Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 July 14

= July 14 =

Big difference in selling price for an ebook
Can someone tell me why the Apple iStore is selling this book for $13.99 while Amazon kindle is selling the exact same book for $6.99

iStore      http://i.imgur.com/hdgCH.png

Amazon  http://i.imgur.com/QWvNs.png

220.239.37.244 (talk) 10:42, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Apple is a "premium marketer", so charges more, and, supposedly, gives you more in turn. They must feel that their version is sufficiently better than the Kindle version to warrant such a high charge. StuRat (talk) 11:05, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The prices are set by deals between the publishers and the stores in question. They also target different demographics — Kindle readers and iPad readers are not necessarily the same group (though there is a Kindle app on the iPad, so it seems kind of silly for it to be so high, assuming you can just get books for that at the Kindle price). The pricing of e-books is a terribly weird market, one which has been under regulatory investigation as of late for price-fixing and other market no-nos. See e.g. . So trying to just reason your way out of this using "normal" market forces is probably not going to result in any accurate answers. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:01, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I can only endorse this: "The pricing of e-books is a terribly weird market." How does it come that e-books are sometimes more expensive than paper books? And, if it's easier to illegally copy an e-book, why make it so expensive? However, note that at your example the answer is explanation is that it's just a promotion. There are many good reasons to do that, not necessarily related to it being an e-book. OsmanRF34 (talk) 16:26, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the best answer is "the e-book market is only a few years old, is at the moment highly competitive based on a limited field of readers and formats in question, and publishers are not quite sure where it is going." I would also note that in thinking about the prices, authors get very different deals on e-books than they do on hard cover books — just another wrinkle to think about. There are all sorts of weird factors, plus regular market factors. Companies that manufacture specific eBook readers also may have an advantage in underpricing their books with the hopes that it will lead to the purchase of more readers. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:24, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * While I agree with all the previous comments, I also think that the iBook (Apple) would have a greater versatility than a Kindle book. I have never bought an iBook, but my impression is that like apps, they are stored in the iCloud and will be available on your (compatible) iProducts. Therefore, an iBook can also be read on your iMac, MacBook Air, iPad and even iPod (with a shared iTunes account). The Kindle book might only be available for reading on your Kindle and not transferable to other units. V85 (talk) 11:28, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * (Old thread, I know.) As far as I know, Kindle books would be just as transferrable as iBooks or nook books, providing you're using your Amazon account to do the transferring. They use the same type of storefront/account-linked interface that Barnes & Noble and Apple have always used, so the principle is the same. When you try to transfer Kindle books to, say, an eReader like the Kobo, expect failure. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 08:47, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Croatan
The article says: The few clues about the colonists whereabouts included the letters "CRO" carved into a tree, and the word "CROATOAN Croatoan_Island" carved on a post of the fort.^[4] Croatan

My question is: Did North American Indians, any tribe, have an alphabet? If they learned it from English settlers of the Roanoke Colony, why would they chose the word "CROATOAN Croatoan_Island"? Croatian voyagers, known and experienced sailors, traveled all over the world. (May I dare to mention Marco Polo)? Did anyone give a possibility that CROATIAN sailors shipwrecked on those shores and left carvings on a tree?99.237.208.177 (talk) 10:45, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * For anyone unfamiliar with the story, this was one of the few clues found at the lost colony of Roanoke. The obvious meaning of the word is the name of the nearby tribe/island named for the tribe, not a nation halfway around the world, with the usual interpretation being that they were fleeing to that island (probably due to hostile Indians), but, apparently, they never made it. StuRat (talk) 10:57, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The Native Americans (in what's now the USA) or Canadians didn't have alphabets or true writing systems, although there were widespread systems of symbols/signs like Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing in Eastern canada and Ojibwe writing systems in the Great Lakes region. These systems were ideographic or pictographic not alphabetic (i.e. they didn't represent individual sounds) and they couldn't represent the entire language. The Mi'kmaq system apprently didn't become a true writing system (capable of representing the whole spoken language as Chinese, Hebrew or Latin writing can) until Europeans came.  Further south, the Maya script is generally considered the only full writing system in the Pre-Columbian Americas, but they didn't get further north than central Mexico.  Aztec writing was again too far south and not a true writing system. --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * But why would Croatian sailors carve 'Croatoan' into trees? Why wouldn't they carve something like 'hrvatski' or hrvatska' (Croatian, Croatia, respectively) if they wanted to indicate their nationality? Or, if we assume that they were employed by someone, wouldn't they carve some word/symbol indicating their employer? V85 (talk) 15:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * You can mention Marco Polo all you like. But he lived hundreds of years before Roanoke was founded. He also wasn't culturally Croatian, but Venetian, and there's no primary source to suggest he was even from modern day Croatia. The carving was most certainly made by the Roanoke settlers themselves. There is absolutely no reason whatever to suppose that it ha anything to do with Croatia and Croatians. History does not proceed by innuendo, supposition, and nationalist fantasy. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:26, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * History would be very different without innuendo, supposition, and nationalist fantasy. —Tamfang (talk) 17:44, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Very true. But historians don't look for answers in unlikely places before they've exhausted all the likely places.  We don't know what ever happened to the people of the "Lost Colony".  That's mystery enough, without introducing unnecessary implausibilities about what CROATOAN really refers to.  This reminds me of the theory that Guatemala was so-named because of some connection to Gautama Buddha ; I've even read that he sailed from India and settled there.  Sounds like a cool idea, but is there even the slightest historical evidence of this?  No, not even the slightest.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  21:10, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * In 2265 AD, Scientists from the Imperium Novum Croatorum will test the world's first working time machine. Before she dies of somatic damage caused by the transference,  and her constituent hadrons decay, delirious Team Leader Shaniqua Katić will attempt to carve the name of her home country, in English, the universal lingua franca, in the walls of the fort where she materialized for prosperity, thus creating the world's first temporal paradox. μηδείς (talk) 22:16, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I wonder if, on his way to Guatemala, he ran into the lost tribe is Israel, which, according to a certain misguided religion, became the Native Americans. :-) StuRat (talk) 22:34, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Unless she is (will be?) Mitt Romney's greedy descendent, that should be "posterity". Clarityfiend (talk) 08:51, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems the list of nations that don't get Medeis's "irony" grows longer by the day. :)  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  20:41, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Did I say that? The dangers of letting spell check do your editing. μηδείς (talk) 16:57, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Make that 1 nation that doesn't appear to get Australian irony. --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  22:23, 16 July 2012 (UTC)


 * There is an alternative version, which is much more plausible:


 * "Before leaving the colony three years earlier, White had left instructions that, if the colonists left the settlement, they were to carve the name of their destination, with a Maltese cross if they left due to danger.


 * "CROATOAN" was the name of an island to the south (modern-day Hatteras Island), where a native tribe friendly to the English was known to live."


 * And on the top of that:


 * "Lawson said the natives on Hatteras island claimed to be descendants of "white people" and had physical traits that no other tribe of natives encountered on his journey shared:"


 * Believing in Croatians writing Croatan (meaning what?) goes in the same direction as believing aliens, and not a legion or workers, built the pyramids.


 * OsmanRF34 (talk) 22:27, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The Hebrews were aliens, and finally left. μηδείς (talk) 16:57, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Overlaid text at end of films
In many films, especially biopics, historical epics, and other "based on a true story" films, at the end of the movie, before the end credits, a few sentences of text will be overlaid onscreen explaining what ended up happening to the characters, or what ended up happening with the events being depicted in the film. Examples of a few films that feature this type of text include 127 Hours, A Beautiful Mind, Black Hawk Down, The Blind Side, Braveheart, Catch Me If You Can, Hero, The King's Speech, Project X, Schindler's List, The Social Network, and Too Big to Fail. What is the term for these words at the end of films? I figure there must be a name for those, since terms exist for other similar things (for example, quotations/poems at the beginning of books are known as "epigraphs"). —SeekingAnswers (reply) 22:28, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Huh, well, right after posting this question, I browsed my way on Wikipedia to the article "intertitle". I suppose I've found the answer to my own question, unless someone knows a more specific term than "ending intertitle"? —SeekingAnswers (reply) 22:37, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Epilogue. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:41, 14 July 2012 (UTC)