Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 January 5

= January 5 =

Websites related to "Oldest in Britain"
I know there is "Oldest in Britain" website for oldest living people in the United Kingdom, but are there websites that show all deaths for and oldest living people of the following countries: United States, Japan, Spain, Australia, Canada, Italy, and other countries? Deaths in 2013 (talk) 03:25, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Places which prohibit photography for reasons that are unknown or/and kept secret
Are there any places in the world with no photography policies, but the exact or official reason for the implementation of the policy is either unknown, or explicitly kept a secret by the people operating/owning/taking care of the place? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:23, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Damn, you are obsessed with this exact topic.  and   and  show prior answers to this similar topic.  What makes you think we know more today than we did in prior years?  Is the horse you've been beating not dead yet?  -- Jayron 32 04:35, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * So, the answer is neigh? μηδείς (talk) 04:41, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * In fairness, our viewership and response rate can vary quite a bit over months, let alone years. As long as a question is not being asked several times in the same week I see no problem with checking in later to see if new or better referenced answers might turn up. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:42, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Further, each of those questions are quite distinct and would have completely different answers; they just happen to fall under a similar umbrella. So, it's a herd being beaten and none of them are dead, merely injured. Matt Deres (talk) 22:48, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * A lot of people's houses are like that, or at least certain rooms. Mine sure is, for perfectly innocent reasons. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:11, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Achieving wealth
Are there statistics on people of modest or average birth who achieve substantial wealth (say at least $5M) and how they got there? I'm curious about the paths that get people rich, e.g. successful business people (what industries?), athletes, actors, singers, etc. For purposes of the question, I'm not interested in inherited wealth or luck (e.g. lotteries). Dragons flight (talk) 05:00, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * PS. There are a number of professions that are typically regarded as high-earning, e.g. doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, etc.  My impression is that while these careers do tend to do well (e.g. the upper middle class), most people in these areas aren't saving enough to reach the $5M threshold, I asked about.  In other words, that reaching high levels of wealth is about more than just having a traditional "good job", and I'm curious what the earning paths actually look like at the higher levels.  Dragons flight (talk) 05:58, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Warren Buffet came from a pretty ordinary background. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:14, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It's very easy for a professional athlete in the four major North American team sports to acquire wealth over $5 million (a lot of annual salaries are well above that). The NBA and NFL are known to recruit a lot of athletes from underprivileged backgrounds. In baseball, most Latino players also come from modest means (it's typical for a player from the Dominican Republic to say he did not own a glove or a pair of shoes when he grew up). Ice hockey used to be filled with farm boys from the Canadian Prairies, and as the saying goes, when you're a farmer, you live all your life in poverty and you die a millionaire (i.e. your assets are worth a lot - farm buildings, equipment and livestock - but your cash flow is usually not so great). See also Horatio Alger myth and rags to riches for a more general discussion of the topic. --Xuxl (talk) 10:16, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * This article at Forbes.com and links from it do a good job of answering the OPs question, though for a very small subset of "the wealthy", specifically the Forbes 400. However, it does give some insight as to how few people grow their wealth from nothing.  Of the 400 wealthiest individuals in 2004 (according to that article), only 19 built their wealth from literally nothing.  -- Jayron 32 18:20, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * There are several routes. Wise investment is one, Michael Burry made his money as a hedge fund manager, after passing up law and medicine.  Or you can create a business like Steve Jobs.  But most make their money in some ways to do with connections.  George Soros made his money off currency speculation.  Ross Perot got a huge government contract.  Bill Gates got the contract to write a substandard operating system for a very large company.  Michael Bloomberg provided a news service for well-heeled investors.  There's also success in sports and the arts, like Madonna and Michael Jordan, with concert tours and endorsement deals.  And then there's election to the Senate, which has netted Harry Reid between $3-$10 million in stocks and properties, and Made Trent Lott a multi-millionaire by the time he resigned as Bernie Ebbers' biggest campaign fund recipient. μηδείς (talk) 21:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It should be noted that for some of those "self-made" should be taken with a grain of salt. The certainly made more wealth for themselves than they started with (so they were in a sense, "self-made") but most of those (indeed most wealthy people in general, even those that get richer) started with a sizable head start, and also access to the social networks that allow access to the machinery of wealth creation.  Jobs, Soros, and Jordan were all from modest backgrounds and social classes without access to such things, but the many others all had sizable advantages over the "average" middle or working class citizen because they already belonged to the upper class (their families were already in the upper echelons of society, they merely took this head start and made it even higher).  For example, Bill Gates' father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the boards of several firms.  No one in the middle class serves on boards.  Ross Perot's father was a wealthy commodities trader with political connections and sent him to exclusive private schools, as Gates's parents had.  And so on.  The 1-10 ranking system the Forbes 400 uses is VERY instructional in answering the OPs question, more than individual anecdotes of select millionaires is.  It at least tries to quantify the very wealthy as to whether they started dirt poor, and made all of their money on their own (ranked 1) to those that were born insanely wealthy, and have sat on it and done nothing (ranked 10).  Most of the top 400 wealthiest people still rank 5 and higher on their scale, which means most of them already had enough money to be considered among the highest socioeconomic classes in America, even those that made their own wealth started with enough to give them the advantage necessary to be able to do so.  Stories like Gates or Perot (wealthy, connected family puts their children through best schools money can buy, pulls strings where needed, and kid ends up getting even richer) are far more common than those of Soros and Jordan, which is statistically indistinguishable from winning the lottery.  -- Jayron 32 01:38, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm reminded of something Richard Armour said about the Kennedy-Nixon contest: When Nixon turned 21, his father gave him a gold watch. When JFK turned 21, his father gave him a million dollars, because he already had a watch. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:12, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * On a similar anecdotal theme, Larry Niven was once asked what was the best advice his (oil magnate) Father gave him. He related that when he turned 21 his Father said to him "Son, here's a million dollars. don't lose it." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 14:08, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * μηδείς seem to acknowledge that a bit with the connections bit. However they seem tp have missed people from such families isn't what the OP asked about. Also, I think the point they missed that while connections may be important, it isn't the only factor. Gates access to time share computers at a relatively early age for someone of his era clearly wasn't just about connections (although it does seem like these connections helped once the paid time ran out and they also undoutedly helped him in numerous ways both in his school years and later with the various things he did). For that matter, Gates dropping out of Harvard to form a business was likely not such a big deal compared to someone from a poor family, realisticly if he'd failed he would still have many options. Heck, you've got to figure Gates knew hacking free time on a computer, or using the scheduling program to put himself in classes with interesting girls wasn't that big a risk, someone from a poor or even middle class family probably legitimately wouldn't have felt quiet the same even if they were somehow had the same opportunity, which again may have a bit to do with connections but also a lot of other things. Nil Einne (talk) 15:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I noticed J seemed to have missed my allusion to connections, but we've basically agreed. I am not sure the OP's question is capable of a well-sourced reliable textual answer.  Consider the joke about the mail-order "How to Get Rich Quick" book that advises readers to write a how-to-get-rich-quick book.  From OR the answer, not in terms of specific people, seems to be, be your own boss and either cater upscale: Martha Stewart, or broad and wide: J. K. Rowling, or offer services (law, restauranteur, plastic surgeon, jeweler, real-estate sales, car sales, stock broker, etc.) to high-paying customers.  I'd also like to point out that being connected seems to fit Soros by definition, given his conviction by the French supreme court for insider trading, and the European Court's refusal to overturn the conviction, for which, and a very interesting quote by Paul Krugmann, see the article linked above.  Oh, and I know an entirely self-made multi-millionaire painter and gallery owner who does swear by The Martha Rules although he was rich well before he read that book. μηδείς (talk) 18:30, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Microsoft Points
I bought microsoft points awhile ago and I have $39 in my microsoft account is there anyway I can get this money out? I want to spend it online somehow but I dont want to buy microsoft apps or games. Can I get around microsoft? I want to buy something off amazon. Can this be done? Anyway I can get the money out of microsoft and into something else would be great! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.42.31.250 (talk) 06:53, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Microsoft Points talks about it in the past tense. You will probably need to call Microsoft and find out how or if you can cash in that 39 dollars. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:04, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * And "Currency gained from converted Points will expire on June 1, 2015." (I suspect Micro$oft will make a tidy profit from unredeemed points.)--Shantavira|feed me 08:15, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

what happened to the small village of Morra in Avellino in Campania in Italy? (Village-Province-Region)
Italy is broken up into communes villages and towns within a larger category of Avellino within Campania, within the country of Italy. I cannot find this village called Morra on a map. I cannot locate a map of Campania with all the small old villages where our ancestors came from. I do not know if it was combined with another village, but it definitely existed in 1920. Is there a map with everysmall town on it from 1920 in Avellino in Italy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richie25rich (talk • contribs) 14:45, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm probably just displaying my ignorance, but we have an article on Morra De Sanctis in Avellino. Mikenorton (talk) 14:55, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The Italian wikipedia states "Morra De Sanctis, formerly Morra Irpino, is an Italian town of 1320 inhabitants of the province of Avellino in Campania." Mikenorton (talk) 14:58, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * This view from Google Maps shows Morra and surrounding villages. Marco polo (talk) 16:33, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Many Italian villages have changed their names a bit. A friend of mine's family came from a town that used to be named Cazzone (a name which means ladle, but also literally means big cock to a modern Italian), for instance, which was thankfully changed at the close of the 1800's. Other times, the place has a long name and a short name, and it's just simpler to use the short name. People know where you're referring to if you put the name of the provincia after. A friend of mine actually took me to visit that area last Spring. You come from a beautiful area with a rich history, good sir. If you'd like to go a bit further in your ancestry hunt, here is the village's website with contact info. You could email them and ask for records about your family's history. Let me know if you might need any help translating messages into Italian if English doesn't work out (in case you don't speak the tongue, but if you do, bravo). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 14 Tevet 5775 16:53, 5 January 2015 (UTC)