(EC) Hmm the Bush administration is the reason the British Civil Aviation Authority recommended in May 2000 the portable phones continue to be prohibited? Interesting I never knew the British (or is it the Americans?) invented time travel Nil Einne (talk) 20:23, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

That's an interesting theory, Ludwigs2, except that for U.S. flights the ban on airborne cellular phone usage under 47 C.F.R. § 22.925 was implemented in 1991—a full decade before the September 11th attacks. Heck, it was three years before Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor broached the subject of flying jets into U.S. landmarks in bestselling fiction form. The regulation was – and still remains – the responsibility of the Federal Communications Commission (charged with managing radio traffic), not the Federal Aviation Administration.

As for why the rule might be more stringently enforced on takeoff and landing—those are the times when things are most likely to go wrong. Aircrew want to have passengers who will hear instructions on the first announcement, they want to have passengers alert to their surroundings (as much as possible), and they don't want small, hard projectiles launched from head height and flying about the cabin in the event of a survivable crash. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:52, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

ALright, I withdraw my cynical theory. --Ludwigs2 21:19, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

On 9/11/01, cellphones were used in violation of the rules, on United Airlines Flight 93. Of course, the flight's rules had already been breached by the hijackers. As far as we know, (1) the cellphones worked fine; and (2) the cellphones didn't cause the plane to crash. The crash was done "manually". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:28, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The use of mobile phones on planes has been the subject of ongoing review in Europe. However, it seems many people would rather see the ban continue for a variety of reasons including 'better safe then sorry' and for the sake of a quiet time aboard the plane.

In my own opinion, I regularly fly on Friday evening and I am often amazed by the number of people who feel the need to carry on dealing with emails on their Blackberry/iPhone even though it is the end of the working week; they grudgingly turn them off while flying, then hurriedly turn them on again as soon as we've landed and carry on chasing up their emails. Geez, give it a rest! Astronaut (talk) 11:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

We invent technology for our convenience, and then become slaves to it. I wonder how Americans ever got anything accomplished before, say, the telegraph was invented. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

section on arnold school blackpool famous old boys.

surely bob hesford was not born in 1916? as he would have been playing top class rugby as an OAP - impossible. who was the idiot who could not be bothered to check his facts. Let me guess that the date shown was in fact possibly his FATHERS birth date and he did not go to arnold school but was a famous football goal keeper for Huddersfield town.!!!!! Am i right? tony fawley —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony fawley (talk • contribs) 17:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I made an alteration after reading your comment, but now I see that there are two Bob Hesfords. The rugby player was born on March 26th 1951. Do we have an article for him? Dbfirs 18:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)