How do I get rid of wild grape vines?

Question: I have what seems to be Wild Grape Vines killing off my hedges.  Is there any other recourse besides uprooting them all?  Would clipping them down and spraying stump rot be another possibility?
Comment: By "stump rot" do you mean salt peter?
Answer: The shortest answer is no. I have grape vines all over the property, and they will re-sprout from any stems underground, and from any roots thicker than 1/4" in diameter. The best method to remove them, in my experience, is to trim all excess vegetation in the hedge bushes 8" from the ground, down, with the crowns cleaned out, and cut everything else out to the ground level every few weeks. Tearing the roots out in moderation may help, but excessive digging will greatly weaken the hedge. This will be difficult at the beginning, but it looks great and well cared for when your done, and the vines underneath will eventually weaken due to the loss of photosynthesis. Also, putting a two foot wide strip of water-penetrable plastic down under each side of the hedge, leaving space for the bushes, and then adding a three inch layer of dyed wood chips helps greatly in keeping down weeds, and also looks great. Again, this is labor-intensive at the beginning, but eventually will come down to adding a new layer of mulch yearly, and cutting off all alien vegetation at ground level, plus the maintenance of the hedge itself.
Comment: Hmm, I'm thinking of planting wild grape, Vitus Riparia. Maybe it's time for a re think on that.
Comment: Tools for rooting: a pickaxe, a D-handle gardening fork, a pair of pruning shears you don't care about dulling, and a hori-hori or a small pruning saw you don't care about dulling.  Some of these won't fit your situation; I haven't had grape to deal with.
Comment: DO NOT plant grapevine as a decorative plant unless you are willing and able to maintain it. When well-cared for, grapevine adds that Napa-valley touch to a trellised yard feature like a pergola or gazebo. However, grapevine will grow anywhere it can and will run rampant over any vertical surface. It can also grow in gaps between structural members of that fence or pergola, and as it grows it will push those members apart, destroying the structure. I have a fence that is falling apart because the previous homeowner thought grapevine would look good. Luckily, Weed-B-Gon kills grapevine.
Comment: This all is very climate-dependent, though. For those of us in zone 4, the grapevines don't make that much progress in a summer and die back in the winter. I have them in my yard, and it is harder to get them to grow enough to cover an arbor than it is to keep them in check.
Comment: @jmusser - yes, I was responding more to KeithS's comment. Sorry for the confusion!
Answer: Let me just say to begin: I... HATE... GRAPEVINE. While it's considered a decorative plant by many, for me it's become an insidious weed that resist my best efforts to eradicate it from my yard. I want to get rid of it because the previous homeowner didn't take care of it, and as a result its unchecked growth has resulted in my deck sprouting new shoots up between the boards all through the spring and summer, one of my fences having been systematically dismantled by vines creeping between structural members, and one of my trees looking like a scene from a haunted forest. It grows anywhere and everywhere it's allowed to, and except for a limited time during early summer when it flowers, it honestly doesn't look all that great (just a big green mess over whatever it's covering; with its 3-leaflet pattern it resembles poison ivy, and would you want THAT in your back yard?).
So, how to kill it. In the olden days, 2,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T) mixed in fuel oil was recommended by the Forestry service to clear grapevine from tree stands. That's how hardy this stuff is, that you'd need to use the banned highly-toxic half of Agent Orange mixed with diesel fuel to have the best success. Weed-B-Gon (there are several formulations; look for ones containing 2,4-D and/or Triclopyr among the active ingredients) is effective at controlling young grapevine shoots and "beating back" overgrowth, but grapevine is "modular" enough that spraying it on outlying shoots will not kill the plant altogether. These chemicals are also uncommonly effective at killing "woody" plants, including grapevine but probably also the shrub they've infested.
The best solution I've found is physical dismemberment coupled with surgical herbicide use. To really kill it, you have to find the main root, sever it close to the ground, then poison what's left (otherwise the root will grow new shoots). So, I would recommend buying a concentrate product containing Triclopyr, cutting the vine off about 2 to 3 inches above the ground, and then painting the concentrated mixture onto both sides of the cut vine. Also watch out for basal roots. Grapevine can throw one of these down wherever it touches earth, allowing that part of the plant to continue to thrive long after you've found and killed the main root system;
Once the vine has died off, you now have a bunch of ugly withered vine in your shrub. The temptation may be to simply rip it out. Don't do this if you value the shrub. Grapevine uses a combination of adhesive tendrils and a twisty vine growth to attach itself to its climbing frame (be that another plant, a fence or trellis, or a brick wall). The adhesive remains long after the plant has died, and the vine itself is uncommonly sturdy. The best way to remove it is to cut it out. With a pair of pruning shears (and maybe a pair of bypass loppers for the heavier cuts) sever every Y-joint in the vine's structure that you can see, before gently but firmly pulling these disconnected pieces out. Never yank; if it doesn't lift out, cut away what you've been able to physically remove from the shrub and then go back in to pull more of it out.
Answer: If you are patient enough to do it, I think its worth going through with a pair of small hand pruners (Fishers makes a very small pair for indoor floral work) and cutting free the tendrils wrapped around stalks of shrubs and branches. If you DON'T do this, they dry & harden and become more difficult to remove, often cutting into the soft tissue/bark of young branches and disfiguring/impairing it's growth.
For harder trees like oaks they dry out and can usually be ripped off later, but younger plantings not so much. That along with the herbicide on the stems close to the ground should knock them out.
If your soil is soft after a rain, I have had plenty of success tearing out extensive roots. That usually means it's permanently removed, or at least gone for that season. Birds LOVE those grapes, and trust me, they will be back if you live in any sort of rural setting.
Lastly, if you have land, go ahead and leave some wild grape growing where is doesn't matter. For example, I have huge patches of Phragmites where the Wild grape shades it out, and provides food for birds.
Answer: I have resorted to chemical warfare.  I have lost trees to wild grapes and have found that if I see them climbing I pull them down and spray with weedbegone.  I am gradually gaining on them and limiting the amount of herbicide used
Answer: Wild grapevine is a highly aggressive invasive plant that smothers and kills all plant life it covers.  I've tried spraying RoundUp on the leaves but it doesn't really seem to do much.  Have been told by an arborist to find the "mother root" and cut one root stem, leaving a 3' length.  Fill a wide mouth jug (old juice or laundry bottle should work) with RoundUp or other toxic liquid and jam the 3' root into the bottle, tape it up securely with duct tape and leave it.  The root should absorb this liquid and hopefully kill a good portion of the plant.  I have yet to do this myself as I'm trying to tackle this plant by cutting, pulling and digging up the roots.
Answer:
Tie a ribbon around the neck of each vine you wish to eliminate
Each time small cousins come to visit, get them out there and show how to rub off the shoots.
Each time they rub off a multiple of 5 they get to say "WooHoo" and then the number.
If the number is not divisible by 5 then they get pelted with dead leaves.
If the number is divisible by 5 and someone pelts them with dead leaves then they get pelted instead.
The older the cousins, the more advanced the arithmetic.

You keep your vines under control, they learn arithmetic.
Answer: I have one acre of mature trees and three acres of a young woodlands that was a field when I moved in 20 years ago. 20 years ago I attacked every vine (grapevine, poison ivy, etc.) with shears and round up with great success. Then about 10 years ago mid-Michigan suffered an Emerald Ash Borer invasion. I've since been ignoring the ivy and dealing with dead ash trees. Last fall I returned my attention to vine growth on my property and found it has gone crazy. I waited until winter was here to better identify the vines, and have spent about 4 weeks ripping out 10 thousand feet (20 thousand feet? More?) of vines. I know I have not eradicated every vine. I still have a lot of work to do. I think that next fall, I will reintroduce Round Up to my routine. It's a lot of work doing forestry maintenance on my property, but it's worth it having a park for a backyard.
After the vines are brought to heel, I need to start on the thorn bushes and thickets of wild raspberries.

How do I get rid of wild grape vines?


What is the work done by friction on a body from the perspective of different observers using the formula $-μmgl$?

Question: Consider two observers moving with respect to each other at a speed $v$ along a straight line. They observe a block of mass $m$ moving a distance $l$ on a rough surface.
The change in KE of the block is different to the different observers in this case. Here "work done by friction= change in KE" i.e. it is different to different observers.
How to solve the same using "work done by friction= -μmgl"? It appears to me that by the 2nd way the answer is coming different. As μ, m, g and l are constants, the work done by friction will be the same to the different observers. Please resolve the controversy.
Answer: Actually, $l$ is not a constant. The different observers measure different values for $l$. The discrepancy in the change in KE is entirely explained by this disagreement on $l$.
So, for a block undergoing a frictional force of $-\mu m g$ starting at $x(0)=0$ with an initial velocity of $v(0)=\dot x(0)=v_0$ we get $$x(t)=-\frac{1}{2}\mu g t^2 + v_0 t$$ so at every point in time the change in KE is $$\Delta KE = \frac{1}{2} m \left(\dot x (t)^2-\dot x(0)^2\right) = \frac{1}{2}\mu^2 m g^2 t^2-\mu m g v_0 t$$ and the other formula is $$ -\mu m g l = - \mu m g x(t)=\frac{1}{2}\mu^2 m g^2 t^2-\mu m g v_0 t$$ which is always equal to the change in KE.
Comment: There's an opportunity to make this answer even clearer and more useful by considering the paths and apparent changes in velocity for a friction-braked 1 kg block that appears to transition from 3 m/s to 1 m/s, from 2 m/s to 0 m/s (in the frame of the rough surface), and 1 m/s to -1 m/s, for instance.
Comment: @Chemomechanics good idea, but I will do it symbolically instead of for a specific numerical example


Related to share point back up and restore from 2003 version to 2013 version

Question: I am very new in share point and i have a task to take complete backup of share point server 2003 to another server 2013 so i have done the backup process with share point server 2003 but when i restore it in share point 2013 so i am facing many problem very first problem is that it shows that farm version is different. So please any one know about the solution of my problem so just inform me.
Answer: their is no direct way to migrate from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2013.
Now you have two options.
Method # 1

You have create sharepoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and sharepoint 2013 Farms. As i said you cannot migrate it directly. So you have to 1st migrate to 2007 then 2010 finally in 2013.

Method # 2

Use the 3rd party tools i.e ShareGate, metalogiz etc. In this case you dont need 2007 & 2010 farm, these tools support direct migration.

Another way is manually move all content to SharePoint 2013 farms.


How to check if a software is legitimate

Question: if I have a developer who wants to install a new software and he ask me to check this software security before installing it what shall I do
Comment: You might be asking one (or more) of many different questions here. I'll try and briefly answer as many as I can below, but you will get better answers if you edit the question to clarify what you need.
Answer: You could be asking one of many questions here.

If you are asking "How do I know that the software I have here is
what the vendor made - could it have been altered before I got it?"
then you will want to compare the hash of what you have to what the
vendor has published, assuming they have. (Almost everyone does
nowadays.)
If you are asking "How can I tell if the vendor has put malware or
back doors into this software?" then the key thing to consider is how
much you trust the vendor. (Although that's not a guarantee. Big
companies have accidentally gotten a virus on their gold masters
before now, and the bigger you are, the more likely a government is
to lean on you to put a back door in.) Of course you've scanned it
with a couple of AV scanners, like you do with anything you put on
your network. Talk to other users and see if they have any issues. If
it's open source, you can read the source before compiling, although
that is a huge amount of work. Lastly, you can run it in a sandbox
for a while, monitoring what it does, especially it's network
activity to see if it phones home.
If you are asking "How can I tell if it has programming mistakes
that make it vulnerable to attack?" then again there are various
approaches. As before, consider the reputation of the vendor; talk to other users; and if it's open
source and you have the resources, review the source. Check it's
bug tracking system if this is public, and it's historical release
notes, to see how well security issues are addressed. Think about
what it does and what threats you face, and identify other security
controls you can put around it.
Comment: that is what I was looking for, after 3 years I have learnt most of things you mentioned here, Thank You sir
Answer: (Liked the Graham Hill approach to answer):
One more question/answer you could think about:

If you are asking "What I want to protect if the software isn't trustworthy?" then you might consider that you could install the software in a virtual machine that doesn't have connection with your network, so that a vulnerability wouldn't be able to get data from other computers, for example. And even if the user puts some "secret" data in the program, it won't be able to send it out.
Comment: trustfull --> trustworthy?


change audio output ports from mic to front

Question: Lately my front audio jack has died. The microphone jacks still works seamlessly and I would like to remap the front speakers output to the microphone if it is possible. I use Ubuntu and I have Aspire 5741 laptop. Thanks
Answer: There is a program called pavucontrol that can remap audio output ports, and you could also pick up one of these for a cheap; a usb to audio out adapter. I use these all the time for this reason.


Why does _ match 0?

Question: Hey i've seen the following function declaration
half :: Int -> Int
half (x+2) = 1 + (half x)
half _ = 0

Why is the last line matching a zero respectively why does that function work?
Answer: To answer the title question: _ matches anything.

Prelude> case 0 of _ -> "match"
  "match"
  Prelude> case True of _ -> "match"
  "match"
  Prelude> case "Eeeek" of _ -> "match"
  "match"
  Prelude> case undefined of _ -> "match"
  "match"

That doesn't really seem to be your question though; in your example _ doesn't match 0, but maps to 0. So the answer to "why" is basically "because it was defined this way". As to why this makes for a useful function: again the _ pattern matches anything – anything that doesn't already match one of the previous patterns. Now, in your case the previous pattern happens to be a pesky n+k-pattern, which isn't actually legal in modern Haskell. The standard alternative is, I think, indeed more explainative:
half x | x>=2  = 1 + half (x - 2)
half _ = 0

so, if we pretend the signature was
half :: Nat -> Nat

then the second clause is basically just
half 1 = 0
half 0 = 0

which makes rather obvious sense for integer division.
What's perhaps not quite so obvious is why the first clause works. But you can grasp it quite easily by picturing x as a "resource" that's consumed recursively: you keep taking away two units from it, and each time add one to the result. In the end, the result will thus be half of x' original value.
Comment: thank you. didnt know about this side condition of n>=0 in the (somewhat weird) n+k pattern
Answer: It matches because the pattern to match is simply a "variable", so it will match any value.
Say you have this function:
fun :: Int -> String
fun 1 = "one"
fun 2 = "two"
fun x = "other"

Since the last pattern is a variable, it will match any number that is not 1 or 2. But note that we don't actually use x in the last pattern; we simply use it to match any number. What if we don't want to have to come up with names for variables that we won't even use? The answer to that is the underscore (_). We can simply replace the x in the last match with _:
fun _ = "other"

Why does _ match 0?


Can I use metal studs for framing a shed?

Question: We're building a shed on a pontoon so it will float.  Therefore we need it to be light weight yet sturdy enough to hold up to snow in the winter.  Will metal studs provide enough strength and support for this project?
Comment: Metal studs are available in different gauges
Comment: An [*A-frame* building](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-frame_house) is well suited to standing up to heavy snow, and requires less structural strength as a result of its design.
Answer: Yes.
But I have to have at least 30 characters to submit an answer.
Answer: Going beyond 'can' to 'should' will involve asking:

How long a service life is desired from the shed? This will determine the grade of framing to be used.
What type of water (fresh or salt)?
What amount of buoyancy will be available (weight capacity for shed and contents)?
How tall a structure?  Have you considered the 'sail effect' of a rigid structure?

You might look at temporary or permanent carport structures:
For example, the pictured structure has:

• Frame is 17 gauge, 1.315" OD USA-made, triple-galvanized structural steel tubing. • 12.5 oz., 24 mil premium forest green cover comes with a 15 year warranty. • 4'W white skylight.

It has a good snow rating, but snow must be removed manually.

How much snow can my building withstand?
  TekSupply structures are very sturdy and capable of withstanding winter months in high snowfall areas. Most snow easily slides off the cover's smooth surface. In the event of buildup, the snow can be easily removed by tapping on the building's ceiling from the inside. For additional safety, most of our buildings are available for purchase with additional rafters. Rafter spacing can be increased from every 4' to every 3' for an additional cost.


Which Is correct: 2500 calories Is/are enough for the average man?

Question: Which is correct: '2500 calories is enough for your diet' or '2500 calories are enough for your diet'?
Comment: Since _calories_ is being quantified here (there are 2500 of them), you'd probably want the plural verb: _2500 calories __are__ enough for the average man._
Comment: The correct phrase would be '2500 kilocalories is enough for your diet' :)
Answer: EDIT: This answer is wrong
Well, this answer here indicates that both are correct.

More links related:
Use of "Here's" before a plural noun / noun phrase
Calories Are/Is?

I also saw an article titled Is 1,200 Calories Enough for Active Young Women?, so it seems to be correct.
Comment: (1) The first answer you linked to concerns cases where a linking verb joins a singular subject with a plural predicate noun (not the case here). (2) The 2nd linked answer (using _Here's_ before a plural noun) doesn't really fit because the OP is not asking about _Here's some calories_. (3) The 2nd link (to englishforums.com) doesn't seem to have a definitive answer, but uses the plural conjugation when _calories_ is the subject (as is the case in OP's question).


Call to undefined function Drupal\Component\Utility\imagecreate()

Question: I got this error on a server I setup and was confused:

Error: Call to undefined function Drupal\Component\Utility\imagecreate() in Drupal\Component\Utility\Random->image() (line 282 of /var/lib/jenkins/src/grls/docroot/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Utility/Random.php
Answer: The imagecreate function is part of php's gd library. If a server has been set up manually it's possible it doesn't have the gd library.
First, figure out which version of php you are using, for example with this command:
dpkg -l | grep '^ii' | grep php
Look for a line like:
ii  php7.2     7.2.19-0ubuntu0.18.04.2           all          server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (metapackage)

That indicates the server is using php7.2. To install gd library for php7.2 on a system managed with apt you need a command something like:
sudo apt install php7.2-gd
And then the error will be gone.


Using same variable as continuous and categorical

Question: I have a pretty general question: I'm writing on my thesis and have some linear regressions that include a continuous variable. Is it okay to use the variables as continuous for the linear regression and use the same one as categorical (2 groups via median split) to analyze the means with post hoc(for example via GLM on SPSS)?
I'm aware that it's not the best solution, but I don't know how to look at means otherwise.
Answer: It is generally bad practice to categorize continuous variables; it reduces power, increases type I error and introduces "magical thinking" - i.e that something amazing happens at the median.
Why do you even want to "look at the means" of the groups based on median split? Why median? Why two groups?  Why not three or ten or whatever?
Unless you have some strong theoretical reason why there should be a difference at the median, I think your aim is misdirected.  Regression lets you see if the continuous variable is significant; you can add quadratics or splines if you want to look at nonlinear effects.  And you can compute the expected mean at any level.
Comment: Regression gives you a formula with which you can compute Y at any combination of X's.  That is the predicted value at those values of X.
Comment: I understand how categorizing reduces power and that is therefore generally not advised. I guess my main problem is 'visualizing' - I know this sounds anything else than professional, but personally i find it much easier to understand what's going on if i have means instead of regression. Could you just explain what you mean with 'compute the expected mean at any level'? Many thanks!


Inserting Grids and Graticules in ArcScene?

Question: I have searched Grids and Graticules option in ArcScene 10.3 but didn't found there. I am specifically interested to mark Y-axis (as in below map I've prepared in Surfer) to show vertical values of my DEM. How would I insert axis in ArcScene?
Answer: I do not know a way to do this in ArcScene, but if you wanted to add a grid to a 3D ArcScene image you could import it back into ArcMap and add the grid there. The steps would be:

Export your 3D image from ArcScene as a 2D image.
Open ArcMap. Add the original georeferenced layer. Then add the 2D .jpeg image exported from ArcScene as a new layer.
Georeference your .jpeg image onto the original layer.
In Layout View, turn off the original layer. Add the grid and rotate the map if necessary.
Comment: I think ArcScene 10.3 currently doesn't have facility to draw vertical and horizontal axis (grids and graticules) into its perspective view, even, you cant insert scale bar or legend into it. There is no option of layoutout. In, ArcMap planimetric view, there are multiple options to handle 2D data with customized grid and graticules. They should work to add such facilities which are common in other applications.


Home entertainment only

Question: We have a Lesley 760 which I use with my Carlovox accordeon. We also have a Kawai ES7 keyboard with no external speakers. I'm wondering if I can connect the ES7 to the Leslie and what I would need extra to do so. I am not knowledgeable in this field and I don't want to risk damaging the equipment. Thanks.
Arie.
Comment: How is the accordeon connected? What ports are used for outputs on the Kawai?
Answer: Tim is correct in pointing out the lack of critical information in this post, but the usual method of connecting two or more instruments to an amplifier is to use a mixer, usually small and simple, between the instruments and the amplifier. This will allow either instrument to be played by itself or in combination with the other instrument. Most of the time, instruments are connected using 1/4 inch phone plugs and I'm making an assumption that the Leslie is using a footswitch pedal that has 1/4 inch phone jacks as inputs. If my assumption is incorrect then you'll probably need to find one of those also.
Comment: I am only trying to find out what is needed to connect the Kawai ES7 to that Leslie 760. Nothing to do with the accordéon, which is connected to the Leslie through a Leslie Combo Pre- Amp II. I do not intent to have the Kawai and accordeon hooked up to the Leslie  at the same time. Thanks. Arie.
Comment: @Arie Brienen- You have revealed to me that you have a leslie preamp, that's good. Now I need to know the kinds of outputs that are available on the keyboard. I should be able to provide an answer when I have that information. I don't expect you'll need a  mixer.
Comment: I took a picture of the back of the keyboard showing all those connections but now I can't figure out how to provide that here as an attachment. As I said this is not my expertise. Anyway it has two 1/4 inch outs - Left (Mono) and Right. There are also others for Midi etc. The Pre-Amp has two channels also using 1/4 inch jacks. I don't want to risk damaging anything. Would it be safe to simply run a cable from the keyboard out to the pre-amp channel one or two?
Comment: @Arie Brienen- That's correct, Plug into the left (Mono)  channel on the Kawai and plug the other end of the cable into the Leslie preamp. There should be no damage to any component. Good luck!
Comment: @ArieBrienen you can insert a pic by dragging it to the question typing window, or copy it and paste it in,

Home entertainment only


Daily Torah from Rav Avigdor Miller

Question: Is anyone aware of any daily email that is sent out that includes a Torah from Rav Avigdor Miller?
Answer: Here is a link where you can sign up for Daily inspiration from Rabbi Avigdor Miller.
Answer: Yes Toras Avigdor used to be a small one-man operation, but he's greatly expanded since, and has opened a fully functioning website, TorasAvigdor.org
Comment: Hi Pinchas, and welcome to Mi Yodeya! I've taken the liberty of editing your post so that it actually links to the site you've listed; you can edit it further or roll it back if you'd like. Thanks for your answer, and I hope to see you around!
Answer: There is a person who puts out emails from Rav Avigdor Miller's tapes ,I beileve he also puts out such divrei Torah on paper in some shuls in Brooklyn. The email is  Torasavigdor at gmail dot com.  Its good stuff ,quick and easy read.
Comment: Does the owner of the e-mail account mind you posting the address here publicly? Consider adding a website URL that would direct one to a sign-up page to receive the e-mails, if possible.
Comment: I just emailed him and Sam is right. He just wants you to email him at firstname.lastname@example.com and he adds you to the list. Seems like a small time one-man operation, but once you sign up you get a daily Q and A from Rabbi Miller's Thursday night shiurim. Looks good. Thanks for the tip @sam.
Comment: he doesnt mind at all,it works by sending a request to that email for the emails
Answer: A Moment with Rabbi Avigdor Miller Z"L weekly Q&A email http://rmillerqa.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=51050d25b69193df91b43c6e8&id=ec593cbc54

Daily Torah from Rav Avigdor Miller


How would a futuristic style army use androids that mimic humans in any way?

Question: In a army(or any military) humans can have qualities that act as flaws in a military. Disregarding emotions, lets say that you had an android, similar to any other droid soldier in popular sci fiction, carrying orders for human commanders. Why make them in any way, physically, human-like at all? A transition period? Sentimental design team? Rule of cool, to appeal to the top brass? Why?
Comment: The reason you'd make them human-like is if your weapon designers were totally unimaginative. If they couldn't fly you'd lose for sure.
Comment: The possible answers are too much dependent on world context. World context that we lack. That's surely why you have issues figuring out why androids are humanoids ^^. It's part of the reason I voted to close for opin-onion-based. Since you don't seem to know what you are looking for, you don't either have constraints to know what you are looking for or a way to properly scale answers, hence it's hard to give any appropriate answer :/.
Answer: Your androids are infiltrators - superhuman combat automatons wrapped in human flesh, designed to slip into enemy lines (for instance, by posing as a refugee) in order to assassinate leadership figures and destroy critical infrastructure.
They can't do this without being humanoid, and the reason androids are used instead of humans is because androids can be (a) mass-produced and (b) sent on one-way suicide missions without any ethical qualms.
A pre-existing fictional example of such an android:
Answer: Because wars are fought over places people are:
Fundamentally, humans fight over places humans are. If you have human commanders, they are fighting human wars. They conquer cities and factories and space stations and submerged sea bases. All these places are places humans live. Humans are clever, troublesome creatures, and you could certainly just ELIMINATE them all together from the world. But that's a different question.
Those same places are adapted to the human form. Doors fit androids, equipment interfaces with android hands. Vehicles are designed to be operated by androids. Humanoid robots will be able to use the vast quantities of STUFF designed for human uses to carry out their needs. Otherwise, the robotic army needs to repurpose the whole human infrastructure to its own needs. Again, unless you plan to get rid of humans all together, that is problematic.
Those robots will need to interface with humans in an understandable way. Humans can relate to other humans, but they will know how to interact with androids. While my wife might get swayed to fall in love with her smartphone, I doubt it will win the hearts and minds of the populous.
Answer: The android soldiers were drafted.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-03-09-the-education-of-an-android-teacher
The android soldiers were not always soldiers.  A lot of them were nursing home attendants, made to be humanlike and have human capabilities.  Some androids were teachers, some were police.
When war broke out, unforeseen technical issues (and defensive tactics) made a lot of the modern war tech much less useful than had been anticipated.  There was an acute need for actual soldiers but a scarcity of humans fit to be soldiers.  The androids were pressed into service and fitted out with weapons and equipment from a generation previous.
Soldier programming was added atop whatever prior programming they had.  On interacting with the soldierbots it does not take long to figure out what they used to do.
Comment: "A lot of them were nursing home attendants, made to be humanlike and have human capabilities. Some androids were teachers, some were police." Some were...other things, too, I imagine...
Answer: You can use them as decoy for protecting high poppies you can't afford being killed.
Instead of sending the original admiral Yamamoto on an inspection tour to Bouganville and having him killed, with the consequent impact on the proceeding of the war, you can send $n$ copies of Yamamoto on all the bases you want, wasting the efforts of the counterintelligence in chasing them down and not risking the good and original one.
Answer: Survival and Esprit de Corps
They tried to send teams of androids on advanced missions in enemy territory. The first wave of androids had a primitive set of rules to decide whether to attack an obstacle or turn around it. But when they decided to attack they stubbornly carried on the attack until they were all destroyed and they could not complete their mission.
The second wave had a primitive survival instinct encoded in their behaviour, but in the most difficult situations they abandoned their mates and the teams quickly became too small to complete their mission.
The third wave had a more sophisticated set on instincts coded in their behavior. They tried to solve a complex balance between the survival of the single, the survival of the team and the goal they had to achieve. In the most difficult situation the balance was so difficult to solve that a routine making random choices had to kick in, but overall they were extremely effective as a team.
Answer: It's not about the killing
Sure, armies have traditionally "fought" each other, when fighting is necessary for their purpose, but it is not the purpose in and of itself.
For a lot of the things that armies are used for, soldiers with humanoid form are very advantageous.  Occupation, policing, interdiction, etc...  These are about imposing your will or rules on people.  They're all about communicating with people, which can be a lot more effective in human form, and operating where people live, which can also be a lot more effective in human form.
Answer: Because of military bureaucracy.
The androids were designed to use existing materials that were made by real people who had jobs who voted for politicians. Cars, trucks, guns, armor, boots, lots of things. This prevented extra expense redesigning these things for a new shape, and gave lots of jobs and work to the people who manufactured these goods, and got the politicians re-elected.


Covariance of $f(X)$ and $Y$

Question: Assume that $X$ and $Y$ have a positive covariance, and $f$ is a decreasing function. Can I say that $f(X)$ and $Y$ have a negative covariance?
Answer: Try the decreasing function $f(X) = 2^{2-X}$ and find the covariances for the data
<code>X  Y  f(X)
1  10  4
2   0  2
3  11  1
</code>
Both covariances should be positive
Answer: @Henry - Very neat!  In fact the OP conjecture is not even close to true:
<code> Y    X    f(X)
 1   a>0   c<0
-2    0     0
 1   b<0   d>0
</code>
$Cov(X,Y) = E[XY] - E[X]E[Y] = E[XY]$ in this example since by construction $E[Y] = 0$.  So $Cov(X,Y) = \frac{a+b}{3}$ and $Cov(f(X),Y) = \frac{c+d}{3}$ and each of them can be any real number.
E.g., you can have $Cov(X,Y)>0$ and then after applying the decreasing $f$ to $X$, you end up with $Cov(f(X),Y)$ even larger (more positive), such as when $(a,b,c,d)=(10,-1,-1,100)$.
If you visualize the 3 points on a plane, and further visualize covariance as a sort of "best fitting ellipse", it is pretty clear what is going on.  Swapping the two $Y=1$ points around wouldn't have done much except that the $(0,-2)$ point then "tilts" the "best-fitting ellipse", and by choosing $(a,b,c,d)=(10,-1,-1,100)$ the tilts both before and after are positive slopes.  And since covariance is also a measure of the "size" of this ellipse, there is no limit to the values before and after.
This does leave open a question of whether the CORRELATION (not covariance) can change arbitrarily from any value in $(0,1]$ to any value in $(0,1]$, since that is not "size" dependent...

Covariance of $f(X)$ and $Y$


Internal and Bluetooth speaker 'virtual' wiring

Question: I'm trying to run internal speakers and bluetooth speakers at the same time. I have a Samsung ATIV 5 with Win 8.1, and a Bose Soundlink Mini. My Samsung has built in Bluetooth capacity, and JBL sound system internally (sounds awesome for PC speakers!!) I have downloaded 'virtual cables' and a 'virtual mixer" from a link I found on a comment on this site, but there was no documentation on how to use any of it. Anyone have ideas on how to hook this up? The mixer, AISO bridge and cables (virtual) are VB Audio, and my Samsung has Realtek and Qualcomm atheros sound built in
Answer: i guess the mixer is "Voicemeeter" from VB-Audio! it will allow you send audio to several audio devices or to audio application as well. there is a complete documentation on the website (www.voicemeeter.com) or you can get the PDF doc from this direct link :
http://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Voicemeeter/Voicemeeter_UserManualR2.pdf
Comment: Thanks for the link, I have the voicemeeter, but not the PDF, so thanks again, I did get it to work once, now I can duplicate it again!!


Variance of number of runs of consecutive heads in $n$ biased coin flips

Question: Suppose we have a sequence of $n$ coin flips of a biased coin with probability $p$ of being heads. Let $X_n$ be the random variable that records the number of runs of consecutive heads, e.g. THHTHTHH has 3 runs of heads. By linearity of expectation, $E(X_n)$ is the sum of $n$ probabilities of getting a run of heads starting at coin flip $j$ for $1 \leq j \leq n$. For $j = 1$ this probability is $p$, and for $j > 1$ we must have flip $j-1$ is tails and flip $j$ is heads, which has probability $p(1-p)$. So $E(X_n) = p + (n-1)p(1-p)$. What about Var$(X_n)$? Is there any way to compute a formula for it? Or if not, at least get asymptotics for it?
Answer: Following the idea of your derivation: let $t_i$ be $1$ if a run of heads starts at coin number $i$  ($i=1 \cdots n$), $0$ otherwise. Then $X_n = \sum_{i=1}^n t_i$ and
$$
P(t_i=1)=E(t_i)=
\begin{cases}
p  & \text{if $i=1$} \\
p(1-p) & \text{otherwise}  \\
\end{cases}
$$
The vars $t_i$ are not independent, but $E(X_n)=\sum E(t_i) = p + (n-1)p (1-p)$ as you already found. Now let's compute
$$E(X^2_n)= E\left[\left(\sum t_i \right)^2\right]=\sum_{i=1}^n\sum_{j=1}^n E(t_i t_j)$$
The terms of the sum can be grouped in:
A) $i=j$: (with $n$ terms)  $E(t_i t_j)=E(t_i^2)=E(t_i)$. The sum over these terms is $p + (n-1)p (1-p)$.
B) $|i-j|=1$: (with $2 \times (n-1)$ terms). Here one of the two must be zero,so  $E(t_i t_j)=0$
In the remainder, the variables $t_i,t_j$ are independent. Hence
C) $|i-j|>1$ and $i=1$ or $j=1$ : (with $2\times(n-2)$ terms) $E(t_i t_j) = p^2(1-p)$
D) $|i-j|>1$ and $i>1$ and $j>1$ : (with $n^2-5n +6$ terms) $E(t_i t_j) = p^2(1-p)^2$
Finally
$$E(X_n^2)=p+\left( n-1\right) \,\left( p-1\right) \,p+ 2\,\left( n-2\right) \,\left( 1-p\right) \,{p}^{2}+\left( {n}^{2}-5\,n+6\right) \,{\left( 1-p\right) }^{2}\,{p}^{2}$$
$$Var(X_n) = E(X_n^2) - E(X_n)^2 = \left( 1-p\right) \,p\,\left( 3\,n\,{p}^{2}-5\,{p}^{2}- 3 \, n\,p+3 p+n\right)=\\
=\left( 1-p\right) \,p\,\left[  n\,\left( 3\,{p}^{2}-3\,p+1\right) -p\,\left( 5\,p-3\right)  \right]$$
As pointed out by Did in a comment, this is valid for $n\ge 4$; if $n<4$ the group D vanishes; if $n\le 2$, only case A survives. Then
$$Var(X_1)=p(1-p) \hspace{9pt} Var(X_2)=p(1-p)^2(2-p)\hspace{9pt} Var(X_3)=p(1-p)^2(4p^2-6p+3)$$
Comment: If $n\geqslant4$, otherwise some enumerations are faulty. (+1)
Comment: True, I added that case (and corrected some mistake)
Comment: Cool, I didn't realize the $t_i,t_j$ were independent for $|j - i| > 1$, but it makes sense because the joint event $t_i,t_j$ is determined by two disjoint pairs of coins, namely $(i-1,i)$ for $t_i$ and $(j-1,j)$ for $t_j$.
Answer: Here is a modest  contribution. Classify binary sequences according to
the difference  in the  number of  runs of heads  and tails.   This is
either  zero, one, or  minus one.  We will  represent these  with four
bivariate probability generating functions with $z$ counting the total
sequence length and $u$ counting the number of runs of heads.
For the same number of  runs we get the following generating functions
(depending on whether we start with heads or tails):
$$G_1(z, u) =
\sum_{k=0}^\infty u^k
\left(\frac{pz}{1-pz}\frac{(1-p)z}{1-(1-p)z}\right)^k
= {\frac {1+ \left( -{p}^{2}+p \right) {z}^{2}-z}{1+p \left( u-1
 \right)  \left( -1+p \right) {z}^{2}-z}}$$
and
$$G_2(z, u) =
\sum_{k=0}^\infty u^k
\left(\frac{(1-p)z}{1-(1-p)z}\frac{pz}{1-pz}\right)^k
= {\frac {1+ \left( -{p}^{2}+p \right) {z}^{2}-z}{1+p \left( u-1
 \right)  \left( -1+p \right) {z}^{2}-z}}.$$
The symmetry here is obvious. If there is one more run of heads than tails we get
$$G_3(z, u) =
u\frac{pz}{1-pz}
\sum_{k=0}^\infty u^k
\left(\frac{pz}{1-pz}\frac{(1-p)z}{1-(1-p)z}\right)^k
\\=
{\frac {pz \left( -up{z}^{2} \left( -1+p \right) -uz+u \right) }{
 \left( -pz+1 \right)  \left( 1+p \left( u-1 \right)  \left( -1+p
 \right) {z}^{2}-z \right) }}.$$
Finally if there is one more run of tails than heads we get
$$G_4(z, u) =
\frac{(1-p)z}{1-(1-p)z}
\sum_{k=0}^\infty u^k
\left(\frac{(1-p)z}{1-(1-p)z}\frac{pz}{1-pz}\right)^k
\\ =
{\frac { \left( 1-p \right) z \left( 1+ \left( -{p}^{2}+p \right) {z}^
{2}-z \right) }{ \left( 1- \left( 1-p \right) z \right)  \left( 1+p
 \left( u-1 \right)  \left( -1+p \right) {z}^{2}-z \right) }}.$$
The generating function for all cases is given by
$$G(z, u) =
G_1(z,u) + G_2(z,u) + G_3(z, u) + G_4(z, u)\\
= {\frac {{z}^{2}{p}^{2}u-{z}^{2}{p}^{2}-{z}^{2}pu+upz+{z}^{2}p-pz-z+2}{
{z}^{2}{p}^{2}u-{z}^{2}{p}^{2}-{z}^{2}pu+{z}^{2}p-z+1}}.$$
Observe that
$$G(z, 1) = \frac{2-z}{1-z} = \frac{2}{1-z} - \frac{z}{1-z}$$
so that for $n>1$ we have
$$[z^n] G(z, 1) = 2 - 1 = 1,$$
which confirms that $[z^n] G(z,u)$ is indeed a probability generating function (probabilities sum to one).
Now we have for the expectation that
$$\mathrm{E}[X_n] = [z^n] \left. \frac{d}{du} G(z, u) \right|_{u=1}.$$
This works out to
$$[z^n] \frac{pz (1-pz)}{(1-z)^2}
= p [z^{n-1}] \frac{1}{(1-z)^2}
- p^2 [z^{n-2}] \frac{1}{(1-z)^2}
\\= p n - p^2 (n-1)
= p + (n-1)\times p(1-p),$$
confirming the result quoted in the question text.
For the variance compute the required factorial moment, which is
$$\mathrm{E}[X_n (X_n-1)] = [z^n]
\left. \left(\frac{d}{du}\right)^2 G(z, u) \right|_{u=1}.$$
This works out to (formula is valid for $n\ge 4$ as explained in the definitive answer)
$$[z^n] \frac{2p^2 z^3 (1-p) (1-pz)}{(1-z)^3}\\
= 2p^2 (1-p) [z^{n-3}] \frac{1}{(1-z)^3}
- 2p^3 (1-p) [z^{n-4}] \frac{1}{(1-z)^3} \\=
2p^2 (1-p) {n-3+2\choose 2}
- 2p^3 (1-p) {n-4+2\choose 2}
\\=  \left( -1+p \right) {p}^{2} \left( n-2 \right)  \left( pn-n-3\,p+1
 \right)$$
To conclude recall that
$$\mathrm{Var}(X) = \mathrm{E}(X^2) - \mathrm{E}(X)^2
= \mathrm{E}(X(X-1)) + \mathrm{E}(X) - \mathrm{E}(X)^2$$
to get
$$\mathrm{Var}(X_n)
=- \left( -1+p \right) p \left( 3\,{p}^{2}n-3\,pn-5\,{p}^{2}+n+3\,p
 \right)$$
which is
$$(1-p)p \left((1-3p(1-p))\times n + 3p-5p^2\right).$$
Sequence A001792 is relevant to this computation.
Addendum. The reader may observe that $G_{1,2,3,4}(z,u)$ are all multiples of $G_1(z,u)$ although this does not appear to simplify the calculation.
Answer: We seem to have two different results for the variance. To investigate this I wrote some Maple code to compute $[z^n] G(z,u)$ by direct enumeration. As far as what I posted earlier the direct generating function seems to match the algebraic one and the same goes for expectation and variance.
Here is $[z^3] G(z, u)$
$$ \left( 1-p \right) ^{3}+3\,p \left( 1-p \right) ^{2}u+2\,{p}^{2} \left( 1-p \right) u+{p}^{2} \left( 1-p \right) {u}^{2}+{p}^{3}u $$
and this is $[z^4] G(z, u)$
$$  \left( 1-p \right) ^{4}+4\, \left( 1-p \right) ^{3}pu+3\,{p}^{2} \left( 1-p \right) ^{2}u+3\,{p}^{2} \left( 1
-p \right) ^{2}{u}^{2}\\+2\,{p}^{3} \left( 1-p \right) u+2\,{p}^{3} \left( 1-p \right) {u}^{2}+{p}^{4}u.$$
These two generating functions can be verified with pen and paper. To conclude, here is how I computed them. The two functions mom_ex and mom_var compute the moments i.e. expectation and variance. Note that $[z^{11}] G(z,u)$ has only $37$ terms, so this calculation is quite reasonable.

ev :=
proc(n)
    option remember;
    local q, d, pos, pb, pf, r, gf;

    gf := 0;

        for q from 2^n to 2^(n+1)-1 do
            d := convert(q, base, 2);

            if d[1] = 1 then
                r := 1;
                pf := p;
                pb := p;
            else
                r := 0;
                pf := 1-p;
                pb := 1-p;
            fi;

            for pos to n-1 do
                if d[pos] <> d[pos+1] then
                    if d[pos+1] = 1 then r := r+1; fi;
                    pf := 1-pf;
                fi;
                pb := pb*pf;
            od;

            gf := gf+pb*u^r;
        od;

    gf;
end;

mom_ex :=
proc(n)
        expand(subs(u=1, diff(ev(n), u)));
end;

mom_var :=
proc(n)

        expand(subs(u=1, diff(ev(n), u$2)))
        + mom_ex(n)-mom_ex(n)^2;
end;
Comment: Yes, I had messed up with my final formula, now we are in agreement. BTW, I think that instead of adding this answer you should have edited the other.


Can I leave the okara in when making tofu?

Question: I've started making tofu recently, and the one thing that bothers me is how much okara I end up throwing away. Since I'm not drinking the soy milk, and just turning it into tofu immediately, what's the problem with just leave the okara? I assume the tofu will be less flavorful, but it's not exactly strongly flavored to begin with. Will it mess up the coagulation process?
Comment: Might you like to edit your question to also ask "what can I do with the okara if I *can't* leave it in the tofu"? It seems like you're interested in that as well. (Or I suppose you could ask separately.)
Answer: The okara has some unextracted protein and sugar but it also has a large quantity of fiber. That fiber will prevent the protein from properly coagulating. If you leave in all the okara you get soybean porridge.
I imagine you could leave in a portion of the okara and you would get a fragile but hearty tofu. The problem with this is that, with most tofu recipes, the beans are not cooked long enough for the okara to be palatable. With all that sugar it would also give rise to much more flatulence.
You don't have to throw the okara out. There are many recipes that make use of the okara for its fiber. It is pretty straight forward to use it in baked goods. Toasting it gives it more interesting flavor.
If you want to look into tofu-like products that use the entire bean you could research tempeh. The whole beans are fermented so you get a meaty product with all the nutrition of the whole soy bean.
Comment: For those of us who don't know, okara is the the pulp left over after you extract the milk from pureed soybeans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okara_%28food%29
Comment: @Brendan- It is fermented so I agree it looks trickier than tofu but not worse than yogurt. It's on my list of things I want to try doing.
Comment: It looked like tempeh is a lot of work, since you need to hold the temperature content perfectly for a long time :\
Answer: If you include the actual beans in the curds, it'll be edible, but it won't really be tofu.
(Edited to add: There are a couple of Japanese companies that produce a product called "Tofu with okara", but based on my reading of this article plus the help of awkward machine translation, it appears to be using okara treated with an enzyme in order to reduce the amount of waste product. Probably not the sort of thing you'll be able to replicate at home, but worth noting that you aren't the only one with this concern; okara consumption, and use in animal feed, has been declining in proportion to the level of consumption of tofu itself in Japan.)
Instead of throwing it away, why not use the okara in other dishes instead? I like to mix them with vegetables and seasoning (soy sauce, mirin, salt, or western seasonings if preferred) and deep fry them as "croquettes", which I serve with a tonkatsu sauce or similar. I've also made an okara burger from time to time.
I've also mixed them with some mushrooms, onions, carrots, celery and some vaguely Italian seasonings, deep fried them, then served them in tomato sauce. In my experience, they tasted nice the first day but didn't hold up as leftovers.
Okara can also be simmered with carrots, green vegetables, and perhaps some hijiki along with mirin, soy sauce and sugar and used as a side dish.
You can bake the okara at a low temperature in an oven to dry it out a bit, then use it in things like cookies. (May only appeal to Japanese sensibilities but they were popular in Japan for a few years).
Answer: I just mixed my latest batch of okara with an equal amount of diced chicken, some finely minced onion, peppers, and a bunch of spices. It made some very nice "burgers", the leftover ones likely to go into my current, ongoing batch of India style curry.
Been doing this since discovering I have elderly lactose intolerance, and make soymilk regularly.
Tempeh and soygurt are on the list, too.
Answer: The other answers explain why you don't leave them inside the tofu. Indeed, if you leave them in, the tofu won't coagulate; however, if you allow the okara to ferment, then you get something resembling fermented tofu.
In China, we often use okara/douzha to feed fish, birds, etc. (if you have one). We also use it to make liangban (cold-stir, "salad") dishes, so you might try adding it to salads.
You can also make "meatballs", or add it to pastry, etc. The opportunities are endless. I've also seen people use it as a crust for deep fried dishes!


Renewing copyright for an artistic work

Question: Scenario:
A British artist dies and the 70 years pma rule comes into effect. However, his daughter sits on the board for the artist's foundation and does not want copyright to expire after 70 years. Can she renew copyright for his works somehow and if so, what are the limitations on this?
Answer: The duration of copyright is specified in the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988:

12 (2) Copyright expires at the end of the period of 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author dies

The only provision for extending the copyright is where is some doubt about authorship. If an unknown author is identified within that 70-year period, then the copyright expires seventy years after the death of the last-surviving author (ibid.)
In the case of an artistic work which is presumably verified as being the work of the artist and protected as such, it would be very difficult to suddenly "discover" an unknown contributor who would cause the copyright to be extended.
Answer: The copyright for the original work will expire. That foundation is free to create copies of the work that are slightly modified and claim copyright on the modified work. Now I would personally not be happy to buy a modified copy of a great work on art, so I doubt that strategy would be too successful.
Comment: Could you add a reference or two to this answer?

Renewing copyright for an artistic work


How do I compress the contents of a folder using 'tar' over SSH?

Question: How do I compress the contents of a folder using the tar command on an Unix system over SSH?
Comment: Sounds like a question for Server Fault (http://serverfault.com/)
Comment: @RonK: Could you explain why? Because it sure doesn't belong there...
Comment: Because that is where I post such questions :-) . Any way - this comment was added before the question was migrated.
Answer: From tar --help:
Examples:
  tar -cf archive.tar foo bar  # Create archive.tar from files foo and bar.
  tar -tvf archive.tar         # List all files in archive.tar verbosely.
  tar -xf archive.tar          # Extract all files from archive.tar.

So just use tar -cf archiveName.tar folderName.
Answer: If the content you want to archive is in the home directory of the user - it should be:
ssh login_name@hostname 'tar cvf archive-name *'

If you need to navigate somewhere, try this:
ssh login_name@hostname 'cd some-dir;tar cvf archive-name *'

Answer: If you want to compress it, add the -z or -j arguments to the recommendations above.
ssh user@host 'tar -C direcotry -czf archivename.tar.gz files/directory'


What adapter lens would fit my Nikon D5100 55-300mm lens?

Question: I have a Nikon D5100 and want to find a telephoto adapter that go with my 55-300mm lens, which has a 58mm filter thread.
Most I see are 52mm —  why is that?
What should I be looking for to FIT my 300mm lens?
Comment: It is unclear what you mean by *telephoto adapter*. Could you post a link to one that is 52mm so we could see what you mean?
Comment: What part of your D5100 has a 58mm thread? One of the interchangeable lenses that you attach to it? Or are you referring to something else?
Comment: The 55-300mm lens has a 58mm thread; this is not intrinsic to the camera body.
Comment: It sounds like you may be looking for a "_frontside teleconverter_" — a secondary lens that screws on to the front of the lens. If you get the kind of teleconverter that goes between the lens and the camera, the filter diameter is irrelevant.
Answer: Most of the add-on "teleconverter" filters that are 52mm are designed to be used with fixed-lens cameras, not interchangeable lens cameras.  It's common for bridge cameras to either have a 52mm or 58mm filter thread, or to allow for an accessory tube that attaches bayonet-style to add a filter thread.
With a dSLR, the more common type of teleconverter to use is one that mounts between the rear of the lens and the camera.  The glass tends to be of higher quality than screw-on converters, and they may report and pass through electronic signals from the body to the lens, so they are more expensive.
When you introduce an additional element to a lens that isn't part of the lens's design, you tend to reduce the image quality. And in the case of teleconverters that increase the effective focal length of the lens, you'll also be reducing the maximum aperture--possibly to the point where you'll lose autofocus with your camera body.  For example, a 2x teleconverter adds two stops to the maximum aperture, and most entry-level bodies (like your D5100) tend to stop autofocusing or have much wonkier autofocusing if the maximum aperture goes past f/8.  The maximum aperture determines how much light hits the AF sensor array, the darker it gets, the harder it is for the AF to lock.  The 55-300 being an f/4.5-5.6 lens with a 2x tc would become an f/9-f/11 lens.
As someone who occasionally throws a 1.4x tc onto a 400mm f/5.6 prime lens, I will say that adding a teleconverter is a compromise.  It will not perform the way a longer lens will.  Granted, it's far less expensive, and you do gain reach, but most of the savings come at the cost of sharpness and autofocus performance.
See also: Can I expect good quality from a 2X TC on a Nikon 55-300mm lens?


Extract values from raster based on points and pixels adjacent to the point

Question: I have an issue. I have a set of points (n=~2000) and I would like to extract the pixel values from multiple rasters (a single-raster solution is also ok) for location of that point as well as that of all eight neighbours.
Comment: @dhyey For each of your points you'll have nine values. Did you want to calculate something with the nine values (e.g. the average) and output it to the attribute table of the points? Or was there something else that you wanted to do with the data?
Comment: Do you have the Spatial Analyst Extension? Also does the raster store integer values or do you need every floating point value in a float?
Comment: One other question. Is it possible for more than one point to occur in a given 8-cell neighborhood?
Comment: If using `r`, have a look at `?extract` from the `raster` package
Comment: jbchurchill . i have spatial analyst extension and my rasters have floating point values. Points  into consideration are randomly distributed and many lie near to each other hence even in the 8 cell neigbourhood. hence each point should be considered as unique when extracting
Comment: Paul . I will go through the extract in raster package
Comment: @WhiteboxDev i am interested in extracting all nine values to study their impact on the pixel having the point.
Comment: @dhyey And do you want those 9 values entered into the point file's attribute table? Also is ArcGIS a requirement to the solution or would other software be okay?
Answer: You appear to be looking at a suite of software options. A way of doing it in ArcMap model builder using off the shelf tools could be:

point to raster (ensure snap to raster environment is set.)
Expand (by 1 pixel to create your block of nine)
Extract by mask.

This method assumes that your points are not so close that their masks overlap. If overlap is going to be an issue then you could use a feature iterator to feed out single points and process them one at a time, this would generate a raster per point.
Comment: +1 Nice use of `Expand`
Comment: @Hornbydd . my points are randomly spread, with many of them very close to each other. I will look up to your suggested solution
Answer: Here is how I would consider doing this if I absolutely had to have every neighborhood value (which is what it sounds like). First create 2 fields for the point geometry (one for x and one for y) and calculate the geometry for the x field and y field. I would be sure my point file was in a projected coordinate system like UTM Meters or State Plane Feet. Better if the units match units represented in the cell size of the raster. Then I'd create 16 more fields ULX, ULY, UCX, UCY, URX, URY, CLX, CLY, CRX, CRY, LLX, LLY, LCX, LCY, LRX, LRY.

I'm going to describe my example using 30 meter cells. So next I'd use the x and y fields for the point to create new x and y values for ULX, LCX, and LLX calculate each of those fields with the field calculator X - 30. for UC and LC it is just the same value as X, and for UR, CR, and LR it is x + 30. Then to calculate the Y values CL and CR are equal to Y. The top row UL, UC, and UR are Y + 30 and LL, LC, LR are Y - 30. So now all the fields are populated. I'd create 8 new point feature classes or shapefiles using the 16 x and y fields using "Add XY Data". Keeping an ID value the same in all of them (FID), you can then run "Extract Values to Points" or "Sample" from the Spatial Analyst Toolbox on the original file (for the central cell) and all the other point feature classes. These results could then be brought individually into a spreadsheet and put back together so that each original ID has a value for UL, UC, UR, CL, Original Point, CR, LL, LC, and LR.
You could script the adding of the fields and calculating of the values if you needed to do this again for different sets of points.
For a 5 x 5 neighborhood, you would need to be more creative in naming your fields and there would be 25 total feature classes / shapefiles, but it could be done this way too.
Comment: This seems to be a nice working solution to my problem. thank you @jbchurchill.
Comment: Happy to help! If you didn't need every value and just needed an average or a max or something, @Hornbydd 's method sounds like it would work pretty well too though single points might still need to be processed one by one.
Answer: You want to get the values of a pixel and its 8 surrounding pixels from points. It can be done in ArcGIS10.2 easily now.

(1) Using the Focal Statistics tool to create an output raster where the value for each output cell is a function (eg. MEAN, MAXIMUM, MINIMUM, SUM...) of the values of all the original input cells that are in a specified neighborhood (in this case: Rectangle of 3*3 cells) around that location.
(2) Using the Extract Values To Points tool to extract the output raster values to your point features.


What determines voltage levels in RS-232

Question: What determines the peak voltage levels for RS-232 lines? Is it determined by the software? The hardware? Something else?
Comment: The standard (TIA-232-F)
Comment: The *peak* levels may be determined by the edge speed and impedance match, not just the nominal drive voltage.
Answer: The RS-232 standard specifies the range as:
<code>0 (space)   Asserted    +3v to +15v
1 (mark)    Deasserted  −15v to −3v
</code>
In addition, inputs must tolerate voltages up to ±25v, and outputs must tolerate indefinite shorts to ground.
In the past, a lot of equipment used ±12v since it was available from a minicomputer power supply for example. Once personal computers became popular, most of them switched to ±5 since it is commonly available and still within the spec.  (Well, the +5 is commonly available, additional circuitry is necessary to get the -5V if the main power supply does not provide it.)
As an example, the MAXIM series of UART RS-232 interface chips such as the MAX220-MAX249 series use a voltage doubler and voltage converter to generate ±10v.)
Comment: Why is logic low positive voltages? Just curious given that this is different from TTL/CMOS levels.
Answer: Voltage levels are determined by the HW drivers. A typical driver has a switched capacitor power supply to transform from logic levels to RS232 bipolar levels
Answer: Specifically the voltage levels for mark and space are determined by the power supply rails of the transmitting circuit. The software neither knows nor cares what voltages represent mark or space (0 or 1). As long as the receiving circuit can discern the difference. In some cases it is not unusual to find simple TTL levels (0 and 5V) in modern digital equipment decades removed from the vintage technology.


noob: Not able to checkout code using Bazaar explorer

Question: So i started Bazaar explorer and set my local path to a project folder on desktop. I have an http URL in the format http://XXX.XXX.X.XX/trunk..I tried checking out the code by entering the URL in the Branch Source but I get an error saying "Connection error: while sending OPTIONS /trunk/: attempt failed as cannot connected party failed to respond or host failed to respond. Please help!
Comment: Does it work when you checkout with SVN?
Answer: You're trying to checkout SVN repository most likely. Something wrong with access to that repository or with bzr-svn plugin. You have to file a bug here and ask your question, and you will have more chanches to get the right answer there than on StackOverflow..


How do I figure out the momentum of a water balloon when it reaches the person I am throwing it at?

Question: Recently an experiment was performed in which myself and a partner filled a water balloon and threw it back and forth at each other without breaking it. We gradually increased the distance at which it was being thrown and at one point I ended up on the second floor of one of my high school buildings and when I threw it, my partner caught it. For the last part of my experiment I went up to the third floor of the building and threw it, my partner caught the water balloon (it burst in her hands) I am assuming that the balloon had so much force behind it that the impact caused it to burst. I know that momentum is measured using mass and velocity but I do not know how to calculate the momentum when it reaches my partner. I would say that there is no momentum because once the balloon is caught, it will not be moving. But apparently that is incorrect so I am assuming the momentum will need to be that of the split second right before it is caught. My final question: How do I calculate the momentum of the balloon when it reaches the hands of my partner?
Comment: To simplify the situation, why don't you just take into consideration the force of gravity acting on the balloon and use the equations of motion for linear acceleration to find out the velocity of the balloon (assuming you know its mass, of course).
Comment: The momentum is the same as for any object of same mass (thrown w/ same force in same direction, of course).  Unfortunately (or fortunately :-) ), balloons tend to have a range of tensile strength and asymmetric weak points, so you'll have to throw MANY balloons to get a good estimate of the mean bursting force.  (Wet partner; hilarity ensues :-) )
Comment: Just a comment as an aside. A friend of mine thought he would drop a water balloon off the top of a building onto one of the parked cars below. He expected it to splash off the car's roof. Which it did, but also put a big dent in it.
Answer:
Following assumptions are made to calculate velocity (at the desired time) of the balloon (and thus momentum),

Balloon has been considered to be a point object or particle. While studying the motion of an object; sometimes, its dimensions are of no importance. For example, if one travels from one place to another distant place by a bus, the length of the bus may be ignored as compared to the distance traveled. In other words, although the bus has a finite size, yet for the study of the motion of the bus along the road; its motion may be considered as the motion of a point or a particle.
In the present calculation, the motion of water balloon is considered to be along a straight line (rectilinear motion).
Water balloon has been assumed to be uniformly accelerated towards the center of the earth with an acceleration of $9.8 ms^{-2}$.
Air resistance has been ignored.

Thus, kinetic equations of motion under gravity can be obtained by replacing 'a'(acceleration) by 'g'(acceleration due to gravity) in the kinematic equations of motion known. Accordingly, one of the kinematic equation of motion under gravity can be given as:
$$V_f=V_i+g(t_f-t_i)$$
where,
$V_f$ is velocity at time $t_f$.
$V_i$ is velocity at time $t_i$.
$g$ is acceleration due to gravity.
Initially at time $t_i$=0, $V_i$ will also be equal to 0. Thus, above equation reduces to the below form:
$$V_f=gt_f$$
By knowing the time($t_f$) at which the water balloon is about to reach the hands of partner (stop watch can be used to know the time practically), velocity at that time ($t_f$) can be known.
Thus, momentum ($P$) of the water balloon of mass ($M$) at the time $t_f$ can be given as $P(t_f)=MV_f$. By substituting all the values, the momentum of the water balloon at time $t_f$ can be obtained.
Answer: The momentum is given by $mv$. This can be calculated by knowing the initial speed and acceleration due to gravity (See Godparticle's answer for a more detailed explanation).
However I think the your conclusion that the momentum causes the balloon to burst is not entirely correct. It is more to do with the force, i.e. change in momentum experienced by the balloon. This is influenced by both the momentum the balloon has and how quickly you stop it.
Consider a slightly different experiment where rather than catching the balloon you drop it onto a surface. If you drop it onto the hard floor it bursts at a certain height. But if you put a foam mat or other soft material there you will need a larger height as the balloon is decelerated by a lower force (over a longer distance/time).
Having said this, presuming your partner moves their hand the same amount each time you are correct that momentum there is a correlation with momentum.
How the balloon is caught may also be a factor as it can create local spots of high pressure on the balloon as it is gripped. Think bursting the balloon in your hand. This is probably difficult to control for in your experiment.


I need to show my poly count in my render for a school assignment. How can I do that using Blender 2.83?

Question: I modeled a well for a school assignment using blender 2.83. I need to make a render which shows the poly count. I can't find polycount as an option in the Metadata to include in the render. I wonder if there is a way to include it in the render or am I going to have to add it in the notes after getting them.
Comment: Just add it as custom text/name in the metadata options.
Comment: related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/174158/show-the-polycount-of-selected-objects-in-object-mode
Answer: Poly count is at the very bottom right of the screen.
In the note section for metadata write the info you want and turn on "burn into image"

A different way to see statistics is to enable the overlay in the 3D viewport as shown in this post:
Bottom Status Bar Doesn't Show Verts, Faces, Tris Information In v2.9a

Here's a script to automatically write the with the selected object's stats on the metadata notes:
adapted from :
Show the polycount of selected objects in object mode
<code>import bpy

verts, edges, polys = 0, 0, 0
dg = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()  # Getting the dependency graph
for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:

    obj = obj.evaluated_get(dg)
    # This gives the evaluated version of the object. Aka with all modifiers and deformations applied.
    mesh = obj.to_mesh()  # Turn it into the mesh data block we want

    verts += len(mesh.vertices)
    edges += len(mesh.edges)
    polys += len(mesh.polygons)

bpy.context.scene.render.use_stamp_note = True
bpy.context.scene.render.stamp_note_text = "Verts: "+str(verts)+", Edges: "+str(edges)+", Polys: "+str(polys)
bpy.context.scene.render.use_stamp = True
</code>
To use go to the scripting window, create a new text, paste the script and run it.


How do I setup Public-Key Authentication?

Question: How do I setup Public-Key Authentication for SSH?
Answer: If you have SSH installed, you should be able to run..
ssh-keygen

Then go through the steps, you'll have two files, id_rsa and id_rsa.pub (the first is your private key, the second is your public key - the one you copy to remote machines)
Then, connect to the remote machine you want to login to, to the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys add the contents of your that id_rsa.pub file.
Oh, and chmod 600 all the id_rsa* files (both locally and remote), so no other users can read them:
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa*

Similarly, ensure the remote ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file is chmod 600 also:
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Then, when you do ssh remote.machine, it should ask you for the key's password, not the remote machine.

To make it nicer to use, you can use ssh-agent to hold the decrypted keys in memory - this means you don't have to type your keypair's password every single time. To launch the agent, you run (including the back-tick quotes, which eval the output of the ssh-agent command)
`ssh-agent`

On some distros, ssh-agent is started automatically. If you run echo $SSH_AUTH_SOCK and it shows a path (probably in /tmp/) it's already setup, so you can skip the previous command.
Then to add your key, you do
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

and enter your passphrase. It's stored until you remove it (using the ssh-add -D command, which removes all keys from the agent)
Comment: If you have to create the .ssh folder don't set it to 600 like me or you're gonna have a bad time. Instead set it to 700. :-)
Comment: @user01 Yes, you can copy the private key to multiple systems and access another server that has the corresponding public key.
Comment: Uploading public key to remote machine can also be handled by `ssh-copy-id [-i identity] [user@]host` executed on local machine.
Comment: Can I login from unknown machine using the private key that was generated for known/configured client to communicate to server? I mean, is this private key portable & could be used to authenticate myself to server from other machines, in case of emergency needs ??
Comment: @Charlie Gorichanaz: Is it also the other way round, like could I generate a key pair on server & use generated public key on all the other machines that I want to connect to this server ?
Comment: @user01 if you generate a key pair on server and copy the public key to other machines, then you'll only be able to log in _from the server to that machines,_ not the other way round.
Answer: For windows this is a good introduction and guide
Here are some good ssh-agents for systems other than linux.

Windows - pageant
OS X - SSHKeychain


Running empty refrigerator

Question: Can I keep an older refrigerator, which is empty, running on the warmest setting for an extended period without worrying about smells?  Will it save considerable energy by turning it to the warmest setting?
Comment: tens of dollars a month to avoid one cleanup? you must be rich...
Comment: Why run it at all.. Not only do you wear out the compressor, but you use electricity. To mitigate smells - ever open a new refrigerator - they have been closed for long periods of time. As fred said - it is the bacteria inside that will contribute to odors. leave the door partly opened - or put arm and hammer inside and close the thing. If you want to verify the effectiveness of this method - leave it closed for a couple of months and then open it.
Comment: If it is **empty**, ANY setting other than off is a pure waste of energy. Clean it throughly and turn it off.
Answer: A clean refrigerator will not smell. The air inside would be entrapped and accumulate no other odors. If not fully clean, anything inside that might decompose would not do so at a suitably low temperature. Clean is still better than cool and old, however.
There is no harm in powering off the refrigerator. One can place a magnet on the door frame to prevent complete closing, which would allow any minor odors to escape. I have a dorm sized refrigerator configured in this manner and it does not smell. The door is about 12 mm open (1/2") and when started after three years of being unplugged, cooled properly and ran normally.
You will save energy at the warmest setting but not what I would call considerable. With the door closed and not opened for extended periods, the compressor should not operate as frequently as when in use, but will operate to bring the temperature back to the dial setting as needed. Temperatures outside the refrigerator and the insulation quality comes into play for that determination.
Not a duplicate, but another post to contribute to your question:
Unplugging vs running an empty refrigerator
Answer: Block the door open
Several times I have seen people shut off fridges not in use.  To their surprise, an explosion of mold follows in the fridge.   The reason is, refrigerators contain water you don't know about.  This humid, sealed compartment then becomes a breeding ground.
I leave the door blocked partially open (like at least 2 inches) for at least a month.   I would not then close it unless I had some dessicant packs to throw in there.  Dessicant packs, not foodstuffs often misused as dessicant like rice.
It is very important that your blocking scheme is not defeated by some well meaning helper.  Some people cannot abide the sight of a refrigerator door open.  They will want to close the door, and will think you foolish for wanting to block it open.  You will need to deal with those people somehow.
Another option is to remove the doors entirely, they are designed to be easy to remove.

Running empty refrigerator


How can i list all stopped services in the order that they were stopped

Question: I have a Debian server on which there are certain stopped services. I would like to know how can i list all the services in the order that they were stopped. Also would like to get the time when they were stopped.
Comment: Which version of Debian?
Comment: I'm using Debian 7.9 on the server.
Answer: The easiest way to find out what processes are running on your server is to run the top command:
became root
<code> top
</code>
or
<code> sudo apt-get install htop
</code>
became root
<code>  htop
</code>
or
<code>  ps
</code>
to kill process
<code>  kill PID_of_target_process
</code>
You can list all services and their status by:
<code>  service --status-all
</code>
Save Process Snapshot to a file
<code> top -b -n1 > /tmp/process.log
</code>
you can email result to yourself:
<code> top -b -n1 | mail -s 'Process snapshot' yourmaildotcom
</code>


Ruby - Relationship of Class/Objects/Methods

Question: Pertaining to Ruby, can someone state the relationship between Class, Objects, and Methods in layman's terms? And maybe even give an analogy?
New to OOP and trying to grasp the concept.
Answer: note: OOP is independent of Ruby.
Classes are like recipes.
Objects are the actual food you prepare from a recipe.
Methods are ... don't really fit in this metaphor.  But they are the behaviors an object can perform. Some might say methods are the messages an object will respond to.
Comment: Methods in this example can be smell, color or weight of prepared food ;)
Answer: A friend gave me this analogy:
"It's like a watch. The Class is the watch casing, it encompasses the inner workings of the watch (Objects and Methods). The hands are the Objects, they perform the function of the watch based on the movement of the gears (Methods). The gears and springs underneath the face are the Methods; they are the heart of the watch that make up the function of the hands (Objects). Without the gears (Methods) the hands (Objects) have no function. Without either of those, there's no need for the watch casing (Class) to exist."
Answer: Classes are your blueprints
Methods are your tools (to build, to modify, to adjust)
Objects are your buildings
Remember that your objects are your nouns (e.g. a building) ... methods are you verbs (e.g. is built)!!


Oracle Spatial, can not find intersect against polygon that covers entire world

Question: I am new to Oracle Spatial, I am trying to implement a service that will take coordinates from a map, and search our database to find any geometries that intersect with that map view.  I works fine for the most part, but when I have the map zoomed out all the way where we can see the entire world, Oracle search returns no records at all.  Can someone see why the following sql would return 0 records when I have over 20 records in the geometry table:
select g.id, g.name, SDO_UTIL.to_kmlgeometry(g.geom) as kml from geography g
where SDO_RELATE(g.geom,
            SDO_GEOMETRY(2003,8307,NULL,SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1,1003,1),
                SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(
                       -180,-90,
                        180,-90,
                        180,90,
                        -180,90
                )),
            'mask=ANYINTERACT') = 'TRUE';

Several sample records inserted into the database:
INSERT INTO geography VALUES(
  GEOGRAPHY_ID_SEQ.nextVal,
  'd2',
  SDO_GEOMETRY(
    2003, -- 2d poly
    8307,
    NULL,
    SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1,1003,1), -- polygon
    SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(-77.01204711074818,38.88772105792418,
                            -77.01200419540395,38.89196328335449,
                            -77.00831347579947,38.89249647861828,
                            -77.00827056045522,38.88768765356904,
                            -77.01204711074818,38.88772105792418)
  )
);

INSERT INTO geography VALUES(
  GEOGRAPHY_ID_SEQ.nextVal,
  'd3',
  SDO_GEOMETRY(
    2003, -- 2d poly
    8307,
    NULL,
    SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1,1003,1), -- polygon
    SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(-77.05552889816111,38.86892085934577,
        -77.05329022237119,38.87065233921285,
        -77.05467677541158,38.87288138804671,
        -77.05786820241124,38.87248696633578,
        -77.05840989692072,38.87006762135151,
        -77.05552889816111,38.86892085934577)
  )
);

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!
Answer: it turns out this is caused by Oracle's limit where no polygon can be bigger than 1/2 of earth surface.  To do the search, have to break the region into smaller pieces and union them all at the end


How do the clients agree on the target to hash for?

Question: Edit: They do not agree on a specific target hash. Any hash lower than or equal to the difficulty is sufficient. This means clients only have to agree on difficulty.
Comment: Are you asking [how the difficulty is determined](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-keeps-the-block-difficulty-at-10mins)?
Comment: Hmm, I had not understood the process correctly. I had thought the network was looking for a specific target but it is looking for any hash lower or equal to the difficulty. So it is enough to agree on the difficulty. Thanks David!
Answer: By "difficulty" I mean the number that determines the minimum acceptable hash. Higher difficulties mean lower hash minimums and thus, on average, more hash attempts needed to produce a valid block. (Related terms are target and nBits).
Every 2,016 blocks there is a difficulty change block. Unless the block is a difficulty change block, the difficulty must be precisely the same as the previous block or the block is invalid.
On a difficulty change block, the difficulty must be precisely what the difficulty algorithm requires or the block is invalid. The algorithm takes into account the amount of time it took to generate the previous group of blocks and computes a new difficulty such that the block generation time will be, on average, once every ten minutes if the network hashing power stays the same.
If you want to see this in the source code, check out the GetNextWorkRequired function in the main.cpp file.


What's the difference between "bougie" and "chandelle" in French?

Question: "Bougie" and "chandelle" both mean "candle" in French. What's the difference?
Comment: as a french person i asked myself the same question, because these days i read Balzac (19 century) and the character is ashamed of using 'chandelles' and prefer more expensive 'bougies'. Your answers are all very informative, you're so good!'Chandelles' are made of tallow, which smells a lot i guess, hence the character wanting to buy candles (bougies) because it's more expensive and won't smell (she wants to impress someone). Nowadays we use the word 'bougie' to name the object, because nobody uses tallow anymore I guess. But it's true, there's a lot of expressions with the word 'chandelle'.
Answer: None already explain the technical and etymological difference.
The main difference is that in European French, or at least in France, chandelle is mostly used nowadays in set expressions, some of them already mentioned earlier in comments:

brûler la chandelle par les deux bouts: to burn the candle at both ends, to do things in excess, to waste
voir trente-six chandelles: to see stars, to be knocked out
dîner aux chandelles: romantic dinner
tenir la chandelle: "to hold the candle", to be a third wheel
devoir une fière chandelle: to owe a great deal to someone.
le jeu n'en veut pas la chandelle: something isn't worth the effort
économies de bouts de chandelle: penny-pinching savings

As you can see, there are plenty of such idioms so the word itself is well alive, despite being almost unused alone. In the few cases where it is, the meaning is figurative:

monter en chandelle/descendre en chandelle: to zoom (plane)
faire une chandelle: to lob (e.g. tennis) or to throw a ball vertically (soccer and other sports), up and under, infield fly, pop fly, pop up, moon ball
faire la chandelle: shoulderstand
mettre une voiture sur des chandelles: to use jack-stands

The derived words chandelier/candelabre are also mostly used for antiques and substituted by bougeoir for current candle holders.
There is also a third word, cierge, specialized for candles to be lit in a church.
Canadian French kept chandelle as its main word for candle and mostly reserves bougies for spark plugs. That means in Québec, you would more likely hear souffler ses chandelles while in France, that would be souffler ses bougies. Both expressions are of course understood everywhere.
Comment: _"something doesn't worth the effort"_ => "doesn't" should be "isn't"
Comment: The literal translation of the phrase, "the game is not worth the candle", is known in English (though it's not exactly common either.)  Apparently it came [into English via a translation of de Montaigne](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/256490/who-is-the-originator-of-the-proverb-be-not-worth-the-candle).
Comment: @MichaelSeifert The expression *ne pas en valoir la chandelle* is not uncommon in French.
Comment: And what about Père Ubu's "De par ma chandelle verte".
Comment: @BernardMasse Merdre! Je l'avais oubliée ;-)
Comment: @MatthieuM Thanks!
Comment: I just researched *"le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle"* and discovered it means "the prize isn't worth the price of the candle we used to have light while playing". It's a surprise for me - I always thought it was "l'enjeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle" and was a reference to arm-wrestling with candles, where the loser might burn their hand.
Comment: @Stef At least *l'enjeu* wasn't semantically wrong because it originally means the money bet in a game.
Answer: If we look at modern dictionaries chandelle and bougie are indeed sometimes given as synonyms and used as such by lots of people.
Nevertheless the use of the word varies according to French speaking countries. The BDLQ (Québec Board of the French Language) confirms what @gdupras says in their comment:

si en Europe chandelle est peu utilisé, au Québec, c'est un mot encore bien vivant, que l'on trouve tant dans l'étiquetage que dans les dictionnaires québécois comme synonyme de bougie. Ainsi, on ne saurait en déconseiller l'emploi1.

But strictly  speaking bougies and chandelles are different objects, even if their purpose is the same.
If you have,  at home, or at the restaurant, a dîner aux chandelles you are not likely to have dinner lit by chandelles but by bougies.
Chandelles (candles) used to be made of tallow (suif in French) and sometimes (rarely) from wax. Tallow doesn't burn well and smells bad when hot. Candles made of wax became more widespread in France from the 14th century onwards because they started to import great quantities of wax from the town of Bougie (nowadays Béjaïa) in Algeria. And that's when the word bougie began to be used for wax candles in France.
In Britain wax also gradually replaced tallow in candle making but English didn't change the name as French did.
So strictly speaking chandelle is a tallow candle, and bougie is a (wax) candle.
Note that candle and chandelle both originate in the Latin candela.

1 if in Europe chandelle is little used, in Québec it is a word still very much alive that is found both in labelling and in Québec dictionaries as a synonym of bougie. Thus we do not discourage its use.
Comment: "Chandelle" sounds old-fashioned to my Belgian ears...
Comment: @LaurentS. Not surprising, I don't expect lots of people use them nowadays - (sauf peut-être s'ils la brûlent par les deux bouts...) !
Comment: @escarlateadamantine je pense que l'époque de la chanson renvoie bien à des chandelles (l'usage généralisé de la cire est quand même récent), de surcroît j'ai toujours entendu dire (du moins depuis que je suis adulte) que chandelle a encore un autre sens dans cette chanson « enfantine ».
Comment: ... ou qu'ils en voient 36.
Comment: Au Québec et au Canada on dit beaucoup plus « chandelle » que « bougie ». Le mot bougie est surtout employé dans « bougie d'allumage », dispositif qui sert à démarrer les moteurs de voitures.
Comment: [_Au clair de la lune..._](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_clair_de_la_lune)
Answer: Other answer have already stated that those 2 are most of the time synonyms
I just want to add that in mechanics you can encounter a Bougie d'allumage which is a Spark plug.
In that case you cannot use Chandelle instead of Bougie
Comment: Just what I was going to say!
Comment: @Tim and CharybdeBE Cet usage du mot bougie a déjà été décrit hier par gdupras dans un commentaire et je l'ai repris dans ma réponse. En France, bougie et chandelle sont d'un certain point de vue synonymes mais à l'usage très rarement, voire jamais interchangeables.
Comment: @jiliagre Désolé je ne l'ai pas vu avant de répondre
Comment: Pas de problème !
Answer: To the other answers I'll add that chandelle is the French word for a pop fly in baseball. You can't say bougie for that.
Comment: Oui, et le terme s'utilise aussi dans d'autres sports, voir ici : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lob


How to delete a dune dashboard I created?

Question: How to delete a dune dashboard I created? cannot find any solution or docs on this.
Answer: Currently you can only archive dashboards.
To do that on the web interface...

go to your dashboard
Click on Settings on the top right (a popup should open)
Click on the bottom right archive


Water vs olive oil when sautéing

Question: I was recently watching a friend sauté vegetables (specifically artichokes and broccoli) and instead of using olive oil, she used water. What's the difference between using oil as compared to using water to sauté? How do I know when to use which?
Comment: Have a look at this : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21467/what-limitations-are-there-to-sauteeing-with-water
Comment: And for those who might complain that you can't sauté without fat ... I've seen 'dry sautéing' before.  (and the origins of the term refer to how the food moves (jumping), nothing about any liquid in the pan)
Comment: @Joe but "fry hot with **a little fat** in a wide pan" **is the definition of** sauté.  Replacing the fat with water, or completely removing it might be a perfectly valid technique... **but it's not sautéing**.  It's "something else".  (I wrote this before reading the answers.)
Answer: In terms of sautéing, the simple answer is that using oil is going to let you develop fond, i.e. the tasty brown stuff, on your veggies whereas cooking only with water will essentially boil/steam your vegetables — and perhaps give them a little char, as well.
In cooking, both oil and water are basically just things you use to transfer heat to food. They are both useful in their own way, depending on what you're cooking.
In practical terms, oils/fats can serve a couple other purposes, too, like:

Help extract fat-soluble flavor compounds from ingredients, like herbs and aromatics.
Keep things from sticking and burning in your pan.
Add flavor.

In a hot pan with only water, your friend was probably boiling/steaming their vegetables — not truly sautéing, in which you really try to avoid steaming. If the water runs low, you risk burning your veggies when they come in direct contact with the hot metal of the pan.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it depends on what the food is and how you're trying to prepare it. There are better ways to steam veggies, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
Cooking for Engineers has an illuminating article on the science behind heat transfer. Learning about the Maillard reaction is also a good read. And others more experienced than myself can tell you a lot more, I'm sure. Hopefully this is a sufficient "short" answer.
Comment: It's pretty easy to avoid charring things - just make sure there's enough water at the beginning, stir a bit, and remove from heat once the water's boiled off. I sometimes use it as a fast way to steam things like green beans, since they need so little cooking time.
Answer: As I believe has been mentioned in other posts, you really can't saute in water. Saute literally mean to fry in fat. Some vegetables which have a high fat content may saute a little in their own oils if very little water is in the pan, but it is more of a steaming process. The big difference is the amount of heat being used to cook the veg.  Olive oils, at least unrefined EVOO start to smoke and burn at faily low temps 200-250 F.  Refined olive oils can take more heat, but many cooks like to use high smoke point oils too fry or even saute.
Anyway, using water in the pan keeps the pan temperature fairly low, generally around the boiling point of the water (212 F).  You can get it hotter using little water but the water will evaporate quickly and burning may occur. If you add more water, you continually cool the pan inhibiting the mailliard effect.  This is the brownig effect that occurs on food when exposed to high heat. This creates a great flavor on most foods.
While there's nothing wrong with cooking in water, the results are quite different from cooking in oil.

Water vs olive oil when sautéing


How can I stop missing my dog?

Question: Yesterday my mom told me my dog Strawberry died. I had her from when she was very young, about 2 months old. From then until now, it's already a few years. I cannot accept the fact. Crying, I cannot stop. Today I stayed in the office with no mind to work, I miss her. Can anyone give me advice on coping with it?
Comment: Grief eventually passes. Make sure that your manager knows why you are so sad. You could always get another dog.
Comment: Thanks,but maybe i can not have another dog,i do not want to have same experience again
Answer: First and foremost I'm very sorry for your loss, I can't even begin to imagine the wreck I would be if I were to lose one of my cats.
To answer your question there's no magic bullet for the grief of losing a pet - just like there is none for the grief of losing a human loved one. There's no schedule or time limit on these things and different people cope with grief in different ways. What I can say though is that time is a great healer and while it's very raw right now you will feel better as time passes.

How can I stop missing my dog?


How to add visible menu item from php code (drupal)

Question: I have a content type with important "created" date field. And I have
a menu link (in primary links) which is link to page that shows list
of all nodes of my content type. (http://example.com/mycontenttype)
I want to have menu links (visible in primary links) to each year when
nodes of my content type are displayed
(http://example.com/mycontenttype/2010). And I want to add these menu
links from mymodule_nodeapi function, when the node is creating and
only if it has a "created" date of new year.
I know that I can create a pathes in mymodule_menu function, but it
doesn't create a visible menu item. (Maybe I can somehow set
parent_link_id or something else to do it?)
Answer: You can create a visible menu item with hook_menu() if you set it's 'type' to MENU_NORMAL_ITEM. Also, you can nest these menu items by defining a path that includes the path of the parent item. For instance, 'mycontenttype/2010' would be a child menu item of 'mycontenttype' (I believe you can also manually set the parent/child relationship using Drupal's menu admin form. You can also set the menu the item should be added to using the 'menu-item' value to automatically add it to Primary Links instead of Navigation.
As for creating a new menu item whenever a node is created with a new year, you'll have to play around with it a little. I think it'd be easy to determine what unique years are available for nodes of that type (using a view or a querying the database manually). To update the menu tables when a new menu item is added, you can call menu_rebuild().
I think the way to hook it all together would be to write your hook_menu function to query the database to find unique created date years and create a menu item for each year. In your hook_nodeapi, check whether or not the created year is new (there must be ways to optimize this so it doesn't get called every single time you create the node, but i'll leave that to you). If it is a new year, then clear the menu tables (menu_rebuild) to recreate the menu items and include one for the new year.