Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 November 24

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November 24

Old "high-tech" font

There's a set of related fonts/typefaces that were apparently deemed futuristic or at least high-tech at one time. They were used for things related to computers and robots, particularly (I think) in the context of science fiction. These days, I think they're probably only found when someone is trying to be deliberately retro. Here's an example. What exactly would you call this style of font? And what exactly are its origins? (I get the impression that it's supposed to look like some sort of computer or calculator display, but I couldn't actually say I've ever seen a device that produces text like that. Were there some? If so, why? Something to do with readability on a computer screen?)

(I wasn't sure if this should be in the Humanities section or the Languages section. Sorry if it's in the wrong place.) -- 203.97.105.173 (talk) 02:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

See Magnetic ink character recognition for origins. Nanonic (talk) 03:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see — a bit different to the impression I had of it. Thanks very much. -- 203.97.105.173 (talk) 03:16, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you had Westminster (typeface) in mind? — Sebastian 08:15, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Just as an interesting side point, as well as the MICR font that the sign is parodying, there also used to be special fonts designed for easy optical character recognition. Today's computers can do a half-decent job of interpreting printed text in typical book fonts, but it was not always so. Text that was meant to be printed and later to be OCR'd would be written in very simple fonts like OCR-A or OCR-B.

I once read a delightful book called "Travels in Computerland" by Ben Ross Schneider Jr. He was a professor of English who frequently used an 11-volume reference book about all the plays performed in London over a 140-year period, and he had the idea that the whole content of the book should be put online, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone reading this today. But this was about 1970 and the whole idea was a novelty.

One of the major problems was the data entry, which had to be done accurately yet at minimum cost. If I recall correctly, the solution eventually adopted was like this. Schneider marked up copies of the original books by hand, with symbols meaning things like "cast member's name". The marked pages were sent to a company in some cheap-labor location like Hong Kong and given to a group of typists. They retyped the entire text and, following instructions prepared by Schneider, inserted codes like "@C" to represent his symbols. This typing was all done using IBM Selectric typewriters with an OCR-A or OCR-B typeball. The typewritten pages were then sent to another company in another country, where they were scanned and OCRd and the content put on magtape. The tapes were sent back to Schneider's university, where the text went onto the computer and the markup codes were interpreted. (Somewhere in there there was a proofreading step, but I forget the details.) The wonders of modern technology!

(The database he created from the book was called the "London Stage Information Bank". I don't know what's become of it now. Google searches for that name turn up things written about it in the 1970s and 1980s, but nothing that looks current.)

--Anonymous, 05:44 UTC, November 24, 2009.

That reminds me of companies who scanned all of the UK telephone directories in the same manner onto a CD. In the days when most people listed themselves in the telephone directory. 92.24.170.160 (talk) 21:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

10 plauges of Egypt

Is there any corroborating historical evidence for the 10 plagues of Egypt described in the Biblical book of Exodus? Googlemeister (talk) 15:51, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

See Plagues_of_Egypt#Historicity. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Whether there is or is not, Christians prefer to accept what the Bible says. That is, not necessarily what anyone else says, since the Bible says to check out what people are saying, but once you know it is in the Bible, believe it. The dange in looking for historical or scientific explanations, is that one may end up not believing the Bible in its miracles. C.B.Lilly 02:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christopher1968 (talk • contribs)

Macabre mishaps at sea (literary?)

Please help me place these two scenarios from works (probably *fiction) whose titles elude me:

• A man adrift at sea, wearing a life vest, who is so savagely and relentlessly attacked by seabirds that he loosens the vest's buckles and drowns himself.
• A ship adrift, all aboard having gone blind from some rampant disease.

All I can think of is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, but my copy's gone astray and web searches have been inconclusive. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not certain if this [1] is a fictional story, blog or otherwise, but it contains a short description of a slave ship where the entire crew has gone blind. cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 16:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

At this Project Gutenberg site [2], there is a copy of Anti-Slavery Poems I. from Volume III., the Works of Whittier: Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform by Whittier. The section entitled “The Slave Ships” begins with a two-paragraph description of the ships Rodeur and Leon and the blindness that struck their crews. It purports to be from the speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the French Chamber of Deputies, June 17, 1820. It is followed by a further paragraph stating that one man on the Leon escaped the disease and brough his ship to port, only to catch the malady some three days after reaching shore. This bit of information is said to come from the Bibliotheque Ophthalmologique for November, 1819. Bielle (talk) 19:39, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

There is a famous classic narrative poem that includes an albatross whose name escapes me. 92.24.170.160 (talk) 20:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. --TammyMoet (talk) 20:16, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

That's the name of the poem, but afaik the albatross was never named. :) -- JackofOz (talk) 07:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

My money's on "Al".

Anyone who thinks modern fiction is depressing ought to read that one, as well as Moby-Dick, the story of an irritable sea captain, and an equally irritable whale who unfortunately leaves one survivor behind to relate that monstrous megillah. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:56, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Heh. Albert Ross redirects, amazingly, to Albatross. Makes me wonder what these people's mothers were thinking about when they named them. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

OP again: I'm quite sure the flock-of-birds-at-sea attack was written in prose... and *upon reflection, was nonfiction. That turned out to be the case in the account of the Rodeur & Leon incident identified above (thanks to 10draftsdeep and Bielle), and that I was duly impressed rather than merely repelled (had it been from a work of horror fiction). However, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner#Background suggests that it may echo the journals of Captain James Cook, excerpts of which I read just over a decade ago (for kid's elementary school assignment - fascinating stuff!). I'll pop over to the local library next time it's open and see if that's indeed the source. -- 17:19, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Interesting geography/history question

1.This city was built after devastation caused by a major war 2. In a short span of few years it overtook economically and functionally another port city (harbor) very near to it on soiteast side

Looking for place names which can fit above criteria.

would appreciate ny help

Extensive search on wikipedia yelded not much help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.77.205 (talk) 18:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You already asked this three days ago. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The question was never answered. It may be Houston which was established just after the Texas Revolution and soon overtook Galveston, Texas to the southeast in terms of population and economy although neither city had much of a population in those first few decades. —D. Monack ^talk 23:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

There are two reasons why this hasn't been answered elsewhere -the first of which is the obvious one - we don't know. Oddly, there are remarkably few port cities which have older port cities to the southeast - most inhabited coastlines don't lie on that axis but are more northeast/southwest (strange, but true). Of those that do, there don't seen to be any where war played a major role in the change of status of the ports - even port cities damaged by war that lie on such a coast (e.g., Da Nang, Naples, Trieste) don't seem to have neighbours that would qualify. One that does is Houston, but -though it eventually took over from Galveston, it would hardly be considered "a short span of years".

The second reason, however, is perhaps more pertinent, even if it may not have become obvious to you - regulars at the Reference Desk are getting fed up with being bombarded by you with what seem like quiz questions rather than genuine requests for help. As such, fewer and fewer of us are willing to try to answer your puzzles. Grutness...wha? 23:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

As fed up as some are getting, I find these mildly amusing. If Houston does not fit, then perhaps Gdynia does; it was founded as a port after WWI; it may have for a time been a more important/robust port than nearby Gdansk which suffered during WWI. Not sure, but the southeast-northwest alignment may work here, since Gdynia is southeast of Gdansk. --Jayron32 03:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I was also thinking it might be Gdynia, which was built northwest (not southeast as Jayron wrote) of Danzig (Gdańsk) after World War I and surpassed Danzig as a seaport before World War II. But the problem is that Danzig wasn't really devastated in WWI; it was heavily damaged at the end of WWII, but that was after Gdynia had been built. The reason why Gdynia was built was that the Treaty of Versailles awarded Poland access to the Baltic Sea via the Polish Corridor, but no major port city. Danzig, which had a mixed ethnic German, Kashubian and Polish – but mostly German – population, became a free city under increasing German influence. Poland, therefore, needed its own port in its own territory. The growth of Gdynia was indeed remarkable: from a fishing village in 1920 to the largest port on the Baltic Sea in 1938. So it's a close match to OP's criteria, except for the devastation part. Or perhaps whoever wrote the quiz question, confused WWI with WWII. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:49, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to say it isn't actually an interesting question at all .I'll go with Carthage for 10...hotclaws 16:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Free money promotions by online casinos

Online casinos often make promotional offers like "Pay £100 into your account, and we will add another £100 for free". How much does the free £100 actually cost the casino, since a proportion of it (I'm not sure how much) will be lost by the gambler to the casino. Or is it really worthwhile to pay £100 for the casino to get another customer who may not be at all loyal and simply chase the next free offer? 92.24.170.160 (talk) 21:41, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

If you look in the small-print of these free-offers they usually require a certain amount of gambling before you can withdraw the funds. That is to say if you put £100 in and get £100 free (so £200) you have to play a certain amount of time (with many imposing minimum odds to count towards the total) before you can withdraw. Yes, some people will walk away with a profit from this setup (I have friends who use these free-offers regularly) but many others will be £100 the worse-off for their efforts, as they lose the £100 'free' cash and the real £100 they put in. It also has the added incentive that you may choose that site as your main gambling site - thus repeat business. It's basically the same as any other sort of 'free' offer - there's a catch / incentive and whilst Loss leaders do exist in i'm not sure this will be an unprofitable foray for the gambling company. ny156uk (talk) 22:19, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

It has to do with a variation of the Gambler's fallacy. The basic principle is that, regardless of how much money you have, the house has more, so as time tends towards infinity, the house always wins, because the house can ride out your longest winning streak longer than YOU can ride out your longest losing streak. The house could give you £500 free for your £100 bankroll, and it would STILL probably take most of your £100 for this very reason; no matter how much cash a gambler shows up with, the majority of gamblers will lose all of the money they arrived with to gamble with. No matter what. Even for games where the house is actually at a statistical disadvantage like blackjack (where the player, playing a perfect system, actually has the edge), the house will still win in the long run because its bankroll is much larger than yours. The only system to "beat" the house, the MIT Blackjack Team, required dozens of perfectly trained players, who counted cards and played a perfect system, with a bankroll in the millions of dollars, and even individual players in that group found themselves going through losing streaks that left them hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole. Other than weird situations like that, you can be sure that a mere £200 isn't going to give the player any more "advantage" than £100 would, but if it makes more players "belly up to the table" the house stands to win a LOT more. If you have any doubt of the mathematics behind this see the results of the largest controlled active experiment in this field, aka Las Vegas. --Jayron32 02:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It depends how much you have to bet before you are able to withdraw the bonus money (if you ever can at all). Often it is possible to make a statistical profit, but requires many hours of perfect play on a low house edge game. Blackjack is a good choice for this, but for the record the house does have an advantage in blackjack, typically around 0.1-0.5%. Some versions of Video Poker surprisingly do work in favour of the player. Prokhorovka (talk) 10:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)