Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 November 18

= November 18 =

2 Anchors?
Why, in these days of financial restraint - whether public or privately funded - which have to be financed in any case by the public purse - do we need to listen to two news announcers - tell us there has been, "an accident on the "Freeway between Botswana and Guantanamo Bay" - sic? In other words, why do the junior reporters need to be there to provide verbal phrases betwen commas and and periods/full stops? If I read a newspaper, I would be annoyed if the story was constantly being interrupted by an announcement that "we are now going to our correspondent in New York." 92.30.47.24 (talk) 00:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Read a newspaper then. I don't see where this is supposed to be the complaints department.  If you don't like how your local TV station presents the news, call them.  We can't really change anything here at Wikipedia.  -- Jayron  32  02:56, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * According to Huntley-Brinkley Report, it's all Bill McAndrew's fault. NBC's director of news saw that a local news program with two anchors got high ratings, so he brought in Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. Besides, somebody has to laugh at their lame jokes. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:33, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Your question is not entirely clear? But are you asking why there's typically two anchors behind the desk on a typical news show? Besides the obvious variety it brings to an otherwise boring program, they intentionally try to have at least two anchors so that they can alternate stories or segments and not have to talk for an hour straight.
 * Or are you asking why there are segues between segments and not just abrupt cuts? Newspapers have headlines and bylines to introduce stories. That doesn't really work in a video format so they use a more conversational way of doing things. Television news is supposed to be somewhat casual anyway, if you want serious information you're going to need a more textual format like a newspaper. (Even then...) APL (talk) 03:47, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * (OR)Having a male and a female announcer creates a illusory parental environment for lonely TV viewers, just like many of the TV ads they also broadcast. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 00:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

4G, 3G, 2G; our network is better because it has a higher number of Gs!
Can I ask what the hell they are talking about? I feel like I'm being bombarded with commercials for carriers touting their Gs without ever telling us what the hell they are talking about: "We have more Gs so we're better." Gigabytes maybe? Anyway it sounds like snakeoil because they use it as a magic statement rather than saying anything substantial.--141.155.159.27 (talk) 05:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Been involved with IT for over 40 years. Many times while products have evolved I've seen reference to 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation versions of whatever is being touted. They usually stop around 4 and move on to another new piece of jargon. HiLo48 (talk) 06:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * As mentioned at 3G and 4G, the letter G is short for "generation". 1G wireless technology was the 1980's era cell phones (remember the big honking cells with the huge antennas, or "car phones" with the wired antennas you mounted on the roof?).  2G wireless technology began in 1991 with digital voice encryption on the GSM standard and the first SMS texting capabilities.  3G wireless was the first broad-application-based wireless service; 3G was the first standard to effectively encorporate media beyond telephone in the wireless service, things like mobile internet and mobile TV.  4G refers to IP-based wireless communication, which is a distinct break from 3G, which was basically using cell-phone protocol to give internet access.  4G flips the standard; where 3G provided internet over cell phone, 4G is fundementally a wireless internet service over which you can also make phone calls.  Each G represents not only a massive increase in data throughput capability, but also a fundemendatal difference in data transmission standards; each basically represents an entirely new network from the ground up, with its own infrastructure, data encryption and transmission standards, etc. etc.  -- Jayron  32  06:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Note that the first generation of anything is only ever described in that fashion in retrospect. HiLo48 (talk) 06:51, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It's also worth noting that 4G is currently an evolving standard and isn't actually implemented anywhere yet (outside of some misleading marketing fluff). See 4G Predecessors and candidate systems for the contending technologies and standards. You may also see the term 'LTE' (Long Term Evolution) mentioned a lot in the near future.  Although this is a real network technology with real, usable equipment and has more capacity than '3G' it isn't yet '4G'. Blakkandekka (talk) 14:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting anecdote of some real life "snake oil" being sold: when Cell C relaunched their marketing campaign with new branding etc., they heavily advertised their "4G" broadband network which was nothing more than marketing jargon as it was still 3G products and network speeds they were selling. Presumably they wanted to indicate that their products were somehow "better". After about a week of their new ad campaign we suddenly didn't see any more use of the term "4G", most likely MTN or Vodacom raised a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority to have the claims removed. Zunaid 07:06, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * In the context of iPhones, Apple do use G for gigabytes: this is different from the 1G - 4G mentioned above, but naive users might be confused. --ColinFine (talk) 08:25, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * doesn't make sense, ColinFine, my iphone 3G does not have only 3GBs of memory --85.119.25.27 (talk) 12:56, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed the iPhone 3G was called 3G because it had 3G (more specifically W-CDMA) network support (sometimes else most smartphones before the iPhone already had but Apple didn't implement possibly because their US network provider still had limited support). For a long time people were calling the iPhone 4 iPhone 4G even tho it was rather unlikely it was going to have 4G since as Zunaid mentioned non network currently available supports the ITU's 4G requirements. Fortunately Apple wasn't that silly and it was simply called the iPhone 4. Of course the term 4G can have different meanings and in some countries networks are advertised as 4G even though they don't meet the ITU's requirements (usually wimax which may be used for 4G one day but doesn't meet the requirements yet). Nil Einne (talk) 16:12, 18 November 2010 (UTC) P.S. Forgot to mention that EDGE can be 3G although I'm not sure if the iPhone's implementation meet the requirements but it's possible technically the original iPhone did support 3G according to the ITU's definition. Nil Einne (talk) 18:58, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right, I was misremembering. I chose a 16Gb rather than an 8Gb iPhone 3G, and was thinking of that. --ColinFine (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Or, you can do what Telstra do, and market your services as Next G. You'll always be ahead of the competition :) /87.96.197.64 (talk) 17:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Just today (November 19), the Chicago Tribune had an article about this trend of carriers calling their networkd "4G", even when they don't comply with the standards. . Buddy431 (talk) 17:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

use of piezoelectric material
how one can implement piezoelectric material in the electric circuit to generate voltage? describe with figure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rananjaysingh436 (talk • contribs) 19:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Welcome to . Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our policy here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know.
 * However, see our piezoelectricity article. In short you thump the crystal. CS Miller (talk) 19:40, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * However, see our piezoelectricity article. In short you thump the crystal. CS Miller (talk) 19:40, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Location based learning
Will schools and places of higher learning be done away with in preference for online learning in the future? AdbMonkey (talk) 20:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe. schyler (talk) 20:41, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's already happening. The Open University is an example of an institution that uses online learning to the full and also gives opportunities for face-to-face contact. Wikiversity is a great institution but I wouldn't rely on it alone quite yet. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:52, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions or predictions about future events. See WP:CRYSTAL. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 23:50, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Our E-learning article doesn't seem to touch on its many disadvantages when compared to going to university &mdash; isolation, lack of dating opportunities, etc. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Distance learning is also relevant, and also lacks discussion of disadvantages. Perhaps this is because the competing model is so standard as not to have a name?  Learning face-to-face, even in the lecture format, has the huge advantage that the audience is communicating back to the speaker.  Even if no one asks questions (and questions are really important), the speaker can adjust the presentation on the spot in response to the facial expressions in the crowd.  And being on location means having after-class conversations in small groups, which is immensely useful.  Two people and a whiteboard works amazingly well.  Paul (Stansifer) 03:49, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Where education works best is when it is responsive; where the students can make contact with an educator (Professor, teacher, grad student, tutor, etc.) or with each other, and learning can proceed with two way communication, such that the instructor can adjust for problems the student is having, the student can ask questions to probe for additional information. Students can work together to fill in each other's holes.  And the sort of communication that occurs between people, in a real-live-can-touch-the-other-person-setting cannot really be replicated online; a good teacher can see when their students are learning from body language, tone of voice, etc.  The problem with the modern Huge Mega State University education is lots of classes, especially the general 101-level classes, are taught in a completely impersonal manner: Lectures of hundreds of students, often with little to no extra support outside of class.  If a student gets enough of that kind of learning, eventually they say "I could teach this shit to myself", and turn to distance learning.  Distance learning is probably not any worse than the 1000-student lecture, but its cheaper and more convenient.  -- Jayron  32  05:13, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I understand that wikipedia is not a crystal ball. (And also that crystal balls don't work.) This is going off of a Harvard or Yale article that I read that showed evidence that location based learning was a thing of the past. The article also cited Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as someone who also said this. So, I am not looking for opinion, or a soothsayer. I am looking for empirical evidence that would support the notion that universities either are or aren't going to be done away with, and an expected time frame for this to occur. I am not asking for an airy fairy guess on the topic, but real evidence. I would think this topic would be particularly important since it would mean an enormous change in the nature of education, and to those who work in the field. But perhaps I shouldn't be asking on wikipedia, not because this matter isn't pertinent, but because most users would not have any more of a clue than I do. AdbMonkey (talk) 06:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The answer is that Universities are not going to be done away with. Think of distance learning as an alternative to, rather than a replacement for, classroom learning.  There are some people for whom, for whatever reason, a traditional university education, with classrooms and teachers and keggers and football games, doesn't work.  Prior to the internet, these people were pretty much stiffed; either they went to University or they didn't get that education.  With the advent of online learning and other distance learning models, it provided an additional outlet for teaching outside of the standard university setting.  But there's no reason to believe it will replace the unversity.  Indeed it is quite likely that many people who are successful at distance learning would NOT have been successful at a university, thus distance learning may not be "poaching" students from universities, it may just be educating different students.  The microwave overn and the crock-pot didn't cause houses to stop being built with traditional cooking ranges; they provided alternate means to cook, but did not replace the traditional oven and stove top.  Its the same deal here. -- Jayron  32  07:05, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * But the microwave did facilitate a change in food habits, along with easily available fast food. The number of Americans who regularly make home-cooked meals has certainly shrunk since the 1960s and 1970s, which quite a number of commentators (e.g. Michael Pollan) have argued has had extremely detrimental effects on American nutrition and health. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:56, 19 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It's frankly unclear what the future of higher education is going to be, and people at the bastions of the old guard are very uncomfortable with that uncertainty. I personally suspect that the University of Phoenix is going to be the model for how most Americans get higher education in the future, rather than the Harvards and Yales and MITs. That doesn't mean that the university will go away. But I would not be surprised if, over the next 50 years, the gap between the "old guard" university experience and the "run of the mill/state school" experience gap widens, and would not be surprised to see digital learning play a part in that. The economics of distance learning are clear, and if the economics of education becomes the primary issue, then it's clear it will be embraced even if the quality of education suffers. I don't personally see this as a good thing, but pedagogically I am clearly a dinosaur. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:56, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

AdbMonkey, you're now here regularly enough that it is a bit disingenuous for you to complain so frequently (as you've done about several of your questions so far) about how you guess WP just can't answer your question for you. This is a free service: use it at your own risk, and take what you get (consistent with all WP policies and guidelines, etc.). BTW, do you have a source (and please read WP:RS as to what is considered a reliable source at WP and how to reference it) for your recollection that Harvard or Yale or someone said something about this, so we can see for ourselves what was actually said and then try to explain that to you in that context? Thanks. Wiki Dao &#9775;  (talk)  17:25, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! AdbMonkey (talk) 06:23, 20 November 2010 (UTC)