Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2010 October 21

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October 21

Not him again!

Why does Michio Kaku keep popping up in every single science TV show I watch? -- œ^™ 00:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Because he's stalking you Why does anyone become popular amongst any segment of the population? I realize that I'm answering your question with a question but sometimes people just become popular. Various show producers want that person on their show and then it just catches on. Dismas|^(talk) 00:12, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Probably because he relates science facts and futurist notions with current issues (Gulf spill, nukes, global warming), making unusual concepts plausible without sounding like an extremist. He also laps over into science fiction, raising the question: Why not instead have Joe Haldeman, Robert Silverberg, William Gibson and other science fiction writers talk about science fiction? Pepso2 (talk) 00:35, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Because it's easier for the TV producer to pitch "we're bringing in a scientist" than "we're bringing in a fiction writer", even if the fiction writer has a better grasp on the material and how to explain it. --M@rēino 14:14, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Equally irritating, Book TV covers only nonfiction. Authors of fiction are seen rarely, usually as panelists when Book TV covers a book festival. Pepso2 (talk) 15:04, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Most scientists (and I say this as a scientist) are abysmally bad at relating to the general public. They get too technical, get condescending when they simplify, are too stiff or robotic in their demeanor, or simply have normal public speaking nervousness. Even those relatively rare scientists who can relate to the general public may not want to, as every hour spent in public relations is an hour away from the lab or away from your personal life, often with very little professional credit. (Indeed, often science popularizers are looked down upon by other scientists as being sullied for it.) So there is a limited pool of scientists which TV producers can draw from when they want to put a scientist on screen. Add to that the fact that producers aren't usually keyed into the scientific world; their exposure to scientists is primarily the same as the general publics' - from other TV science shows. All of these facts lead to the self-reinforcing situation where there is a small group of scientists who are the "go-to guys" when producers want a scientist talking head. Want a particle physicist? Get Brian Greene. Need an astronomer? Neil deGrasse Tyson. And so forth. -- 174.31.221.70 (talk) 18:42, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

When does Countdown repeat?

What time (in the Eastern time zone) does Countdown with Keith Olbermann repeat after midnight? The schedule guide on my cable system is not correct and I can't find it on their website. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:49, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

When is Nissae Isen's Birthday

When is Nissae isen's birthday in 1997? -- Wendal 204.112.104.172 (talk) 03:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

we no speak americano version diferences

What is the diference between the MARCO CALLIARI and Yolanda be cool versions of said song, other then the diferent people? they sound like song clones, but with a diferent voice. 204.112.104.172 (talk) 03:41, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

For starters, the Yolanda Be Cool version is sung with a prominent saxophone accompaniment.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 04:44, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Finding music?

Anyone care to help me find any "epically dark" battle music? THe music can be as dreaded and exciting as you can find, but lyrics need to be kept minimal. It's not necessary, but maybe think of a "godly battle" between good and evil/light and dark when you try to find stuff. Calm background music may be fine too, as long as it's scary or dark. Thanks 64.75.158.193 (talk) 08:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you can find something here: Allmusic moods, try Epic for instance. Or you could use last.fm's tags, like: Dark Ambient or Battle metal if you're more into metal. Good luck! Sealedinskin (talk) 09:00, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

My first thought for epic battle music would be the many boss themes of Final Fantasy...One Winged Angel and Dancing Mad are popular. Don't know if they're dark enough for what you're after, though. Many remixes exist if there's some aspect of the original you don't like. For me, they pretty much define "godly battle between good and evil". Vimescarrot (talk) 10:42, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Going classical, you can't beat "Mars, the Bringer of War" from Gustav Holst's The Planets[1]. Maybe a bit obvious though. Or try Neil Richardson's "Approaching Menace" [2] [3] from the UK tv quiz Mastermind (TV series) Alansplodge (talk) 12:07, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Also depends on if you want something that some might consider "overused." The first piece I thought of was "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Additionally, some of the score from Coppola's Dracula might work.... Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 13:34, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Orff's O Fortuna, though it's a bit overplayed. Staecker (talk) 14:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

This is it[4]. Alansplodge (talk) 15:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

As far as "calm background music" that is all instrumental, no vocals and a bit on the darker side, you might favor Ghosts I–IV. 10draftsdeep (talk) 14:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Would Ride of the Valkyries qualify? 216.93.213.191 (talk) 22:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 5 (quote) has very dramatic use of percussion: at the climax of the first movement ... the snare drummer is instructed to improvise "as if at all costs to stop the progress of the orchestra". This is best heard live in a concert hall, but the highly charged atmosphere still comes through on recordings. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 03:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

or u could download "the bridge of khazadum" from the LOTR soundtrack.Metallicmania (talk) 04:26, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

ms bg's real name

On the show Ms. BG, they refer to the main character as bg, could this be short for Billy-Gean? I have met people named Billy-geen that is usualy called bg. Is this true for bg? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.112.104.172 (talk) 08:34, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Slight re format of post so it word-wraps - 220.101 talk^\Contribs 09:11, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean Miss BG? According to that article it's Big Girl Rojomoke (talk) 11:11, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

YouTube girl with guitar

I remember watching YouTube videos a couple of years ago of a thin, long-haired, 20-something African-American woman singing cover songs (maybe her own too) with her guitar. I wish I could remember a particular song she sang! Her voice was just amazing. Her username might have had "angel" in it. There was also a clip of her being interviewed at a radio station about a talent contest (in Atlanta perhaps?). It's a shot in the dark -- can anyone identify her? 198.161.238.19 (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Just a stab in the dark but she fits the description other than the name - Alyssa Bernal is actually my fav artist on youtube and started out with covers... She now does her own music (has her first album out in US now) and still has plenty of covers on her channel... Hope this helps! gazhiley.co.uk 16:59, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Peter Gunn, Channel 5 CSI trailer

The Channel Five group of channels in the UK have a current trailer for the various CSI series. The music that plays has the underlying Peter Gunn riff, with female vocals over the top. Anyone know what this version is called and who it is by? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 14:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Is it the version by Art of Noise?--TammyMoet (talk) 15:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

No, definitely not TAON. DuncanHill (talk) 15:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Tricky - Murder Weapon? --Frumpo (talk) 15:39, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Good work that man (or woman, as the case may be)! Tricky it is. Many thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 15:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Are most of the things on YouTube violating copyright law?

Are most of the things on YouTube violating copyright law? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

You are getting into legality issues of semantics. A "thing" on YouTube has no intelligence and cannot violate copyright law. The person who uploads the thing can violate copyright law. Of interest here is if YouTube is responsible. According to Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., the D.M.C.A states that YouTube is not responsible. (I find it strange that the D.M.C.A. is usually despised by people trying to copy music and videos, but in this case it is used to protect a site used to share music and videos.) -- kainaw™ 18:35, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, so YouTube is not violating the copyright law, but people who upload copyrighted material are? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict with above) I've yet to see any good breakdown of the "types" of videos on Youtube. There are certainly lots of clips from TV shows and such, which are probably copyright infringements. There are also lots of kids videotaping themselves doing stupid stunts, which are generally not copyright infringements (the cameraman in such cases is the copyright holder, and is free to distribute his work, such as it is, however he wants). If anyone could find some sort of statistics (There are about x videos on Youtube. About y% are pets doing stupid things, and z% are sex scenes from movies, and...), it wouldn't be too hard to estimate the percentage that are copyright infringements. My gut says no, most videos aren't copyright infringements, but that's not really based on any data. Buddy431 (talk) 19:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

A videotape of yourself is certainly not a copyright infringement. Besides videos, there are also things on YouTube that are copyrighted photos with a copyrighted commercial recording as a soundtrack. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:29, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

And a followup: if YouTube is not responsible for copyrighted material, why is Wikipedia so emphatic about not allowing any copyrighted material? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:27, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The fundamental reason for the latter is that Wikipedia was founded with the idea of being a truly open encyclopedia licensed under the GFDL which will have "downstream" users in many places, so copyrighted content not licensed under the GFDL (or, now, under CC-BY-SA 3.0) does not belong here. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Under the current case law, it's not really accurate to say "YouTube is not responsible for copyrighted material." YouTube isn't responsible for the material getting on its site in the first place, but once the copyright owner asks them to remove it, they have to do so. --M@rēino 19:38, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Here is a related news report coming out of the Viacom v. YouTube lawsuit, in which the YouTube founders discuss over e-mail the problem of hosting all this content they know is copyrighted. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:50, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Above it is said that YouTube is not responsible for what is uploaded. But several years ago didn't the court rule that Napster was responsible? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:51, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

A law was passed called the DMCA which has a provision called the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, which says that YouTube and many other sorts of Internet companies are not liable for copyright infringement by their users if the companies follow certain rules about taking down content when they're informed that it is infringing a copyright. The Napster article details how Napster was sued, partially using the terms of the DMCA, and was ordered to monitor file sharing, and block users who infringed copyright; Napster could not, so it shut down the service. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:19, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

So I guess that no one has sued YouTube similarly, and got such a judgment, which is the reason for the difference. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:32, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Not true; YouTube is being sued by Viacom and has been sued before; but, unlike Napster, YouTube takes down videos when it receives a "DMCA notice" from a person who affirms that they are the copyright holder. If you read the "safe harbor" section of our DMCA article, it explains that websites have to do this in order to qualify for exemption from liability. It is counterintuitive that Napster collapsed and YouTube has not when Napster didn't actually host the copyright-violating material and YouTube does host its copyright-violating material; but there you go. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

PS - this came up yesterday when a kid in the chess club I coach said that if what you upload to YouTube is a little faster or slower than the original, it isn't a copyright violation. I thought to myself "that doesn't sound right." Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it does not. This sounds similar to many artists being told in art school that if they steal some artwork from the Internet and change it "by 10%" or something then it's not copyright infringement. This is untrue; it may be a way to attempt to avoid detection; but the act of making an unauthorized copy is copyright infringement ... unless you have a legitimate fair use argument, if you're in the US; etc. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:19, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

We have an article about that issue called derivative work that explains the legal issues in some detail. Getting back on topic, Youtube has agreements with (among others) MGM and CBS about hosting their content, so a good portion (though by no means all) of the copyrighted content on Youtube is perfectly legal. -- Ferkelparade π 00:29, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Youtube allegedly uses automated song-matching software to detect copyright infringement. It wouldn't surprise me if changing the play-back speed confounded this software. You can see how a trick to avoid getting caught might be confused by the hopeful for a trick to avoid violating the law. APL (talk) 06:07, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

So would it be a copyright violation to take a film, go to editing and drop every other frame? Technically, the movie is 50% different then the original and while quality suffers, would it be legitimate? Googlemeister (talk) 13:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

It might confound automatic copyright violation detection systems, but I doubt that a judge would be very impressed with your trick. Especially, since all you've done is change the formatting and not the content (Dialog, acting, Mise en scène, etc.) APL (talk) 14:30, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with APL. You've still made a copy. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not so sure. If you delete every other word of Hamlet, it is not Hamlet any more. Googlemeister (talk) 18:46, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Did you read derivative work? Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)