Was slavery economically most efficient system in the ancient/agricultural era?

Question: I mean slavery in ancient civilizations, for example Greece, Rome, Egypt. Not considering moral aspects at all, but considering economic reasons and agricultural nature of economic activity.
Comment: Far too broad (1) different cultures implement slavery in different ways - is a peasant a slave? a serf?  What do you mean by slavery? When? Where? post war slavery? Birth slavery?(2) discussions of economic efficiency in ancient cultures are... questionable. Kind of like talking about the smell of green.  Economic efficiency wasn't the goal of slavery, and if it were, they understood economics differently.
Comment: I didn't do you any favors with my edit, so I changed it back. You can try editing it the way Mark C Wallace describes and see if that improves the response.
Comment: Things don't happen unless they are economic. You can assume that the price of slaves fluctuated and reflected the profitability of owning one.
Comment: @TylerDurden that's simply not true. People do act for non-economic reasons - the study of those reasons is one of the most fertile branches of economic research today. Even if they did, their understanding of economics changes - rational actions in a mercantilist system are different from rational actions in a Marxist system, etc.
Answer: No
Slavery is an incredibly broad topic, with different cultures and different times practicing different forms of slavery. It also isn't a topic in which I consider myself an expert. So I'll offer a very broad brush response.
definition of terms

"economically effective" - I'm going to interpret this phrase to mean that a system is more economically effective if it produces more units of output/units of input.  The answer might change if we were to assume that it meant "What is the minimum number of units of input/labor needed to produce a specific desired outcome?"
Slavery - For simplicity, I'm going to define slavery as ownership of an individual (who has restricted civil rights) and assigns part or all of the slave's productive output to the master.  Different systems of slavery will restrict different civil rights, and will assign different portions of the slave's output to the master.  I personally believe that modern people get confused because we think of "slavery" as "chattel slavery as practiced in the American South in the Ante-bellum era" - which was an unusual, and unusually brutal form of slavery.  Historically slavery has been much more varied, and usually much less revolting.

Based on those two principles, I can answer without research.
Bottom line
I believe based on my reading that every human will be more economically efficient if they own the marginal product of their labor (extra labor results in extra wealth).  I haven't yet discovered any example of a culture where slavery is more efficient than freedom.
Let's dive down into some examples - because this is a very broad brush survey answer, I'm not going to provide the level of sources/research that I believe is necessary for H:SE
Conquest slavery
Frequently slavery was the result of conquest. An individual captured in war agreed to give up civil rights and liberty in exchange for life.  Sometimes the slave could be freed after a period of servitude - sometimes the individual would expect to become a part of the society once freed.  Although the individual labored, there was no expectation that this labor would be "economically efficient" - it was just more profitable than killing the man.
Roman Slavery
Roman slavery took two distinct forms.
Urban Roman Slavery
In towns and cities slaves were economic units. Some were born to slavery, others were sold into slavery, others sold themselves into slavery.  Many were taken in war.  Roman slaves had some legal status, (although sometimes that legal status derived from their status as property - it is a crime to damage another man's property). They could own property, could buy their freedom, and when they were freed, were considered a member of their (ex) owner's household and clientele.
Rural Roman Slavery
Rural Roman slaves were, not to put too fine a point on it, beasts. They farmed the 'latifundia' and were either working or shut up in barracks. Everything I've heard about the latifundia suggests to me that this is the nadir of humanity, and only possible because they were out of view.  This was perceived at the time as the optimum economic efficiency because the absolute minimum was spent on their maintenance, and they were driven to produce output.
Feudalism
I'm going to over-generalize here, but most of the rest of humanity in the Roman/Greek was in some form of slavery.  Slavery doesn't have a strict formal definitions, but civil rights were a consequence of either (a) the military or governance power to assert a civil right - e.g. the aristocracy, or (b) derivative of a member of the aristocracy.  Assume that < 10%  are aristocrats with the weapons, nutrition, experience and ability to defend themselves.  Everyone else was to some extent a slave - they relied on the aristocrats to grant and protect their civil rights. Yes, I'm overgeneralizing.  Your lord determined what you did, what you earned, what you kept out of what you earned, whether you married, whether you lived or died, whether you were guilty of civil and criminal offenses.  In most cases, you had no recourse and no appeal.  You also had no chance to change your status. Again, I'm painting in very broad strokes here - my point is not to argue that I'm depicting history accurately, but rather to point out that the difference between a "serf" and a "peasant" and a "slave" is less clear than many people think.
Was that economically efficient? It was the only system they had.  I would argue that slavery is always less efficient than freedom, and that any man will produce more when working for his own interests rather than a masters.  Feudalism included a set of conventions & customs that ensured that the marginal value generated by additional effort was shared between the individual and the master/lord/ruler.
Final thought - this is a sensitive subject and I really dislike painting with this broad a brush.  I don't think I've put my foot in my mouth and offended anyone; it was not my intent. But when dealing with oppression, there is always the chance that I'll screw up; if I do, please provide constructive feedback.
Comment: Your answer makes complete sense. Although I wonder (and I may be completely wrong) whether the OP perhaps meant "profitable for the master/owner" or "commercially low-cost for the master/owner" rather than "efficiency" per se.
Comment: I meant economically effective for total society, not for master/owner.
Comment: From what I can tell, slavery is particularly cruel form of conspicuous consumption.
Answer: In Greece, Mesopotamia, Carthage, Egypt, Rome, slaves were widely traded and used in a chattel slavery system for economic purposes. The slaves did not typically have rights and could be very poorly treated or even killed. Highly skilled slaves were treated better and more likely to earn their freedom, because threats of violence alone cannot make someone be a good business manager, trader, artisan or craftsman.
Slavery was very profitable, but it was not economically efficient. This seems a bit paradoxical.
EDIT-this had a confusing error equating slaves and serfs:
Slavery is the most efficient if you use a manorial form of agriculture, even though it is less efficient than free labor farming on small farms. (Meaning that tenant farmers and serfs, as not technically slaves, are less efficient than slaves. In other words, people must own their land and own what they produce to be productive or they are disincentivized. Slaves are made to be productive through violence, which can't be used on a serf.) The proof for this idea comes from the numerous emancipations of serfs or slaves throughout history. Agricultural production will fall by nearly half in the first few years as a result of the upheaval but will soon recover and greatly overtake the past production levels if land ownership is implemented.
In civilizations where land is the measure of wealth, there is a tendency for the wealthy to buy up all the land. Rome for example divided its official class structures by the amount of land someone owned. When Rome started winning many wars, there was a greater and greater gap between rich and poor, and the rich were able to establish a plantation system (latifundia referred to in the other answer). So, therefore, even before industrialization, slavery is less efficient. It's more of a status symbol for the elite to make it just efficient enough for them to have plantations.
Debt slavery is also economically inefficient. In the American colonies, the consistently poor were sold into slavery to the lowest bidder for short periods of time, a year to five years, prior to the invention of poor houses. There was limited charity and government aid, but some people needed long term assistance. It was a consistent problem that these slaves would not be able to bring enough income for the master and thus were often very poorly treated, not given enough food and basic clothing. The intention was to improve the lot of the poor person who was likely begging for food in the street, but the system obviously failed. It makes a bit of sense that those who are poor have low earning potential, since many would be elderly or suffer from disabilities. For what its worth, the Romans actually did ban debt slavery. Broadly allowing it probably has really negative economic effects, such as increasing parasitic lending practices and bad business investments.


Receiving more money to my bank

Question: I left my job 4 months ago, but my previous employer still paying the salary to my bank account, what should I do?
Comment: A key thing here is to not go on a shopping spree and spend this extra money. You will be asked to remit it back to the company if it is shown that they actually issued extra pay checks to you.
Answer: That's easy:
a) Calculate how much was overpaid
b) Be sure to have that money available to be able to pay it back quickly
c) Contact you old employer, explain the situation and ask what to do.
Comment: I disagree with the order. The first thing to do is notify the employer, everything else comes after that. If he does not have the money at hand, a settlement of time of devolution may be negotiated (after all, it was the employer's mistake). But delaying the notification because the OP does not have right now the money to return to the employer means that he will be acting in bad faith.
Comment: It may worth creating a new bank account for your current income and expenditures. so that the old employer deposits become the only activity on the old account. That way, it will be easy to segregate and avoid spending the erroneous payments.

Receiving more money to my bank


How do I SSH into Ubuntu on VirtualBox?

Question: How do I SSH into Ubuntu from an outside network? It's running in VirtualBox and the network adapter has to remain NAT. I can't seem to figure out how to set it up. Are there any ways to directly SSH into the VirtualBox session?
Answer: When the VM networking is based on NAT, you need to use port forwarding to remotely access the VM (here named ubuntu).
VBoxManage modifyvm "ubuntu" --natpf1 "guestssh,tcp,,2222,,22"

Then you'll be able to access the VM by connecting to the host on port 2222, eg:
ssh -p 2222 user@host

How do I SSH into Ubuntu on VirtualBox?


Where should the terrorist destroy to destablize global economy

Question: In my story(setting--modern day), a group of terrorist got one nuclear device from North Korea(50-100 kiloton). Their goal is to destablize global economy so the common people in first world nation (include China and Russia) will lose their job and bank saving, causing something that looks like the Great Depression, but global. Where should they strike to accomplish that goal?
Comment: A *terrorist* wants some form of political change, usually by forcing a governmental overreaction that creates popular sympathy. The danger for a terrorist is that unanticipated consequences will occur that prevent the desired  change or destroy their organization. Unless a terrorist can clearly define how their attack will both further their goal and generate sympathy, they won't waste their time on it. A *nihilist* might want to revel in those unanticipated consequences of impoverishing billions, but a terrorist likely would not..
Comment: Destroy enough fossil fuel reserves (oil & coal) & you might have an effect, there are microbes (used to clean up oil slicks) that might conceivably be jiggered for purpose, big advantage of that method (if you can get it to work) is no one will know who did it, if you don't brag about it.
Comment: What if by "destroy" I could also mean an airburst that trigger a massive EMP strike like in CoD Modern Warfare 2?
Comment: If you want EMP there are plenty of questions already asked about that in here, just go look at them .... but an emp (on its own) wouldn't really do that much permanent damage, you can even argue it would 'stimulate' the economy, plenty of work replacing fried components, lots of sales of replacement components, but to get that kind of emp effect you need a nuclear weapon anyway, so the emp effects become negligible & of no consequence compared to the other effects it was propagated from, a nuclear blast.
Comment: I can think of a few things but I'm not sure it would be wise to speculate
Answer: As far as I know, you cannot bomb Wall Street and crash the economy any more than you can destroy the internet by plugging out a computer. Turning Fort Knox into a pile of rubble would also not suddenly make the United States a third world country - the gold would still be federal property, even in its molten, irradiated state.
I can think of a few potential targets that could destabilise the world economy as a side effect, and none of them are particularly creative.
The Pentagon
That would certainly start a war. You can detect the origin of the nuclear material from the fall-out; within a couple hours it would have been identified as North Korean. A declaration of war would soon follow, and if the right people in important seats screw up the diplomacy, it would become a world war. Which would, in turn, wreck the global economy.
Of course the Pentagon itself was designed to withstand nukes and the attack itself would not kill many more people than 9/11 did - it is the principle that matters.
Jerusalem, Rome, or Mecca
If one billion people became a bit depressed at once because their most sacred religious leaders or sites were blown to bits, it will impact their spending habits. Even just uncertainty over their potential changes in spending would upset the stock exchange, make currencies rise and fall against each other, and while it's possible some countries end up profiting off it, in the short term there would be trouble across the board.
Berlin
This too would mostly be indirect. Taking out Berlin would quite devastate German economy, which is the powerhouse of the EU, which itself is a global player. But here it is more the idea that a safe, non-offensive city leagues from violent wars and completely without controversy: the idea that such a place could be turned to ash in a day because some terrorist group/nation wanted it; that would upset people everywhere. And again, upset people in large numbers can wreck an economy that's based on speculation the way our global economy is.


Random pairing algorithm

Question: If you have a list of items and you want to randomly pair the items in the list together, what kind of algorithm would you use to do that, such that the items can only be matched to one other item.
Answer: Randomize the list and then grab pairs of adjacent items.
(I'm not sure I understand your last requirement, "the items can only be matched to one other item." If I haven't fully answered your question, please edit the question to expand on that point.)
Comment: I could be wrong, but I think the only way to interpret that last line is that if you generate a pair A-C (out of a list of values from A-Z) none of the other pairs can have either A or C. Repeat this until all items have been paired-off. So in a list of items numbering 'n' (where n is even), there will be 'n'/2 pairs with no pairs having an element in common.
Comment: That is correct Dan.

Random pairing algorithm


Are there any legal or tax issues for an international student receiving a gift via wire transfer?

Question: I am an international student in the USA. I have a friend in UAE, he wants to send me money to cover my tuition cost ~$2500.00. He is planning to send it through the Western Union or Money gram. Do I have any legal issues or limit to receive money as F-1 student. I couldn't find that information under FAQ.
Also, does it consider as an income for me for the Tax purposes?
Answer: To my knowledge, there shouldn't be a limit on the amount you can receive as a gift, and gifts are not considered income to you; they are not taxable for the recipient.  Depending on the size of the wire transfer, it may be reported by the bank to the government, but there is no limit, and it should not be a concern to you.  (I don't think that $2500 is large enough to be reportable anyway.)
Having said that, this might be a good question to ask your international student advisor at your school to make sure he or she agrees.
There is a very similar question on Avvo.com (a legal question-and-answer site) that agrees:
Limit to transfer money to students on f1 visa.
Comment: If you are a US resident (it can happen in F-1 if you study more than 5 years) , there is a Form 3520 filing requirement when the gift is more than $100,000 from a foreign individual. Also, in my experience advisers never answer specific tax and/or legal questions.


Proportions of a giant humanoid?

Question: In a humanoid mammal, say 15-20 feet tall, how would the brain, heart, reproductive organs, facial feature and other attributes scale up? In very large mammals, the brain seems to be comparatively small while the heart is very large. Would this hold true for a human-like animal?
Answer: Scaling a humanoid up to 24 feet is very possible, even if evolutionarily unlikely. The main issues that have to be dealt with are muscle strength and the cardiovascular system. Most of the other functions either scale correctly with size, or can afford to take a small hit in efficiency.
Bones: every time height doubles, the bones have to take twice as much weight proportionately. Luckily, your bones are are already very strong, so increasing their load by a factor of four wouldn't lead to broken bones(most bones break from excessive shear stress or collision with something. As long as the humanoid doesn't make a habit of kicking rocks or jumping from heights(which wouldn't be as high for them) it would be fine.
Stomachs: food would have to be pushed through the stomach four times faster. This is definitely doable without changing much of the stomach or increasing mass.
Brain: doesn't have to increase in size at all! This saves some weight and extra energy usage at the expense of an oddly small looking head. We may keep the head proportional and use that extra space to help out the cardiovascular system.
Cardiovascular system: humans aren't very good at surviving vertical G-forces, but we can survive G's 2-3 times normal. If trained to survive g's, people can go higher than that, but not by much. Unfortunately, the humanoid is 4 times taller than a normal human, so are standard heart may not cut it. This would be solved by having two hearts, one slightly lower than a humans, and one inside the head(headspace has increased 64-fold, so there's plenty of room). Two hearts means two lungs. The head-lungs could be connected to the mouth, while the chest-lungs may have spiracal-like openings.
The cross sectional area of veins only increases by a factor of 4 while mass increases 8-fold. That means that blood is only able to pass through are veins at 1/4 of the proportional speed. We can either increase their proportional size, increase the speed at which blood flows(higher blood pressure, higher heart rate) or increase the red-blood fell count. A combination of all three would probably be best.
Muscles: These are arguably the most difficult to scale-up. I'm reasonably sure(not certain) that muscle strength depends on cross-sectional area, which scales 4-fold every time height doubles. That means that our muscles are lagging behind at 1/4th their proportional strength.  The easy solution is to say that this giants muscles are 4-times stronger per pound than human muscles. Otherwise, you have to scale the muscles up, which increases weight, requiring more scaling up. An in-shape human can carry someone equal to their weight on their shoulders, though it's not a very pleasant experience. I'm sure strength-based athletes can carry someone their weight much easier than I can. So your humanoids muscles really only need to increase in strength 2-fold. The legs are the most important, but also some of the heaviest part of your body. To be generous, id say the cross-section of the leg muscles would have to increase 4-fold.
Features: eyes would be very small proportionately, nose may be a similar size, if not larger to make breathing easier. Mouth would probably be around the same proportional size. Ears would be smaller proportionately. Reproductive organs would probably scale near-proportionately.
And boom! A humanoid that walks on two legs all the time and stands 24 feet tall, can't run that fast, and weighs over 11,500 pounds(180*64—plus whatever the scaling up or certain parts adds).
Answer: most likely, it'll be essentially an elephant-looking ape, but with no trunk and maybe a longer neck
You see, the main problem here is that, when compared to dinosaurs, their hollow but strong bones and airsack systems, mammals tend to have bigger problems growing. Yes, African elephants can get bigger than what you asked, and that comes at the price of being quadrupedal. One thing that you'll notice is that, unlike dinosaurs, mammals have a harder time growing due to having heavier bones and lacking an airsack system, which, while great for flight, is also very effective at helping you keep cool.
Looking at the brain, circulatory system and other systems overall, they'll likely be very similar in size and function to an elephant's or maybe an Paraceratherium's. Given we're talking mammals, I find it highly unlikely that the humanoid will be bipedal, because every mammalian instance of a creature that size was quadrupedal (4 legs hold weight better than 2) and because humans and primates usually can't deal too well with bigger size (the biggest one ever recorded was the Gigantopithecus blacki which was 10 feet high). As a result of the quadrupedal anatomy, the skull and brain will be sustained mostly by muscle, meaning its brain can't have the same weight ratio than in humans, but since it's elephant sized, it'll likely be the size of an elephant.
Regarding facial features, I'm betting on more dexterous lips and tongue, likely with a prehensile tongue similar to a giraffe. It's digestive system will likely develop to digest plant matter (again all instances of mammals this large were herbivores). It's overall facial features will likely resemble something like the gigantopithecus, except the neck will likely be moved a bit. It's eyes though will likely migrate more to the sides, reducing the range of binocular vision but increasing the overall field of vision.
So summing up, your humanoid will likely be a humanoid herbivorous ape, fully quadrupedal, probably still capable of standing on two legs for short periods (elephants can do it so I don't see why your ape couldn't), with heavily padded hands and feet to help it walk around (I don't think it'll be a knuckle walker though, it'll likely adapt to use the entire hand to sustain itself). I'm mostly sure it'll adapt over time to use more it's mouth, with prehensile lips and tongue so that they don't rely on forelimbs to grab food. It's overall systems will be very reminiscent to an elephant's and it's facial features likely won't change that much, though there's a good chance its eyes will move more to the sides of the face to allow for a wider field of vision. There's also a chance it'll either develop a longer and stronger muscular neck (notice this might cause the brain to become smaller) or tusks for self defense.
Comment: the real issue is the heart and blood pressure, upright stance buts very high stress on cardiovascular system,  the bigger you get the worse it gets. giraffe have some ridiculous adaptations to get as tall as they are, that just will not work on a creature with a large brain.
Comment: @John yup, that's why I said it'd be the size of an elephant's in the best case scenario (as big as possible) overall it's just a primate becoming something similar to an elephant. Also that's another reason why, like I said, it being bipedal was just a no go.
Comment: It has to be bipedal. Could it get away with being very thin, like slenderman, or a giraffe? That seems like it would eliminate many of the problems mentioned above. If it were 3 times the height of a human but only 1.5 times as wide and deep, then it would only be 1/4 the weight of a normally scaled up human.
Comment: @Praearcturus The solutions you proposed simply don't work because the bigger it is, the heavier it'll be due to having more bone and muscle and bigger systems (see giraffes, they look skinny, but they weight 800 kg and walk on 4 legs). To try and remove weight from muscle and bone (remove from guts and it'll die) while increasing the size will give you a tall humanoid most likely incapable of moving by itself or sustaining its own weight (see what gigantism does to most humans) .
Comment: @Praearcturus to get a more plausible humanoid (1 spherical head, 4 limbs, bipedal) , we'd need to go towards another route: a dinosaur with a shrunk tail. Theropods have what you want, bipedal, 2 arms, hollow bones which allowed for bigger growth and airsacks to help with ventilation. Looking at those, we're likely looking at a scaled up [dinossauroid](https://parody.fandom.com/wiki/Dinosauroid?file=dinosauroid_by_monopteryx-d33l1tk.jpg), this time maybe it can have a brain a tad larger, as the skull retained some of the traits which make it lighter. Facial features? Almost nothing like us.

Proportions of a giant humanoid?


Wiring a shed sub panel

Question: I'm wiring a 100 amp subpanel in a shed that is 100ft. from the main service panel.  I have 3 - #2 AL wires, 2 hots and 1 neutral.  What size ground wire is recommended?
Comment: Not an expert, but usually they call for 2-2-2-4.  The feeder breaker is usually limited up to 90 amps.  You should do a load calculation to see how much extra power you spare from your panel.  A 100 amp panel can be fed by 100 amp breaker or less, even 30 or 40 amps.
Answer: You can use a #8 copper or insulated #6 aluminum wire.
You must use a 90A breaker, not 100A, because #2 is only 90A wire.  See Table 310.16, 75C column, since you cannot use the 90C column with consumer tier electrical panels.
If you have a critical need for 100A, use 1 AWG aluminum.   If your task is EV charging, you don't have a critical need for 100A, that's a common (but understandable) mistake made by EV novices. Ask about that and we'll put you right.
Answer: Harper's answer is correct, as usual. A few more things to consider:
Subpanel Size
Your subpanel can be a 100A panel even with a 90A feed. In fact, it can be a 200A panel with a 90A feed. This is important for 3 reasons:

Breaker Spaces

Larger (total feed capacity) panels tend to have more breaker spaces. Often a shed will have a 12 space panel, but it doesn't take much to fill that up. You generally (there are exceptions) need AFCI or GFCI on almost everything and those generally (there are some GFCI exceptions with some panel types) need full-size breakers. So a 20 or even 30 or 40 space breaker is not unreasonable. Nearly all panels are the same width (designed to fit between 2 studs on 16" spacing) and they all need the same space in front of them (30" x 36") so the only real difference is vertical space and you can't put much else on the same wall section anyway.

Main Breaker

The general differences between a subpanel and a main panel are whether there is a main breaker or not and whether the neutral is bonded to ground or not. Neutral always needs to be separate from ground in a subpanel. But a main breaker is OK! In fact, a main breaker can function as the required disconnect for a panel that is in a different building from the main panel.

Price

A bundle of "mid to large size main panel" + "main breaker" + "a few branch breakers" is often almost the same as "small subpanel" + "disconnect switch" + "a few branch breakers". And when it is all done you have lots of spaces left over for future expansion if needed - at very little, if any, extra initial cost.
Ground
You generally need two ground rods (or one Ufer ground if you are pouring concrete) connected to a ground wire connected to the subpanel. This is in addition to the ground wire (sized as Harper answered) that goes back to the main panel.
Load Calculation
Unless you are installing tankless hot water (don't) or EV charging (can be done, but needs to be done right), you are unlikely to need more than 90A in the shed. But you need to figure out how much capacity your main panel can spare. To do that, you do an NEC Load Calculation on the current main panel. Subtract from the service size and see what's left. If that's 90A, great! If it is less, that's OK but you need to make sure you don't exceed the available amount with everything you put in your shed.

Wiring a shed sub panel


Where is the MachineKeys folder in Windows 7?

Question: I know where the MachineKeys folder in XP. Anybody can tell me where it is in Windows 7?
Comment: what framework version are you referring to?
Answer: In clean installation of Windows you can find it under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys
In newer versions of Windows, try: %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys
Answer:
C:\Users\All Users\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys

And make sure the folders are not invisible.
Answer: I found it in the same location.. its protected but, I got there with some effort:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys\
Comment: Actually `C:\Users\All Users` is a junction to `C:\ProgramData` too
Comment: C:\Users\All Users\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys is probably the 'correct' location, while the documents and settings path is probably for application compatibility.
Answer: I am assuming you are referring to the machine keys in the machine.config file, in that case it depends on what version of the .NET framework you want, it should be in the default location, for example .NET 4.0:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Config\machine.config


Is "Hominum futurae" the right way to say "future man"?

Question: I want to call my project "future man". Is "Hominum futurae" is the right way to say this? If there is another good way to say this in Latin, please tell me.
Answer: "Hominum futurae" is ungrammatical gibberish.
"Future man" (i.e. the man that will be) would be homo futurus.
Comment: @PatrickT that phrase is indeed found here and there, but back in actual Latin, *futuris* is the dative/ablative plural of *futurus/-a/-um*, so it is certainly out of congruence with *homo*. (You could have *hominibus futuris* in some context or other, but that is neither here nor there.)
Comment: @PatrickT There are different kinds of adjectives in Latin with different sets of endings. The forms *futurus/facilis* are the same, and so are *futuris/facilibus*. The analogy doesn't, unfortunately, work.
Comment: Isn't ``homo futuris`` the common phrase?
Comment: I see, thanks! By analogy with homo heidelbergensis (Of Heidelberg), it seemed to make sense. But having said that, searching through google books doesn't return many uses. I found it in a 17th century book, "Atheismus triumphatus seu reductio ad religionem per scientiarium veritatem." But for some reason it has become a very popular phrase in more recent years. Several books with that title on amazon and other booksellers.
Comment: Thank you, got it!
Answer: While rare in this usage, one possibility that gibes with some more modern cultural references could be:
Homo crastinus, the "Man of Tomorrow".
Given the English phrase, it would have additional "futuristic" or even comic book connotations. You can compare Superman: The Man of Tomorrow, but more importantly Marvel's Phoenix: The Man of Tomorrow, or Disney's Tomorrowland. You get the idea.
Answer: Allow me to offer yet a different route:
Homo venturi saeculi.
Saeculum is, of course, a "century," but also "age" and, for example in Tacitus, the Zeitgeist, which perhaps is not altogether irrelevant here,
Venturus is in essence a synomym of futurus, but since it's not so insanely all over the place, it has, I think, its appeal.
(Evidently my proposal is a thinly veiled paraphrase of the vitam venturi saeculi at the very end of the Nicene creed.)


is there a way to copy part of pose into another pose

Question: I have a not-perfect walkcykle, but in the proces I made a mistake on one bone. I do have a copy of each step I made, therefore I have a walkcykle, which have this bone seved corectly and the other bones are not. is there a way how to combine these two poses?
Answer: This is old, but the answer will help other people with the same question.
Yes, you can copy part of a pose into another pose. The armatures must be identical. The best way is to create a pose library and save both poses.

Select the pose from which you'll copy a part and go into pose mode.
Select the bones to be copied.
Tip: Hold Ctrl when selecting a parent bone and you'll select all the children.
Ctrl+C or Pose > Copy pose.
Now switch to the pose to be modified. Still in pose mode, Ctrl+V go
to Pose > Paste Pose.


Is it safe to publish a number theory formula in OSF or preprints.org?

Question: I have a new number theory formula. I am a software engineer, but I am interested in number theory. I do not have an endorsement on arXiv, so I am left with two popular choices, OSF and preprints.org. Which one is safe, so my formula will not get stolen?
Comment: What do you mean by "stolen"?
Comment: Independently discovering something certainly isn't "stealing".  It happens all the time.  The backpropagation algorithm is great example of that.  Good job nobody published a book claiming that there was no prospect of discovering an algorithm to do something for which an algorithm had already been invented some years before ;o)
Comment: Did you get feedback from a colleague more specialized in number theory?
Be aware that publishing INCORRECT results on an ARCHIVING website will result in a permanent stain associated to your name, coming out each time someone is searching for your list of publications. I think you should be more afraid of publishing PERMANENTLY something incorrect than of your formula to be "stolen"...
Comment: Yes and no, it is really simple algebraic formula I searched for it for days I didn't find something like it even on Wikipedia. I verified multiple time with online math solver like symbolab it got it correct. I verified with calculator and it is correct. I think from your comment the safe archive for me is preprints.org when it got reviewed by editor?
Comment: I found this in researchgate.com where they discuss stealing preprints ideas, https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_preprints_on_research_gate
Answer: I fear you have a misconception about intellectual property and publishing. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you don't and can't "own" ideas. Publishing (somewhere that has a firm date attached) can associate your name with an idea and give you a claim to priority, which is really a social construct. It is proof against plagiarism but not against use and extension.
Publishing an idea, anywhere, doesn't give you exclusive rights to it. Any one can use it. Anyone can extend it. Anyone can dispute it. Ideas are free.
There are certain protections that can be applied to certain expressions of ideas. This permits the originator to exploit the ideas financially for a time. Copyright protects the specific expression of an idea (words, figures, ...) so that creators can be rewarded for their ideas, even though they don't own those ideas.
Patent law protects certain expressions of ideas ("devices") for a time, again to permit commercial exploitation.
But, if someone needs to hold ideas "close" so that others can't take any advantage of them at all, they are held as trade secrets and not published. Some (likely weaker) protections apply to these but in the form of sanctions against those who reveal them without permission.
The very purpose of publishing is to make the ideas public and available to others for use and extension.
Publishing anywhere in a venue that provides a verifiable date of publication and is stable (i.e. not a personal website) gives you a "receipt" that can be proof against plagiarism of others. But plagiarism isn't the use of the ideas, nor their extension, but only an improper claim of priority.
And, keeping the ideas to yourself, while it may prevent others from knowing what you know, has the disadvantage that your discovery might be published through the independent work of others. You then have no proof of priority.
Comment: Thank you so much for your detailed information, let me please lightly introduce myself  I am computer scientist and software engineer and I am math lover. I discovered new formula for i^x where x can be any value including irrational numbers and non integer numbers without knowing about Euler formula but the formula I discovered doesn't use the constant "e" it is directly using trigonometric function. So can I put it in math-overflow instead writing research paper and considered my discovery? I searched the Euler formula can be little problematic for irrational numbers and non integers.
Comment: Math overflow is actually a question answer site, not a publishing site. And things are subject to disappearance there. Formal publishing (or at least submitting a paper) will give you feedback from reviewers, which is probably what you need.


What is ISO27000 (27001) and how to achieve it?

Question: I have recently came across ISO 27000. Basically what I learnt is that it is used for audit purpose in organizations. Can you tell what exactly it is, if I am wrong? What tools are available for ISO 27001 audit and how can I learn about it? Can simple penetration tools be used for the purpose?
Comment: In my opinion, where to obtain the standardization material and how to achieve it are far from being the same question.
Answer: ISO27000 has little to do with penetration testing. It's a collection of ISMS (Information Security Management Systems) standards that provide a list of controls which an organization should implement as it enables (or should enable) proper security governance.
It's more on a conceptual level and provides more a set of rules which can be used to create policies and processes.
The standards can be used for both implementation as well as auditing. Auditors will review if you have correctly implemented all concepts and acredit you with the certificate if it is deemed you have performed a correct implementation. They will request to see the defined policies and will test these against the actual situation. This is almost never technical.
One of the controls (there are several) requires the company to perform regular attack and penetration testing. The auditor will not perform a penetration himself but will request relevant reports. The policies often also define how problems should be tackled or how risks can be accepted or mitigated. The auditor will review the report and request how follow up is performed (and review if this is done correctly)
Comment: There are no IT tools involved as there are no technical implementations involed. Just get the ISO standards and read them.
Comment: Thanks for answering. I got it somewhat. Are their any tools or material to apply set of rules to a company. What are other controls and where one can learn about them?
Comment: Can someone tell me which standards are indispensable to buy when starting with the implementation?
Answer: ISO/IEC 27001:2013 is an international standard promoted by ISO that establishes the requirements for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). The main purpouse of ISMS is to reduce the IT risk of your organization by identifying threats, implementing security controls, measuring their effectiveness and improving them continuously.
The ISO/IEC 27001:2013 is one standard of a family. For example, ISO 27000 has definitions, ISO 27002 best practices (best practices != requirements) and so on...
The main purpouse of ISO 27001 is not to be audited but to be implemented first in an organization. After that, it can be audited. Audits can be from first party, second or third party (certification). A passing a third party audit by an accreditted organization grants you the certification of you ISMS as ISO 27001 compliant.
If you just audit compliance with ISO 27001 without implementing it first, as for example to have a measure of your security posture, in my opinion, the result will be deceiving because ISO 27001 requieres some documentation and the lack of it does not implies that you are not secure (having it neither implies you are secure).
IMO, the best way to learn about ISO 27001 is to buy ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 standards from the ISO site and study them.


Dual Boot on dual hard drive set up

Question: I currently have Ubuntu and windows 7 on identical but separate hard drives.  I wanted to use a NTFS partition on Ubuntu drive to allow file sharing between to two OS's but when I formatted that partition, I accidentally shot my self in the foot by deleting my boot info.  So I now must reformat and reinstall my windows OS because I accidentally deleted my BOOTMGR and when I do I wanted to know, should I put each OS on the same drive and have the other be a data drive in NTFS, or should I set it up as the way I had it again.  Also, Its been a while since the last time I've set it up so how do I select where I want the folder with all the boot info to go, or should I put in on its own partition somewhere.
Comment: Ubuntu's root partition cannot be NTFS. I'll probably write an extended answer later when I have more time, but you could just create symbolic links from ubuntu to allow file sharing.
Comment: I would be very great-full for an extended answer but in the mean time I will do some research on this symbolic links.
Answer: You don't necessarily have to erase the windows partition. Just boot off the Windows CD and hit "Repair your computer" You will have to restore Grub2 afterwards (see the grub2 ubuntu wiki page).
Since you can't, putting the OSs on different devices is probably the smarter decision because of HDD crashes. Put Grub2 on the first HDD, Windows on the second that way both will be able to boot independently.
You could of course also experiment with RAID for data or even for your Ubuntu partition.
Comment: Actually I did try the repair method, and even looked up multiple tutorials on using the command prompt and using things like bcdedit but it all came down to en error with the file system, even though I didn't do any formatting on my windows drive.  I will have to reinstall which isn't really a big deal, but any tips on how to avoid this problem next time would help, thanks.
Answer: If you've decided to install two separate operating systems, I'd say installing them both on one and using another one as dedicated data is definitely a better choice. It lets you isolate your OSes from your large data like media, and you're not stuck in OS-dependent represntation like C:/Users/username/Documents/Videos [oops, backslash... right.] or /home/username/Videos. You can have a clean hierarchy that you can mount wherever you like.
Creating a separate boot partition is entirely a matter of personal preference. On a few of my machines I use multiple distributions of linux, so it's good for them to be able to share that information. In your case, though, I don't really see a benefit.
Answer: I would suggest installing both operating systems, and a dedicated NTFS "data drive" (partition), on the first hard disk, and using the second drive for backup.  You can regularly create disk images of the first drive in order to be able to do complete system or individual partition restores, and use a "real-time" folder/file backup utility to keep an up-to-date copy of the data drive.
I am currently using Acronis True Image (Windows) to create disk images, but have used PartImage in the past, and may go back to a Linux-based disk imager, several of which are available.
For real-time backup, I use inosync (http://bb.xnull.de/ or http://github.com/hollow/inosync) in Linux, and Quick Shadow Backup (http://quicklytech.com/) in Windows, to back up the same data partition that is used by both operating systems.

Dual Boot on dual hard drive set up


QGIS .dxf file conversion to .kml no geometry notification

Question: My colleague is having an issue converting DXF files into KML files.
He is using QGIS version Lima (not sure version no.) and I am using Hannover (3.16)
We have checked all the various options and plugins but when he loads (import dxf layers) then tries to save layer as a KML he gets an error after filling in the KML details advising there's no geometry. {See below for error}.
The DXF file shows a route on the main window when he loads it. (the file just contains a few polylines in a route from point A to point B.)
DXF file is in ESPG-27700 (and as on the project) and output on the KML is set to EPSG-4326.
I can take the same DXF on my version and although it doesn't show the DXF when loaded, the KML output works fine and checking on Google Earth shows the correct output.

Does anyone have any ideas of whether this is setting somewhere or something that may be different in the versions that would make it not work as I have followed exactly the same process on both myself, and cannot for the life of me figure out what's wrong.
edit- I don't have enough reputation to add a comment but unfortunately the file is a company one so legally cannot be shared.
Comment: is the original .dxf file shareable?
Answer: Take a look at the "KML Tools" plug-in, it does a great job exporting data into KML/KMZ:


SharePoint 2010 development with Visual Studio 2012

Question: What is the community recommendation regarding SharePoint 2010 development with Visual Studio 2010 vs. 2012? I am allowed to install 2010 Pro on my new machine or I may choose 2012 Pro.  There may not be a right or wrong answer, but I'd love some feedback.  I feel like I will fall behind in other development efforts if I hold to 2010.
Thanks.
Answer: It is a personal choice of which one you prefer. I prefer to use Visual Studio 2012 and I haven't had any problems developing solutions for SharePoint 2010.
If you want to try out 2012 then don't let the SharePoint version hold you back.
Comment: Thanks.  That's what I needed.  I appreciate you taking the time.
Comment: How to get the project templates for SP 2010 in VS 2012? Am unable to see the SP 2010 empty project templates, from where will I download?
Answer: VS 2012 will work with SP 2010 (but not with SP 2007).
Comment: Cheers mate.  Thanks for the input.  Is it preferable in your opinion to VS2010 for SP2010 development?
Comment: If you have a team that has an existing VS2010/SP2010 development process, I see no need to upgrade VS (until you update to SP2013). But if you're starting fresh with SP2010, I'd go VS2012.
Answer: Lots of content on MSDN. Also, I wrote an article with more details from the SP2010 perspective that will be published in the Dutch Information Workers eMagazine "real soon now."


How to find my ID in Skype for Business?

Question: I would like to invite someone external to my organization to be part of a Skype for Business meeting which I am setting up in Outlook. I sent him a connection request using the Skype ID he gave me, but it doesn't seem to be working, so he asked me for my Skype ID so we can connect that way. Where can I find out what my ID is in Skype for Business?
Comment: Shouldn't it just be your username?
Answer: In Skype for Business, your Sign In Address functions as an ID.
However, knowing that probably won't help, since it sounds like you have a different issue.
By default, Skype for Business networks cannot communicate with regular Skype (personal) accounts.
This article from Microsoft describes how to enable communication between your Skype for Business and regular Skype accounts.
However, it's a bit more complicated.  At least according to this other article from Microsoft, it's still not possible for Skype users to search for Skype for Business users at all.

"While you can search for and find Skype users, they can not search for
  and find Skype for Business users."

If that seems surprising and frustrating, bear in mind that Skype and Skype for Business are actually two different services.  They have very little to do with each other, and are not particularly integrated.
Comment: Thanks. For my company, my sign in ID is my work email address, so this is my Skype for Business ID. As far as I can tell, you can't find this on the Skype for Business window; you just have to know. You are right about Skype and Skype for Business not being integrated. I sent a contact request from Skype for Business to the outside person using the Skype ID he gave me, and he did't get it.
Answer: our Skype ID is a unique name associated with your account, which can't be changed.
To find what your Skype ID is, you just need to open your Skype profile. You can do this both on your desktop, and in the mobile app for iPhone and Android.
You used to be able to set your own Skype ID, but it's now created and given to you when you make your Skype account.


Counting problem: Given that there are 25 men and 25 women...

Question: ... how many ways can we make a team of 10 people consisting of 4 men and 6 women, such that 2 of the women are captains.
My answer is $$\frac{1}{2!}\binom{25}{4}\frac{\binom{25}{6}}{N}$$
where $\binom{25}{4}$ is the number of ways we can pick 4 men, $\binom{25}{6}$ is the number of ways we can pick 6 women and the $2!$ is the overcounting factor. I know I have to divide $\binom{25}{6}$ by some other overcounting factor N, but I can't figure out what it is.
Comment: If there only two co-captains are to be named, it is $\binom{25}{4}\binom{25}{6}\binom{6}{2}$.  There is no overcounting factor.  Can you see where the $\binom{6}{2}$ comes from?
Comment: Yes. $\binom{6}{2}$ is the number of ways we can pick 2 captains out of the 6 chosen women. Thanks.
Answer: Community wiki answer to the question can be marked as answered:
Solution by André Nicolas in a comment:
Choose $4$ of $25$ men and $6$ of $25$ women, then choose $2$ of $6$ women as captains, for a product of
$$
\binom{25}4\binom{25}6\binom62=\frac{25!\cdot25!\cdot6!}{21!\cdot4!\cdot19!\cdot6!\cdot4!\cdot2!}=\frac{25!^2}{21!\cdot19!\cdot4!^2\cdot2!}\;.
$$
Solution by Alex in an answer now deleted:
Choose $4$ of $25$ men, $2$ of $25$ women as captains and $4$ of the remaining $23$ women as non-captains, for a product of
$$
\binom{25}4\binom{25}2\binom{23}4=\frac{25!\cdot25!\cdot23!}{21!\cdot4!\cdot23!\cdot2!\cdot19!\cdot4!}=\frac{25!^2}{21!\cdot19!\cdot4!^2\cdot2!}\;.
$$


Can domestic rabbits carry diseases if left outdoors for too long then brought in?

Question: I have a domestic rabbit that we have raised - we have a large, gated backyard. He has since lived in the backyard for months, somewhat free. We feed him daily. He has become hard to catch. I bathed him and brought him in because my rooster and him have been fighting (both adult males now).
Can my rabbit carry a disease? He only goes under the shed to sleep then out in the day to layout and eat.
Answer: There are a number of infectious diseases that domestic rabbits can get and carry if they are outdoors:

Myxomatosis and viral hemorrhagic disease are fatal viral infections with available vaccines.
Encephalitozoon cuniculi is a common parasite that may cause serious harm but could also be sub-clinical, infecting areas that don't destroy significant tissue.
Snuffles is a respiratory infection caused by Pasteurella multocida, a bacteria that can be treated with antibiotics but can become severely dangerous if left untreated

More info here: https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/rabbits-infectious-disease
Of those listed, I believe only E. cuniculi is zoonotic (transmits between rabbits and humans).
Comment: It would be a great idea if you could include some of the more appropriate details from the linked webpage here.  Not everyone likes to click on links (and web pages can die).
Answer: Yes, the can also also get parasites if only outdoors for a short time, even on a snowy day, personally we treat with Revolution Flea & Tick to address most parasites. We also take them to the vet for annual well bunny checks.
One risk is Encephalitozoon cuniculi occasionally called 'EC' which I discuss in this answer
Leaving a rabbit outside unsupervised has a lot of risk if Owls will attack small dogs then rabbits are also at risk.
Optimally the best place for your rabbit to live is in your bedroom
Comment: "Optimally the best place for your rabbit to live is in your bedroom" - There is no green and if it is not a very big bedroom, not enough place to life a rabbits live. If you enclose the rabbit trough the night, and they can hide at day in the garden, then there is no reason to "store" them indoors...


Is there anything in SWTOR that you can't buy with cartel coins?

Question: I'm debating on whether or not to get a subscription or cartel coins my personal thought is that I can get all the things I need with cartel coins and they won't expire. Is there anything that I can only get through subscription?
Comment: Operations passes and the like are for a single week.  And to maintain them constantly costs more than a sub, though of course you can buy them from other players with credits.  Artifact gear authorization, crew skill slots, etc. are permanent.
Answer: The full breakdown of privileges for subscription vs. preferred status vs. free to play is on swtor.com.
Most restrictions can be bypassed with cartel coins to access otherwise unavailable items (e.g. purple quality items) but preferred status and free to play players have a credit cap which prevents you from purchasing items that sell for higher than the credit cap. For the same reason, some mission rewards are not accessible to preferred status and free to play players.


Is credit card activity reported to credit bureaus when you carry zero balance at the end of each month?

Question: I've read that it's important to continually demonstrate responsible activity with credit cards. If I pay my balance to zero each month, are the credit bureaus aware of my responsible activity or do I need to let a balance register on my statement before paying it off? My concern is that my behavior may result in it appearing as if I'm not utilizing these cards. I am located in the United States.
Comment: Where in the world are you? Credit scoring works differently in different places. Please comment or edit to add a location tag.
Comment: Yes. Closing until we get this detail. Otherwise we wind up with a US centric answer that may or may not apply to the OP.
Comment: @JTP-ApologisetoMonica OP has now specified the country.
Comment: @BenMiller-RememberMonica - thx for the alert, reopened.
Answer: If you get your free credit report from each bureau each year, you'll see what balance your card is reporting.
Most cards report your balance to the credit bureaus once or twice a month.  If you are paying your bill on the due date every month, it is almost certain that the credit card will report a balance each time (the balance from the last statement + whatever new charges you've made since the statement date - whatever payments have posted) because you'll have new charges before payments post.  If you want to force a lower balance in order to reduce the percentage of your available credit you're utilizing which may improve your credit score, you can pay the balance early (including prior to getting the statement) on whatever day(s) the credit card company reports.  It is seldom the case that this is an effective use of your time but it might be if, say, you're applying for a mortgage with a credit score that hovers right around an important cutoff.
Note that credit reports are only a snapshot in time as well.  There is no history of balances.  So someone getting your credit report has no idea if you had a $0 balance every month for the last 24 months or if you had a $10,000 balance 24 months ago that you've steadily paid down to $0.  They only see that your current balance is $0 and that your payments have (or have not) been on time.  Unless you're actively applying for credit and close to a credit score cutoff, trying to manage what balance gets reported every month isn't beneficial.
Answer:
I've read that it's important to continually demonstrate responsible activity with credit cards.

This is true, but it means "have a good payment history", not "show a balance". All of my lenders report a successful payment for the month even when I pay it off before the statement reports; I get both a payment logged and a $0 balance on the line.

If I pay my balance to zero each month, are the credit bureaus aware of my responsible activity or do I need to let a balance register on my statement before paying it off?

You do not need to allow a balance to register, with a minor caveat:
Allowing a $1 balance to report on one card is called "AZEO" - All Zero Except One. It's the sort of thing you might do the month or two before applying for a new loan to maximize your score if it were borderline; it can be good for a couple extra points (anecdotally: 5-10) versus a $0 balance across the board.


A word to describe taking pleasure in the way a word sounds

Question: What is a word that describes one's satisfaction in the phonetics of a word?
Like visual appeal of a pictures, but the audible appeal of a word.
Comment: Another word for audible appeal is euphony, though I admit that "mellifluous" is more euphonic than "euphony".
Comment: Are you asking for a word describing the *pleasure* or the *sound*? If it's the sound, you can say it's *mellifluous*.
Comment: Hamlet:
    Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you,
    trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our
    players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
    Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 1–4
Answer: The go-to word for this quality is euphony:

Good phonetic quality of certain words.

More poetic options include mellifluousness and consonance
Answer: I'm not sure this is entirely germane to your question - whether you're talking about the phonetics as it leaves your mouth or as it hits your ear - but I'll offer "mouthfeel" for the "as it leaves your mouth" part. It is typically used of foods to talk about how it feels in your mouth. (Think of pudding versus crackers versus steak.)
I've never been entirely sure it was appropriate to apply "mouthfeel" to words as well, but I'm not aware of anything else.
Personally, I have loved the "mouthfeel" of the name "Sam" since I was a small child.
Comment: "mouthfeel" just sounds really weird, to me.
Comment: I don't disagree @MaxWilliams :)


Trying to reload my parentViewController's data but failing

Question: Trying to [self.parentViewController.tableView reloadData] from a save: method in my DetailViewController but getting my favorite error: request for member 'tableView' in something not a structure or union.
Included the header for my RootViewController and casted the parentViewController as a RootViewController to no avail.
What have I botched?
Answer: Design wise, its a bad idea to have one controller sending messages directly to the views of another controller. Instead, you should have a method in the tableview's controller that other objects can call. This is will prevent you code from turning into spaghetti in which you never know what controller/object is changing the UI.
The reason the self.parentViewController.tableView doesn't work is that it's only defined as a generic UIViewController which has no tableView property. As noted above, casting it to the proper class will get rid of the message.
You can also use the [self.parentViewController tableview] call which doesn't produce the error because it treats the property like a method call.
Answer: Try:
[((MyParentViewControllerClassName *)self.parentViewController).tableView beginUpdates];
[((MyParentViewControllerClassName *)self.parentViewController).tableView reloadData];
[((MyParentViewControllerClassName *)self.parentViewController).tableView endUpdates];

replacing MyParentViewControllerClassName with your parent vc's class name.
To reference the parent view controller, I have always had to do something like this, e.g.:
NSArray *viewControllerArray = [self.navigationController viewControllers];
NSInteger parentViewControllerIndex = [viewControllerArray count] - 2;
[[viewControllerArray objectAtIndex:parentViewControllerIndex] setBackBarButtonItemTitle:@"New Title"];

You could also try, following this example:
[[[viewControllerArray objectAtIndex:parentViewControllerIndex] tableView] beginUpdates];
[[[viewControllerArray objectAtIndex:parentViewControllerIndex] tableView] reloadData];
[[[viewControllerArray objectAtIndex:parentViewControllerIndex] tableView] endUpdates];

Answer: Try this:
MyParentControllerClass       *parent = (MyParentControllerClass *) self.parentViewController;
[parent.tableView reloadData];


How do you create a block of fields to a second Profile2 using views?

Question: I can create a list of profiles of a specific type. That works great. But what's stumping me is I need a view that has fields that pertain to a specific person. Say for instance you are on Bob's "personal" profile and there is a block that has information for bob's second "business" profile (or any other member's other profiles for that matter). How do I create a block for this profile with relative fields that only populates on demand?....
Answer: Using Configuration
You can use the Views module to access the Profile2 fields.
Below is a quote from ltiong on Drupal.org regarding accessing fields from multiple profile types.  The same process applies to accessing a single Profile2 type.

5.1 create View (Show:User)
5.2 add relationship, (User:Profile); give the Identifier a unique name ie 'MainProfile'; select a single checkbox for 'Profile type',
  in my case 'Main profile';
5.3 add another relationship, (User:Profile); give the Identifier a unique name ie 'EducationProfile'; select the other checkbox for
  'Profile type', in my case 'Education profile';
5.4 add Fields to view; select Profile2 field items; use Relationship dropdown in 'Configure field' to associate w/ correct
  relationship;

You can output as a Block, and use the Page URL to retrieve the correct user ID to load. (For your views context)
Using Code
You can use the profile2_load_by_user(); function to programmatically retrieve Profile2 data.
<code>$profile_data = profile2_load_by_user($user->uid);
</code>
See also: profile2_load_multiple()
Comment: Thank you.... I'm a newbie... How do I implement this code... Wouldn't I need arguments, contexts, and relationships???
Comment: I added the configuration method from a post on Drupal.org.  This should allow you to access the fields in a view that can be output as a Block.  I will try to clarify if this is on the right track.
Comment: I did the above and was able to get one block... but I need have any control over which content showed... it was always the first user I created no matter what I adjusted. I will try again and see... will report back in a couple hours if it worked or not.


Adding a user to configure templates

Question: Looking to give access to a technician to help with message templates configuration eg offline receipts. What is teh best way to add a user and give access to this area only
Thanks in advance
Answer: It is not possible to give a user access to only this area. On what CMS did you install CiviCRM? You could have a look in your cms to the available permissions.

Adding a user to configure templates


Magento1.9: How to add state, city and locality dropdown in magento Checkout page

Question: I am searching the way to add three dropdowns into checkout page but still, I did not get any way to do this.
Answer: Adding the list of States in India to Magento
I have tested this and worked for me on my server.
Please open your php my admin and run following:
INSERT INTO directory_country_region VALUES
(NULL , "IN", "Andaman and Nicobar","Andaman and Nicobar"),
(NULL , "IN", "Andhra Pradesh","Andhra Pradesh"),
(NULL , "IN", "Arunachal Pradesh","Arunachal Pradesh"),
(NULL , "IN", "Assam","Assam"),
(NULL , "IN", "Bihar","Bihar"),
(NULL , "IN", "Chandigarh","Chandigarh"),
(NULL , "IN", "Chhattisgarh","Chhattisgarh"),
(NULL , "IN", "Dadra and Nagar Haveli","Dadra and Nagar Haveli"),
(NULL , "IN", "Daman and Diu","Daman and Diu"),
(NULL , "IN", "Delhi","Delhi"),
(NULL , "IN", "Goa","Goa"),
(NULL , "IN", "Gujarat","Gujarat"),
(NULL , "IN", "Haryana","Haryana"),
(NULL , "IN", "Himachal Pradesh","Himachal Pradesh"),
(NULL , "IN", "Jammu and Kashmir","Jammu and Kashmir"),
(NULL , "IN", "Jharkhand","Jharkhand"),
(NULL , "IN", "Karnataka","Karnataka"),
(NULL , "IN", "Kerala","Kerala"),
(NULL , "IN", "Lakshadweep","Lakshadweep"),
(NULL , "IN", "Madhya Pradesh","Madhya Pradesh"),
(NULL , "IN", "Maharashtra","Maharashtra"),
(NULL , "IN", "Manipur","Manipur"),
(NULL , "IN", "Meghalaya","Meghalaya"),
(NULL , "IN", "Mizoram","Mizoram"),
(NULL , "IN", "Nagaland","Nagaland"),
(NULL , "IN", "Orissa","Orissa"),
(NULL , "IN", "Pondicherry","Pondicherry"),
(NULL , "IN", "Punjab","Punjab"),
(NULL , "IN", "Rajasthan","Rajasthan"),
(NULL , "IN", "Sikkim","Sikkim"),
(NULL , "IN", "Tamil Nadu","Tamil Nadu"),
(NULL , "IN", "Tripura","Tripura"),
(NULL , "IN", "Uttar Pradesh","Uttar Pradesh"),
(NULL , "IN", "Uttaranchal","Uttaranchal"),
(NULL , "IN", "West Bengal","West Bengal");
INSERT INTO directory_country_region_name (locale ,region_id ,name )
    SELECT 'en_US', tmp.region_id, tmp.default_name FROM directory_country_region
        AS tmp WHERE tmp.country_id='IN';

I hope it will help to you.
http://tejabhagavan.blogspot.in/2015/12/adding-list-of-states-in-india-to.html
Adding the list of Cities in India to Magento
Please follow this url to get the city drop down.http://www.magebuzz.com/region-city-manager.html
Comment: Thanks for your reply..But I want to add three dropdown state, city and locality. I am adding html in billing.phtml but it is not showing on frontend.
Comment: My site two years old, just now i updates above command when i go to checkout, for all users asking the select state, but we know customer state, how can i assign the state to the customer for 100k customers.
Answer: For state dropdown, Refer "https://tejabhagavan.blogspot.in/2015/12/adding-list-of-states-in-india-to.html" and add states accordingly your country.
You have to create two more tables in the database.
for city dropdown. Let's say "directory_country_region_city" having four columns as below.

city_id (INT, primary key, autoincrement)
2  country_id (VARCHAR) values like IN,US,UK.
region_id (FK, INT, id from "directory_country_region" tables).
city_name (varchar) Name of the city according to Country, region_id.

for locality dropdown. Let's say "directory_city_region" having four columns as below.

locality_id.
city_id. (FK of directory_country_region_city)
locality_name.

Create manully script to import cities and locality data in both tables.
Now in the billing and shipping html, you just need to add two dropdowns. for city and locality.
Now on change of state, write ajax and point to controller which fetches cities according to selected country and region id.
same as for locality write ajax and point to a controller which fetches localities according to selected city_id.
the controller code should be as below.
public function getcitiesAction()
{
    if (!$this->getRequest()->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
        return;
    }

    $regionId = (int)$this->getRequest()->getParam('region_id');
    $countryId = $this->getRequest()->getParam('country_id');

    if (!$regionId || !$countryId) {
        return;
    }

    echo Mage::helper('your data helper')->getCities($countryId, $regionId);

    return;
}

 public function getLocalityAction()
{
    if (!$this->getRequest()->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
        return;
    }

    $cityId = (int)$this->getRequest()->getParam('city_id');

    if (!cityId ) {
        return;
    }

    echo Mage::helper('your data helper')->getlocalities($cityId);

    return;
}

============Helper function=====================
public function getCities($countryId, $regionId)
{
    $cityCollection = Mage::getModel('your city model')->getCollection();
        $cityCollection->addFieldToSelect('cityname')
        ->addFieldToFilter('country_id', $countryId)
        ->addFieldToFilter('region_id', $regionId);

    $jsonData = Mage::helper('core')->jsonEncode($cityCollection->getData());

    return $jsonData;
}

public function getlocalities($cityId)
{
    $localityCollection = Mage::getModel('your locality model')->getCollection();
        $cityCollection->addFieldToSelect('locality_name')
        ->addFieldToFilter('city_id', $cityId)

    $jsonData = Mage::helper('core')->jsonEncode($localityCollection ->getData());

    return $jsonData;
}

Now create one js file and add ajax function which returns data of city and locality in JSON format and set data in city and locality drop-down option.
hope it helps.


Can I think of the level of a hypothesis test as being the probability the null hypothesis is true?

Question: I am trying to understand the level of a test better and was wondering if the level of a hypothesis is essentially equal to the probability that the null hypothesis is true. I have been trying to think of a counter example but haven't been able to confirm nor deny this association. Could anyone be kind enough to shed light on my understanding? Thank you!
Comment: Also think about how to interpret the pvalue if the null hypothesis is false (eg the number of hairs on both sides of  sheep are exactly equal). There is nothing stopping you from calculating a p value, but the procedure of accepting/rejecting this type of hypothesis does not seem very meaningful.
Answer: (Here be dragons, but I'll try not to mess this up...)
The null hypothesis either is or isn't true. The $p$ value tells you how likely it would be to get the result (a test statistic, and hence the data you collected) you did on the test if the null hypothesis were true. Hence your suggestion to use the level of the test as the probability that the null hypothesis is true is not the correct interpretation - the null is either true or false, nothing in between.
Consider a $t$-test where we are interested scientifically in whether two groups of samples differ in their means for some variable $y$. The null hypothesis in this case is that there is no difference in the means, that the two groups are drawn from the same population (or populations with the same mean). We perform the test and get a $p$ value for the test statistic $t$.
If we don't care (or know, expect) if the difference in means is positive or negative (odd, but what I mean is the second group could have a smaller or larger mean than the first), then we are doing a two-tailed text and the $p$ value is the probability getting an absolute value for the $t$ statistic as large or larger than the observed absolute value of $t$ if the null hypothesis (of no difference) were true. We talk about absolute values of $t$, $|t|$, because large negative values as well as large positive ones are both evidence that the null hypothesis is not true.
(If the alternative hypothesis in the above example was that we expected the mean of group two to be larger (smaller) than that of group one, then we would only consider large positive (negative) values of $t$ as evidence against the null hypothesis respectively.)
In more general terms, you'll often see the $p$ value described as the probability of getting a statistic at least as extreme as the observed statistic, where extreme depends on exactly what the distribution of the test statistic is, what the alternative hypothesis is etc.
Answer: That is not correct. It is simply the probability of rejecting the hypothesis if it is true. You are unknowingly mixing up two different conceptions of probability: uncertainty vs. variability.
Roughly, variability requires that probability statements refer to observable statsitics. Uncertainty can refer to unknown, fixed values.
You are trying to attach a probability to a hypothesis. One way to conceretely see how your interpretation is incorrect is to use as follows:

Imagine you have a jar of poorly made coins, such that the probabilty of a particular coin landing heads is distributed with 50% having p=0.5, and 50% having p=0.1. This a description of the population of coin probabilities.
You pick one of the coins at random and flip it 20 times.
You run a hypothesis test for $p=0.5$ and reject at the 0.05 significance level.

Note that the probability of your null hypothesis being true is: $\frac{P(p=0.5)P(Reject|P=0.5)}{p(p=0.5)P(Reject|p=0.5)+p(p=0.1)P(Reject|p=0.1)}=\frac{0.5*.05}{0.5*.05+0.5(1-\beta(p=0.1))}<\frac{.025}{.025+.025} = 50\%$ Where the bound is based on the fact that the power is $\geq$ the Type I rejection rate.
Since the power will vary smoothly between 0 and 100% for this problem, it is not the case that the probability your null is true is equal to the significance.


Need to hang 60 lb water heater on exterior stucco wall

Question: I need to hang a 60 lb tankless water heater on the back wall of my house located in California. The house was built in the 1940s and the exterior walls are stucco.
The mounting bracket on the water heater unfortunately does not span the 16 inches I would need to get it securely into two studs. I can get it into one stud, but without making a new bracket I would have to do one side into a stud and the other directly into the stucco. I don't think this house uses wood sheathing under the stucco, so it's probably the thick type embedded in wire mesh.
Is there a reliable anchor I can use to go into the stucco that would support at least half the 60 lb weight without pulling out? Keep in mind Southern California gets earthquakes now and then.
Answer: Yes- there are toggle bolts that can support 60#. The real issues is the stucco wall. Plus in earthquake area, the wall-mounted water heater should be mounted on solid support members.
A better way to mount the water heater is to have two horizonal wooden spans that are bolted to the studs behind the stucco wall with the proper size lag bolts into the studs.  The purpose of the second span which is below the first spand is to provide support to the bottom section of the tank since it is now 1 1/2" from the wall. The water brackets are screwed into the top horizontal span.
And alternate method is use a 3/4 plywood panel, the width would span the two available joist and additional width to where you want to hang the water heater.  The plywood would be mounted to the at the top and bottom of the plywood plate on the studs.  Brackets of water heater easily screwed into the plywood sheet.
My preference is the 2x4, because your screws for the bracket will have more backing to screw into.  With the plywood plate, only 3/4 of holding power.
Yes there are toggle bolts that will hold the weight, but would not recommend this in stucco for a suspended water heater.
Comment: I think you mean 30# for the bolt since the total weight is 60# and I don't know if that includes the water and plumbing so 120# might be closer to the installed weight. If gas powered, there might be increased seismic requirements.
Comment: It's an outdoor tankless heater, so it's designed specifically to mount outside. It's a shame the manufacturer didn't make the mounting bracket 1" longer and put it on 16" centers!


Arduino / Love-O-Meter : wrong temperature read when LEDs are on

Question: I tried the Love-O-Meter example given in the Startup kit of Arduino. The example is available here. The temperature sensor is the TMP36 given with the kit.
If the three LEDs are off (e.g. when writing LOW in the code, comment the corresponding lines or unplug them), there is no problem: the real temperature in the room is given and the sensor gives a value around 150.
However, if one or more LEDs are on, then the temperature increases to around 10°C for each LED (the sensor gives 215 when the three LEDS are on).
The conversion from the sensor value to the temperature works well. Also, I measure a correct voltage by using a multimeter.
Any idea?
Answer: Run a separate ground connection for the temperature sensor.
The way it is shown in the picture of the link, The LEDs are sharing the ground connection, and this is causing a slight ground reference shift (voltage drop), which is causing the output voltage to be shifted with respect to the A2D ground reference.
Comment: Gah, you were 7 seconds faster. :D


What's the best way to introduce Bitcoin to the family and friends?

Question: What's the best way to introduce Bitcoin to the family and friends?
Has anybody succesful experience in the topic?
Comment: What do you mean by 'best'? Best at convincing them to use Bitcoin, or best at educating them about it.
Comment: I guess both. Trying to find new ways to tell people without causing more confusion.
Comment: related: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-a-good-way-to-concisely-explain-bitcoin
Answer: I don't know the best way. But what I do is talk about it all the time. And actually use the bitcoins. I mean purchase things with your bitcoin not trade with them on exchange networks.
I buy a new product with my bitcoins and use it in front of my friends and family. Those who are interested ask where I got it, and then ask how much I spent on it. My response is in bitcoins. eg it was just 0.10 bitcoins very decent deal. Or it is just 2 bitcoins.
I've found that when selling an idea of bitcoin by saying things like 0.10BTC is worth $60.00 today I tend to get strange looks. Like so you spend $60.00 on 10 cents? People have a hard time understanding concept of ForEx and values of money when comparing one currency with another. It is more successful when you buy something and explain that you purchased it with bitcoin.
Also Christmas is coming up. And I've made paper wallets loaded with bitcoins. And on the paper wallets I have a list of websites that accept bitcoins as payments. So it is like a gift card and it helps people get the idea of what bitcoin is.


How can I prevent Java from creating hsperfdata files?

Question: I'm writing a Java application that runs on Linux (using Sun's JDK). It keeps creating /tmp/hsperfdata_username directories, which I would like to prevent. Is there any way to stop java from creating these files?
Answer: Try JVM option -XX:-UsePerfData
more info
The following might be helpful that is from link https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/tools/unix/java.html
-XX:+UsePerfData

    Enables the perfdata feature. This option is enabled by default
    to allow JVM monitoring and performance testing. Disabling it
    suppresses the creation of the hsperfdata_userid directories.
    To disable the perfdata feature, specify -XX:-UsePerfData.

Comment: Just to point out that using either of -XX:+PerfDisableSharedMem or -XX:-UsePerfData will not allow JConsole, VisualVM and similar tools to connect to the JVM unless you activate JMX.
Comment: The "more info" link has been fixed.
Answer: Use the JVM option -XX:-UsePerfData.
This will not have a negative effect on performance, as some other answers say.
By default jvmstat instrumentation is turned on in the HotSpot JVM.  The JVM option -XX:-UsePerfData turns it off.  If anything, I would speculate, turning off the instrumentation would improve performance (a trivial amount).
So the downside of turning off jvmstat instrumentation is that you lose the performance monitoring information.
jvmstat is described here http://java.sun.com/performance/jvmstat/
Here's a thread with someone who is worried that by turning on jvmstat - with the option -XX:+UsePerfData - will hurt performance.
http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=33833
(It probably won't since jvmstat is designed to be "'always on', yet has negligible performance impact".)
Comment: Also see this blog post from a softare engineer at Twitter: http://www.evanjones.ca/jvm-mmap-pause.html
There he describes a positive effect on garbage collector pause times.
Answer: Rather than switching it off, change the java.io.tmpdir location.
Add -Djava.io.tmpdir=/mydir/somewhere/else/ to your Java startup command
and then the file will be somewhere that you control.

Note a comment by @simonc:  this only works in a few versions of the JVM and is no longer supported. See https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?bug_id=6447182, https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?bug_id=6938627, https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?bug_id=7009828 for more information.
Comment: I know this is an old question, but for the Google searchers:  this only works in a few versions of the JVM and is no longer supported.  See:  http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6447182, http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6938627, http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=7009828.
Answer: EDIT: Cleanup info and summarize
Summary:

Its a feature, not a bug
It can be turned of with -XX:-UsePerfData which might hurt performance

Relevant info:

Sun forum
Bugreport
Comment: The bottom of that page outlines a solution, that does indeed work.
Comment: Down votes are not hostile actions.  They just reflect the percieved accuracy of your answer.  Your original answer indicated it could not be solved ("Looks like you cant").  That just was not true.
Answer: There is also "-XX:+PerfDisableSharedMem" option (recommended by Sun) which should cause less performance issues than use of "-XX:-UsePerfData" option.
Comment: " which should cause less performance issues " . Interesting, but do you have any official source ?
Answer: As an addendum to Mack's reply (answered Mar 25 '11 at 17:12), the option java.tmp.dir looks no longer available since Java 8.  See the info at: https://bugs.java.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8189674
So disabling the option using -XX:-UsePerfData seems the only option not to have hsperfdata_* files.
Answer: From svrist's link:

The first item in http://java.sun.com/performance/jvmstat/faq.html mentions an option which you can turn off to disable the whole suite of features: -XX:-UsePerfData.
Answer: According to the filed bug report there is a work-around:

This undocumented option will disable
the perfdata feature:
-XX:-UsePerfData

It's worth mentioning that it is a feature though, not a bug. The above work-around just disables the feature.


How to resolve Google Suggested Canonical tag Issue?

Question: I don't know how to fix this issue. Why does Google suggest another page as canonical, as opposed to the one selected by us?
Answer: Canonical links only work if they are targetting the correct page(s).

/menu/cuisine/14/ points to /menu/cuisine/14/ - CORRECT
/menu.php?cuisineid=14 points to menu.php?cuisineid=14 - INCORRECT

So, the problem is menu.php?cuisineid=14 not pointing to the correct page. To fix simply ensure your ?query-strings canonical the correct SEF URLS e.g ?cuisineid=14 should be using this:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.burmesekitchen.in/menu/cuisine/14/" />
I can see that you also have <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> therefore you're at no risk but if you wish to suppress the warnings in GSC then fix the canonicals as I have said.
Or alternatively, make your site inaccessible using these query strings and have them 301 redirect to the SEF URLS.
Comment: Thanks for the support, We will try this.


How can I hang a ceiling fan on a cathedral ceiling without wiring or an electrial box?

Question: How do I install a ceiling fan on a cathedral ceiling that has no wiring and electrical box? I don't really want to cut into ceiling drywall.  I'm worried about support for the fan.
Comment: Cutting into drywall is not really all that disruptive:   most of the wire can be run without opening the drywall.  At worst, a good installer can cut small holes at the attachment point, at the top of the wall above the switch, and maybe the bottom of the ceiling next to the wall where the wire will go.
Answer: After writing this long answer, here's a YouTube video.

I'm not a professional, but I had to do a ton of research for a similar situation at my home, and here's some information that I hope will be helpful.
First, it would be easier to break your question into parts, for clarity.  I may be misunderstanding your question though.
Q1: I don't have electrical in my ceiling, how can I get power there?
Answers:
First there may actually be wiring up there, an electrician (or you) could figure it out by trying to get access to attic or space around the perimeter of the cathedral ceiling.  In our house, from the attic we see Romex cable entering the cathedral ceiling in between the rafters.  So I would do some research there first, or ask a Pro too (they would know where to look faster).
If there is no power there already, it should be possible to add it to an existing circuit from a nearby wall.  An electrician would cut a hole in the ceiling and then cut a hole in the wall and use a fishtape to bring the wiring up to the ceiling.  I'm not a pro, so there's a lot of detail here that is missing, but trying to give you a general idea (there are a ton of resources online to find out how to do that).
Worst case scenario you could surface mount the wires like another person mentioned, but unless it is a rustic house or you have a very limited budget, I wouldn't go with that (unless you are ok with it as a short term solution).  I would think an electrician / GC could get wiring to this location for $300-400 and might install the fan for that price as well.
Q2: how do I attach the fan to the ceiling?
Ceiling fans need considerable support.  If the center of the room or the location where you want to mount it doesn't have a joist/rafter that you can mount the fan to, you will need to get one of these mounting brackets:

Westinghouse-15-5-cu-in-Retrofit-Ceiling-Fan-Saf-T-Brace (search that on google)
I used something like this (not sure the brand), and it works well (it is very stable/solid), but it definitely involves cutting into the ceiling, however all the work can be done from the one carefully cut hole it needs anyway. Also, depending on how your ceiling is designed, there may be no clearance space (ours has insulation between the exposed ceiling and the roof deck).
If you have a joist/rafter that you can attach the fan to, then you can get an normal mounting bracket (your fan might come with one already).
This is my first answer on this site, hope there's some helpful info!
My references:
familyhandyman.com/electrical/how-to-install-ceiling-fans
They have a good video on installing the fan brace too, but stack exchange won't let me post 2 links
Answer: Without cutting drywall, you're going to need to buy a surface mount conduit.  This is a rectangular metal tube through which you can run wires.

Find an outlet into which you can tap the feed.
Remove the outlet (power off! Wires Marked!) and mount a surface box extender.
Re-mount the outlet on the extender, and tap your new wire into the feed in the box.
Run a vertical run of conduit and wire to where you want the switch.
Mount the switch in a surface mount box and connect.
Run conduit and wire from the switch to the fan location.
Securely mount the fan to a ceiling joist through the drywall.
Connect the wires to the fan.

Here's a picture of some conduit and surface mount boxes.  The materials in the picture are fairly old, and show some wear and tear, but it looks better when new.
Also, cost out the job.  It may be cheaper to hire someone to patch the drywall.
Comment: Flat wire is available which could be used and is barely noticeable. It is relatively new though so surface mount conduit may be cheaper and simpler.
Comment: As far as I can tell, Flat Wire is only good up to 40 watts.  Not enough for a ceiling fan.  BUT, if you can find a source of 1800 w (15 amp) wire, I'd be interested.
Comment: On a second look, it appears only approved for 12v solutions.


Why does the 3D view have trouble with clip start <=0.01

Question: Earlier I've answered a question where the issue was that in edit mode, the 3D view fully or partially renders the mesh as if limit selection to visible was not ticked, when the 3D view clip start is set to 0.01 or lower, (or apparently when the 3D view clip end is set to 100000 or higher and view is set to Ortho - but I'm more interested in the first scenario).
If someone here knows, I'd really love to know why this is happening. The default values are 0.1 and 1000. So you'd expect not to run into such an issue when changing the values to 0.01 and 100 for example. By default 1 Blender unit equals 1 meter, this means that if you want to keep this default but work on an object that is the size of something that you can hold in your hand, then you'll run into this issue. Designing objects that are the size of your palm is not a very rare thing to do.
Furthermore, this issue does not happen when the 3D view is set to camera. Doesn't that prove that it should be able to work as expected in user view as well? Or is there even a way to get rid of this issue when working with a view clip start of 0.01 in Edit Mode? It should also be noted that sculpt mode is not affected either.
Comment: related, but in those links it's about having a huge range in between clips start and clip end.
But no matter how low you set clip end, you won't get rid of the behavior described here when clicp start is set to 0.01. It seems like an arbitrary absolute limit.
Comment: Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/1387/599
Comment: Also Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/23693/2217
Answer: From my purely theoretical and limited technical knowledge on the matter real time rendered scenes (like in OpenGL or DirectX) use a Z depth buffer to determine the distance to camera of any object or vertex on screen.
That Z buffer is basically a black and white image of the screen, where for every pixel there can be a a value from 0 to 255 (black to white) for distance information. This image is then used to determine what is visible and what is not and build the viewport image. (There may be other wizardry involved for increased precision like double precision or using other color channels for more possible depth values, by my technical knowledge is limited here)
If the clipping distances (Start and End)are too far apart these 255 (or whatever) shades of grey are not gonna cut it and will not be enough for all the possible depth differences on screen, so artifacts and errors start appearing on screen, like the so called Z-Fighting on co-planar or coinciding faces, or these seemingly ghost-like edges and see-through faces in your mesh.
Now in theory changing clipping values but keeping them in sync should have no ill effects, but there are probably other variables like your graphics card capabilities, drivers, etc.
I would also like to know more about this, so if Blender developer, programmer or someone with more technical knowledge care correct me or enlighten us, I would be very grateful.
Answer: This issue seems to be fixed since 2.8


Ceiling Light Wiring Confusion

Question: I replaced two sockets in my dated pantry pull chain ceiling light. I tried to put it all back together but blew a fuse.  Each new socket has  one white & one black wire, the newly installed pull chain has two black wires. The house wiring is older, no color distinctions there.  Fortunately I tagged the four house wires when I disassembled everything so I know which two belong together.  Can you possibly draw a diagram that I could easily follow to put this back together? Thanks. Location: Chicago, IL, USA
Answer: Your description is somewhat vague but I'll give it a try.
You say there are four wires from the house. I'm going to assume that these were connected together in pairs. In turn, each pair was connected to wires going to the old lights.
If the above is not correct, STOP READING! You need to clarify the wiring to us. A photo or drawing may help.
One of the pairs of wires is HOT and the other is NEUTRAL. Unfortunately, due to the lack of coloring, it may be difficult to tell which is which. Do you know that one of the pairs was connected to the outer ring of each socket? If yes, that pair should be NEUTRAL. If no, do you know which pair was connected to the old pull switch? If yes, that should be HOT.
If neither of the above can be determined, I strongly recommend you call an electrician to sort it out to avoid setting up a hazardous situation.
Assuming that has been sorted out, the wiring should be as follows:
HOT to one black wire of the switch. The other switch black connects to both blacks on the sockets. The white wires on both sockets connect to NEUTRAL.
I'd also recommend getting a roll each of black and white electrical tape. Wrap a strip of black tape on both HOT wires coming from the house. Wrap a strip of white tape on both NEUTRAL wires coming from the house. this will correctly identify the wiring for the future.
Again, if anything I've written does not match what you know of the wiring or if anything is not clear, STOP and call an electrician. If you connect things incorrectly, you could be setting up a very hazardous situation where someone could be electrocuted or your house could catch on fire.

Ceiling Light Wiring Confusion


Separating atoms in water

Question: Suppose I have the power of Jean's (X-Men). If I separate the all the atoms in the water in a water bottle, would the volume remain the same?
Answer: Imagine you have one litre of water, with the molecular weight of water being 18g/mol, this gives about 56 moles of substance. If you were to seperate all the atoms, you would be left with 56 moles of oxygen and 112 moles of oxygen (both would be gaseous, assuming normal* conditions).
Manipulation of the ideal gas law gives the result that one mole of gas occupies 22.4 litres at standard pressure and temperature - or a total of nearly 3800 litres of our completely disassociated water. That pressure would certainly be high enough to make (I would imagine) any bottle explode, and then you've got the added fun of the hydrogen and oxygen explosively recombining to remake their preferred watery combination.
*As normal as you can get in this situation, at least.
Answer: Since the question is rather in-precise, so shall the answer be.
When you talk about separating all the atoms you have to specify in which manner you to this. When you disassociate water you will need to add some energy to break the hydrogen bonds. Afterwards you will have a pile of hydrogen and a pile of oxygen. There would likely (even though the temperature would be slightly lower) both be gasses and you thus be of a immensely larger volume.
I'll leave it so someone else to give a more thorough answer with all the energies involved as well as a proper application of the ideal gas law that gives the final volumes (provided the two gases don't mix again).

Separating atoms in water


Can I reuse/ edit the Batch Apex code on sandbox that was deployed into production environment-

Question: I have a batch apex class that deletes all the records from a custom object and it is deployed from sandbox to production. Now I have to write an other batch apex to delete all records from other custom object, Can I edit(reuse) the old batch apex class in sandbox and use it for other objects? will it affect the batch class that was deployed in production?
Answer: Yes, you can do it.
Create a constructor in batch class where you pass the query you want to execute in the start method.
Then in the execute batch method pass the List<sObject> scope instead of the particular object.
On production,  however, you should rerun the batch with new constructor.
To summarize, the batch will look somehow like this:
public with sharing class RunFlowBatch
        implements Database.Batchable<sObject> {
    public String query;
    public RunFlowBatch(String query) {
        this.query = query;
    }

    public Database.QueryLocator start(Database.BatchableContext bc) {
        return Database.getQueryLocator(this.query);
    }

    public void execute(Database.BatchableContext bc, List<sObject> scope) {
        //do necessary operations
    }

    public void finish(Database.BatchableContext bc) {
        //do necessary operations
    }
}

Comment: So, once the code is deployed in production, changes made in sandbox code will not be affected right ? @Mariia IIIarionova
Comment: If you won't refresh your sandbox or deploy from sandbox to prod - than yes, these are two separated environments.
@SalesforceUser
Comment: Thank you @Maria lllarionova
Answer: When you make an edit of any existing class in a sandbox and redeploy it to Production, the class in production will be overridden with your changes.
This may disturb your functionality. If your batch class is no longer needed in Production, Then you can modify it in the sandbox and re-deploy it to Production with new functionality.
If you don't want to deploy the code to production and just keep it to the sandbox, then you will not have any impact on your production instance.
Comment: Thank you very much @sanket kumar