Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007 September 13

= September 13 =

TV show name.
I'm trying to remember the name of an old (maybe 10-15 years ago) childrens' TV show. I'm pretty sure it aired on PBS. I remember that it had different segments. One recurring segment I can remember was about several men in business suits who had dogheads. I know this isn't much to go by, but any help would be appreciated. QWERTY | Dvorak 21:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This might be way off, but Sesame Street had some segments featuring William Wegman's Weimaraners, they may have been dressed in suits. -- LarryMac  | Talk  17:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * That might be it. Thanks. QWERTY | Dvorak 02:37, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

music
I don’t know how answerable this question will be, and it's kind of random, but here it is. Say; hypothetically, you were to take all of the music produced in the U.S. in the last century. About how many gigabytes would the size of that collection be? Thanks to anyone who attempts to answer this question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.213.92.182 (talk) 21:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

According to iTunes Store article they have about 24,000,000 songs available to download worldwide. Taking into account that they only sell a small fraction of the music produced it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that the US has produced well over double this in the past 100 years. The amount would vary hugely dependent on what you consider 'produced'. Some bands make their own CDs (look at myspace - ripe with small bands), do they count? I guess if you say they had to make something like the billboard charts that would alter it a bit. Also the iTunes store has lots and lots of duplication (like say a 'single' and the album version, plus a live version, as well as an acoustic version, etc.) ny156uk 23:01, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You start with something vague like 'a small fraction' and then arrive at something much more precise like 'well over double', in the process translating from world wide to the US? A better approach might be to take the total turnover of all record companies in the US over the last century and divide that by the average price (over time) and edition (actually, median would be better). Don't have those figures, though. Of course, another factor is in what form you want to store it. Master quality, cd quality or mp3 or what? DirkvdM 07:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The number also depends on whether you're talking about a straight rip of a file to something like a wave format (which doesn't compress) or a compressed MP3 or any other number of compression schemes. A single song which was 3 minutes long could be anywhere from 1Mb to 30Mb (random guess on these numbers by the way). See Audio compression (data) for more info. - Zepheus &lt;ゼィフィアス&gt; 21:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Since this estimate will only be within an order of magnitude anyway, we can split the difference and estimate non-lossy compression, roughly 20MB for a 3 minute file. Given an iTunes catalogue of mostly 3 minute songs, mono or stereo CD quality input (i.e. no 5.1 or extra high sample rates), that would be 480,000,000 MB, or roughly 500TB (500,000GB).
 * Sticking with wild guesses here, let's assume 100 years of recorded music, most of it in the past 40 years, U.S. releases only (but not excluding foreign musicians on U.S. labels, e.g. The Beatles), big and small labels but not demos, bootlegs, and private/home recordings. Let's also assume the iTunes figure represents maybe a third of what was released during a few of those years. Given all that and a big dose of Ketamine, I would hallucinate a figure of 20-100PB (or 20,000,000-100,000,000GB), based on no hard numbers or sound mathematics. I'm sure someone can narrow it down further. / edg ☺ ★ 05:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I really don't understand why you assume that "most of it" would be from the last 40 years. If you take into account the vast numbers of jazz recordings made before 1967, as well as all the folk music, blues, rock & roll, big bands, easy listening, tiny Sixties garage bands, film soundtracks, Muzak, field recordings, and (of course) classical music, it can more than hold its own numerically against that produced in the last 40 years. 80.254.147.52 14:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I was guessing rock-era market expansion might drive more artists to record regardless of genre, as might wider availability of recording technology. I rounded my final estimates way up as a hedge against the possibility I was excluding too much. If someone else gave a sensible-sounding argument for 2-10PB I wouldn't be inclined to argue my estimate were better. However, someone would have to make a solid case before I would accept a figure over 100PB. / edg ☺ ★ 20:30, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Hendrix performance
On the CD Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix, track 6 is a certain recording of Hendrix's Hear My Train a Comin', a song he would often perform at concerts. However, the version on that album is different from the other two versions I've heard (I've heard one performance from Blues and another from Live at the Fillmore)... the version on Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues is AMAZING. Was that version an unused studio cut or a live performance? If it was a live performance, what concert is that recording from? Jolb 22:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know, but thanks for the heads up! I was hesitant about this buy, but I like your review.  Muchos kudos, Jolb. Beekone 14:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)