Miscellaneous desk
< January 31	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 2 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 1

Who is my father?

My name is ...[removed]

Removed per WP:BLP We do not identify non-notable people or their relatives, especially not without verifiable sources. Editors who want to offer resources for such searches can do so without reference to personal information.

My Google search for find your biological father online reported about 2,220,000 results, including this one.

I Found My Biological Parents, and Wish I Hadn’t - NYTimes.com (May 4, 2012)

—Wavelength (talk) 03:29, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

ETHICS

IN ETHICS, DO DEAD PEOPLE HAVE RIGHTS OVER THEIR PROPERTY-INCLUDING INTELLECTUAL ONES- AND PRIVACY? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.52.145.100 (talk) 09:39, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your caps-lock key is over there, at the left hand side of your keyboard. 'Ethics' is not a set of universal standards. However, as a rule of thumb:

'Rights' are granted by law to natural persons. They are at least as much a matter of law as of ethics.
Someone dead is no longer a natural person under the law, so they have no rights as such.
Dead people also own no property, and enjoy no privacy. ("The grave's a fine and private place...")
Whether or not the wishes of people now dead, expressed while they were alive, ought to be respected varies between legal systems, and between ethical systems. Your answer to this question depends on your other assumptions in lots of ways.

If you can tell us more about what legal and ethical systems you're interested in, we may be able to help you more. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although a deceased person's Estate passes to their next of kin, who inherit intellectual as well as physical property (usually for a limited amount of time). Alansplodge (talk) 13:22, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is that necessarily true in the Phillipines? I wouldn't count on it. If the OP wants to know, he needs to consult a lawyer licensed to practice in the Phillipines, assuming his IP geolocates to where he actually is. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're bracket may be in a confusing position or alternatively your statement must only apply to limited area. AFAIK in most places inheritance of physical property lasts indefinitely, baring exceptions when stuff like fraud is involved, or any laws which limit how long you can hold certain forms of property or which otherwise allow your property to be taken by someone else without your agreement. But as said, in most cases these are exceptions. (Various taxes may also arise which may make it difficult for you to keep your property in some cases.) Of course once that person dies, their estate will be handed over to whoever their beneficiaries are including any stuff remaining from their inheritance. Intellectual property is generally time limited and in some cases, the limit may be shorter after death of the original creator (or perhaps there is no limit until death), although you do generally keep whatever you rightfully inherited until any expiry when the rights cease (or you die). Nil Einne (talk) 17:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, badly placed brackets - I was thinking about intellectual property like copyright and patents. Alansplodge (talk) 18:22, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very interesting question. Difficult to know where you want to go with this though without more information. A question came up recently on the humanities reference desk concerning the german legal theory (with their normal level of civil law precision) notion of 'Rechtsfähigkeit' which is as a natural person, the ability to be a holder/subject of rights and obligations. Both civil and common law legal systems, I believe, tend to recognise that the ability of a person to be a holder of rights ends at death - there are notable exceptions to this in terms of things like copyright and personality rights; and the recognition of these exceptions seems to vary a bit from one jurisidiction to another.---- _nonsense ferret 20:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Death does not retroactively destroy one's rights. The right to have a will is simply the right to make a gift and to make legal arrangements contingent on future dates just as with commodities futures and insurance. Likewise someone who is murdered doesn't therefore lose his right to life, leaving the killer scott free because his victim no longer has rights. The point about dead bodies is they can no longer pursue or engage in new rights or rightful acts after their deaths. Dead people can't write new wills after they are dead. Living people can write wills that take effect upon their death. μηδείς (talk) 01:59, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'm right in saying that personhood and capacity in a legal sense ends at death - the person is no longer a person under the law and cannot be a holder of rights. The example of murder isn't really an upholding of a right to life of the dead person, it is just an enforcement of a obligation not to kill people on the murderer. The distribution of the deceased's property after death is arguably not an enforcement of the deceased's rights - surely it is an enforcement of the rights of the beneficiaries, and the rights and obligations of the executors. The beneficiaries can agree to amend the provisions for succession, so I think that points towards it being their right of succession rather if you see what I mean.---- _nonsense ferret 16:24, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the rights of the beneficiaries matter--but they only have those rights in that form (as opposed to inheritance laws for next of kin in intestate deaths) because the deceased wrote his will while he was still alive granting those bequests to them. Death doesn't affect that. It makes no more sense to talk about the dead having no rights in this situation than it would to say the dead have no obligations and hence debtors claims against the estate are null and void. μηδείς (talk) 18:53, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate you think it makes no sense, but I understand it is the prevailing view particularly from a civil law tradition to frame the analysis in these terms - rights and obligations are held by a person under the law and legal personality ends with death - that you might have a claim on the deceased's estate is an obligation on the executor, not the deceased ---- _nonsense ferret 13:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Strange military vehicles in London

This morning, I saw two [civilian type] transporter lorries carrying military vehicles in London. Although the vehicles were mostly covered with tarpaulins, I could make out that they each had the acronym "UDF" printed on it, along with a stylised globe logo. Additionally, I saw no sign of the usual British flag one normally sees on UK forces vehicles, although, like I say, the tarpaulin may have obscured it. Assuming the Ulster Defence Force isn't on active service in London, does anyone have an idea who these vehicles belong to? --Dweller (talk) 11:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My first guess would be that they belong to a film crew, and that 'UDF' will prove to be some kind of ersatz-UN organisation in some action movie in the next 18 months. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:39, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And here [1] is a picture, and here [2] a news story indicating that this is Tom Cruise's forthcoming SF feature All You Need Is Kill. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:41, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great sleuthing. Thank you. I imagine that choice of acronym may cause some box office anomalies in Northern Ireland and Eire. --Dweller (talk) 12:20, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! And yes - a Hollywood action film, based on Japanese source material, being insensitive about the Troubles? Who'd have guessed? AlexTiefling (talk) 12:50, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You mean like the rather ill chosen "The future's bright, the future's Orange" ;-) Dmcq (talk) 15:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Something like that, although the Indy lazily repeats the 'No va' urban legend [3], so i'd view the reporting with a little skepticism. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:54, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although dressed as a military vehicle, I think it's one of MAN SE's civilian trucks (they make them in so many variants for different purposes that I can't figure out precisely which; I think it's a construction build TGM) rather than one of the military vehicles built by Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles (which have armour). IMCDB hasn't got a page up about the movie yet. So they probably belong to some plant-hire company, to whom they'll be returned (with the cammo overpainted) once filming is done. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:39, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The MAN vehicles we used in the US Army 56th Field Artillery Command 20 years ago were not armored. --— Gadget850 (Ed)^talk 23:04, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How do I change my username on a wikipage?

How do I change my username on a wikipage? Venustar84 (talk) 19:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of the fact that that might be highly inappropriate, see http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk which handles editting questions. μηδείς (talk) 19:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Past posts to talk pages where you signed your username probably shouldn't be changed. If you wish to merely change your username going forward (i.e. to start using a new username from now, without regard for your previous posts on talk pages) you can do so at WP:CHU. --Jayron32 19:48, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The user has already promised not to change his username given past misbehavior. See http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk/Archive_96#New_NeptuneKH94_sockpuppet_nonsense. The user's already got over a dozen names. μηδείς (talk) 22:21, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, yes. In that case, don't do that. Just keep this name, and don't do the things you were told not to do before. --Jayron32 01:42, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn;t going to change it on wikipedia. I was going to change it on wikimoon.org. 174.7.167.7 (talk) 20:54, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How were we supposed to mean that you mean WikiMoon? Dismas|^(talk) 21:19, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, we have no association with Wikimoon. You'll have to contact someone there. --Jayron32 00:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense. Ok I'll ask people on that website. 03:24, 3 February 2013 (UTC)