Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 April 28

= April 28 =

Women's Guess brand watches
How do I find a specific watch? I've searched everything I can think of. It's Guess brand, women's style,gold with crystals or diamonds and I have even typed in a number I can see on the back of it. G95326L?71.92.123.209 (talk) 00:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Have you looked in the catalog?   RudolfRed (talk) 00:58, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Hobart Mills, California
The geographic reference locator for Hobart Mills, California places the hamlet in the wrong place. By clicking on the locator, the map locator will point to a position west of the town of Loyalton in eastern Sierra County. It is supposed to indicate the correct position where Hobart Mills is located in Nevada County several miles north of the town of Truckee, a tourist town on Interstate 80. Hobart Mills is actually located on the old route 89 by Prosser Reservoir just east of California Route 89. I don't have the expertise to change the geographic reference locator mentioned in the article. But I am linking the geographic reference for Hobart Mills from the U.S. Geological Survey. http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/f?p=gnispq:3:3903057738102203::NO::P3_FID:1658762 — Preceding unsigned comment added by ElkeWylie (talk • contribs) 02:46, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the problem. The editor who set up the infobox read the coordinates of 39.40, 120.18 and entered them into them as 39 deg 40 min, 120 deg 18 min, which is wrong.  It should point to the right place now.  Thanks for pointing out the error. Looie496 (talk) 03:32, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Getting from Munich Airport to Theresienwiese
I just noticed that my flight to Munich arrives at 16:15 and the check-in at my hotel near Theresienwiese closes at 18:00. I have 1 hour 45 minutes to get from the airport to Theresienwiese U-Bahn station. Is this enough time? J I P &#124; Talk 09:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Barring a very late arrival of your flight or some major screwup at the baggage checkout, you should be okay - the trip to your hotel should take about 70 minutes in total...S-Bahn trains leave the airport about every 10 minutes. The airport is served by 2 S-Bahn lines going in opposite directions around the city, but you want to get off at Hauptbahnhof to change to the subway so it doesn't matter which S-Bahn line you take - they both take about 45 to 50 minutes to get you to the city center. Getting to the hotel from Hauptbahnhof shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes, including finding the subway platform and waiting for the next train there. That leaves you with more than half an hour for getting off the plane and picking up your baggage - unless your flight is more than 20 minutes late, you should be able to make that without problems. -- Ferkelparade &pi; 10:34, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Addendum: I just remembered that it also depends on what terminal you arrive at. I usually arrive at terminal 1 (which I think is used excluively by Lufthansa and Star Alliance), there you get dropped off directly next to the baggage retrieval, and it's a very short walk from there to the S-Bahn station. If you arrive at any of the other terminals, there will be a bit more walking and navigating the maze of corridors involved. You should still be able to get to your hotel on time if your plane is on time, but the "no more than 20 minutes late" I wrote above only works for terminal 1. -- Ferkelparade &pi; 10:47, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I will be arriving at terminal 2 and not terminal 1. But my mother has a bag that can hold my baggage and is small enough to take as hand luggage. If the airline will allow me to take everything as hand luggage I save time by not waiting for my luggage at the airport. This is also what I did when I had to get from Paris-Orly to Paris-Charles de Gaulle in three hours. J I P  &#124; Talk 18:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It may also be worth ringing up your hotel and negotiating a later check-in. I've checked into hotels at crazy o'clock many times before just by letting them know in advance when, approximately, I expect to arrive. ny156uk (talk) 10:44, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That is an option, of course. But I'm not sure if the hotel staff understand English well enough and I don't trust myself to be able to speak understandable German over the telephone, only in person. J I P  &#124; Talk 18:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd be almost prepared to put money on you being able to communicate with your hotel in some way. A hotel in Munich is nearly guaranteed to have at least one member of staff with a high enough level of English to deal with your request - it would be tantamount to professional suicide if they didn't. I would advise making a phone call, and when they answer simply say "Hello, do you speak English?". I have always found this to be useful in allowing the person on the other end to either reply themselves, or to find the English-speaker-on-duty. Alternatively, if you still don't trust their language ability, you could send an email - this allows them to translate your request at their leisure. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:41, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree. Almost any hotel in a major city will have the front desk staffed by people who are reasonably fluent in English - certainly in Munich (where I lived for 8-11 years, depending on how you count ;-). I'm fairly sure that you can arrange for a late check-in - 18:00 will be the time they guarantee the room without a credit card, but even that can probably be negotiated. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:15, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have sent the hotel an e-mail (in my not-exactly-perfect German) informing them that I might be arriving late. Let's see what they reply. J I P  &#124; Talk 19:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The hotel replied, saying that if I arrive past their check-in time, I simply have to telephone them. The only problem was, as I've become accustomed to, that they think I'm a woman, when I'm a man. My real first name happens to end in an "a". In native Finnish names, the ending letters in first names bear no relation whatsoever to the person's gender, but I've found out that in pretty much everywhere in continental Europe, people assume everyone whose name ends in an "a" is a woman. J I P  &#124; Talk 20:09, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, not in Italy. Several common men's names &mdash; Andrea, Nicola, Luca &mdash; end in a.  The first two tend to be women's names in the States, which can be a source of confusion. --Trovatore (talk) 00:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Why is that a particular issue in the context of the question you've asked here? --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  19:33, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not. It's just that it has happened often enough to be an annoyance. I even once signed my e-mail with "Herr..." and still got a reply addressing me as "Sehr geehrte Frau...". The hotel staff has never expressed any surprise when I show up and reveal that I'm a man, though. J I P  &#124; Talk 20:34, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

On a related note...
Ferkelparade or C'Mike, would you recommend for or against asking, "Sprechen wir ein bisschen Englisch?" I've asked the question in that form, and sometimes there's a substantial pause on the other end before a reply; would you guess that's due to an unexpected question, bad grammar, or just or my foreign-to-them accent? Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:41, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * No problem. They can understand the question in either language. They just need a short while to bring their most fluent person to the phone. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Um, well, that question means, "Do we speak a bit of English?", so part of the pause is probably due to them trying to figure out what you are really trying to ask. Looie496 (talk) 01:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)


 * That is, where you have wir, substitute Sie. 86.161.209.128 (talk) 06:43, 29 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I spent several days in Munich when Reagan was president and not a single person outside a few very small shop owners (the owners, not the shops) would speak German to me once they realized I was American. The only person who didn't try speaking English with me was a junkie who said she was from Poland. (This was several years before the Wall fell.) μηδείς (talk) 01:50, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I lived in Neu-Ulm not far from Munich during the same time frame and had few issues. I did start off speaking German and usually ended up speaking English when I did know a certain word or the other wanted to try out their English. --  Gadget850talk 18:57, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I hate it when I am in Germany or Austria, trying to speak German to the locals, and they immediately reply in English. Sure, English is easier for me to understand, but I take pride in my German skills. My sister speaks German at a near-native level, while my brother doesn't understand a word of German. The weirdest example was in a hotel bar in Seeboden, where the barman continuously spoke English to me as long as there were other guests present. Immediately after I became the only guest present at the bar, he switched to German. Here in Finland, I make it a point to always speak Finnish to foreign tourists if they show any sign of trying to speak Finnish. If they talk to me in English, I reply in English. J I P  &#124; Talk 19:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I had the same experience when I first moved to Germany. (I no longer live there.)  I remember conversations in which I spoke only German and the other person spoke only English. Very annoying. However, after a couple of months, my German improved to the point that Germans recognized that my German was better than or as good as their English, and people no longer insisted on responding in English. I have never encountered this behavior in any other country, even when my command of the local language was weaker than my command of German when I moved to Germany.  It seems to be a German cultural trait, for which the Germans even have a word: Besserwisserei. Marco polo (talk) 20:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * There's an anecdote from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! that has stuck with me, and applies to this situation. Professor Feynman had been invited to give a series of lectures at a Brazilian university; he brought with him only limited Portuguese.
 * I thought at first that I would give my lectures in English, but I noticed something: When the students were explaining something to me in Portuguese, I couldn't understand it very well, even though I knew a certain amount of Portuguese. It was not exactly clear to me whether they had said "increase," or "decrease," or "not increase," or "not decrease," or "decrease slowly." But when they struggled with English, they'd say "ahp" or "doon," and I knew which way it was, even though the pronunciation was lousy and the grammar was all screwed up. So I realized that if I was going to talk to them and try to teach them, it would be better for me to talk in Portuguese, poor as it was. It would be easier for them to understand.
 * The general principle is that by speaking the other person's language, you're not going to have problems with either exhausting their vocabulary, exceeding their knowledge of the language's syntax, or (usually) speaking too quickly. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This does make a certain amount of sense when you're teaching a class. In ordinary social interaction, though, it can come across as rude, as though you're disparaging the other person's command of your language.  If you want to speak the other person's language, you can say, would you mind if we speak Elbonian?  I don't get a lot of chances to practice it.. --Trovatore (talk) 21:38, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

economics of netflix streaming
How much does Netflix pay the movie studios or other owners of the films for the right to stream them on netflix? Do they agree on a flat fee beforehand, or does Netflix pay studios more if ppl watch it more?--24.228.93.254 (talk) 20:34, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think they disclose the specifics of their contracts for streaming. In their annual report, they say how much their costs are and that they are paying more for access to more titles, but not if its per-viewing, per-user, etc.  RudolfRed (talk) 20:53, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I do get the sense that Netflix plays hardball with the content providers, though, as they regularly cut off one source of movies/TV shows or another, due to that content provider wanting to charge too much. StuRat (talk) 18:30, 29 April 2013 (UTC)