Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 October 12

= October 12 =

Business management
Business management.... can u tell me d advantages n disadvantages of control which is one of d managerial function? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.205.203 (talk) 11:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Why not look it up for yourself?86.209.30.56 (talk) 14:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a homework question. Wikipedians will not do your homework for you. After trying to decipher your chatspeak, I think your question is too vague to get a coherent answer anyway. Xenon54 / talk / 16:02, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:41, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Try Fayol for a start. 92.24.128.70 (talk) 23:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * See the article Management which links to other management-related articles. Control is only one of the activities of a manager. Others are planning, organizing, staffing, leading and directing an organization or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:49, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Mummy
How can I buy Egyptian mummy for personal collection? --Hok1234 (talk) 15:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I doubt the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (who oversees all archaeological finds) is selling any to average people. Xenon54 / talk / 16:00, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It would be a long and difficult process. I would imagine the first step would be to start a museum and get it internationally renowned.  65.121.141.34 (talk) 16:02, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * However, a surprisingly large number of them were removed from the Egypt in previous centuries. Many of these were destroyed for various stupid reasons, but some of them wound up in the hands of private collectors. Some of those may still be extant. Perhaps you could track one down and purchase it.
 * This would require a lot of detective work, and who knows about the legality of it. APL (talk) 16:22, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * There are UNESCO regulations that govern the sale of antiquities... you would definitely want to get a lawyer who knew about this sort of thing. It's likely not possible. There are a lot of national and international regulations regarding the sale of things like mummies. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The Sadigh Gallery regularly has bits of mummy wrap, masks, etc. available for sale. You can get a mummified falcon for $9,000, for example. I've purchased other kinds of items from them; each item comes with a certificate of authenticity. While we think of mummies as being priceless heirlooms from the past, until recently it was no big deal to sell them by the ton - for example, as a source of mummy paper or fuel. Matt Deres (talk) 02:56, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

T.V.
Why is it that the more channels you have to choose from on your tv, the less there is on, is this not some sort of paradox.? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.172.58.82 (talk) 16:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * There is only a limited amount of good TV available. If it is diluted across countless channels then it appears as if there is nothing worth watching. The more channels there are available to buy TV programmes the easier it is for production companies to make and sell crap. Caesar&#39;s Daddy (talk) 17:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * . Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm reminded of the Bruce Springsteen song 57 Channels, which pretty much covers this exact topic. It was also cool in that it featured Bruce playing lead bass instead of guitar.  Fun song.  -- Jayron  32  18:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That sounds a lot like The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 21:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Back in the 60s sometime, when the only way to get TV was via antenna, one of the Peanuts characters said to another, something like, "Now that our reception is good, the programs aren't." →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:53, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Teevees of that era had "brightness" controls. They didn't work. PhGustaf (talk) 04:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure they did. Well, they turned, anyway. As opposed to being glued in place. But I do recall having to fiddle with several knobs to try to get the RGB in balance. Color sets kind of do that for you nowadays. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 04:37, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That's probably because you had NTSC - which stands for "Never Twice Same Color". Those of us who had PAL didn't have that problem. SteveBaker (talk) 13:07, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Guys, he's making a frigging joke about how dumb the shows were. Adjusting the brightness levels didn't make them any less stupid. Why would he hijack a thread regarding show quality to drop in a non sequitur about technical difficulties? Matt Deres (talk) 03:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Getting back to the original question, before cable all you had were 3 network affiliates, maybe an independent, maybe a public TV station. So if you wanted to watch something, you didn't have much choice, so you stuck with whatever was most appealing out of the five. Then you went on vacation during the summer because it was all reruns. And here's the problem with cable: A number of cable channels seem to have endless reruns. To put it another way, the quantity of original programming that's on 57 channels at one time might not be all that many. And a number of the channels are niche channels with a fairly narrow audience. So while there seem to be 57 channels, the choices for something new and interesting, at any given time, might be considerably less than 57. And thanks to channel surfing, you can practically watch all 57 shows at once. Entertainment overload. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 04:42, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Part of the problem is that when there ARE new shows, all of the channels feel the need to compete for audience share - so many of the new shows are scheduled at the exact same time. You'd really hope that DVR's would go some way to preventing that practice...but these companies are slow to change their ways, and the "official" ratings systems (which are racing to catch up with modern viewing techniques) aren't helping that!  People like me who "collect" an entire series of shows on DVR before starting to watch any of them must really screw up their methods! SteveBaker (talk) 13:07, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Personally, I think TV is getting better. In the olden days you had three channels of shallow crap. Now you get about fifty channels, by shear chance some of them produce good shows from time to time. For instance, quality Sci-fi like the new Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly would never have happened in the 3-network era. APL (talk) 13:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

The more sure you are than at least one of these goshdarn channels has something good on, the less charitable you will be to whatever it is you are watching or thinking about watching. That said I remember the dreadful days of 1993 when we only had 26 channels. When Matlock is your best bet for entertainment, you know you have failed God and yourself. Vranak (talk) 15:41, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks to flat-screen TV's and DVD's, you can watch whatever's available, on a big screen, and nearly commercial-free. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 17:34, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * 26? 26?! Until 1997, we had four. And we were glad of it. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 07:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I am from the colonies. When I return to the old country and see what is on those five channels, I find that your programming is far preferable. Even the adverts are amusing and intelligent. Vranak (talk) 15:42, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

What states have the McDonald's Monopoly million dollar winners been in?
In other words, what states have the Boardwalk tickets been found in? I'm just wondering if they change fairly randomly or if the winners come from the same state or from a small group of states every year. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * No clue, but I want to point out that a "random" distribution would not necessarily mean that winnings would be distributed equally across U.S. states—it would have to do with the number of McDonald's in each state, presumably, which likely varies by state (Montana should not have nearly as many as California, for example). --Mr.98 (talk) 18:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has, of course, an article on this promotion, McDonald's Monopoly, which also discusses the 2001 fraud. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:59, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like North Carolina was a hotbed for McDonald's "winners" in the late 90's-early 2000's because of the fraud Comet Tuttle was talking about. This FBI investigator's report http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/finaffar.pdf is a more entertaining read than any TV crime drama! 71.161.59.133 (talk) 00:20, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

the mysterious British House of Commons
(Not House of Kafka, oh no.) I am most interested in the Guardian story "Guardian gagged from reporting parliament", but it's impossibly evasive and uninformative. One part:


 * Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found. / The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

Does anyone here know what it's about? -- Hoary (talk) 23:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Nope. The Order of Business for Monday is published here. Although on further digging, I guess the information might in fact be in Questions for Oral or Written Answer beginning on Monday 12 October 2009. But that's a huge list of questions. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:45, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Oral question 13 for the 12th reads in full: Mr Simon Burns (West Chelmsford): In how many primary schools in Chelmsford there were. That's somewhat cryptic: "there were children withdrawn for 'extraordinary rendition'", perhaps? I can't immediately see anything else of interest for yesterday. If I were in Britain, I'd pop out to buy a copy of the Eye. Thank you for the longer list; I'll peruse it from now. -- Hoary (talk) 23:54, 12 October 2009 (UTC) .... PS 2344 questions? Um, not all by myself. If we can muster a dozen interested volunteers, perhaps we can divide and conquer. (The last question -- so far -- partly involves "Huntingdonshire", which I'd naively believed had disappeared thirty or forty years ago. I doubt that I'm qualified to look through even one twelfth of a set of questions about this inscrutable nation.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

The last issue of Private Eye indicated that Mr Justice Eady had gagged the press with relation to a potential libel, to the extent that even reporting on the case would be a breach of the gagging order. It also added that an MP had made it clear that he would use parliamentary privilege to raise the matter when the Commons reconvened. That is likely to be what the Guardian is referring to, although it is unable to say any more due to the gagging order. Malcolm XIV (talk) 00:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It didn't happen to say which MP? That would make a search more easy. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:04, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Here we go. Questions for Written Answer - Notices given between Thursday 17 September and Friday 9 October. Questions 60 to 63 seem apropos, and the matter is already covered in our article, here. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The Grauniad has also published The Trafigura files and how to read them --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

This is most interesting. Thank you for the information, Tagishsimon and Malcolm IV. I'd already been vaguely aware of the Trafigura affair, and also of the surprisingly wide scope of British libel law. (For the latter, I warmly recommend this paper: don't let the word "linguistics" in the title scare you: I read it and -- with mounting disbelief -- understood it before I'd ever studied any linguistics.) I shall resist a mighty urge to make a tart comment on this (it might be deleted as inappropriate speechifying), and instead simply raise a glass to Paul Farrelly. -- Hoary (talk) 02:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Update: Guardian claims victory on 'gag'. See also Streisand effect. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:17, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

In New Zealand, if Parliament is filmed ( we have only one House - that's enough as it is ), they are not to be filmed if they are doing something stupid, which is pretty much most of the time. But nowhere to my knowledge is a paper banned from reporting the whole business of the House. Let them be accountable, State Secrets aside. It seems politicians want to have it all their own way, and show an arrogance they may not have had otherwise. The Russian.202.36.179.66 (talk) 23:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If you take the trouble to read through what's been going on, 202.36, you'll see this issue arose out of the application of libel law by UK courts, rather than having anything to do with mendacious politicians. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Generally speaking, libel laws in the UK are a sticky wicket indeed, but most everything that transpires in the H of C eventually comes out in the Hansard--Myersdtm (talk) 03:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Stockdale v Hansard is probably relevant. --ColinFine (talk) 19:46, 14 October 2009 (UTC)