Miscellaneous desk
< May 19	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 21 >

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.

May 20[edit]

Shop census in Pakistan[edit]

Some times some census are made by NGOs or government, I am working in a company workin as Distributor, So I need shop census for all the cities & towns, how many shops are there & what kind of business they have. If there is possible I will also appreciate that clasification (A class,B class etc)included. I heard about Aftab Associates that they have all kind of census for Pakistan but I did not found thier web site. Yousuf Ilyas —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yousuf Ilyas (talk • contribs) 07:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

fr:Boîte à meuh[edit]

Hello,

Someone asked if there's some article in WP:EN (and other languages) about this thing, to set interwikis. It asked that because he doesn't know the local name of this box.

Thanks a lot in advance for your answers. Olivier Hammam (talk) 10:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bonjour,

Quelqu'un a demandé sur WP:FR s'il y a un article dans WP:EN (et pour d'autres langages) sur cet objet, pour placer des liens Interwikis. Il le demandait car il ignore le nom anglais de l'objet.

Merci d'avance pour toute réponse. Olivier Hammam (talk) 10:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So this is one of those toys where you turn it upside down and it makes a "moo!" sound like a cow. Hence "Boite a meuh" is a "Box that moo's". Sadly, I don't think there is a name for those kinds of toys in English. This web site [1] calls them (variously) "Moo Cow In The Box", "Toy Country Cow Voice Can", "Animal's Cry Cow Toy Noisemakers" - but I can't find English language Wikipedia articles about any of those things. SteveBaker (talk) 12:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the answer. Olivier Hammam (talk) 13:23, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Digital zoom in digital cameras[edit]

Does it have a purpose or is it complete useless? Apparently I don't see any use to it, you can always process the pics afterwards, can't you?Mr.K. (talk) 14:56, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Digital zoom is basically cropping the image before you take it. I agree, it is pretty much useless. If you are photographing something very small/far away it can help you see it better to line up the shot, but I think that's about it. --Tango (talk) 15:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)It's pretty much completely useless. An optical zoom actually gives you a more detailed image of the area, a digital zoom just uses software to enlarge the area. You get "bigger pixels", so to speak, but you don't get any more actual detail in the image itself. You can get the same (or, more often than not, better) effect simply be enlarging the picture in Photoshop or some other program. However, depending on the camera and image settings, having the camera do it with digital zoom may sometimes offer better quality than doing it in Photoshop, if the image is processed by the camera before it's stored on the camera's memory card a format with a lossy compression method. However, if the camera stores the images in raw format, this advantage goes away. Optical zoom will always offer a better quality image than digital zoom. Of course, for many users none of this may be a concern, they just want to zoom in for compositional reasons and don't really care that much about the picture quality. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 15:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Digital zoom has a very important use, which is persuading the naive camera buyer that your camera has a better zoom capability than it really does. These days the lack of usefulness of digital zoom is well enough known that naive has to mean someone who hasn't read anything at all about how to buy a digital camera. DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:19, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above is pretty much right in general. Not every photographer has photoshop or the desire to post-process their images or do the cropping so for those folks the digital zoom may serve a beneficial purpose. Similarly if it means that people feel they can take a photo they previously felt they couldn't that's a benefit to them. These are pretty flimsy reasons and i'm 99% certain that the reason it is included by camera manufacturers is so they can over-inflate the zoom-capability of their camera to the naive/average Joe that just wants a camera for holidays and special ocassions as has no knowledge (or care) about features and 'quality'. ny156uk (talk) 16:22, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you're planning to crop the photo afterwards, using the digital zoom will allow you to compose/frame the shot and may improve automatic calculation of exposure, white balance, etc, by only focusing on the area you're interested in (although the camera software might be really stupid and not do this). Another factor is that images are normally compressed in cheap digital cameras (and cameraphones) and using the digital zoom may result in lower compression or some interpolation making the image slightly more detailed than the crop of a full-frame image (although on my cameraphone the digital zoom image often looks worse than the cropped unzoomed image, I'm not sure why). Plus it saves memory for stored images, may be quicker to process and store, etc. Of course it's more for low-end cameras and it's only useful if the alternative is taking a full-frame image and subsequently cropping it: it's no substitute for an optical zoom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.172.19.20 (talk) 17:21, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with 193; I use digital zoom sometimes in the hope that the white balance and even the autofocus might improve because the camera knows to only consider the area I've digitally zoomed in on. Tempshill (talk) 20:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The other thing I guess is if you find yourself running out of space (e.g. you forgot to clear the memory card and don't have a spare and can't transfer them somehow) it may be useful. But with the price of memory cards nowadays, it should only ever really be an issue on devices like crappy phones where you can't upgrade the memory. Nil Einne (talk) 19:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gulet captain[edit]

What qualifications do I need to skipper a gulet with paying passengers in Turkey and Greece —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.70.172.254 (talk) 20:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Companies that hire out boats will doubtless be able to tell you the full legal requirements: they may differ between countries, e.g. because Turkey is not part of the European Union. BrainyBabe (talk) 22:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You might need to have training as captain or officer, and furthermore - first aid, safety at sea, fire prevention, SAR, navigation, communication... when my father was a sailor (he's retired now) he needed to renew a dozen or so (I'm not kidding) similar certificates every few years. Concur with BrainyBabe - ask directly at the company you're aiming to work for. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:02, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clothing[edit]

What are these guys wearing on their arms? Some confusion has arisen over their name during a discussion of arm-length dragonscale vambraces. 90.193.232.41 (talk) 22:29, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The guy on the left seems to be wearing compression arm sleeves with holes in them. The guy on the right seems to be wearing compression elbow sleeves with his forearms and wrists wrapped with the wraps used by athletic trainers (a cheaper, disposable version of an Ace bandage).--droptone (talk) 12:19, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Vimescarrot (talk) 15:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]