Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 March 29

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March 29

theme intros of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 version

how many intro versions did they do for the 1987 series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the whole 10 seasons? Is there a website that shows the intros? I only North American. Not Japanese nor European.

I think there were two. I stopped watching before the second, but occasionally heard it. Awful. This allegedly complete compilation seems to agree. About the two, I mean. Not the awful. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:43, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Music of the trailer Get mean

Dear WikiProject Rock music! In the trailer of spaghetti western Get mean hear this rock music, but the title and singer is unknown. This is not the music of the film. What is a song? Doncsecz^talk 18:47, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Star Trek Computer Wrong

I figure this had to be a plot point at some time in all the shows and movies... Was the computer on Star Trek ever wrong? You know how you go to Google and you type "star trek computer wrong" and it brings up countless articles about how the latest Star Trek movie got it all wrong? Did Captain Kirk ever say something like "Computer: What kind of ship is that?" and the computer said "You can save 10% on shipping - just click here!" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.139.68.215 (talk) 19:26, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

No, because she was married to the boss. μηδείς (talk) 20:09, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I can think of at least one episode, Court Martial (Star Trek: The Original Series), where the computer was fallible, and it was an important part of the plot. Spock was consistently able to beat it at 3D chess, and pointed out that this shouldn't happen, as the computer is programmed with all of his knowledge of the game, and therefore the best he should be able to do is get a draw from it. Therefore, he concluded, somebody had been messing with the computer.

Of course, the reality is that any type of hacking of the computer would likely have no effect on it's ability to play chess or else make it completely incapable of playing, but I could imagine a scenario, say, where most of the computer's game memory is re-allocated to whatever the nefarious program was doing, leaving it with insufficient memory to look ahead as many moves as it previously did.

Later in that episode it was revealed that the computer's memory had been sabotaged, resulting in a video being out of order. Of course, a video is data, while playing chess is programming, but they seemed to conflate the two in that episode. StuRat (talk) 21:11, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Then there was a Star Trek TNG episode that made me laugh, where they asked the computer where a crew member was and it responded that he was not onboard the Enterprise. I would have said "Listen you stupid bucket of bolts, if a crew member ever disappears from the ship without having been given authorization to leave, tell somebody, got it ?" StuRat (talk) 21:19, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

And there's the Jack the Ripper episode. But these seem more external influences than fallibility. μηδείς (talk) 21:28, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the computer was taken over by aliens or reprogrammed several times, including once where it started flirting with Kirk. StuRat (talk) 21:33, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Music Artists' Discographies

In the discography for musical artists, they list how much an album has sold in the U.S. and world wide. Are the U.S. sales numbers factored into the world numbers on these pages, or are they seperated? The reason I ask is because some numbers for total world wide sales for certain artists don't add up to what is posted in the history of the artists' sales on the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.247.4.167 (talk) 21:42, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean those listed in Wikipedia, or elsewhere ? StuRat (talk) 22:30, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

School research

Hi there, Just creat an account, Can I be using this site to do a research as a student?

Regards, Francis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noahark74 (talk • contribs) 22:07, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

We certainly have no objection to you doing so. However, your school might. Typically, they don't want you to use Wikipedia articles directly, but what you can do is follow the links from our articles to reliable sources, and use those, as your sources, too.

And, if something is unclear in the articles or those sources, you can ask for clarification here on the Ref Desk. (BTW, why did you post of the Entertainment Desk ? Is your research in the Entertainment field ?) StuRat (talk) 22:36, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

A good thing to do would be to check with your teacher, who will tell you what their policy is. RomanSpa (talk) 14:07, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

The only advice I'd give is not to copy and paste directly from Wikipedia, as it's quite likely that the lecturer actually wrote (or contributed to) the article and knows what it says! Use the links the article gives to do your own research. --TammyMoet (talk) 08:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)