Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 August 3

= August 3 =

Beaches on north shore of Lake Erie
OK, it's not Maui, but are there any decent beaches on Lake Erie in Elgin, Norfolk or Haldimand county, Ontario? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:28, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Norfolk has lots of beaches. Port Dover, Turkey Point, Long Point. In Elgin there is Port Stanley. Here is a list from Haldimand County. A little further east in Niagara, there are beaches in Fort Erie. I don't really know if any of these beaches are "decent", but Lake Erie is pretty cold and dirty so I wouldn't want to swim in it. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It warms up this time of the summer moreso than the other great lakes because it's shallower, but I would also suggest staying out of it. I'm on the south side and we have mostly cliffs but some nice beaches and people go swimming without normally getting sick. Most people make sure they take a shower immediately after returning home. We have signs posted warning of contamination levels after the storms kick stuff up and the beaches with lifeguards don't let anyone in the waters then. I heard that people who test water quality think it's a pretty bad idea to ever go in there. -LambaJan (talk) 13:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Are lakes Ontario and Huron as dirty? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 16:23, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There are no general restrictions on swimming in Lake Erie. There are occasional beach closures usually after heavy storms overflow city sewer systems but those are localized occurences. Thousands of people swim the lake daily and I would expect few immediately run to the shower afterward. Water temperatures seems to be running mid-70s on the south shore and around 70 F (21 C) on the north shore. Rmhermen (talk) 18:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Traveling on a students budget
Is it possible to travel in the Middle East for an average $50/day? I’m thinking walking/bicycling, youth hostels, and living on staples here. . . Sħukrân --S.dedalus (talk) 03:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Possibly, but travel to and from the Middle East will likely blow your budget. StuRat (talk) 03:47, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, but there are ways of limiting the cost. For instance if a flight is overbooked you can agree to wait and take the compensation. Let’s just focus on cost on the ground to make it simple. --S.dedalus (talk) 04:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It might also depend on where in "the Middle East" you are specifically referring. $50US will go a lot further in some countries there than others. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:10, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That’s what I’d like to know. :) Where will $50 go far? Anybody know the answer? --S.dedalus (talk) 05:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The prices in Jordan 10 years ago (I know, WAY out of date for your purposes, but perhaps a starting point?) were extraordinarily cheap, at least as far as basics like food and gasoline were concerned. I recall our tour guide treating the whole minibus to ice cream--we protested at the expense, and he then explained that ice cream cones cost something along the lines of 3 or 4 to the US$.  This was a while back, and I'm sure my fuzzy memory can be outdone by folks with more recent experience.  User:Jwrosenzweig editing as 71.112.34.57 (talk) 09:59, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I was recently looking this up a little bit. I think Syria is probably much cheaper than Jordan. At this point Lebanon is probably closer to the Syria end of the spectrum. For that price range I'd stay away from the Emirates but if you want to go to the peninsula you might want to check out Oman or Yemen. I can't guarantee they'll be cheap but they'll most likely be a lot cheaper than the touristy places. -LambaJan (talk) 13:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * One warning, those places in the Middle East which are cheap are likely to also be dangerous. There are several reasons:


 * 1) They were dangerous first, which made tourists avoid the place, which made the owners of hotels, etc., lower their costs to bring people in, despite the danger.


 * 2) The hotel owners, etc., don't take in enough money to afford security guards, walls of sandbags, etc.


 * 3) The region is poverty-stricken, which both brings about low prices and terrorism. StuRat (talk) 13:57, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Lebanon is on my short list, so I’m glad to hear it’s on the cheaper side of the spectrum.


 * StuRat, yeah, I’m aware of the potential dangers of visiting some parts of the Middle East. I also know about the countries you don’t want to mix on your passport, etc. However I’m young and have some experience and I figure it’s not going to get any easier for me to do these things later in life. It’s a risk I’m willing to take. --S.dedalus (talk) 19:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, but be sure you take precautions and don't lose your head. StuRat (talk) 23:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've been to Egypt a couple of times and found prices were pretty low. For a US visitor, it's probably safer than Lebanon, Syria or Yemen; and prices seem to be lower than in the Emirates; and you get to see stuff like the Pyramids, and the Valley of the Kings.  Amongst the best things I've ever done, is rent a bicycle from my hotel in Luxor and cycle to the Valley of the Kings; yes it was hot - 45 C - but gentle slopes, a cooling wind from the river and a slow pace made for a great day :-)  Astronaut (talk) 16:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * A cooling wind ? I'd need a tornado to keep me cool at those temps. StuRat (talk) 21:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Longest building?
The list of largest buildings in the world states that the longest building in the world is some airport at 1.7 km. Excuse me, but what about Prora? Sure, it ain't used for anything, but it is, undoubtably, a building. Is there some criterion I'm missing or is the article simply incorrect? 83.188.196.191 (talk) 07:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know anything about Prora, but a glance at the article says that it's actually eight buildings, not one, and that that length is all eight of them together. --Masamage ♫ 08:37, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And a glance at the satellite view linked from the article doesn't show any single building 1.7 km long. Franamax (talk) 08:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

On Line Chatting
So does it seem like people you meet chatting on line have more serious problems and bad events happen in their lives than average? Why is that? AndreaTrue77 (talk) 14:46, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd chalk it up to the fact that you are likely to meet more people online than in "real life", thus increasing the chance that one of them would have had a serious problem or bad event. (It's more likely that one person in a chat room of 1000 people would have had a car accident in the past month than it would for one of 10 people in the hair stylist's waiting room.) You then have the fact that people are more likely to talk about abnormal events than routine events (In that chat room you'll probably here from the one person who has had a car accident [and the one person who has won the lottery] rather than the 900 people who are just doing the day-to-day slog.) You then throw in the Von Restorff effect, which means you'll remember the few people who have bad stories while forgetting the 900 people who said "can't complain". Finally, people are subject to confirmation bias, where once you have formulated a theory ("people online have more serious problems"), additional evidence that confirms the view is given more weight than evidence which conflicts with it. (That is, if two people, one online and one in real life, come up to you with stories about their car crashes, you are likely to view the first as confirming your theory, while the second would likely be dismissed as a random fluke or outlier - a special case not mandating adjustment to your theory.) Finally, there might even be some truth to the theory. I can't say for certain, but it may be that people who have serious problems are more likely to seek out socialization and companionship than other people, and may feel more comfortable doing it online. -- 128.104.112.147 (talk) 19:11, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Would many people go online to talk about what a nice day it's been today, or other mundane topics? That gets really boring really quickly (much more so than chatting face to face about the same topic), and if they can't think of anything more substantial to talk about, the other party says "Gotta go now, see you next time".  So, to avoid that, people tend to bring up meatier topics.  They could discuss climate change, or the state of world poverty, or the global obesity epidemic, or the life of Emile Zola, but they'd need to be chatting to someone with a similar interest for that to work.  One thing that everyone can relate to is a personal human issue, drama or tragedy, so that becomes the common denominator.  It doesn't necessarily mean that that issue is dominating the writer's life away from the computer.  It is very tempting, though, for the other party in the chat to form such a view, because typically that's all they know about their interlocutor and they get defined (in the listener's mind) by that issue.  But we're all far more than just one issue, and every bad thing that happens is matched by many good things.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:05, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Coincidentally, I've just been reading about Tuchman's Law, which has things to say on this general topic of perceptions vs. reality: The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold. Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening, on a lucky day, without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. --  JackofOz (talk) 08:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Why does YouTube partner accounts main video on profile pages load automatically?
Why does YouTube partner accounts main video on profile pages load automatically without the viewer's consent? I criticize this feature because it discriminates against non-partner accounts, wastes bandwidth on the profile page.. They get their videos mark as "red diagonal ellipse" when searching for videos. I want to start a blog about this. That why I call these accounts "elite". Note: I'm not debating controversial subjects but want simple answers only. Jet (talk) 18:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Are you really asking why? Because the answer is pretty obvious. It's about getting partners more hits, which means more people want to be partners, which benefits YouTube. Since YouTube is a service paid for by advertising and so forth, I don't think one really has a huge amount of leeway to complain about their relatively unobtrusive revenue-generating attempts. They aren't exactly forcing you to use their site. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:09, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Because Google is capitalist. I'll blog it myself once I get around to it, was going to write an article on YouTube anyway. Avnas Ishtaroth drop me a line  05:12, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Why is eternity symbolized with a sideways 8?
Who thought of this? It's really very confusing.

"Professor Dinglefuddy, I thought eternity meant forever. How come it says here it's only 8 years?" --Hey, I&#39;m Just Curious (talk) 19:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It's actually the infinity symbol. As per the article, we're really not sure why the symbol looks similar to the a sideways 8. -- 128.104.112.147 (talk) 19:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ummm, perhaps because (a) the symbol has no discernible beginning and no end, and (b) were it to be oriented upright, it's likely to get mistaken for the numeral "8"? This is just a guess, nothing fit to add to the article. -- Deborahjay (talk) 20:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant "infinity". I often use the words interchangably. Hey, I&#39;m Just Curious (talk) 20:04, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * My all time favorite explanation is that it is a sand timer on it's side; therefore it will take an infinite amount of time to empty. 20I.170.20 (talk) 20:40, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I understood it to be symbolic of a moebius strip (which has one continuous - i.e. infinite - side in two dimensions). Steewi (talk) 03:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops - I just read the article above. It's a popular but implausible origin. I stand corrected. Steewi (talk) 03:03, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * To me, it's a twisted ouroboros. Avnas Ishtaroth drop me a line  05:11, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Samsung SGH G600
Does the Samsung SGH G600 supporty SDHC memory or is it only the regualar microSDs?

89.241.242.129 (talk) 21:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Everything I've found so far suggest it only supports microSD cards. Note that MicroSD cards are about a quarter the size of an SDHC card, so unless the phone has a dedicated port for SDHC it will not be compatible. The phone's manual should list which cards it will take. 20I.170.20 (talk) 21:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, but you can actually get microSDHC cards nowadays, or so the article says on the wiki. I'll go with getting a regular 2gb microSD, just to be on the safe side. 89.241.242.129 (talk) 21:48, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. Well then it's a possibility, though I know from experience than using SDHC cards in older devices can cause problems. Have a look at SD and SDHC compatibility issues for more info. 20I.170.20 (talk) 21:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * And, we do have a computing desk which may draw more attention to your question. -hydnjo talk 00:43, 4 August 2008 (UTC)