Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 January 27

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.

January 27

Where did answers to my question go?

Dears, once in January 2011 (I don't remember the date exactly) I asked a question in Reference desk/Humanities, it was titled "Bibliography required" and dealt with modern English men and weman writers, but I've lost the link to it. How and where can I find the answer to my question? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uliana stg (talk • contribs) 10:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Dears, once in January 2011 (I don't remember the date exactly)I asked a question at Reference desk/Humanities. It dealt with modern English men and weman writers and their works and was titled "Bibliography required". Unfortunately, I've lost the link to the answer. How and where can I find the answer to my question? Thanks a lotUliana stg (talk) 10:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

At the top of this page, there are two search boxes, one of these will search previous reference desk questions. If you put in "Bibliography required", the first result is required this one, which gave a few hints, but found your question a little vague. Worm 10:40, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Another option is to click on the "my contributions" tab on the top of the page and browse through what you posted here to find it. TomorrowTime (talk) 10:47, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

That's not really another option, though; when the question gets archived, the link is broken. Also, this user's list of contributions only shows one question, which makes me think he also posted from an IP or other account for the other question, as I distinctly remember seeing two questions that basically asked us for a "list of contemporary English fiction (novels)men and weman writers (preferably of those who are still alive)including lists of their works.Give a prompt where and how to download books free-of-charge." Needless to say, we couldn't satisfy any part of that request. Matt Deres (talk) 11:43, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

We can! I answered in his original question but everyone seems to ignore it: You can download free, current and popular e-books from many public libraries. The only reason we can't be of better help is that the OP didn't tell us where (s)he is from, so we can't indicate whether their local library has them or not. Aaronite (talk) 20:18, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this is the question (and answers) you are looking for: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 January 12#Actualization of disgust. It would have been easier to find from your contributions if you had filled out the "Subject/headline" when asking your question. I also added a heading to this question to separate it from the date header. Astronaut (talk) 17:40, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

This Google Books link might be of some use to you. I set the options to return only books with the full text available, published after 1980, containing "disgust". What it actually returns, unfortunately, is mostly a list of magazines, with a few reprints of old books (with expired copyright) and a few obscure academic works. 81.131.49.248 (talk) 19:54, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

By the way, Uliana, "Dears" is not a conventional way to open a letter in English. It is true that "Dear Sir" and "Dear <name>" are conventional, but "Dears" is not, and makes me think of a teacher talking to small children, or a grandmother addressing some of her friends. I tell you this just to help you avoid embarrassment in the future. Good luck on your research. --ColinFine (talk) 20:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

"Dear all" is sometimes used, even in business communications with recipients who are personally known to the sender. "Dears" would probably invite some degree of ridicule. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Phone hacking

In the News of the World phone hacking affair, there seems to be precious little discussion about how the celebrities' phones were hacked. Our article contains only a somewhat puzzling reference to "91 PIN codes for accessing other people's voicemails". So how was this done? Presumably you need the person's phone number, which I guess a journalist might be able to get. But you would also need their PIN code, which would be a lot harder to get. Is it, therefore, a question of just guessing the pincode via trial and error, or is it more sophisticated than that? And in any case, wouldn't you need to be calling the voicemail from the phone in question? --Viennese Waltz 12:50, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Many people don't (or didn't - I imagine they're doing so now) change the default PIN on their phone's voicemail service. Each provider may use a different default, but it's pretty easy to work out who's the provider ("Hello and welcome to the Orange Answerphone.." is what people calling me are greeted with Correction, that's what I hear when I call my voicemail. There aren't too many providers in the UK, though, so even if you didn't know every provider you could just try all the defaults), and it's also easy to find out what the default is. Some of the older phone hacking incidents happened this way; I'm not sure about the most recent. This article suggests that someone may have actually contacted phone companies as asked for PINs to be reset. Also, people tend to pick easy to remember numbers, and I suspect that most people didn't really worry about the security of their voicemail much.

The trick then is to make sure you get the person's voicemail so you can enter their PIN, by calling their mobile from another line. I vaguely recall some of those claiming to have been hacked saying that they'd had bizarre and pointless conversations with journos which they later thought were for this reason. Voicemail can be accessed from any line by calling a special number, and again it's not a secret what the number is. You then use the keypad to enter your phone number and PIN for access. At least some systems will allow you to call your own mobile number from another line and access your voicemail by entering a special sequence. Note also that at least one dodgy private investigator was used and the possibility of bribery or an inside job at the phone companies can't be ruled out. See this and this. --Kateshortforbob _talk 13:30, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Here's quite a good article on voicemail security (or the lack of it). There will always be idiots who don't change the default PIN, or set it to something easily guessed. If that fails, I imagine it isn't too hard with a few personal details to convince the operator to reset a "forgotten" PIN. It seems that voicemail systems don't pay any attention to what number they are called from either. the wub "?!" 13:33, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

This article titled "5 Things We All Do That Make Hackers' Lives Incredibly Easy" is written from the point of view of internet security, but there is nothing in there which is not directly applicable to hacking any security code, including your voicemail PIN. After all, consider the background of the Sarah Palin email hack. Everything that guy did could have been done with voicemail PINs with very little difference in technique. --Jayron32 13:51, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Anti-fat-woman movement

Apparently, a woman with extra pounds cannot avoid being regularly insulted on any online dating site. I ask myself where did these hater towards fat woman come from? Are fat woman the new homosexual? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.205.105 (talk) 16:39, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

There are several overlapping Wikipedia articles that deal with this. The best (though shortest) is likely Anti-fat bias. There's an article titled Weightism but it strays afield of many core Wikipedia policies, and is mostly unreferenced. Fat acceptance movement is also an interesting read, and does have lots of references you can follow to find further information. --Jayron32 16:52, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

It's worth bearing in mind that the clientele of dating agencies are not representative of the population in general, but are self-selected from those who, for various reasons, are unable to meet and befriend potential dates in more traditional ways: I suggest that a higher than average proportion of them, particularly the males, may have attitude problems and a lack of social graces that contribute to their difficulties. In addition, many people seem to feel freer to offer far more insult and hostility online than in face-to-face interactions, as is readily seen on most blog comment threads, etc. In short; online one encounters far more assholery than in 'real life'. On the positive side, such behavior serves as an instant asshole detector. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:39, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

And then there's Fat fetishism. Corvus cornix_talk 23:40, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

If an online dating site permits insulting comments to stay up, perhaps they are not serious about finding you a mate. Astronaut (talk) 11:17, 29 January 2011 (UTC)