Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 December 14

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December 14

Kings of Leon

Can anyone recommend a good website that will let me listen to the Kings of Leon album "Only By The Night" in its entirety for free? --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 03:06, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

No, we can't. Wikipedia policy forbids linking to blatant copyright violations of this type. You'll just have to pony up for the album. Exxolon (talk) 05:15, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I meant legit websites that allow you to listen to the album before buying! --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 05:17, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Not very likely that exists - reason is that in order for you to be able to listen to the audio, your computer has to be able to download it - that given that it would be easy to have a utility to save the files and convert them into mp3s (similar to the utilities that allow you to save streaming videos). Exxolon (talk) 05:25, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Nope, there are plenty of artists' own websites that offer streaming of entire albums. Either they've worked out a way of stopping you from downloading it, or they don't give a fig about it. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The best you're likely to find are videos for the singles on Youtube or similar, or maybe a sample of a song or two streaming from somewhere. Exxolon (talk) 05:26, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Normally I'd use Rhapsody, but I've reached my 25-a-month limit, and now I'm starting to think they're ripping me off, because I started using it in November, and they've yet to reset my free trial.-- Crackthewhip775 (talk) 05:32, 14 December 2008 (UTC) ^{--Crackthewhip775 (talk) 05:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)}

Who resets a "free trial"? Julia Rossi (talk) 07:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

And how is that a rip-off if you didn’t pay a cent for it in the first place. --S.dedalus (talk) 08:32, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

LimeWire? ~AH1^(TCU) 17:54, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Mininova —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 18:15, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Both of the above would be copyright violations. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

25 free plays a month . It's been a month, they were supposed to reset it. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 00:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

According to Rhapsody (online music service) what your referring to is not a free trial but Rhapsody 25 which is a free ad supported version. If you signed up for a free trial you probably signed up for the wrong thing, there is mention of an unlimited free trial for 14 days. I suggest you take a look here [1] for more info on Rhapsody 25. If you are having problems with Rhapsody you should e-mail them rather then complaining about it here. Bear in mind what they mean by a month may be different from what you think they mean. It's possible they mean a calendar month and therefore if you signed up on the 13th of November your number would have reset once in 1st December. If you played 25 times after that you're not going to get another 25 until next year. Alternatively they may have a subscription period which would be close to when you signed up. If for example you signed up on the 17th November and expected them to reset you on the 1st December you would be wrong and won't be reset until the 16th. Also the help page says you need a valid e-mail and can only have up to 3 accounts per computer. If you didn't use a valid e-mail, didn't confirm the service or cancelled your e-mail at a later stage I wouldn't be surprised if you service is suspended. If you've tried to use more then 3 accounts on your computer, it may have stored something on your computer which tells the player not to work or the player may have disabled your accounts. Nil Einne (talk) 10:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Why not visit a local CD store and ask them to play it to you through one of their "listening stations". Maybe you will then buy the CD, which will allow you to listen to it whenever you want and as many times as you want. You will also get a nice case to keep it in and a little booklet with all kinds of info about the band. Hell, maybe you will start to think that expecting these guys to work for free just to entertain you is somewhat unfair. Astronaut (talk) 03:15, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not expecting anyone to work for free, I just want to listen to a record before buying it to make sure I'm not wasting my money. Had I not done that with I Am...Sasha Fierce, I would have been fuming about the $11.98 spent over it. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 03:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Man, where do you live that CDs are only $11.98? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:45, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally I would say that you shouldn't need to hear a whole album right through to decide whether or not to buy it. If you find that there are just three or four songs you like, that should be enough for you to shell out for the monster. Hell, I've bought hundreds of albums in my time without hearing a note of them. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Where do you live where CDs cost more than that, Adam? (Not Vancouver, I hope). --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 20:11, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

No, Toronto. I suppose this is simply because the most convenient place for me to buy CDs is Chapters where everything is more expensive. Incidentally they are always out of Kings of Leon. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It figures. Products of that nature (CDs, DVDs, electronics) always tend to be more expensive in Canada than in the U.S.. Have you ever tried spotting an HMV or a Best Buy store near you? Don't know if it might be at a lower price, but they should have KOL in stock. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 01:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah we have lots of those around here too, but as far as I remember CDs cost at least $15 no matter what store it is. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

If you happen to be a US college student, Ruckus has it. -Elmer Clark (talk) 05:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Contingent Liabilities After a Business Wind-up

The following is a result of curiousity, not a request for legal advice. In terms of jurisdiction, I'd be happy with an answer that applies to any district of Canada or the US (say, the district of Delaware) (or anywhere really, I just don't want a "it depends on where you are.")

Let's say a public company has a likely future liability that is contingent on a court case or legislation, or any other legal action (punitive or damage-recovering) that in some way represents social justice. The amount of the liability will be some very large and material amount (say, half of the FMV of the company's assets).

Let's say that the judicial or legislative body didn't invoke any sort of order freezing the company's assets, and the company liquidated, paid of creditors and cashed out the remainder as a one-time dividend to equity-holders. Maybe they dissolve the company at this point, or maybe all of the directors and executives resign.

Who is responsible for the eventual liability? Is there any legislation or precedent that allows the court to seek damages from the executives? The directors? If their assets are insufficient, can the court pursue former equity-holders or debtholders? Are there any examples of this type of thing happening? NByz (talk) 03:12, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Not sure up to the point where they cash out dividends. On the company books, if they are kept properly, there would be a position "contingent liabilities" or at the very least their auditor would have noted such in his audit report. I'm not sure how it would be handled, but the money should definitely not show up in equity anymore. There have been companies that went broke and were unable to settle their liabilities. In that case the people in whose favor the judgment was would be out of luck, just like any other creditors. But in such cases the shareholders don't get anything back out of the company. (After all they own the company, and if it was their own privately owned one, they woulnd't get anything either. The difference is shareholders only lose their investment, a private owner loses his home and everything else down to a bare minimum.) Laws on what debts get paid off first in a liquidation differ. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 13:07, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I suspect this is the kind of grey area in business law and management that makes the kind of general answer we can give here fairly useless. If the company, and/or their auditors, conclude that the lawsuit is likely to go against them and result in a genuine liability, then they'd be required to provide as such in their financial statements, which would reduce (or entirely eliminate) any positive balance in their retained profit that could be legally distributed as a dividend. Hence, if the company were to liquidate it would most likely be illegal for them to distribute the remaining assets after creditors were paid until the results of the lawsuit were concluded. Hence, had the assets been distributed to the shareholders, they could quite possibly be liable for the full amount distributed to them if it were needed to pay the liability - though probably no more than that, due to the limited liability nature of a corporation. Please do bear in mind that the above is based on my limited experience in an entirely different country. ~ mazca ^t|c 13:55, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

So I broke up with my girlfriend

She doesn't think of me in the same way any more. Was quite a short relationship, only lasted a couple of weeks. What should I do? I mean, it's always the same. I can never get in long term relationships with girls and actually have it last.-YeaH, Ino (talk) 12:08, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Before anyone will love you, you have to love yourself. Then you have to love them. It's a tricky balance and I don't think anyone gets it right - but remember to try. Oh and we don't really give advice on Wikipedia...--TammyMoet (talk) 12:50, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Lose the cling wrap. Make friends without making one your "girlfriend" if at long last it becomes obvious that you are spending more (free-)time together than apart, take the next step. Unfortunately there is still no recipe for what makes long term relationships last. Obvious "perfect matches" end up throwing dishes at each other after a week and The Lockhorns stay married till the end - or vice versa. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 13:16, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

If it only lasted a couple of weeks, then it just wasn't a good match. Keep trying - there's plenty more fish in the sea, as they say! --Tango (talk) 14:31, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

It took me until I was 25 to get a solid relationship. But we have been very happily married now for 45 years. Be patient... and enjoy the ride.86.194.121.222 (talk) 15:56, 14 December 2008 (UTC)DT

When you're with a girl you really like try and get into the mindset that you're just really good friends. This avoids all the clinginess and will put you at ease when you're with her. Then, if it's meant to be it will just happen, and if not you've made a good friend. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 18:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Many women do not want a guy who’s looking for an intense, deep relationship from the beginning. Let your partner have some space. Keep things casual for a while. Be very respectful and supportive, never clingy. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:45, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest a little caution over the "starting as friends" bit. If it happens naturally that's great, but trying to engineer such a situation is questionable. See this cartoon, and the associated forum discussion for people's reactions. Most seemed to think it counted as manipulative.

It depends on whether your are being friends and planning to actively work towards something more (as the person in that comic was), or you're just going to be a good friend and see what happens. The former is clearly manipulative, the latter is just cowardly! Ask them out, if they say no, you can still go with the being friends plan. --Tango (talk) 11:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Of nudism, and the French

This might be a bad question and hurt some people, but I couldn't find any either place to ask it. I got this in a movie (Eurotrip), that an average french person remains nude 40% of time. Is that true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whatssinaname (talk • contribs) 14:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

That sounds very unlikely. I think there are more nude beaches and things in France than a lot of other countries, but most French people won't be spending a large portion of their time at the beach. 40% works out to an average of just under 10 hours a day. If you sleep in the nude, that could be around 8 hours, but I doubt many people spend 2 hours of their waking day nude (some might - people that frequent saunas, say, but not the average person, regardless of nationality). --Tango (talk) 14:35, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

The thing that I am asking is, why is French being singled out? Or is that common for europeans? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whatssinaname (talk • contribs) 15:14, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Living on the South Coast of France I can assure you that it is the visitors, not the French who strip off. But not entirely. The only places for nudism are official, and entrance is strictly controlled.86.194.121.222 (talk) 15:54, 14 December 2008 (UTC)DT

Eurotrip also stated that there was no minimum drinking age in the United Kingdom, so I'd take anything that movie tells you with a pinch of salt big enough to kill Jabba the Hutt. 87.112.67.132 (talk) 17:34, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, it is illegal to give alcohol to anyone under the age of 5 in the UK (except on medical advice). DuncanHill (talk) 17:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that they were right (for the most part) because at age 5, you don't want to drink, so that law is unnecessary. flaminglawyer^cneverforget 18:44, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Plenty of young children see their parents drinking and want to have some too. They don't really understand what alcohol is, but they know it's a special adult drink and that appeals to them. --Tango (talk) 19:26, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, the prohibition was introduced to discourage the practice of giving small children alcohol to quieten them, rather than in response to an epidemic of inebriated toddlers demanding booze from all and sundry. DuncanHill (talk) 19:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, I suspect you're right. --Tango (talk) 19:36, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Well - if you eschew PJ's for sleeping - you'll be nude 40% of the time too. Do French people sleep naked? This husband of French wife isn't telling! SteveBaker (talk) 20:54, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

.swf

Hi, I have Adobe Flash Player installed and yet my computer doesn't recognise swf files. When I click "open with" I can't find Flash Player in my Program Files folder, but the Flash Player download section of the Adobe website says I already have Flash Player. What should I do to open these files. Thanks.92.1.80.167 (talk) 20:05, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Might be better asked on the computer desk

Moved to computer desk92.1.80.167 (talk) 20:25, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Workers acquiring a factory

Has it happened in a non-Marxist country that the employees of a factory etc. have received it from an insolvent employer as payment for back wages, settlement of a lawsuit etc., and then turned it into a worker cooperative? NeonMerlin 21:46, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, such things do happen, they are called "employee buyouts" [2]. I don't think they would actually be given the company by a judge in a lawsuit or anything like that, they would awarded money and if the company couldn't pay the employees could make an offer to buy the company (just as anyone else could). I don't know any examples, I'm afraid. --Tango (talk) 22:17, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't there a case in France in which workers took over a plant after it was shut down and turned it into some cooperative enterprise that was successful for a time? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:17, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

LIP factory might be what you're thinking of. NByz (talk) 03:28, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Canadian [3] although that was more a government backed union takeover. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 05:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Anarcho-syndicalists collectivized many of Barcelona's factories during the Spanish Civil War, which is mentioned in passing in History of Barcelona#The Second Republic and civil war. It sounds like Tango's answer is more in line with your question though, yes? --Fullobeans (talk) 05:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Triumph Motorcycles was bought out and became a workers co-operative for a while. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

There have been cases, I believe, in South America where workers locked out of a factory simply moved into it and started running it. Can't find a reference offhand. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

There is general information at Workers' self-management, and see also Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002)#Worker-owned Cooperatives and Self-Management. Warofdreams talk 18:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

How much is enough?

How big do wikipedians think WP should get: 10m articles, 100m articles 1G article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.38.109 (talk) 22:20, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

You may find Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth interesting. The current best model seems to predict Wikipedia will level out at around 3-4 million articles. There will still be some growth due to new topics arising, of course, but that would be significantly slower than current growth (which is already down from its peak a couple of years ago). --Tango (talk) 22:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I would expect the rate of growth as a percentage of it's current size to decrease, but never to zero. So, the absolute size of Wikipedia should continue to grow indefinitely, albeit at a slower and slower rate. StuRat (talk) 23:25, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Or it could start expanding at a geometric rate until it becomes self-aware. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

All hail the singularity! 83.250.202.208 (talk) 12:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

If the vanispamcruftisements were moved to Vanispamcruftpedia, Wikipedia would have about 800,000 good articles. If every garage band has an article for each of its songs which never made a national chart, and every verifiable thing: every church, school, local shopping mall, mayor of a small town, hamlet with 6 houses, bridge, bus stop, cell phone model, and city street is judged notable enough for an encyclopedia, andwe have articles for each crime victim or water cooler story which was in the papers for 3 days, it would hit 100 million articles and continue to grow. Edison (talk) 19:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

there is no limit, knowlege is boundless, there will become an article for all of human knowlege. it will be a never ending expansion, much like the universe, the bigger it gets the bigger it can get. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.145.61 (talk) 20:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the answers. But you'll notice I said 'should get' NOT 'could get' So whats the answer now? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.38.109 (talk) 01:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

As I stated, about 800,000. Edison (talk) 02:53, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You are asking how big Wikipedians THINK it'll get - not how big it'll actually get. That's good - because we can answer this one! There is a lot of debate about this subject - and a very wide range of opinions. Edison is far from alone in believing that Wikipedia should shrink rather than grow. A few of the really rabid deletionists would like to see everything that's not a featured article being ripped out (leaving us with just a few thousand articles!). On the other hand there are equally crazed inclusionists who would be happy to see articles about every single person on the planet (dead and alive) - every building - every pet cat...every everything! So the answer is "between 10,000 and a hundred billion". I lean towards the inclusionist perspective (but not to that degree!) - I think there are hyper obscure topics that really ARE worth having articles written about them. If the quality of the article is good, I really don't see why there can't be articles about everything.

The problem is that little word "If". There are only so many responsible editors around and the number isn't growing as fast as the article count. That pretty much guarantees quality will decline - and quality already isn't as high as we'd like it to be. To pick an example - suppose I decided to write an article about the car I just restored - right now, it would fail the "Notability guidelines" and would promptly be deleted. But I have referenceable information about the car - it's been described in a couple of magazines and mentioned in a newspaper - I have obtained copies of the 1962 factory and dealership sales records for it. I can prove enough of the things I'd write about it to meet all of our other criteria. The quality of that article could be high enough - it could meet every single other guideline except notability. So why are we so against not-notable subjects? They don't really do any harm (providing they are properly written and researched) - and who knows whether someone might just remotely want to read about it ten, twenty or a hundred years from now?

IMHO, what Wikipedia needs to do - is to push the quality bar higher (excluding low quality articles more agressively than we do now) - but relax the notability bar. Relaxing notability (but maintaining quality) would cost us a fairly trivial amount of disk space - but attract more authors who'd like to write about their pet subject.

I think there is no doubt amongst Wikipedians that we'll rapidly hit 3 million English language articles - maybe even 4 million. Many believe we shouldn't hit that kind of number - but I don't know anyone who thinks we won't. But it's becoming noticably hard to find subjects that meet notability criteria for which we still have no article - so the pace of growth simply has to slow down. Of course (unless the rules change) the growth rate won't ever stop completely because news events are always a source of new articles, scientific advances are always there...that kind of thing...but the growth rate (with the present rules) must slow down eventually.

SteveBaker (talk) 04:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I can think of three reasons to delete non-notable articles:

1) Disk space. This argument, of course, goes away as disk space becomes exponentially cheaper.

2) Search and disambiguation pages. People don't want to see non-notable subjects with similar wording found when they look for a notable one. If we could somehow prioritize based on popularity and list less popular matches at the bottom of the list, or require picking a button to see "non-notable matches", this might help here.

3) Quality. Very few people will edit non-notable articles, so the quality could be low, and vandalism there may never be fixed. If viewed as "percentage of articles with poor quality", this would make Wikipedia quality go down. However, the better way to measure quality is "the percentage of page views which find a low quality article", which won't be much affected by adding many low quality non-notable articles, assuming that each is rarely viewed. The "Random article" button presents a bit of a problem, though. Perhaps it should be changed to "Random notable article". StuRat (talk) 15:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

1. If I personally spent my entire life typing in articles - I doubt I could reach more than (maybe) a couple of megabytes of text and a few Gigabytes of pictures. That's about $1 worth of disk space at today's prices (I recently bought a 500Gbyte hard drive for $200). We have 150,000 active members - $150k is nothing to the foundation if it's spread over a lifetime. Wikipedia's growth is slower than the increase in capacity of ~$200 hard drives - if we keep replacing disk drives at this rate of expenditure, we'll never run out of space and our storage costs will never increase. Besides - most borderline non-notable articles are stub-like anyway - they take VERY little space.
2. The Wikipedia search engine is already horribly behind-the-curve. It's already much easier to find things using a Google search that's constrained to Wikipedia than it is to use the built-in engine. That's not a good reason to dump content - it's a reason to pay more attention to our lamentably bad search engine.
3. Quality is indeed the problem - but recall that I have no problem with deleting junk articles - I'm only concerned that we routinely delete articles that are in every way perfectly acceptable EXCEPT for the notability criteria. If I write an article that is (say) of FA quality (except for the notability thing) - then why should it be removed on grounds of notability alone? You can't use "quality" as a reason if the article is of high quality. Vandals extremely rarely hit articles that are not high on the notability scale. Articles like Computer (for example) are getting vandalised about 100 times a DAY (Computer is now semi-protected - and now the vandalism rate is zero)...but if you look up articles on Japanese railway stations, it's hard to find any of them that have EVERY been vandalised. Obscure articles just don't make good targets. I'm pretty certain that the impending doom of "Random article" producing trivia can yet be averted for the good of mankind! (In truth, it appears to generate nothing but articles about Japanese railway stations already!)