Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 July 19

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July 19

To write love?

close trolling by banned user
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
To Write Love On Her Arms,Love or A Publicity Stunt? Why this organization... have Business Behavior and Publicity Stunt? Why this organization... have commercial exploitation? Love or just like a singer - Lady Gaga? What is real... I suggest you write your question in your native language, and somebody will translate it into proper English for you. StuRat (talk) 02:29, 19 July 2012 (UTC) To Write Love On Her Arms,Love or A Publicity Stunt? 到底它是爱还是只是在炒作呢？非盈利性组织为什么会有商业活动和炒作行为呢？这些天读了一些关于这个组织的报道，尝试去了解这个组织，为什么它给人的感觉就像娱乐圈一样呢？它不是一个非盈利性组织吗？什么才是真实的? 我不知道答案，有谁知道呢？ I tried google translate on the above. I got this : "In the end it is love or just speculation? Non-profit organization why there is commercial activity and speculation behavior? Read some reports on the organization of these days, try to understand this organization, why it feels like entertainment? It is not a non-profit organization? What is real? I do not know the answer, who knows?" Any native speakers care to give a better translation? Because it looks like gibberish still. I also added a title to this thread. --Jayron32 03:12, 19 July 2012 (UTC) This is obviously User:Ochson in another guise, see his removal of his autosignature in the edit history. μηδείς (talk) 04:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Family genes?

Wikipedia has an entire article on the Huxley family, which produced numerous individuals who excelled in different fields. Is this streak of producing unusually intelligent, intellectual human beings merely due to good genes that run in the family, or are there other factors too? If it's genes, why don't the families of other eminent people produce more eminent people later on? Does upbringing play a part in all this too? As far as I've seen, most descendants of popular icons, celebrities, and other famous people simply bask in the former glory of their ancestors, and fail to live up to others' expectations... La Alquimista 08:52, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Education also plays its part, alongside upbringing, culture. Why do we expect so much of "celebrities" children? Especially those who have become celebrities through media, or are "famous for being famous"? Why should their offspring be any different to anyone else's? Surely that's a bigger question to answer than why excellence should run in families? --TammyMoet (talk) 09:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, in addition to genes and environment in common, certain other advantages might also be passed down, such as money and business contacts, giving them a head start in their chosen field. Then some of it is that the children really don't do anything that would be noteworthy, but we find it noteworthy solely because they are from a famous family (or in the case of the Kennedy family, most of the noteworthy things they do these days seem to be bad things). Also consider that careers sometimes run in families, but some careers, like politics, will make the entire family famous, while other careers, like farming, won't. StuRat (talk) 10:20, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I have a view that something that gets passed on in successful families is the belief that you can be successful, because you have seen it in so many other relatives. HiLo48 (talk) 11:55, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

And we have an article on this: Nature versus nurture. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:58, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Non-exclusive Rights

What does this mean? I have been translating in the law field, and specifically for contracts and agreements, for years, but it has only just occurred to me that I have no idea what this means. Just exactly what is not excluded? Does it just mean 'full rights', as in 'all inclusive'? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:33, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

If I'm licensing something, for instance a patent, then if I (the licenser) give someone (the licensee) exclusive rights, that means they (licensee) are the only person/organisation who can use it (either worldwide or within a specified territory), but if I give them non-exclusive rights, then I can sell the rights to another person, and another, and all of them can use the patent in the same territory. Exclusive rights are more valuable for the licensee, because if you buy them you know you're not going to have any competition. For the licenser, selling rights non-exclusively would allow you to sell them multiple times or use the licensed item yourself, though each sale may get less money. The same principle is involved if you're licensing copyright material, giving distribution rights, etc (exclusive=one person holds them, non-exclusive=many can hold them). Sources[1][2][3]. This is not legal advice, consult a lawyer before entering into any agreement, etc. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:52, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Non-exclusive means the agreement or contract does not exclude similar agreements with other parties. So a non-exclusive agreement means "we may enter into a similar agreement with another party at the same time as this agreement"; an exclusive agreement means "we will not enter into a similar agreement with another party at the same time as this agreement". In my house I have a non-exclusive right to watch the television, but an exclusive right to eat the Marmite (because no-one else likes it). Gandalf61 (talk) 13:00, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I see. Thanks, I understand it now. So, it basically means, "I am going to let you use this, but let other people use it as well." Cheers. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:21, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

More precisely, "reserve the eight to let other people use it as well". Just because I sell you a non-exclusive license does not mean I have to sell licenses to others. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

And just to add one more detail, many compulsory contracts contain this clause to make it sound not so bad. So if I'm the government and I fund your research, I usually can say, "contingent of me giving you funding is the fact that you will let me purchase the right to use this in the future from you, but I won't demand a monopoly over it." Similarly if I'm Instagram or whatever I will usually have in my terms of use, "you give me the right to use this photo, but I'm not claiming that I'm the only person who can use this photo." Those are both instances of what non-exclusive rights mean. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:37, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

There are some specific reasons for that in some contexts, specifically copyright (although whether or not it's necessary is questionable). For instance, you cannot transfer a copyright or grant an exclusive right in a copyright [in the U.S.] without it being in writing. There are other instances where exclusive licenses are treated differently than non-exclusive licenses. Shadowjams (talk) 21:20, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Is really expensive whisky ever drunk?

During my holiday, I saw a bottle of Glenfiddich 1955 whisky on sale in the Viking Gabriella's tax-free shop for €6100, and later learned that it's only about one-sixteenth of what the world's most expensive whisky costs. With one bottle costing as much as a small apartment, and each glass poured from it costing about as much as a Canon EOS 5D Mark II professional DSLR camera, who would ever dare drink such whisky? It would surely mean their investment became worthless. But then, if the whisky isn't drunk, what good is it then? It might as well be coloured water and its owner would never know. JIP | Talk 19:21, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Bill Gates has enough money to buy over a million bottles at that price. Looie496 (talk) 19:54, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

See also conspicuous consumption. Looie496 (talk) 19:57, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

^^This is correct. You consume things that expensive to show the world that you are rich enough to consume things that expensive. Find that ethically problematic, in a world where people can't afford basic needs? Well, welcome to the club. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I remember an episode of MASH were Col. Potter was sent a bottle from a dead buddy. Potter was the last of a group from WWI. They all agreed that the last would drink it with friends, so the cast at the time did.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That sort of whisky is best once the owner finds you in his house, but before he phones the police. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:00, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

It helps if you're a government or business fat cat with a generous expense account. How about a nice $16 glass of orange juice? Clarityfiend (talk) 00:41, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Just today there was a story in the Evening Standard about a group making 5050 GBP cocktails out of a 50,000 GBP bottle of cognac was dropped by one of the customers. Buddy431 (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Best news magazine relative to its fame and the cost?

Which news magazine would you say that this could be? I'm trying to determine which news magazine is the best one to subscribe to using these factors. For the record, I think that TIME Magazine is a very good contender for the answer to this question. Thank you. Futurist110 (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

National Geographic. News you can always get from the net or TV, but National Geographic has lasting value.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

What country are you in? What languages do you read/are you learning? Are you interested in any particular fields, e.g. international relations, sociology, culture, economics, science? Itsmejudith (talk) 20:05, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

(ec) That would be the mimeographed newsletter my friend Sam printed when we were in elementary school. It had no fame and no cost, so in relative terms its quality was infinite. Looie496 (talk) 20:06, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I live in the United States of America and I am primarily interested in news, politics, current events, and history. I want all of my articles to be in English, since this is the language that I am the best at and the most used to (I also speak Russian). National Geographic is also pretty good, but I'm not sure if it talks about the news as much as Time Magazine does. Also, I just want to clarify--I want to find a magazine that is relatively cheap and very famous that talks a lot about news and current events. Also, it has to have an archive that is free and completely available to subscribers (which Time Magazine does have). Futurist110 (talk) 20:17, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

In regards to getting news from the net/web or TV, that's true, but I want to always have access to news articles from long ago, and most of those right now are not free. Futurist110 (talk) 20:20, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

There are a few listed at News magazine#Notable print news magazines. I'm sure there are some free online news sources that keep old articles up - BBC News seem to keep theirs indefinitely, and Google News indexes some very old newspaper articles. We have a list of online newspaper archives, some of which appear to be free. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 20:39, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. However, BBC's archives only go back to 1997 or so. I looked at the list of online newspaper archives. Thank you very much for that. How would you compare TIme Magazine to The Atlantic Monthly? Thank you. Futurist110 (talk) 00:12, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I usually check RealClearPolitics and its Science section first thing in the morning with coffee, and often find I am led to an article at The Atlantic. They write balanced and very in-depth articles. I have been led to read perhaps half a dozen things at Time in the last few years and they have inevitably been puff and opinion on the level of USA Today. μηδείς (talk) 03:04, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I've always been impressed by The Economist -- it has its particular point of view, of course, but no publication will escape that charge. It will provide an international perspective (though with a lot of news about American events and public figures), and according to our article, its "primary focus is world news, politics and business, but it also runs regular sections on science and technology as well as books and the arts," so that's a nice broad coverage. And according to their website, subscribers have full access to their historical archive which stretches back to the first half of the 19th Century, a scope few periodicals can claim. There are plenty of good choices here, but given your criteria, if I was picking for myself, I think this is my choice. Jwrosenzweig (talk) 05:04, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Have to second that. μηδείς (talk) 15:57, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

For the record, I want a news magazine that is very cheap per issue, and while The Economist is a very good magazine, it is WAY too expensive for me. RealClearPolitics is pretty good, but it was only founded in 2000, whereas Time Magazine was founded in 1923. The Atlantic is very good and relatively cheap, but the problem is that it only publishes once a month, whereas I prefer weekly news magazines. To be honest, I actually like Time Magazine's news stories and their style of reporting. I also like their specials, such as Person of the Year, their Top 100 lists, and their long cover stories. Futurist110 (talk) 07:24, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

FAIR's Extra will tell you what the mainstream news is getting wrong, so if you just pay attention to mainstream sources and supplement with FAIR, you get far more accuracy than trying to find the One True Source. 75.166.200.250 (talk) 18:21, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, but I also want to be able to look at good news articles from 50+ years ago. I have a question--is there an easy way to search the BBC website online news archives or not? Futurist110 (talk) 08:19, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like a subscription to Time works out to about $0.53 per issue, and the Atlantic about $2.50 per issue. The New Yorker falls between, at about $1.50 per issue and is basically weekly (47 issues per year). Looks like for subscribers they have a back issue archive to 1925. Pfly (talk) 08:38, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

http://www.cheapmagazinesite.com/products.php?q=New+Yorker+Magazine+Subscription --At this cheap magazine site the New Yorker is $1.28 per issue, The Atlantic Monthly is $0.65 per issue, and Time Magazine is $0.54 per issue. It looks like one can save a huge amount on the Atlantic and some money on the New Yorker using cheap magazine sites such as this one. Futurist110 (talk) 07:57, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

The "Offensive" Fallacy

Is there any logical fallacy which states that a position is invalid just because it is offensive to someone? This certainly sounds like a particular logical fallacy, but I can't find the name for this fallacy (if such a fallacy exists). Thank you. Futurist110 (talk) 20:19, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

How about wisdom of repugnance (the 'yuck factor') or appeal to emotion? 81.98.43.107 (talk) 20:26, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Would wisdom of repugnance work for this scenario? :

Individual 1: I support prenatal personhood. Individual 2: Your position is offensive to women. Therefore it is less valid than another unoffensive position.

Futurist110 (talk) 00:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Depending on the context, I wonder if appeal to pity (or "argumentum ad misericordiam") would sometimes apply, if the idea is that you should feel bad about offending someone? Or, if the implication is that most people find X offensive, it might be argumentum ad populum (or "appeal to the people"). I personally doubt there's a specific "offensiveness" fallacy -- it seems likelier to me that, depending on the specific situation and the way in which the claim "that's offensive" is intended to work, it falls under one of several possibilities. Jwrosenzweig (talk) 05:10, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Futurist110 (talk) 07:25, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Writing a message in code that doesn't look like its in code

Hi, my problem with most codes is that the wrong eyes can immediately see that a message is in code. If someone found a piece of paper with "YJOD OD OM VPFR. VSM UPI FRVO{JRT OY?" written on it, it's immediately obvious that they're looking at a code, even if they can't decipher it.

I'm designing a murder mystery for an upcoming party, and I want them to find a poem or something that is actually a coded message. But I'd like it to also look like a poem at first glance. What are some code styles that I could try? 68.111.171.31 (talk) 22:22, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

First letter of every word spells out a clue or the name of the murderer? Or that of a person framed for the murder? Dismas|^(talk) 22:24, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Problem is the message I'm hiding is pretty long in its own right. I'd like if the poem and the hidden message be as close to 1:1 in length as possible. 68.111.171.31 (talk) 22:27, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

This is called steganography. -- BenRG (talk) 22:34, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

(ec)The general subject domain to do with hiding messages (often exactly the problem you have, where one wants to conceal the existence of an encrypted message, to avoid rubber hose cryptography) is steganography. But most steganograpy, whether done with a machine like a computer or a manual system like a cardan grille usually relies on there being a large ratio between the overt material ("covertext") and the hidden stuff. That's necessary because any decent cryptosystem produces as its ciphertext a stream of very-random-looking data - and the covertext (being an English language text, or a picture of a butterfly) isn't very random. The only exception I can think of, for a manual system, is an environment where you'd expect a random covertext. So think about what circumstances someone might, in the real (computer-less) world, be walking around with a bunch of random letters (or digits, or other symbols) which would have an innocuous explanation (but which, if the correct cryptographic key was known, could be decrypted to a secret message). Off the top of my head I can think of:

• Bingo or lottery numbers.
• Telephone numbers in an address book.
• A newspaper column discussing a game which has a randomised initial element, like a bridge or poker deal. A random deal should be enough (but subsequent play will either corrupt the message or would produce a weird state that a decent bridge-player would spot as phoney)
• Some kind of puzzle where the initial condition is complicated and looks arbitrary, like a late-game chess puzzle, a word-search, or a sudoku (the steganography article talks about hiding data in sudokus). These require extra care, as someone reasonably familiar with chess can spot the difference between an endgame that would result from real play and one generated by randomly positioning a few pieces.
• Some nonsense text like an alien conlang or Lewis Carroll-like pig latin scheme.

Having both cryptography and steganography may be smart if you were trying to avoid the actual secret police of an oppressive country, but may produce a problem that requires too much of a grind to be fun or tractable in a light-hearted party setting. Any system that's going to be solved in that time is going to have to be very simple. So perhaps set your murder mystery in a grimy modern housing project (not the hackneyed Edwardian stately home it always is) and buy the decedent actual lottery tickets where the numbers picked are your message (assuming you live in a jurisdiction where one can pick lottery numbers on a kiosk in a shop). Given that simply figuring out it is a code is going to be hard enough, I don't think you can expect people to solve a code more complicated than the trivial caesar cipher a=1, b=2, etc. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

That's an excellent answer.. Vespine (talk) 00:52, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm having vague flashbacks to The Westing Game... --Mr.98 (talk) 02:07, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I remember a series of books I read as a child where a gang of children wrote secret letters. The key to deciphering them was the stamps on the envelope. Each denomination had a different meaning, but the basic method was that you skipped words. You might just read every third word, for instance. One denomination meant you read the remaining words backwards. It's not 1:1 (you'll struggle to achieve that in a remotely realistic way), but if you don't skip too many words then it's better than taking one letter from each word or something. It's not easy to come up with a letter than seems plausible (you may need to re-word the message to make it fit better), but it should meet your needs. --Tango (talk) 02:20, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Riddles might be more fun that code-breaking, depending on your audience. I'd only expect "geeks" to enjoy code-breaking. Riddles can be concealed within poems. You could even tailor it to your audience, so, say, if you have a librarian, there could be a Dewey Decimal System code, and from that they would get a subject. Different parts of the riddle could be tailored to different people, so they all have to work together to solve it. StuRat (talk) 03:21, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

The problem with this really is that there's all sorts of options that could be suggested as answers to the problem, but that would fall outside of answering rules (as it would pertain to advice). Seeing that we're giving suggestions, though, here's one that could keep to the original flavour of the problem: take the words in the message, and scramble them into an entirely different order. To make this work, change some of the words into rhyming words. From there, all you will have to do is to hide the list of numbers and the list of rhymed words in the poem. The numbers could be hidden as some math-like scribblings (in order) or as numbers inserted throughout the document(with a few errant or strange ones to tip people off), and the changed letters as a quote with similar swappings in order. Simplify or complexify bits of this for the audience, if that works better for time, and enjoy. Sazea (talk) 04:46, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I moved Sazea's response here from a question on fried chicken, since, presumably, this is where it belongs. StuRat (talk) 05:04, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Sazea (talk) 06:08, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. StuRat (talk) 06:17, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

This may be a ridiculous suggestion, but one semi-simple solution that occurred to me was to have a half-completed crossword puzzle. At first it appears to be something left behind absent-mindedly -- or maybe it's on the same page of the newspaper as a story that at first appears to be the important item. But eventually it's apparent that the words not yet filled in are the message -- then it's just solving the crossword clues (and maybe working out what order the words need to go in? that feels tougher, unless it works top-down and left-right, or something like it). I agree with the others above about the difficulty of doing what you want to. If you wanted this to be ridiculously difficult, there would be no problem generating a coded message that reads as a poem -- just use a Vigenere cipher and a key of gibberish, and you can produce any ciphertext you want from whatever your plaintext is. But it would be beyond your mystery party's abilities to solve unless this is a hazing for new agents at the NSA. Finlay's right on about that point, which is why trying a steganographic method (like my suggested crossword puzzle) seems the best course to me. Jwrosenzweig (talk) 05:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

The use of a crossword to pass secret information was one that MI-5 worried about, such as the D-Day codewords crossword panic of 1944. A similar panic (one that seems to involve much more invention on the part of the security services, rather than just a coincidence, happened earlier this year in Venezuela. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:16, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

You could write your poem (or use an existing poem even) and use it only as a key (it has no actual message content, but it could contain hints on how to use it) by writing the secret message to the same length, then assign all the letters of the key and the message corresponding numbers, and linearly combine each of their numbers (as their sums or with a more complex algorithm) to produce a numeric ciphertext. Then, anonymously have this meaningless ciphertext put in "plain view" in a public or accessible place, such as scrawled in library book, on a blog or perhaps here somewhere on the this huge wiki. Then, the sleuth(s) or recipient will need to know that your innocuous poem is a key, plus either learn or know where on Earth to find the message's ciphertext, and also must either know, learn about or figure out the algorithm used to combine them. You could make its solution even more difficult and interesting by requiring the use of more than one key too. Casual sleuths will likely need hints... such that the poem is only a key, of course. Modocc (talk) 08:04, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

The traditional way of doing this is to avoid the use of ciphers and instead to use code. Your participants will gradually become aware that the exact words and phrases are likely code for other, more meaningful, terms. You can make these as easy or as hard as you want. John M Baker (talk) 16:00, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Don't forget the whole category of poem codes, of which the best-known is probably "The Life That I Have" by the brilliant cryptographer who grew up in a second-hand bookshop. BrainyBabe (talk) 20:46, 20 July 2012 (UTC)